Maude nodded somberly. “Where are you off to next, Henry . . . Brittany?”
“I hope not,” he said with feeling, for he considered the Breton realm to be a king’s quagmire. Nothing was ever resolved, troubles merely deferred. It was more than ten years since Duke Conan had overthrown his mother’s husband, Eudo, Viscount of Porhoët, sworn allegiance to Henry, and been recognized in turn as Brittany’s duke. Conan had proved unable to control the volatile, strong-willed Bretons, though, and Henry had grown weary of having to put down their rebellions. He’d thought he’d solved the problems posed by Brittany last summer by deposing Conan and betrothing Conan’s daughter to his young son Geoffrey. But the Breton lords had rallied around Conan’s one-time rival, Eudo of Porhoët, amid reports of spreading mayhem and bloodshed.
“The Bretons are as hardheaded as the Welsh,” Henry complained. “But after campaigning all year in Auvergne and the Vexin, I’d like a chance to catch my breath ere I have to head back to Brittany.” He also had it in mind to bring Rosamund Clifford over for a clandestine visit, as only the Lord God Himself knew when he’d be able to return to England.
He glanced away, no longer meeting Maude’s gaze, for he was determined to keep her in ignorance of his plans, knowing she’d disapprove. She’d occasionally displayed a disconcerting ability to discern when he’d sinned, and he could only attribute it to some uncanny maternal instinct, as she’d always scorned gossip. She was regarding him pensively now, dark eyes too probing for his comfort. He’d been shocked to find her so frail, to see how much ground she’d lost since his last visit. His brain knew that she’d reached the advanced age of sixty-five and her health was failing; his heart still saw her as the fearless woman who’d once escaped a castle siege by walking right through the enemy lines under cover of darkness and a swirling snowstorm.
He was right to be wary, for Maude did sense that he was keeping something from her. She suspected it concerned Eleanor, who remained in England months after giving birth to John, a land for which she’d never shown much fondness. “I finally heard from Ranulf,” she said at last, watching closely for his reaction.
His eyes flickered, no more than that. But Minna took the hint for what it was, a signal that Maude wanted to discuss matters of family, and found a pretext to excuse herself. As the door closed behind her, Maude slumped in her chair, allowing Henry to position a cushion behind her back. “It was not much of a letter,” she said, “notable mainly for all that it left unsaid. I suppose he wanted to reassure me that he was still amongst the living. Henry . . . you’ve had no word from him?”
“No.”
She suppressed a sigh, for she grieved over this estrangement between the two people she loved best, but her attempts at mediation had been rebuffed by both men. They would have to find their way back to each other in God’s Time, not hers. “When is Eleanor coming home?” she asked instead, and saw the wine in his cup splash as his hand jerked involuntarily.
“Soon, I expect,” he hedged. “She had much to do, after all, to prepare for Tilda’s marriage to Henry the Lion. We want to send our lass off with a wardrobe to bedazzle even the jaded courtiers at the German court.”
Maude forbore to comment that Eleanor could as easily have arranged for Tilda’s departure on this side of the Channel. That there was trouble in his marriage, she did not doubt. “You’ve been apart for many months, Henry. Do you not miss Eleanor?”
For a fleeting moment, he looked startled. “Of course I do!” And he did, for his absent wife was more than a sultry bedmate, a shrewd confidante. She was good company, too, and he missed their bawdy banter, her irreverent humor, the unspoken understanding that had been theirs since their first meeting in the great hall of Louis’s Paris palace. She was as close as he hoped to come to a kindred spirit in this world, but unfortunately she was a kindred spirit with a just grievance. He ought to have been more careful, should never have brought Rosamund to Woodstock like that. How could Eleanor not take that amiss? Who knew her pride better than he? It would be no easy task to placate her, and he could not help feeling a certain relief that she’d chosen to extend her stay in England. At least she’d had time for her temper to cool and he’d had time to acknowledge he was in the wrong about Rosamund. He ought to have been more circumspect.
Maude reached over to take a sip from his wine cup. He’d once told her that Geoffrey had claimed the best marriages were based upon detached goodwill or benign indifference. That was one of the rare occasions when Maude found herself in utter agreement with her husband. Passion was dangerous in any relationship, above all in marriage, for it was utterly unpredictable. She could only hope that her son was not about to find that out.
