“Poor Harry, my heart bleeds for his ‘raw nerves,’ in truth, it does! Do you never tire of licking his arse, Little Brother? Or have you acquired a taste for it by now?”
Color seared Will’s face. “You’re enough to make me believe those tales of babes switched at birth, for how could we ever have come from the same womb?”
“Let him be, lad.” Thomas Becket was regarding Geoffrey with chill distaste. “ ‘As a dog returneth to his vomit, so a fool returneth to his folly.’ ”
“You stay out of this, priest! But then,” Geoffrey said with a sneer, “you are not a priest, are you? You hold the chancellorship, yet you balk at taking your holy vows . . . now why is that?”
“I serve both my God and my king,” Becket said evenly, “with all my heart. But you, Geoffrey Fitz Empress, serve only Satan, even if you know it not.”
Geoffrey had no chance to retort, for the door was opening again. A foreigner unfamiliar with England would not have taken the man in the doorway for the English king, for he scorned the trappings of kingship, the rich silks and gemstones and furred mantles that set men of rank apart from their less fortunate brethren. Henry Fitz Empress preferred comfort to style: simple, unadorned tunics and high cowhide boots and mantles so short that he’d earned himself the nickname “Curtmantle.” Equally indifferent to fashion’s dictates and the opinions of others, Henry dressed to please himself, and usually looked more like the king’s chief huntsman than the king.
To Geoffrey, who spent huge sums on his clothes, this peculiarity of his brother’s was just further proof of his unfitness to be king. Henry looked even more rumpled than usual today, his short, copper-colored hair tousled and windblown, his eyes slate-dark, hollowed and bloodshot. Mayhap there was something to Will’s blathering about Harry’s “raw nerves” after all, Geoffrey conceded. Not that he cared what was weighing Harry down. A pity it was not an anchor.
What did trouble Geoffrey, though, was his brother’s silence. The young king was notorious for his scorching temper, but those who knew Henry best knew, too, that these spectacular fits of royal rage were more calculated than most people suspected, deliberately daunting. His anger was far more dangerous when it was iced over, cold and controlled and unforgiving, and Geoffrey was soon squirming under that unblinking, implacable gaze. When he could stand the suspense no longer, he snapped, “What are you waiting for? Let’s get it over with, Harry!”
“You have no idea what your rebellion has cost me,” Henry said, much too dispassionately, “or you’d be treading with great care.”
“Need I remind you that you won, Harry? It seems odd indeed for you to bemoan your losses when I’m the one who is yielding up my castles.”
“You think I care about your accursed castles?” Henry moved forward into the chamber so swiftly that Geoffrey took an instinctive backward step. “Had I not been forced to lay siege to them, I’d have been back in England months ago, long ere Eleanor’s lying-in was nigh.”
Geoffrey knew Eleanor was pregnant again, for Henry had announced it at their Christmas court. Divorced by the French king for her failure to give him a male heir, Eleanor had then borne Henry two sons in their first three years of marriage. To Geoffrey, her latest pregnancy had been another drop of poison in an already noxious drink, and he could muster up no sympathy now for Henry’s complaint.
“What of it? You’d not have been allowed in the birthing chamber, for men never are.”
“No . . . but I’d have been there to bury my son.”
Geoffrey’s mouth dropped open. “Your son?”
“He died on Whitsunday,” Henry said, softly and precisely, the measured cadence of his tones utterly at variance with what Geoffrey could read in his eyes. “Eleanor kept vigil by his bedside as the doctors and priests tried to save him. She stayed with him until he died, and then she made the funeral arrangements, accompanied his body to Reading for burial. He was not yet three, Geoff, for his birthday was not till August, the seventeenth, it would have been—”
“Harry, I . . . I am sorry about your son. But it was not my fault! Blame God if you must, not me!”
“But I do blame you, Geoff. I blame you for your treachery, your betrayals, your willingness to ally yourself with my enemies . . . again and again. I blame you for my wife’s ordeal, which she need not have faced alone. And I blame you for denying me the chance to be at my son’s deathbed.”
“What do you want me to say? It was not my fault! You cannot blame me because the boy was sickly—” Geoffrey’s breath caught in his throat as Henry lunged forward. Twisting his fist in the neck of his brother’s tunic, Henry shoved him roughly against the wall.
“The
boy
has a name, damn you—William! I suppose you’d forgotten, for blood-kin means nothing to you, does it? Well, you might remember his name better once you have time and solitude to think upon it!”
