The castellan and his men returned at dusk, bearing a body wrapped in a blanket and grim word for Eleanor. They’d arrived too late to be of help, had found only the corpses of the dead and a few men too badly wounded to be worth carrying off. He was bringing the injured back by horse litter, but he held little hope for their recovery. They’d need an ox-cart to retrieve the other bodies, but out of respect, he’d brought back the remains of my lord Salisbury.
Eleanor watched bleakly as the body was carried into the castle chapel. When the priest gently pulled away the blanket, she gazed down for some moments into the earl’s face, and then made the sign of the cross.
“My lord Raymond?”
The castellan turned at once. “Madame?”
“The earl had a nephew with him, a young knight named William Marshal. Was he amongst the wounded?”
“No, Madame,” he said quietly. “But it may be that he was amongst those taken prisoner. God grant it so.”
Eleanor nodded somberly and they walked in silence from the chapel. Outside, the sky had begun to darken. This accursed Wednesday in Easter Week was at last coming to an end. But she did not yet know how many men had bought her freedom with their blood.
HENRY HAD NEVER BEEN so exhausted in all his life. Upon getting word of the attack upon Eleanor, he had immediately broken off talks with the French king and raced south. By skimping on sleep and changing horses frequently, he and his men had reached Poitiers a full day before anyone expected him. But almost from the moment of his arrival, nothing had gone right.
With an effort, he fought back a yawn. His head was throbbing, his eyes red-rimmed from the dust of the road, and he doubted that there was a single muscle in his entire body that was not aching. He wanted nothing so much as a few uninterrupted hours of sleep now that he knew Eleanor was indeed unharmed, but instead he found himself presiding over the high table in the palace’s great hall, having had time only for a brief, unsatisfactory reunion with Eleanor and a quick wash-up. Even Henry’s careless disregard for protocol would not permit him to miss this solemn meal of mourners. Just two hours before his arrival, Patrick d’Evereaux, Earl of Salisbury, had been laid to rest in Poitiers’s church of St Hilary, far from the mausoleum in Wiltshire where his kindred were buried.
The Countess of Salisbury had been given a seat of honor on Eleanor’s left. She looked wan and weary, but she’d always struck Henry as a very competent, no-nonsense kind of woman, and he expected her to cope with her husband’s death as capably as she had life’s other crises. For a moment, his gaze rested upon his own wife, regal in black. Wearing dark colors for mourning was essentially a Spanish custom, but once word spread that Eleanor had worn black for the Earl of Salisbury, Henry felt certain that it would become the fashion at funerals throughout Aquitaine, Normandy, and France.
Eleanor looked tired, too; the powder she’d applied with a skillful hand could not quite camouflage the shadows hovering under her eyes. But with him, she’d been infuriatingly offhand, almost dismissive of her ordeal, brushing aside his concern for her emotional well-being, acting as if her physical safety was all that mattered. He knew better than most that the mind could be wounded by violence as easily as the body; he’d seen hardened soldiers haunted by battlefield memories, and he assumed that women would be far more susceptible than men to dark thoughts and dreads. Eleanor would have none of it, though, refusing to admit her fears even to him. He’d been irritated by her bravado, reminding her that it was well and good to assume an air of public sangfroid but hardly necessary in the privacy of their bedchamber. But he’d gotten only an unfathomable look from the depths of those greenish hazel eyes, a shrug, and a murmured, “I do not know what you want me to say, Harry . . . truly.”
Nor had his edgy, irascible mood been improved any by the presence of Eleanor’s uncle, Raoul de Faye. The younger brother of Eleanor’s late mother, Raoul was about ten years older than Eleanor, with a handsome head of silver hair, snapping dark eyes, and a cultivated air of jaded world liness that Henry had encountered all too often in Aquitaine. There was an obvious fondness between uncle and niece, and Eleanor seemed to respect his political judgment. Henry thought that was unfortunate, for he most definitely did not. Raoul was no admirer of his, either, and the tension between the two men sputtered and flared even on so somber an occasion as this. Eleanor’s constable, Saldebreuil de Sanzay, was seated at the high table, too, as well as a number of other familiar faces, all vassals of Eleanor’s, including a few whose loyalties he considered suspect. Eleanor appeared to be doing exactly what he’d asked of her—mending fences with the volatile Poitevin barons, soothing ruffled feathers, healing bruised pride as only a woman could. So why was he not better pleased with her efforts?
