Alinor (3 page)

Simon was not Ian's father in the flesh, but in a more essential way he was the author of his being. Ian could remember his real father only dimly, and even that was too much. Simon had saved him from the hell of that dimly remembered existence, had taught him honor and pride and gentleness. It was a debt that could never be repaid, until now.

If only debt and desire were not so intermingled. Ian's trouble was that he wanted Alinor for herself. He had worshiped her from the day he had first seen her, almost 20 years ago, kneeling in the road to greet King Richard's mother. But one could not worship Alinor for long. She was far too real, far too much of the earth and the flesh, too kind and gentle, too hot-tempered and bawdy, to be seated on a pedestal. A man could only love or hate Alinor. Ian stirred restlessly, wondering again whether he was really paying his debt to Simon or reaching to snatch something he had always wanted.

It was no use worrying that bone again. He had been at it as soon as his initial shock of grief at Simon's death was over. His first rational thought had been that he could now have Alinor. Sickened by the exposure of that long-repressed desire, Ian had recoiled from the idea, but it returned again and again. Each time the notion seemed more reasonable. The children loved him, and he loved them. He would not steal their heritage or harm them as another might to gain absolute control of Alinor's vast estates. And as for Alinor— there was nothing Alinor could not have from him just for the asking.

In the privacy of her own chamber, a place she seldom sought now because it was redolent of happy memories, Alinor took herself to task. Of all the men in the world to lust after, Ian was the last. If she had such a need, there were a dozen men she could ask outright to service her. It would be a pleasure to them both and mean nothing to either. But not Ian. Simon had molded Ian into a mirror of his own uprightness. Not that Simon was a prude—far from it—nor that Ian would object in the least to mating casually with this woman or that. Considering what he looked like, there must have been plenty of women, particularly in John's lascivious court. The king was openly a lecher and preferred that his gentlemen and his queen's ladies should not be overly virtuous. Ian would not be horrified at bedding any lady of the court; he would only be horrified that Simon's wife could feel such a need so soon after his death.

Simon would not have been horrified, Alinor thought, chuckling while tears ran down her face. He would have bewailed her lack of morality aloud while his eyes laughed at her. Who would have believed that Ian was not old enough to accept that the flesh had its own laws, and they had little to do with the heart or mind? Yet look at his reaction to a most natural accident. Unless they were willing to use the common whores, men engaged in military actions were deprived of women. Alinor was fairly certain that Ian had little need to use a whore under ordinary circumstances; there would be plenty of willing fine ladies. She was also sure that he would recoil from using the filthy creatures that serviced the men-at-arms in a military camp. She understood that when a strong young man had been continent for months, the slightest thing, the lightest touch, would wake his body. She would have laughed and forgotten it had Ian himself not been so appalled at his reaction to "Simon's wife."

"I am not only Simon's wife," Alinor sobbed softy. "I am Alinor."

Some hours later and many miles away, across the narrow sea, a sweet, rich voice suddenly developed an ugly snarl, interrupting itself in the midst of a sentence to ask, "What did you say about Pembroke?"

The man addressed did not blanch, even though King John seemed angry; he laughed. "I said, my lord, that we did not miss him in the taking of Montauban or in our other ventures. We did not miss him nor that mighty and sanctimonious man of his hands, Simon Lemagne, whom your brother leaned upon so heavily."

William, Earl of Salisbury, the king's bastard half brother, straightened from his bored slouch and shook his head. He was a little the worse for wine, a condition not uncommon with him when the king and his cronies gathered. It was easier, Salisbury had discovered, not to hear too clearly when he was a little befuddled. Normally this was an ideal situation; it saved him from needing to reply and from the danger of losing his temper at what he heard. Moreover, nine times out of ten, nothing of any importance was said, the talk consisting of gross flattery of the king and gross conversation in general. Unfortunately, tonight was the tenth time. Salisbury knew there was something dangerous about the name Simon Lemagne, but at the moment he could not marshal his wits into remembering what.

"Lemagne is dead. Let him rest in peace," Philip Marc said idly.

"Dead?"

