Devil's Brood (56 page)

“I am giving him Aquitaine. God knows he earned it.”

Willem was impressed, knowing how reluctant Henry was to relinquish authority. “He must have been overwhelmed,” he said, and Henry’s pleasure lost some of its luster.

“He was not as joyful as I would have expected,” he admitted. “When I told him that from now on, he could govern the duchy as he chose, he thanked me as calmly as if I’d just offered him a new saddle.” His eyes rested for a mystified moment upon the tall figure of his second son. “I confess, Willem,” he said quietly, “that I do not understand the lad, never have if truth be told. He keeps his own counsel, has learned to guard his thoughts. As his king, I find that commendable, for no ruler should be as easily read as…well, as Hal is. But as his father, I do wish he were more forthcoming, at least with me.”

After a moment, though, he shook his head, and began to question Willem about his mission to the Flemish court. Willem had just begun his report when there was a sudden stir in the hall. Curious, he paused, and was taken aback to see the queen coming through the open doorway.

Henry caught his questioning look and shrugged. “Richard wanted her here,” he said simply, and Willem thought it was encouraging that the king was learning to pick his battles with his sons. But then Henry said, “Actually, what he’d asked for was her freedom, and there is no way I could have granted that wish. So it would have been churlish to deny him her presence at revelries in his honor. I’ve tried to be a good sport about it, Willem, even bought her a gilded scarlet saddle and new robes for the occasion. I cannot say, though, that I am pleased to have her here.”

Willem understood why. The change in Richard’s demeanor was startling. Where before he’d been detached, even aloof, he was now displaying considerable animation as he conversed and laughed with his mother. Henry made no comment, but he kept his eyes upon them even as Willem completed his account of his meeting with Count Philip. By then Richard had noticed Willem’s presence and was heading in their direction, his mother pacing serenely beside him, her hand resting lightly but possessively upon his arm.

Once greetings had been exchanged, Willem made ready to hear Richard’s firsthand account of Taillebourg’s fall. Richard had other matters upon his mind, though. “I’ve not had a chance to talk with you since your return from the Holy Land, and I am eager to hear all about your experiences there. You were one of the victors at Ramlah, no? Is it true that your siege of Harenc was interrupted by the arrival of Saladin himself? What do you think of his military prowess? Did you get to Jerusalem—”

Willem flung up his hand in mock surrender, and let Richard lead him away to continue his interrogation. Henry and Eleanor found themselves alone for the first time since her arrival at Woodstock. After an awkward moment, Henry took refuge in courtesy and escorted her toward their chairs upon the dais. Richard and Willem had moved to a window-seat to continue their discussion of Holy Land warfare, and they were soon surrounded by a large throng, for Richard was exercising the sort of magnetic appeal that had previously been Hal’s alone. Henry watched his son for a few moments more, wishing that Richard could be like that with him—enthused and unguarded. Glancing toward his wife, he said, “What were you saying that Richard found so amusing?”

His brusque tone made it sound more like an accusation than an inquiry. Eleanor ignored the undercurrents and said composedly, “Ah, that. I told Richard that I was particularly gratified to see Taillebourg Castle reduced to rubble, for Louis and I spent the first night of our marriage there.”

Henry gave her a sharp look, but decided he did not want to talk of wedding nights with Eleanor; that was too intimate for his liking. It vexed him that she insisted upon displaying a wife’s familiarity instead of a rebel’s contrition. “You like to accuse me of never learning from my mistakes,” he said. “But Louis does not even learn from other men’s mistakes. Did you hear that he is planning to have Philippe crowned in August on Ascension Day?”

“No, I had not heard that,” Eleanor said. “I cannot say it surprises me, though. Louis always had a talent for taking a bad situation and making it worse.”

“To be fair, he did have some misgivings about the idea after observing how well it worked with Hal. But he has decided to go ahead with it, mayhap because he has been ailing this past year. It will be interesting to see how it goes,” Henry commented, in a masterly understatement.

Eleanor regarded him pensively. “I saw Hal out in the bailey,” she said. “He looked out of sorts and, sad to say, was making no attempt to hide his discontent. I fear that he is not handling Richard’s newfound fame very well.”

“No, he is not,” Henry said, and sighed. “Hal and Richard show all the good will of Cain and Abel. And for that matter, Richard and Geoffrey are not much better.”

