The Autumn Throne (9 page)

John writhed and tried to push him off without success. ‘Don’t touch me; I’ll tell Papa.’

‘Oh yes, carry the tale and see how far you get,’ Jeoffrey scoffed.

John’s expression grew narrow and mean but he pressed his lips together. Jeoffrey released him with a final shake and John shrugged away and straightened his clothes, defiant but wary. The obnoxious reek of dead rodent filled the air.

‘He put the rat in my sewing box and spoiled all my work!’ Belle was determined that John was going to pay the price. ‘I’ll have to throw it away now and it was going to be a band for my papa’s tunic.’ She did not have to feign the quiver in her voice. It had been a lot of hard work. She sent Jeoffrey a look intimating that he was her champion and would see justice done.

Jeoffrey eyed the ruined basket and a look of revulsion
crossed his face. ‘You will be compensated; I will personally make sure it happens.’

Belle said nothing. How could there be compensation for all her time and effort?

John shrugged sulkily. ‘It’s a fuss over nothing, a silly piece of embroidery.’

Jeoffrey stared at him with contempt. ‘It would not be a fuss over nothing if the item belonged to you; indeed you would be the first to complain. Why do something like this? It benefits no one, it’s not funny. You should have grown out of such pranks by now.’

John shrugged again. ‘Very well, I am sorry,’ he said in a way that suggested he was anything but. ‘I didn’t mean to cause harm. It was in jest.’

‘You did mean it.’ Belle continued to be aggrieved. ‘I’ll never forgive you.’

John curled his lip. ‘You think I care?’

‘Peace!’ Jeoffrey bellowed. ‘You should care, because one day you will need friends and allies. What will you do when all turn against you because of what you have done to them in the past?’

John set his lips and Jeoffrey dug one hand through his hair in exasperation. ‘I’m warning all of you to stay out of the King’s way and mend your behaviour. He’s just received bad news and his mood is vile.’

John immediately pricked up his ears. ‘What sort of bad news?’

Jeoffrey lowered his hand. ‘Rosamund de Clifford has died in childbirth and the baby with her.’

‘Good.’ John’s smile was sharp. ‘She got what she deserved. She was a whore like all the others. He will soon forget her, he always does. There will be another one in his bed before Christmas.’

‘Do not let our father hear you say that or you will not sit down for a week.’ Jeoffrey shook his head in baffled disgust. ‘Why are you so full of poison?’

John
lowered his eyes, disengaging from the contact, and fell silent.

‘Just watch your step,’ Jeoffrey warned. ‘And stay out of trouble if it’s within you to do that.’

Belle knew it wasn’t within John at all. She hated him, but at the same time, that look in his eyes, a dagger gleam between narrowed lids, gave her a frisson of horrified attraction. She found it very exciting, the way he walked so close to the edge.

Henry sat before the hearth in his chamber, his head bowed and his body racked with painful spasms. He could not believe that Rosamund had left him; that their last farewell had been final. It was a wound so deep he could not deal with it. Indeed, he could not face it at all, because he was a king, and if he broke under the weight of his grief, then so did the Crown.

He had been alone for several hours. The one person he might have allowed access to this room was Hamelin and he was in Sicily seeing Joanna safely married. He had gone out riding earlier to try and outrun his grief but had only succeeded in half killing his horse. Why had God not taken Alienor instead? That would have been justice.

A string of women had frequented his bed, some for longer than others, but he had only ever had two proper mistresses and both were in the grave. It felt like betrayal. He would never give of himself to anyone again. As powerful as he was, he could not control death, and when people died they took pieces of him with them into the grave, leaving him with raw wounds that would never heal.

The door creaked open and he turned ready to do battle, but was surprised by the sight of his youngest son tip-toeing into the room. ‘What do you want?’ he demanded.

John hesitated. ‘Nothing, Papa. I left my knife on the stool.’ He pointed to a leather sheath gleaming in the edge of the firelight.