The purring tone of the king's voice pierced the vague haze engendered by the rich Burgundy wine Salisbury had been drinking. He was still not sure where the danger lay, but when the king used that tone, someone soon suffered for it.

"There was a letter," Salisbury said thickly. "I remember, because it came the day de Vipont and I were planning the assault—"

His voice died. The mention of Ian's name suddenly brought the danger clearly to Salisbury's mind. He remembered the younger man's stricken face, his own anxious questions. Now he remembered the answers to those questions, and he was made dumb by remorse. He had said the worst possible thing in his drunken effort to divert John.

"You mean you were putting some small touches to the king's plan," Fulk de Cantelu growled aggressively. "The king told me the whole thing before ever you thought of it."

Salisbury lifted his bleary eyes from the stained table where he had been seeking a way of mending his drunken slip. In general, William of Salisbury was not a man given to hate. He tended, in fact, to blame himself for another's fault and to see the best in all men. However, he had learned over the years of his brother's reign to hate Fulk de Cantelu and the man who sat some places down from Fulk on the other side, Henry of Cornhill.

It was not only that these cronies of the king were lowborn, cruel, and greedy in themselves; they seemed to bring out the very worst in John.

It was not fair, Salisbury thought. There was much good in John. He was clever, he could be warm and loving and generous. That he did not often show that side of his nature was the fault of circumstances. John had been the youngest of a large and violent brood, unwanted by his powerful and magnetic mother, whom he adored, and spoiled by his father, who had already divided his vast possessions before John's birth. Thus, he had been called John Lackland, had been made the butt of jests, had been blamed for all the dissensions in the family. Salisbury knew that John felt that deep in his father's mind he had even been blamed for the rebellions and, finally, the death of his eldest brother. Although old King Henry had buried that thought deep and had been even more insistent about finding a suitable heritage for his youngest son, he could not completely conceal the canker in his heart.

Then Henry's frantic efforts to carve a kingdom for John out of Richard's domain brought about the rebellion of his second son. John was near demented. If Richard died, he would have the whole, because Geoffrey, the third brother, was dead of disease. He would also have the undying hatred of his mother, already imprisoned for her efforts in Richard's cause, and the no-less-bitter grief and hatred of his father, no matter how concealed. How much John wanted that kingdom no man, not even Salisbury, knew. At first he threw himself into the war on his father's side, but Richard was more than a match for the aging, guilt- and grief-ridden Henry.

John was clever. He saw there was more than one way to skin a cat. The kingdom could be inherited from Richard more easily than it could be wrested from him by war. John knew his brother Richard was not likely either to reign long or to breed up an heir to the throne. Richard was a lover of men; to prove himself no woman, or perhaps in some deep and concealed desire for a heroic death that would glorify his name and bring him peace, Richard fought constantly—in tournaments, if a war was temporarily lacking. What was more, Richard had taken the Cross and would go on Crusade. It was very likely that the diseases of the Holy Land would kill him if the warriors of Saladin did not.

John withdrew himself from his father's war. When the time was ripe, he went to Richard, received his indulgent brother's kiss of peace, wrested from Richard the promise of vast territories, and turned on his father. He turned on his brother, too. When it transpired that neither disease nor war had destroyed Richard, John had conspired with the ancient enemy of his family, King Philip of France, to murder Richard or, failing that, keep him imprisoned for life. That, too, failed. John's mighty mother was still alive, and she so bedeviled the Pope and the Emperor of Germany, who held Richard prisoner, that they set a ransom for him. Then, by draining the lifeblood from England and her own territories in France, she had paid that ransom and procured her son's freedom.

Now, Salisbury thought, John is being blamed for that also. Perhaps John's actions were not all that they should have been with respect to his father and his brother, but the taxes and fines that had brought such misery to England were not John's fault. Richard's Crusade and Richard's ransom had impoverished England. Richard's wars against Philip after he was freed had also cost money, and those wars were more often started by Richard than by Philip. On the other hand, it was Philip who had attacked John. John did not go looking for war, and it was not his fault if he had to pay for a war that was thrust upon him.