Eleanor’s eyes narrowed; was he saying the dissention between their sons was Richard’s fault? But as he continued, she saw that was not what he was implying. “I confess to being baffled by their constant squabbling and strife, Eleanor. It is true I never got along with my brother Geoff, but that was mainly his doing. Will and I were always very close.”

“I know,” she said, remembering how grief-stricken he’d been by Will’s sudden death at twenty-seven. “I was only six when my brother died, so I do not have many memories of him. I probably considered him a pest, as big sisters are wont to do. But Petronilla and I were confidantes and allies—even partners in crime—as far back as I can remember. Somehow, though, our sons have managed to reach manhood without any true sense of brotherly affection or loyalty, and I do not know what to do about it.”

“Neither do I,” Henry admitted, frowning as he saw the corners of her mouth curving upward. “What possible amusement can you find in this?”

“Not amusement exactly. It just occurred to me that we have finally found some common ground to agree upon, Harry, and what is it? Our failings as parents!”

Henry shared her sense of the ridiculous and when their eyes met, they were soon both laughing, laughter that stopped abruptly when they realized that this was the first time they’d laughed together in more than seven years.

A
T FIRST PHILIPPE WAS ANGRY
—with his horse for bolting and with his companions for taking so long to find him. He’d been calling out until his voice was hoarse, but the only sounds he heard were the normal noises of the forest. He was getting hungry and tired and, as the afternoon wore on, increasingly uneasy. The prospect of being lost in the woods at night was a daunting one. This was the first time in Philippe’s fourteen years that he’d ever been utterly alone, and he liked it not at all.

He was scratched from brambles and overhanging branches, bothered by swarms of gnats and other insects, as miserable as he’d ever been in his entire life. When his mount suddenly shied and he banged his elbow painfully against a gnarled oak, he lost his temper altogether. He did not enjoy riding, had always viewed horses with dislike and distrust, and this particular horse was to blame for all of his troubles today. Giving in to his rage, he jabbed it in the sides with his spurs at the same time that he brought his whip down upon its withers. The gelding snorted and reared up suddenly. Philippe dropped his spear and clung to the mane as he tried to maintain his seat. But the horse began to buck, and the boy lost his grip and his stirrups, went sailing over its head into a wild blackberry bush.

Like his father, Philippe rarely cursed; the strongest oath he normally used was “By the Lance of St James!” But as he sought to extricate himself, he was muttering an obscenity, one that could have come from the mouth of the English king or any of his sons. When he finally fought free of the thorns and briars and saw that the wretched horse was nowhere in sight, he had to bite his lip to keep further profanities from spewing out into the humid August air. As bad as being lost was, being lost and on foot was far worse.

Philippe rooted around in the undergrowth until he’d recovered his spear. They’d been hunting boar and had not seen one all day. But now it seemed to him that boars lurked in every thicket, behind every felled tree, and he gripped the weapon so tightly that his knuckles turned white. He shouted again, listened in vain for a response and then, hunching his shoulders, began to trudge along the path.

The tree branches intertwined, forming an opaque, green canopy over his head, and he went for long stretches without seeing the sky. He was slow to realize, therefore, that the light was ebbing. With the awareness that the sun would soon be setting, he suffered his first surge of fear. His second came when he tripped over an exposed root and nearly landed on a snake, and his next when he heard an owl’s prey in its death throes, unseen in the twilight dusk. But it was the distant howl of a wolf that sent him into panicked flight. He ran until he stumbled and fell flat, hitting the ground with enough force to bruise his ribs and drive all the breath from his lungs. The shock of it enabled him to regain control of himself. Realizing it was madness to keep racing around in the darkness, he crawled over to the closest tree, curled up next to its trunk, and prepared to endure an interminable night.

He was sure he’d never be able to sleep, but he finally dozed, and jerked upright just before sunrise. During the night, fog had drifted in and the trees were wreathed in patches of pale vapor, blotting out the sun. Shivering in the damp dawn air, he struggled to his feet, every muscle in his body cramping in protest, took a deep breath, and yelled for help. He thought he heard an answering shout, but he did not trust his own senses. His next cry brought another echo, though, louder this time.

“I am here! Over here!” He could hear running footsteps now, and then a huge, hulking figure was looming out of the mist, a giant with bare, muscled arms, hands like hams, a blackened, smudged face, and an axe dangling by his side, the ogre of Philippe’s boyhood night terrors. Shrinking back against the tree, he gasped, “Stay away from me! I am Philippe Capet, the king’s son! Keep away!”