Henry was so caught up in these brooding thoughts that he did not hear the Bishop of Poitiers’s query and had to ask the cleric to repeat the question, one which only reminded him of the many reasons he had to be wroth with the meddling King of France. For all that people talked of Louis’s piety as if he were almost saintly, Henry did not consider shiftiness to be a virtue.
“Yes, my lord bishop, you heard right,” he said tersely. “The Count of Angoulême has sought refuge in Paris. The French king is getting into the habit of making rebels and malcontents welcome at his court.” And although he was speaking ostensibly of the fugitive count, he was actually thinking of Thomas Becket, Canterbury’s exiled archbishop.
The rest of the meal passed without incident, aside from an embarrassing mishap by Henry and Eleanor’s son Geoffrey, who tripped and lurched into one of the trestle tables, overturning wine cups into laps and splattering gravy over the fine clothes of several unhappy guests. Geoffrey flushed to his hairline with humiliation, and Henry felt pity stir, remembering a similar accident from his own boyhood, this one involving a dropped soup tureen. Even the offspring of the highborn were taught by doing, and boys were expected to wait upon tables in the great hall as part of their lessons in courtesy and etiquette. Geoffrey had learned little this day but mortification, though, and as Henry’s eyes met Eleanor’s, they shared a brief moment of parental solicitude.
Leaning closer so her voice would carry to Henry’s ear alone, she murmured, “I know what Scriptures say about pride going before a fall, but must it be out in the full glare of public scrutiny? At least Richard sought to cheer him up; you did notice that? Too much of the time they are squabbling like bad-tempered badgers. It is heartening to see that they can close ranks when need be.”
Henry wasn’t as sure of what he’d seen as Eleanor. There had been a brief exchange of words between the boys, as she said, and he supposed Richard could have been offering sympathy. But if so, Geoffrey was an utter ingrate, for he’d responded with a look of loathing. He kept his suspicions to himself, for he had nothing to go on except sour memories of his rivalry with his own brother. Remembering, too, his father’s feuding with his uncle Helie, he said softly, “The House of Anjou could give Cain and Abel lessons in brotherly strife. Let’s hope our lads take after your side of the family.”
Reaching across the tablecloth, he clasped her hand in his. “Are you truly sure you are all right, Eleanor? This I can promise you, that Guy and Geoffrey de Lusignan will come to look upon death as their deliverance.”
What was most chilling about his statement was that it was said so matter-of-factly. Eleanor did not doubt that he meant to wreak a terrible vengeance upon the de Lusignans, and the thought of their suffering did ease some of her rage and grief over the deaths of her men. She merely nodded, though, for her throat was suddenly too tight for speech. It hurt more than she could endure, this sudden glimpse of what had once been hers and was forever lost. Discussing their children and their mutual mortal enemies, she could not help remembering a time when they’d been in perfect harmony, allies as well as consorts, hungering after empires and dynasties and each other, their aspirations and ambitions as entwined as oak and ivy, impossible to separate one from the other without destroying both.
WILLIAM MARSHAL’S SLEEP was shallow and fretful, the grim realities of his captivity clawing insistently at his dreams, seeking admittance to his last refuge. When he turned over, pain lanced through his leg, jarring him to full wakefulness. He lay very still, willing the throbbing to stop. The air was musty, and with each breath, he inhaled the familiar, foul odors of straw and sweat and urine and manure. He remembered where he was now, chained in another stable in an unknown castle, with his only certainty that the morrow would bring fresh indignities, more miseries.
So far he hadn’t been ill treated; the de Lusignans wanted him alive in hopes of making a profit. They were desperate for money, reduced to banditry by their failed rebellion, and had carried off all of the captured knights, save those near death. Guy and Geoffrey de Lusignan had been almost as enraged by the Earl of Salisbury’s death as they were by the queen’s escape. Will was a knight, too, and therefore he might be worth ransoming. Will had done his best to foster that belief, stressing his kinship to Earl Patrick at every opportunity. He did not expect his uncle’s widow to barter for his freedom, though. Why should she deplete her dower on his behalf? She barely knew him. The bulk of Salisbury’s estates would pass with his title to his eldest son and he was even less likely to ransom a needy young cousin. And unlike the other men seized, Will could never have afforded to ransom himself.