It was the need to pay that brought the like of Fulk de Cantelu and Henry of Cornhill into John's favor. There was no mercy in them, and they did not fear God. They would take a cross from an altar or wrest the last farthing from a starving widow with equal indifference. That was what made them valuable to John, who could do neither. From a distance, he could order the widow's property confiscated or the cross to be torn down, but he could not put his hand to such work.

The drink-muddled train of thought had brought Salisbury back to the danger of mentioning Simon Lemagne's death. It was Ian de Vipont who had told Salisbury that Simon's marriage had displeased John, who had planned to give the woman Simon married to another man. Ian wished to marry her himself now that Simon was dead, largely, Salibury thought, to protect her children, who were the heirs to a very large property. Ian loved those children as if they were his own; he was never done talking of them, and he feared that another man might be tempted to deprive them of their rights or even, to enrich himself or his own children, do away with them. The letter Salisbury mentioned had been from the widow. It was a stupid thing to bring her into John's mind. Salisbury giggled drunkenly. For once he had reason to be grateful for Fulk's jealous spite, which would leave Salisbury no credit for anything in his brother's eyes. In Fulk's desire to deprive Salisbury of the honor of planning a successful assault, he had said what was most likely to divert the king's mind from Simon's widow.

While Salisbury's mind was in the past, however, the fulsome praise of the king had come to an end, and the end, unfortunately, brought Simon's name back into the conversation.

"He is no loss," John agreed, and he smiled.

It was a pleasant smile, if one did not look into John's eyes. The king was not an unhandsome man. He was growing stout, but that was characteristic of the body shape he had inherited from his father: short and very broad, with enormous strength. His coloring was his mother's: crisp, dark hair, graying very slightly now, cut evenly a few inches below the ears and growing from a decided peak on the forehead. His mouth was small and well-shaped, but the thin upper lip betrayed bis cruelty, and the full lower one his lust. His nose was good and straight; the wide-springing nostrils would have warned of choler, but no man needed that warning.

All the Angevins had fierce tempers. John's, in fact, was less apparent than Henry's or Richard's. The former had been driven into such rages that he rolled the floors and tore at carpets and pillows with his teeth; the latter had more often broken furniture or heads. John was seldom violent. His temper seethed within him, gnawing at his vitals. Thus, it was not well to look into his large, dark eyes, which otherwise would have been his best and most beautiful feature.

A chorus of sycophantic laughter greeted the king's dismissal of a vassal who, if he had not loved John, had yet been faithful and had answered every call for military service until illness had made it impossible. Salisbury was saddened by his half brother's long-lived rancor, but he accepted it as he accepted John's other weaknesses, making what excuses he could for the baby brother he had protected and shielded all his life.

"He is dead, so forget him," Salisbury urged. "Tell me, brother―"

"But his lovely and wealthy widow is not dead," John interrupted, forestalling Salisbury's attempt to lead him to some other topic.

The purr was back in John's voice, and Salisbury shuddered inwardly, but he could not drive his wine-sodden brain to conceive a subject that would be more interesting. Suddenly John laughed.

"Poor woman, likely she was as glad to be rid of him as I. He must have been a useless hulk to her these many years. It comes to my mind that I would do the lady a favor by cutting short her mourning and providing her with a husband who would know how to use her abed and abroad. She is a little hot at hand—er—I have been told. Perhaps she would need a little taming. How would that sit with you, Fulk? Or you, Henry? Are either of you man enough to take such a task in hand?"

"You would do better," Salisbury said desperately, "to take a rich fine from her and leave her to her own devices. Every pound you gain will lessen the toll you must ask for from the kingdom at large. Any husband you choose will very soon bethink him that the lady's gold would go into his purse if it did not go into yours."

John looked at his brother, and for a moment the cruel mouth softened, and the hungry eyes grew milder. "You always see the best way for me, William. That was a shrewd reminder. Yes, indeed." He laughed uproariously. "I will offer the lady her choice, and when she has made it, she shall pay richly for the privilege. And you," his eyes swept the table, "my dear and loving friends, will be able to place no blame upon me. It will be the lady's choice, not mine, that makes one man master of her estates."