H
ENRY WAS BACK AT WOODSTOCK;
it had always been one of his favorite manors and it gave him comfort to visit the nearby nunnery of Godstow, where he lavished largesse upon the priory and prayed for Rosamund’s soul. He’d held a council meeting that afternoon, a productive session in which they discussed a wide range of topics: the coming Christmas visit of the King of Scotland, the feasibility of issuing a new coinage, a report upon his recent judicial reform in which he’d divided the realm into four circuits, and the need to fill the justiciarship now that Richard de Lucy had resigned the post because of ill health. The council was done but Henry and a few others still lingered in the solar.

As all of them were men who stood high in Henry’s favor, the talk was more relaxed and informal; they’d been idly discussing the Lateran Council held in Rome that spring. One of the canons had banned “those abominable jousts and fairs, which are commonly called tournaments,” but Henry and his companions agreed that the Church prohibition would not likely be heeded. Nor did they expect the Lateran Council’s excommunication of routiers to discourage rulers from hiring them.

Henry candidly admitted that he’d continue to make use of routiers when the need arose. “Though it could be argued that routiers are actually more dangerous when they are not employed. My son Richard kept his routiers under tight rein, but once he came to England in June and they were no longer being paid, they sacked Bordeaux.”

Getting to his feet and beginning to pace, Henry stopped the others from rising, too, for Gilbert Foliot and the Bishop of Winchester were no longer young. “I received two interesting communications from the French court this week,” he said, and these men knew him well enough to understand that there was something highly unusual about those “interesting communications.”

“One came from the French king,” Henry continued, “and the other from…well, let’s just say a well-placed source at Louis’s court. Louis has had to postpone his son’s coronation. Philippe was hunting in the royal forest near Compiègne and somehow he became separated from his companions. He spent the night alone in the woods and was finally found the next morning by a charcoal burner. But my ‘source’ tells me that the charcoal burner must have had a fearsome visage for his appearance scared Philippe so badly that he took ill soon after his rescue.”

The men exchanged grins and several laughed outright. Henry shared their amusement; royal heirs were not supposed to be so delicate. “At that age, any of my hellions would have considered a night alone in the woods a grand adventure. But we know Philippe is as high-strung as a lass. The humor of his mishap soon soured, though, for within a day he was burning up with fever, and they are now fearing for his life.”

They were no longer laughing; if Philippe died, the repercussions would be felt throughout Christendom. Louis’s own health was said to be failing. If he died soon after his son, there could be a vicious struggle for his crown. His two sons-in-law, the Counts of Champagne and Blois, would be sure to make claims on behalf of their wives, his daughters with Eleanor, Marie and Alix. Some would look to Marguerite, too, even though she was a younger daughter, for there were bound to be French barons who would eagerly embrace the idea of having the easygoing, pleasure-loving Hal as their king, just as there were Poitevin lords who’d prefer Hal to his more martial brother, Richard.

“Marie is the eldest, of course,” Willem said thoughtfully, “but that might not count for much, what with her husband now in the Holy Land. My money would be on Thibault of Blois…unless you seriously back your son and the Lady Marguerite, my liege.”

Henry knew this was the question in all of their minds, but only Willem was bold enough to voice it. Thinking that Hal had yet to show he could rule one kingdom, much less two, he said, “You are getting the cart before the horse, Willem. Let’s not be so quick to bury Louis’s son. I said I’d heard from Louis as well as from my spy. He has been half out of his mind with fear.” Adding fairly, “As any father would be. But it seems that St Thomas came to him in a dream and told him that if he made a pilgrimage to Canterbury, Philippe would recover. Needless to say, when he suggested this to his council, they were greatly dismayed and dismissed it out of hand.”

Henry’s smile was sardonic. “My spy tells me they lectured Louis that it would be utter madness to enter the lion’s den of his own free will. The lion, I suppose, is me, which might be considered a perverse sort of compliment. Be that as it may, Philippe’s condition continued to worsen, and Thomas paid Louis two more nightly visits. After the third dream, he did what he ought to have done from the first—found a king’s backbone and told his council that he meant to make a Canterbury pilgrimage, their misgivings be damned. And so he has written to me, earnestly entreating me to issue a safe conduct so that he may come to England and pray for St Thomas to spare his son.”