AUGUST HAD BEEN HOT and dry that year and the gardens at Woodstock were wilting despite the best efforts of the manor gardeners. Rosamund Clifford and her guests were playing a game out on the green, and each time one of the women rolled her heavy stone bowl toward its target, it stirred up puffs of dust and left a rut in the parched, browned grass. Whenever Rosamund’s sister Lucy got a strike, she laughed and clapped her hands, attracting admiring glances from the gardeners laboring nearby. While she had none of Rosamund’s ethereal beauty, Lucy was a very pretty young woman, blessed with fashionable fair coloring and more than her share of feminine curves.
The eldest sister, Amice, was neither as amply endowed as Lucy nor as radiant as Rosamund, and Meliora wondered if this was why there seemed to be so little warmth between them. Growing up in Cornwall, Meliora had squabbled and bickered with her own sisters more often than not. But for all of their jealousies and childish rivalries, they were fiercely devoted to one another, bonded by much more than blood. She sensed no such loyalties amongst the Clifford sisters and could not help recalling Henry’s acerbic opinion of Rosamund’s family. Rosamund, he’d once said caustically, must surely be a foundling. After a week at Woodstock with the Cliffords, Meliora found herself in hearty agreement with her king.
Rosamund’s mother, Margaret, was seated in the shade of a nearby tree, sipping a cider drink and fanning herself languidly with a napkin. Upon completing her turn at bowls, Rosamund hastened over to Margaret’s side. Meliora wasn’t close enough to catch her words, but she was sure Rosamund was inquiring after her mother’s comfort. She had been running herself ragged since their arrival, doing all she could to make their visit a pleasant one. And her reward, Meliora thought indignantly, was to be buffeted by their unending demands and worse, to be interrogated and prodded and pestered for the smallest scrap of gossip concerning her royal lover.
But Rosamund had shown a stubborn reticence whenever Henry’s name was dragged into the conversation. She willingly drew upon the resources of Woodstock to indulge her family’s whims. She listened attentively to the narration of their needs, promising to bring her brother Richard to the king’s notice, to seek a boon for Amice’s husband, Osbern Fitz Hugh, to pass on her father’s complaints about his ongoing troubles with the Welsh, to ask the king to allow her kinsmen to hunt in the royal forest of Clee. Yet when they pressed her for details of her liaison with Henry, she became tongue-tied, evasive, or shyly uncomprehending. She had yet to reveal anything but the most banal aspects of her new life as the king’s concubine. She had contributed nothing to the rampant rumors of an autumn confrontation with the queen at Woodstock. And she’d breathed not a word of her impending departure for Southampton, where she would take ship to join Henry in Normandy.
Margaret Clifford got to her feet, announcing that the gardens were too hot for her liking. Her daughters at once abandoned their game of bowls and clustered around her. Meliora doubted if the queen herself had people dancing such deferential attendance upon her as Rosamund’s mother did. They were heading toward the great hall when a horseman rode in through the gateway. Meliora recognized him at once, for Henry used the same trusted courier for his messages to Rosamund; ever since Eleanor’s surprise visit to Woodstock, he’d become a sincere, if belated, convert to the doctrine of discretion.
Catching Rosamund’s eye, Meliora jerked her head toward the rider, and then feigned a semiswoon, moaning that the sun was making her sick. None of the Clifford women appeared unduly alarmed by her distress, but she commandeered their aid by the simple expedient of stumbling and grabbing Margaret’s arm in a viselike grip. Wheezing and panting and thoroughly enjoying herself, she let her reluctant volunteers assist her across the bailey, giving Rosamund the opportunity to lag behind.
She continued the charade in the great hall, gasping weakly for water, going limp, and indulging her penchant for theatrics. The stratagem worked quite well; it was some time before anyone noticed that Rosamund was missing. At Margaret’s insistence, Lucy ventured out into the bailey in search of her sister, reporting a few moments later that she was nowhere in sight. Meliora gave a satisfied sigh and graciously accepted an offer of ale.
She was somewhat surprised, though, by Rosamund’s failure to return to the hall. As time passed, she felt a nagging sense of unease. If Rosamund had not resumed her role as hostess and dutiful daughter, it could only mean that Henry’s letter had conveyed bad news. Declaring that her sunsickness was much improved, she made an inconspicuous exit and went to find Rosamund.