Henry pinched the bridge of his nose. ‘You disturb me for this, boy?’

‘I
wanted to see how you were,’ John added disarmingly.

‘You can see how I am.’ He looked at his son in the dim light of candles that were burning down to their stubs because no one had come to replenish them. John was like a wary, half-feral cat, padding softly in the shadows, ears pricked. If John was asking how he was, it was for his own purpose, but Henry could not be bothered to know what it might be. ‘Let me give you some advice,’ he said. ‘Harden yourself. The world is a harsh place. Trust no one, especially those who smile on you because one day they will steal everything from you, and when that happens, the betrayal will be so bitter it will choke you.’

John picked up the sheath from the stool and drew the knife to examine the blade and make sure the rat blood hadn’t rusted it. He had reached that conclusion himself. And that the world was a place where those who had power could do what they wanted and those without it were the victims. The world would try to make him its victim, so it was always best to strike first. ‘You can trust me, Papa,’ he said. ‘I won’t betray you.’

Henry watched him sheathe the knife and sighed. ‘You’re a good boy. Come here.’

John joined his father at the fire and Henry ruffled his hair. ‘You are my youngest, but that does not mean I value you less – indeed perhaps the opposite. I see myself in you and what you could become; I do not see your mother.’

John didn’t see that either and his father’s words were like being given a glowing jewel worth braving his chamber for. One day he would be a king and of more than just Ireland. And he would be better than his father.

At Sarum, Alienor listened to the wind whistle around the keep as dusk fell. Summer’s heat was over and this chilly autumn bluster had snatched the first of the leaves from the trees. She had been sewing until it grew too dark to see the thread against the cloth. Amiria had gone to fetch food and
candles, but Alienor had grown accustomed to sitting in darkness and to eking out the light. No more profligate use of wax and lamps, burning into the night, sometimes until matins. The thought of spending another winter at Sarum did not bear contemplating.

Breathless from her climb up the tower, Amiria returned bearing a tray of food and the requisite candles. As she set the bread and wine on the trestle she said, ‘I heard some news in the courtyard just now.’

Alienor eyed her maid with cautious interest. Not all news was equal, but if it was sufficient to animate Amiria, it must be important. ‘Indeed?’

‘They are saying that Rosamund de Clifford has died in childbed and the baby too – a boy stillborn.’

Alienor experienced no flood of triumph at the information, rather a weary trickle. What did it matter? It was just more detritus. ‘God rest her soul,’ she said.
And damn Henry’s.

Amiria set about lighting the few candles she had brought. ‘Forgive me, madam, I thought it would please you to hear it.’

‘I am more saddened than anything.’

Amiria chewed her lip, clearly agitated about something, and eventually she could not contain herself. ‘She is to be buried at Godstow and the King says he will pay for a shrine before the choir for her and daily prayers. It is not fitting!’

‘No, it is not, but much good it will do her now.’ Alienor imagined Rosamund lying in state at the nunnery like a queen. How often would Henry visit? As often as he went to see Thomas Becket? More often than he visited Reading and the tomb of their firstborn son? ‘I pity her, and that is the truth.’

She attended to her simple meal of bread and cheese and thought with longing of beef stew simmered with cumin and ginger, of spiced wine and her favourite sugared pears. She was not starved here, but the food had no savour. She had long ago finished the gingerbread from Isabel and Hamelin even though she had eked it out.

Her
meal over, she retired to pray at her small portable altar. It was one of the few items of high wealth in her chamber, studded with sapphires and rock crystal, and under the marble top was a fragment of the finger bone of St Martial. She prayed for Rosamund because it was her Christian duty. She felt angry contempt for Henry for the way he had paraded the girl at court, but Rosamund had only possessed the fleeting power of the bedchamber and Alienor had never seen her as a serious threat to her queenship. Poor, silly girl.

Amiria came back from returning the used food bowls to the scullions and announced that she had more news.

Alienor raised her brows. ‘This is indeed a feast day in the midst of famine,’ she said tartly. ‘What have you heard now?’

