Handsome Alfonso VIII of Castile was married to a haughty English princess named Eleanor of Aquitaine (sister of Richard the Lionhearted), but he tired of her and ran off to Toledo with his darkly lovely Jewish mistress. The love story lasted for seven years, and then the mistress was poisoned by Eleanor's agents. Alfonso, gnawed by both a guilty conscience and a dark suspicion that he was next on the poisoners' list, went home to Eleanor and atonement. Last week, almost 800 years later, the fruits of Alfonso's atonement were providing Spanish archeologists...
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