There was a moment of astonished silence and, then, incredulous laughter. “For some reason,” Willem said dryly, “a verse of Scriptures comes to mind:
He that diggeth a pit shall fall into it,
” and Hamelin gleefully recited a proverb to the effect that revenge was a dish best eaten cold.

Henry smiled. “I’ve always believed that the best way to deal with temptation was to yield to it. So it came as a surprise to discover that it is not actually that difficult to tell Satan to get behind me. An interesting lesson to learn so late in life, no?”

Hamelin’s mouth dropped open. “Harry, surely you are not saying that you might give Louis a safe conduct!”

“Yes, I am,” Henry said, and saw that Hamelin was not the only one to be gaping at him. He had not expected to have to defend his decision, but he said, with rare patience, “It is too easy to put myself into Louis’s shoes. If one of my sons were on his deathbed, I would bargain with Lucifer if I thought that would save him. It is not the French king that I am accommodating, Hamelin. It is a grieving father.”

O
N AUGUST
22
,
Louis landed at Dover, where Henry was waiting to welcome him and to escort him to Canterbury. It was the first time that a French monarch had ever set foot on English soil.

H
ENRY LED WILLEM
into the cloisters of the cathedral. He’d sent Willem to France with the safe conduct, and this was the first time they’d had to talk since Willem had returned to England with Louis and the Count of Flanders. It was a beautiful evening, that twilight hour in which stars were just beginning to glimmer in the sky and the clouds still reflected the dying glow of the setting sun. Both men paused to breathe in the sweet clover-scented air, listening as a passing bell chimed somewhere in town, signaling that a parishioner had gone home to God. Henry came often to Canterbury in the years since he’d done penance at the archbishop’s tomb, and he was always surprised that this place, the scene of sacrilege and murder, could seem like such a peaceful haven, that the cathedral he’d entered in such despair and dread could now be soothing to his soul.

“I am on a rescue mission,” he confided to Willem. “Louis’s physicians begged me to coax him into ending his penance. They fear that he may become ill himself if he passes a second night fasting and praying. I promised to do what I could, for it would be rather awkward if he were to die whilst he was an honored guest of the English Crown.”

Willem agreed that Louis was too frail for severe mortification of the flesh, and for a moment, Henry remembered what he’d been told of Thomas Becket’s self-abasement in the last years of his life, baring his back thrice daily for scourging, wearing a lice-infested hairshirt and braies, spending hours on his knees or prone upon the stone floor as he offered up his prayers to the Almighty. Even now, five years after he and Thomas had made their peace in that shadowed, silent crypt, Henry found it difficult to reconcile the holy martyr with the worldly chancellor who’d been his friend.

“Ere I go chasing after Louis,” he said, “there is something I want to discuss with you, Willem. I learned this morning that the Count of Aumale died on Monday.”

It was never comforting to hear of the passing of a man who was close in age to them, and Willem instinctively sought to distance them from the dead count, saying, “He was not in the best of health, was he? I seem to recall that he was called Guillaume le Gros, at least behind his back!”

“He was on the stout side,” Henry allowed. “But it is not his sin of gluttony I want to talk about. He had no son, and his estates will pass to his daughter, Hawise. It is my intention to give the girl to you, Willem.”

Willem was rarely taken by surprise, but he was now. Kings were usually loath to give up the wardship of an heiress, for that gave them control of her revenues and eventual marriage. “I am honored by your trust in me. I will be greatly pleased to have the lass as my ward, will do right by her, you may be sure.”

“I am not offering you her wardship, Willem. I am giving her to you in marriage,” Henry said, amused to see that he’d managed to render the courtly, urbane earl quite speechless for once.

Willem was overwhelmed. As Earl of Essex, he need never have to beg his bread by the side of the road, but his was not the wealthiest of earldoms. Guillaume of Aumale had held extensive lands in Yorkshire and other shires as well as his estates in Normandy. Henry was offering him a great heiress as casually as if he were proffering a benefice to an improvident priest.

“Harry! How can I ever thank you?”

“I’m sure I’ll think of something,” Henry joked, before saying, quite seriously, “Kings are not denied much in this life. But their friendships are as scarce as hen’s teeth, which is one reason why we rely so often upon kinsmen—though that obviously has its drawbacks, too. I’ve been luckier than most, for I’ve had two men I could call ‘friend,’ you and Thomas.” Unable to resist teasing, “Let’s hope that our friendship ends better than mine and Thomas’s did.”