“I can only imagine how humiliating that must have been for you.” Eleanor’s sympathy was as lethal as hemlock. “I daresay they were laughing at how easily they’d breached your defenses, adding insult to injury by making you the butt of their jests and jokes. I do hope that at least they let you both dress ere they carried you off into the night?”
Maud, watching with a grin, thought it a pity that Rhiannon could not savor the peculiar color of her brother’s complexion. Hawise was equally flustered, and Maud wondered gleefully which rankled more: the implicit slur upon her husband’s manhood or the suggestion that she’d been abducted stark naked.
Satisfied with her victory, Eleanor allowed the discomfited couple to flee the field, trailed by amused titters from some of the spectators. Slipping her arm through Rhiannon’s, Eleanor guided the Welshwoman up onto the dais. “I need to sit down,” she confessed, not surprisingly, for she was in the eighth month of yet another pregnancy.
“That was a highly enjoyable spectacle,” Maud declared, “watching my lout of a brother be minced into sausage. But ought I to warn Cousin Harry how sharp your claws can be, Eleanor?”
“Harry knows,” Eleanor said, with a complacent smile that faded as she glanced toward Rhiannon. “Gloucester is a fool, wed to another one. Try not to let their spite spoil your evening.”
“It does not matter,” Rhiannon repeated. This time she meant it. “It hurt me to think that they were making sport of my blindness,” she confided, and then she smiled. “But now that I know they scorn me merely for being Welsh, I can return their hostility in good conscience and full measure.” And the last sour aftertaste of the Gloucesters’ rancor was washed away by the approving, amused laughter of Chester’s countess and England’s queen.
THE HILDREN ERE Shrieking again and a nurse hurried over to make peace between three-year-old Mallt and two-year-old Maude, now nicknamed Tilda. Although the floor of the solar was strewn with toys, the cousins invariably set their hearts upon playing with the same puppet. Richard kept trying to claim that puppet, too, but at eleven months, he was too wobbly on his feet to offer a serious challenge. Hal, a handsome, cheerful youngster of three and a half, was more interested in teasing his mother’s greyhound, using a wafer to lure the dog within reach. Slouched on a coffer seat, Rhiannon’s son, Gilbert, was disconsolately bouncing a ball against the wall over his head. After a time, that irritating, rhythmic thud attracted Eleanor’s attention.
Gilbert was feeling very sorry for himself, trapped here with his little sister and cousins when he yearned to be outside, playing games like hoodman blind or hunt the fox. After all, he reasoned, he was nigh on seven, old enough to be having fun on his own. When the queen said his name, he glanced up incuriously, finding these English adults no more interesting than their children. He didn’t understand why they were in Winchester, yearned to be back home in Wales with his friends.
Eleanor was beckoning to one of the young women working upon an embroidered cushion. “Beatrix, I’d like you to take Gilbert down to the stables and show him the roan mare’s new foal.”
Gilbert sprang to his feet, remembering just in time to toss a plaintive “Mama?” in Rhiannon’s direction. “Go on,” she said reluctantly, hoping that Eleanor had chosen a sharp-eyed caretaker for her spirited young son, whose mischief-making capabilities were truly awesome. The banging door told her that he was now on the prowl and Winchester Castle in God’s Keeping. Getting to her feet, she moved cautiously across the solar to join Eleanor at the window.
It was unshuttered, open to the August heat. “Sit beside me,” Eleanor invited, “and I’ll tell you what I see as I look out upon the city.”
Rhiannon did, appreciative of Eleanor’s matter-of-fact acceptance of her blindness. Most people were too self-conscious to make such an offer, so fearful of offending her that they denied her the opportunity to envision new surroundings. “I would like that,” she said. “Ranulf often talks of Winchester, for he was under siege here during the war between his sister and King Stephen.”
“Yes, I’ve heard those stories, too. To judge by all the men who’ve boasted to me that they were at the Winchester siege with the Empress Maude, there was nary a soul who supported Stephen. Which makes it very mysterious that he managed to cling to power for nineteen years.”
Rhiannon laughed, and Eleanor began to describe the view. “In the distance, I can see the spire of St Swithun’s Priory. High Street or the Cheap runs through the center of the town, east to west. It is not visible from here, but off to the southwest lies Wolvesey Palace, where the Bishop of Winchester will be dwelling again now that he’s made his peace with Harry. And to the north of the palace is the convent commonly called Nunminster, not far from the East Gate.”