Margaret had already sent a servant to Rosamund’s bedchamber, to no avail, so Meliora did not bother retracing his steps. Shading her eyes from the noonday glare, she sought instead to reconstruct Rosamund’s likely movements. She’d have wanted privacy to read her letter, so she’d not have lingered in the gardens. It was too hot for her to have walked down to the springs. After a moment to reflect, Meliora headed across the bailey toward the stables.
The barn was spilling over with shadows, the air still and pungent with the odors of sweat, dung, and horses. A plank had been laid across two overturned buckets and a meal set out on its rough-hewn surface—a chunk of cheese and half a loaf of bread—as if its owner had just been called away. A scrabbling in the straw and a pitiful squeak told Meliora that one of the stable cats had made a kill. Stallions nickered and snorted, and a restive dun gelding gnawed and slobbered on the corner of its manger. The country-bred Meliora made a mental note to mention to the grooms that her father had successfully treated this vice by removing the manger and feeding the horse on the floor. By now her eyes had adjusted to the gloom and as she moved forward, she glimpsed movement from the depths of an empty stall.
“Lady Rosamund?”
There was a long pause. “I’m here, Meliora.” Rosamund’s voice sounded as it always did, soft and slightly out of breath. But as she emerged from the stall, Meliora could see tear marks drying upon her cheeks. She clutched a sheet of crumpled parchment in one small fist; this one would not be joining the precious store of letters she kept secreted and locked in an ivory casket box under her bed.
“He is on his way into Brittany,” she whispered. “He could delay no longer, for the Viscount of Léon has joined the rebellion against him.”
“FIRST WASTE the land, deal after with the foe.” That was a basic tenet of military strategy in God’s Year 1167. The castellan of Morlaix Castle had accepted it as gospel, as did most of the men who were trained in the arts of war. But the king of the English cared little for conventional wisdom. Instead of burning crops and sacking villages, then settling into a lengthy siege of the castle by blockading all access roads and controlling the countryside, Henry Fitz Empress had once again rewritten the rules of combat, relying upon speed, surprise, and a sudden assault.
His army had appeared before the walls of Morlaix before his foes were even aware of their danger. No one knew that he’d penetrated this far into Brittany. The sleeping garrison had rolled out of their blankets before dawn to a waking nightmare, to find Henry’s troops breaching the walls of the town, encountering little resistance from the startled citizenry.
The castellan had done the best he could, but his men were already spooked by Henry’s abrupt, unnerving appearance in their midst, already convinced they could catch a whiff of sulphur in the air. All knew the House of Anjou could trace its descent to the Prince of Darkness himself. They knew, too, about the formidable strongholds that had fallen to Henry in the past, able to recite the names like a litany of doom. Chinon, taken from his own brother. Thouars, said to be invincible, captured in just three days. Chaumont-sur-Loire, Castillon-sur-Agen, even the great fortress at Fougères. How could Morlaix hope to hold out against one of the Devil’s own?
Henry’s army wasted no time in storming the castle itself, seizing the momentum as he had the town. An iron-tipped bore was soon positioned at a sharp angle of the bailey wall, the men shielded behind a wooden penthouse as they turned the handles and began to drill into the masonry. A huge battering ram was wheeled forward to smash into the portcullis guarding the gatehouse entrance, and mangonels were loaded with rocks, which were then catapulted into the castle bailey. But Henry meant to take full advantage of the chaos and confusion before the garrison could recover their equilibrium, and he ordered an all-out assault. Setting fire to sacks and brush, the attackers raced for the walls through a billowing smoke screen, braced scaling ladders, and started to scramble up onto the battlements.
Had Morlaix been expecting an assault, there would have been cauldrons ready with boiling oil and water and heated pitch to throw down upon the enemy. The castellan urgently ordered fires to be kindled, but he knew time was not neutral, that it, too, served Henry Fitz Empress now.
The castellan’s pessimistic premonition was not long in proving true. The portcullis was absorbing too much punishment to hold, giving way with a shriek of tearing metal, and the ram began thrusting against the next barrier, a heavy oaken door. The bore continued to grind away at the wall, sending up clouds of dust and debris. And more and more of Henry’s men had managed to heave themselves onto the ramparts, where hand-to-hand fighting had begun. But the castle’s fate was not yet determined, not until flaming arrows streaked across the sky above the bailey and a fearful cry went up: “Greek fire!”