Amiria flushed at her tone. ‘A wine merchant was telling one of the guards that your son the Young King and his queen expect a child next summer.’

Alienor was assailed by two emotions at once: pleasure at the thought of a grandchild from her eldest son, and upset that she had had to find out like this – as overheard gossip from her maid rather than a salutation from an official messenger. How much else of the warp and weft of family life and politics was passing her by? The child would be born to parents who had no lands to call their own, only allowances doled out by Henry, spent almost before they touched the sides of Harry’s coffers.

‘It is indeed good news,’ she responded to Amiria, because she had to say something. It was too much to hope that Henry would now give Harry the dignity of lands to govern. It would be utterly wrong should Marguerite bear a son for him to have a father who still had not so much as a yard of earth to his name. Henry was only forty-three, and his grandfather, the first King Henry, had been almost seventy when he died.

Still, new life was new hope. ‘A toast.’ Alienor directed Amiria to fill her cup. ‘To my son, his wife and their unborn child, may they prosper and flourish.’

Beyond
the palace walls a burning summer sun had stolen the blue from the sky. The Downland grass was parched and sere and the cathedral gleamed like a white lantern in the bleaching heat. It was early in the year for thunderstorms but that kind of oppression crackled in the air. Sick of being cooped in her chamber even though the walls kept the room cooler than outside, Alienor bade Amiria leave her sewing and come for a walk.

Beyond the shelter of the tower, the sun’s heat struck like a fist. Two guards crouched in the shade, their weapons propped against the wall. They were playing a desultory game, throwing small round stones to try and strike a larger one, and after a glance at the women and a swift obeisance, they paid little heed to what was a daily routine. What attention they could dredge from their heat-induced lethargy was focused on some women collecting buckets of water at the well. Gowns tucked through their belts, exposing bare legs, they were splashing each other and laughing. A small boy dashed through the sparkling rainbows of water, wearing nothing but his shirt. The sight reminded Alienor of her own sons doing the same when they were that age, and she smiled with nostalgia.

For the last fortnight, masons had been busy constructing a new gatehouse and a wall around the inner compound. Their presence was a welcome distraction to the mundane daily routine and helped Alienor believe that Sarum was not a forsaken place at the back of beyond, but somewhere worthy of attention. Why Henry was bothering with these renovations was a puzzle. Surely she was not so much of a threat that he
needed to add new walls and defences to keep her enclosed? Perhaps it was a warning to others that there was no chance of springing her free.

The women at the well stopped their sport to curtsey. The little boy with no understanding of etiquette continued to caper and splash. When his mother moved to grab him, Alienor shook her head. ‘Let him play,’ she said. ‘I would join him if I could.’

She moved on, aware of the women’s constraint. The masons toiled on the scaffolding of the new gatehouse. A labourer had stripped to his braies and Alienor appreciated his wiry musculature. The linen clung to his buttocks and thighs, leaving little to the imagination, and her eyes glinted with appreciation. Amiria averted her gaze.

The guard on watch suddenly reached round to the horn slung on his baldric and, placing it to his lips, blew a long, loud blast. ‘The King!’ went up the cry. ‘The King is here! Bow to your sovereign lord!’

The labourer in the revealing braies dropped to his knees and his companions downed tools and followed suit. Soldiers hastened to open the gate and the guards who had been lounging outside the royal apartments came at the run, cramming helmets on their heads.

Despite the heat of the sun, Alienor felt as if she had swallowed a bucket of ice. What was Henry doing here?

Two by two the knights of the royal escort entered the yard, Henry riding in their midst. It was not the full court, but a conroi of about twenty men including Henry’s half-brother Hamelin. Watching Henry dismount she noticed the way he tensed as he landed. His face was fiery red with sunburn despite the shade of a straw hat and he sported the belly girth of a middle-aged man. As usual his impatience was palpable, but he seemed bogged down, as though his energy was a ball of iron with a solid core.