Eleanor stopped suddenly, smiling. “And below us, the men have just ridden into the bailey.”
Rhiannon sighed with relief, for she’d feared they’d get so caught up in the thrill of the chase that they’d be gone for days. While she didn’t understand that particular passion, she knew many men found it as compelling an urge as lust. “I hope,” she said politely, “that they had a successful hunt.”
“Usually the dirtier and sweatier they are, the more fun they’ve had. So this hunt must have been truly memorable!”
When the men came trooping into the solar, Rhiannon soon discovered that Eleanor had not been exaggerating. Ranulf was pungent, muddied, soaked with perspiration, and in very high spirits for a man who’d been in the saddle since daybreak. So was Henry, who startled Rhiannon by planting an exuberant kiss on her cheek before grabbing for his wife. “Here you go, love,” he declared. “I saved the hunt’s prize for you.”
Eleanor looked dubiously at the object he’d dropped into her lap. “This had better not ruin my appetite,” she warned, gingerly unwrapping the deerskin covering. “What is it?” she asked, puzzled. “It looks like . . . like gristle.”
“It is a bone from a hart’s heart,” Henry explained, grinning at the wordplay. “Well, actually you are right and it is gristle. But legend has it that this so-called bone is what prevents the hart from ever dying of fear. They say that if it is made into an amulet, it protects a woman in childbirth.”
“Harry, you spoil me. Other husbands may give their wives gemstones, but how many women ever get gristle from a dead deer?”
“Not just any deer,” Henry protested, “a hart of twelve of the less!” And so universal was the love of hunting that even Rhiannon knew enough of its terminology to comprehend that he meant a stag with twelve tines on its antlers.
“Oh, that does make all the difference,” Eleanor agreed dryly and gave Henry a kiss that got her face smeared with some of her husband’s mud. Sprawling beside her in the window seat, he shouted for wine and launched into an enthusiastic account of the hunt, with his brother Will and his uncles Ranulf and Rainald and the Earl of Leicester all interrupting freely whenever they felt he was claiming too much credit. Servants hastily fetched flagons of wine and Eleanor gave orders for baths to be made ready, warning that not a one of them would be allowed to take supper that night without being scrubbed down first. The mood was ebullient and raucous, and Ranulf realized just how much he’d missed the humor and energy of his nephew’s court. He and Rhiannon would have to spend more time in England, he decided.
Having exhausted the dramatic possibilities of the day’s events, the talk ranged back to past hunts, each man summoning up his favorite story. Ranulf told them of Loth, his beloved Norwegian dyrehund, who’d once brought a stag down by himself, and Henry boasted of tracking a huge black wolf who’d been slaughtering livestock in the villages around Angers. When it was his turn, Rainald told of a hunt for the most dangerous prey of all, a tusked wild boar that he and Henry and Thomas Becket had brought to bay in the New Forest. The men had retreated into a pond to await the boar’s charge, a common practice that enabled the hunters to take advantage of their longer legs. The trick, as Rainald explained it, was to get far enough from shore so that the boar could no longer touch the bottom.
“Becket balked at going into the water, though. He was not fearful of facing the boar’s tusks, but he was loath to get his new furred mantle wet—you remember, Harry? So he braced for the charge on the bank. But the boar sped right by him, plunged into the pond, and impaled himself on Harry’s spear, as clean a kill as I’ve ever seen.”
“It was a good kill,” Henry agreed. “Though when he came churning through the water straight at me, there was a moment when I thought it would take one of God’s own thunderbolts to stop him!”
Ranulf was not surprised Rainald’s tale had not put Thomas Becket in the best of lights, for Rainald was no friend to the chancellor. He’d always found Becket to be good company, though, and he said curiously, “Just where is Thomas these days? Off on some mysterious mission for the Crown?”
Henry looked amused. “You might say that. I am meeting the French king soon to discuss the future of the Vexin, amongst other matters. So I sent Thomas ahead to blaze a trail for me. I’d wanted to send Eleanor, for she’s had some experience at charming Louis—” He pretended to flinch when Eleanor jabbed him in the ribs with her elbow. “But she balked, so I had to settle for Thomas.”
