A rose for a queen

Nothing to post about July 21st medieval happenings, but I do have a lovely story about Eleanor of Aquitaine told to me by one of my readers. She said that she’d visited Fontevrault Abbey about fifteen years ago and at the foot of her tomb was one red rose. She asked the guide, “Do you put them there?” He said, “Oh, no, Madame, we find them there.” I think Eleanor would be pleased and I suspect she might just mention to Henry that no one put flowers by his tomb.

Some years ago, I visited the abbey ruins of Cwm Hir, where Llywelyn ap Gruffydd is said to have been secretly buried by the Welsh to keep the English king from desecrating his grave as he’d done with Simon de Montfort’s grave at Evesham Abbey. It was rather remote and not easy to find. There is a black slate plaque there in his memory, which I always found far more moving than the large monument to him at Builth Wells. On my first visit to Cwm Hir, I was touched to see that someone had been there very recently and left a bouquet of flowers on the memorial stone. Welsh friends have told me that flowers are often found on Joanna’s tomb in the alcove of St Mary’s Church in Beaumaris, too.