Geoffrey blanched. “You . . . you cannot mean to imprison me?”
Henry slowly unclenched his fist, stepped back. “There are men waiting outside the door to escort you to a chamber in the tower.”
“Harry, what are you going to do? Tell me!”
Henry turned aside without answering, moved to the door, and jerked it open. Geoffrey stiffened, eyes darting in disbelief from the men-at-arms to this stranger in his brother’s skin. Clutching at the shreds of his pride, he stumbled across the chamber, determined not to plead, but betraying himself, nonetheless, by a panicked, involuntary glance of entreaty as the door closed.
Will untangled himself from the settle, ambled over to the door, and slid the bolt into place. “Harry . . . do you truly mean to imprison him? God knows, he deserves it . . .” He trailed off uncertainly, for his was an open, affable nature, uncomfortable with shadings or ambiguities, and it troubled him that his feelings for his brother could not be clear-cut and uncomplicated.
Henry crossed to the settle and took the seat Will had vacated. “If I had my way, I’d cast him into Chinon’s deepest dungeon, leave him there till he rotted.”
“But you will not,” Becket predicted, smiling faintly as he rose to pour them all cups of wine.
“No,” Henry admitted, accepting his cup with a wry smile of his own. “There would be two prisoners in that dungeon—Geoff and our mother. She says he deserves whatever punishment I choose to mete out, but that is her head talking, not her heart.” After two swallows, he set the cup aside, for he drank as sparingly as he ate; Henry’s hungers of the flesh were not for food or wine. “I’m going to try to scare some sense into Geoff. But since he has less sense than God gave a sheep, I do not have high hopes of success.”
“Just do not give him his castles back this time,” Will chided, in a tactless reminder of Henry’s earlier, misplaced leniency. “It would serve him right if he had to beg his bread by the roadside.”
“Sorry, lad, but Scriptures forbid it. Thomas can doubtless cite you chapter and verse,” Henry gibed, “but I am sure it says somewhere that brothers of kings cannot be beggars.”
“I thought it said that brothers of beggars cannot be kings.” Becket tasted the wine, then grimaced. “Are your servants trying to poison you with this swill, Harry? Someone ought to tell them that hemlock would be quicker and more merciful.”
“This is why men would rather dine with my lord chancellor than with me,” Henry told Will. “He’d drink blood ere he quaffed English wine. Whereas for me, it is enough if it is wet!” Becket’s riposte was cut off by a sudden knock. Henry, the closest to the door, got to his feet; he was never one to stand on ceremony. But his amusement faded when a weary, travel-stained messenger was ushered into the chamber, for the man’s disheveled appearance conveyed a message of its own: that his news was urgent.
Snatching up the proffered letter, Henry stared at the familiar seal, then looked over at Will. “It is from our mother,” he said, moving toward the nearest lamp. Will and Becket were both on their feet by now, watching intently as he read. “I have to go to Rouen,” he said, “straightaway.”
Will paled. “Not Mama . . . ?”
“No, lad, no. She is not ailing. She has written to let me know that Eleanor is in Rouen.”
IF THE ENGLISH KING’S WIFE had a remarkable history, so, too, did his mother. Sent to Germany as a child to wed the Holy Roman Emperor, Maude had been summoned back to England by her father, the king, after her husband’s death. Forced into a miserable marriage with the Count of Anjou, Maude had sought comfort in their sons and in her hopes of succeeding to the English throne. But her crown was usurped by her cousin Stephen, and she’d fought a long and bloody civil war to reclaim it, fought and failed. She would never be England’s queen, and that was a grievance she’d take to her grave. But she’d lived to see her son avenge her loss, and she took consolation in his kingship, a bittersweet satisfaction in his victory, one that had been denied her.
Maude had continued to make use of the regal title of empress even after her marriage to Count Geoffrey of Anjou, and she still did so, although she no longer lived in a regal style. The woman who’d sought a throne with such single-minded intensity had chosen to pass her twilight years in the cloistered quiet of Nôtre-Dame-du-Pré, dwelling in the guest quarters of the priory on the outskirts of Rouen. But upon her grieving daughter-in-law’s arrival from England, she’d made haste to join Eleanor in residence at the castle.