“Tell Ranulf and Rhiannon about his entry into Paris,” Eleanor prompted her husband. “Better yet, read from his letter, for you’ll never remember all the glittering details otherwise.” Adding, “And whilst you’re up, I need a cushion for my back.”
Henry unfolded himself from the window seat. “Imagine how she’d order me around if I were not a king.” Tossing Eleanor a cushion, he began to sort through a pile of letters spread out on the table.
“Here it is. Envision this if you will. First came two hundred and fifty footmen, followed by Thomas’s hounds and greyhounds and eight wagons, each pulled by five horses and guarded by a chained mastiff. Ah, yes, each of the wagon horses also had a monkey riding on its back.”
Henry’s mouth twitched. “Then came twenty-eight packhorses laden with gold and silver plate, clothes, money, books, gifts, and such. After that came Thomas’s retinue: two hundred squires, knights, falconers with hawks, clerks, stewards, and servants. And finally came Thomas himself, mounted on a stallion whiter than milk, looking more like a king than most, I daresay.” With that, his grin broke free. “For certes, more kingly than me!”
“Well,” Ranulf acknowledged, “if his aim was to bedazzle the French with English wealth and splendor, he must surely have accomplished that. Mayhap too well! For how can you possibly overshadow him? You plan to bring along elephants and trained bears and Saracen dancing girls?”
Henry laughed, glancing over at Eleanor. “Saracen dancing girls? Alas, as intriguing as that suggestion sounds, I doubt that—” Interrupted by the sound of the opening door, he strode forward to confer briefly with the man who’d just entered, not loudly enough for the others to hear, and then startled them by plunging out into the stairwell. They could hear his boots echoing on the stairs, and then silence. No one spoke after that, waiting uneasily for his return.
He was soon back, a crumpled letter in his hand. “Will,” he said, and his brother tensed, for Maude had been ailing again. Henry read his fear and swiftly shook his head. “It is not our mother,” he said. “It is Geoff. Will . . . he is dead.”
His brother’s mouth dropped open. The others shared his astonishment, for Geoffrey was just twenty-four. “What happened, Harry? Was he thrown from his horse?”
“Or caught with another man’s wife?” Rainald blurted out, before thinking better of it, relieved when no one paid his tactless suggestion any heed.
Henry was shaking his head again. “He got a chill after going swimming, and a fever followed. It was very quick . . .” His voice trailed off, and as his eyes met Will’s, he saw the same thought was in both their minds. This was how their father had died, too, death coming without warning to claim him in his prime.
What puzzled Rhiannon was the lack of sorrow in their voices. They sounded shocked, but not grief-stricken. Tugging at her husband’s sleeve, she whispered, “Are there none to mourn him, Ranulf?”
“Yes,” he said somberly. “There is one.” Crossing the solar, he said, “Will you be going to France straightaway?” When Henry nodded, he said, “I want to come with you.”
Henry nodded again, unsurprised. But Rhiannon gasped and Ranulf heard. “I must go, lass. My sister has lost a son.”
Rhiannon could not hide her dismay. She did her best, murmuring that she understood. But Eleanor knew better. Leaning over, she touched Rhiannon’s hand in silent sympathy, for they would be stranded together in England. Once again, she thought morosely, Harry would be miles away when she gave birth to his child.
THOMAS BECKET WAS STANDING by an open window, watching as monks from the priory went about their daily chores. As soon as word had reached him in Paris of Geoffrey’s death, he’d ridden for Rouen to pay his condolences to the empress and to await Henry’s arrival. Knowing Henry, he’d known, too, that he would not have long to wait.
Henry was now with Maude on the settle, their voices low, faces intent. When Will offered his mother a wine cup, she thanked him absently, setting it down untasted, and Ranulf felt a twinge of pity for the youth. Maude’s rapport with her firstborn was so complete that it inevitably and unintentionally shut others out, even Will. Ranulf had not seen his sister in seven years. His elder by sixteen years, she was fifty-six now, too thin for his liking and too pale. She was dry-eyed, which didn’t surprise him; Maude would let only the Almighty see her tears. But her pain was apparent in the rigid stiffness of her posture, in the lines grooved around her mouth, even in the unnatural stillness of the fingers loosely linked in her lap.
Rising, Ranulf crossed the chamber and joined Becket at the window. “How did your talks go with the French king?”