But there was no other way for Will to buy time. The de Lusignans had split up their men and prisoners into small groups and Will’s captors could not read or write. Nor could he, and it had taken them a few days to find someone they trusted enough to write to Countess Ela. By Will’s reckoning, it would take several weeks to get the countess’s refusal or counteroffer. At that point, he planned to assure them that his eldest brother would pay the ransom.
Lucky for him that his father was two years dead, for Will could not see him parting with so much as an English farthing to rescue an expendable younger son. He’d made that abundantly clear at the siege of Newbury. His brother John would at least make a token offer; their mother would see to that. But John was always short of money and could not be expected to sell family lands for his sake. The game must still be played out, though, for the alternative was an unmarked woodland grave with none to mourn or pray for the salvation of his soul.
Will was by nature an optimist, and at first he’d held fast to hope. All he had to do was avoid antagonizing his guards needlessly and wait for his injury to heal. Once he was strong enough, surely he could find an opportunity to escape. But after a week in captivity, he was no longer so confident. While he’d not been abused, neither had his wound been tended. He had done the best he could, fashioning a bandage by ripping off the legs of his braies and using the cord to fasten it. He’d even been able to find a flicker of humor in his predicament, for his cordless, torn braies kept sliding down to his hips every time he stood up.
The humor had soon faded, though. His captors were understandably fearful of the English king’s wrath and dared not spend more than one night under the same roof lest their presence be betrayed to Henry’s spies. They put Will in mind of mice trying to avoid a stalking cat, scurrying from one burrow to another. Sometimes it was a castle of a de Lusignan ally or vassal; twice they’d had to sleep in the woods and once even in the nave of a small church.
Not surprisingly, Will’s leg was not healing as it ought and with each passing day, the risk of infection grew greater. Will would far rather have died on the battlefield as his uncle had done than to die slowly and painfully from a festering wound. He had never been one to borrow trouble, feeling sure that life would invariably dole out his allotted portion. Nor had he ever been fanciful or readily spooked. But lying awake in the stable blackness, he found it alarmingly easy to imagine that Death was lurking in those gloomy shadows, no longer willing to wait.
If only they would remain here for a day or two. Every hour that he spent in the saddle lessened his chances of recovery. That night, they’d dragged him into the great hall to show the castellan their prize, giving him a sudden sense of pity for the bears chained and set upon by dogs for the amusement of spectators. As he listened to their boasting, he could feel a slow anger stirring, embers from a fire not fully banked. They had ambushed a highborn and defenseless woman, their own liege lady, had slain men not wearing armor. His uncle had been struck down from behind. Where was the honor in that?
He’d managed to contain his rage, to appear oblivious to the jeering and insults of those in the hall. He was never to know the castellan’s name, but the face he would not soon forget—florid and rotund, fringed with greying hair that reminded him of a monk’s tonsure, and eyebrows so thick the castellan seemed to be peering out at the world through a hedge. Will had good reason to resent the man, for he’d been the one to write the ransom letter to Countess Ela. He’d been sorry to see that the castellan had a young, comely wife, thinking that she deserved far better than she’d gotten. She was the only one in the hall who’d regarded him with a hint of sympathy, had even sent a servant over to offer him hippocras when the others were served. The wine had flowed like nectar down Will’s parched, scratchy throat, but then he’d had an unsettling thought: was this to be the last wine he ever tasted?
The castellan had accorded his guests center stage long enough to let them brag of their exploits. Only then did he ruin their triumph by giving them his news. While the January rising against Henry Fitz Empress had been instigated by the de Lusignan brothers, they’d been joined by the Counts of Angoulême and La Marche, and Robert and Hugh de Silly. But Robert had ended up in one of Henry’s dungeons on a diet of bread and water and, according to the castellan, he’d soon died of it. Will was surprised by Robert’s rapid decline and death, for men could survive a long time on even such meager rations. He felt not a shred of pity for the dead rebel, though, and for the rest of his unpleasant evening in the hall, he consoled himself by imagining the de Lusignans in a sunless cell, sharing Robert de Silly’s unhappy fate.