A summer storm had drenched the city at dusk, and rain still fell hours later. Maude had ordered a fire built in the great hall’s center hearth, and she was stitching an elegant altar cloth by the light of the flickering flames; needlework was the lot of all women, even queens. She was not surprised when a servant announced that her son had ridden into the bailey, for Henry never let the weather interfere with his plans; he’d sailed in a winter gale to claim England’s crown.
Within moments, he’d swept into the hall, and as always, her spirits soared at the sight of him. Flinging off his sodden mantle, he gave her a damp hug and she resisted the impulse to urge him closer to the fire. He’d just laugh and remind her that he was twenty-three, nigh on two years a king, no longer a stripling in need of a mother’s coddling.
Maude suppressed a sigh. Henry had reached manhood years ago, but she doubted if Geoffrey would ever cross the border into that adult domain. She very much feared that he’d be as irresponsible and immature at forty as he’d been at sixteen, as he was now at two and twenty. “I do hope you brought an escort,” she said, half-seriously, for Henry was known for traveling fast and light.
“Only those who could keep up with me.” Henry strode over to greet Minna, the elderly German widow who’d been his mother’s companion since her girlhood at the imperial court. Minna beamed and blushed when he kissed her cheek; in her eyes, Henry could do no wrong. Even when he’d hired mercenaries and sailed for England to help his mother in her war against Stephen—at the ripe age of fourteen—Minna had found excuses for his reckless folly. Maude rarely joked, but she sometimes teased Minna that if she saw Henry slit a man’s throat, she’d claim it was just a very close shave.
Beckoning Henry away from Minna, Maude touched her hand gently to his face and then said, low-voiced, “What mean you to do with Geoffrey?”
“I would to God I knew. . . .” He found a smile for her, hoping it might give her the reassurance that his words could not. But then Geoffrey was forgotten and he was striding hastily toward the woman just entering the hall. She was a sight to draw most male eyes, a slim, dark-haired daughter of the South, the Lady Petronilla, widowed Countess of Vermandois, his sister by marriage.
“How is she, Petra?”
“How do you think? Hurting.” Petronilla’s green eyes were coolly appraising. He supposed she blamed him for not being with Eleanor when she’d most needed him and he resented the injustice of that, but not enough to stay and argue with her. Instead, he went to find his wife.
CRESSET LAMPS still burned in the nursery. A young wet-nurse was drowsing by the fire, a swaddled baby suckling hungrily at an ample breast. The infant paid no heed to Henry’s entry, but the woman jumped to her feet, flustered and stammering as she sought to cover herself. Henry ordinarily had an appreciative eye for female charms. Now, though, he hardly glanced at the girl’s exposed bosom. “Let me see my daughter,” he said, and she hastily complied.
The baby wailed in protest as her meal was interrupted, showing she had a healthy set of lungs. Her hair was wispy and soft, as bright as the flames licking at the hearth log, and her tiny face was reddening, puckered up into a fretful pout. Henry stroked her cheek with his forefinger and then handed her back to the nurse.
There were two cradles, but there ought to have been three. That missing bed cut at Henry’s heart like the thrust of a sword. His eyes stinging, he halted by one of the cradles, gazing down at his second son and namesake. Hal was sucking on his thumb, the firelight gleaming on his cap of curly fair hair, and even in sleep, his resemblance to his dead brother was wrenching. Henry was tempted to wake him up. He was afraid, though, that the little boy would not remember him. He’d been gone for the past six of the child’s sixteen months on earth.
Will would have known him. But he’d been away so often in Will’s pitifully brief life, too. He’d meant to be a good father, to forge a bond with his sons that could never be broken. His own childhood had been a turbulent one, he and his brothers held hostage upon the battlefield that his parents had made of their marriage. He’d wanted to do better by his children, and when the duties of kingship relegated them to the outer edges of his life, he told himself that it could not be helped, that there would be time later to make amends for these lost, early years. But for Will, there would be no more time, no more chances. For Will, it was too late—for them both, too late.
ELEANOR HAD NOT yet undressed, but she’d unbound her hair and it cascaded down her back in dark swirls and spirals, flowing toward her hips. Henry’s pulse still quickened at the sight of her, even after four years of marriage. She’d obviously been told of his arrival, for she showed no surprise. They’d often been separated for months at a time, had been apart for more than a year when he’d been fighting in England to regain his stolen birthright. Their reunions had always been incendiary; Henry could remember days when they’d never even left their bed. This was the first time that no passion flared between them. Crossing the chamber, he kissed her gently on the corner of her mouth, and they stood for several moments in a wordless embrace.