Devil's Brood (26 page)

Henry regarded his second son, looking intently into grey eyes very like his own. “What, then?”

“You gave us no assurances that Hal will have any say in the governance of England or Normandy. Nor have you said that I will be able to rule Aquitaine as is my right.”

Henry’s anger was diluted by a vast weariness, for he’d had this very argument so often with Hal. “As I’ve told your brother more times than I can begin to count, that is because of your youth and inexperience. Why do you lads find this so hard to grasp? An aspiring goldsmith does not expect to become one overnight; he knows he must first serve an apprenticeship. Why should it be any different for young princes?”

“You did not serve an apprenticeship,” Richard pointed out coolly, “before your father turned Normandy over to you.”

“And you were just seventeen,” Hal chimed in, “fully a year younger than I am now!”

Henry wanted nothing so much at that moment than to grab them both and shake some sense into them. “That happened because I had proved myself by then, and my father knew my judgment could be trusted.”

“Yes, but you will not give us the chance to prove ourselves!”

This was an old and familiar argument of Hal’s, but before Henry could respond to it, Richard stepped in front of his brother. “There is more. Even if you agree to give us a share in the governing of Aquitaine and England or Normandy, there is another obstacle in our path to peace. You said you were willing to forgive us.”

“I said it and I meant it.” Henry glanced from one to the other; Geoffrey, as usual, was forgotten. “I will forgive you, I swear it upon all I hold sacred.”

Richard raised his chin, met his father’s eyes challengingly. “Can you also forgive our mother?”

Henry stiffened and, as he looked at his sons, never had the gap between them seemed so wide to him, so impossible to bridge. “So be it,” he said flatly. “We are done here.”

As Henry started to turn away, there were startled murmurs from the French, and he marveled wearily at their surprise, for he’d warned them from the first that he’d not come to bargain with his sons. He’d only taken a few steps toward his horse, though, before Louis hastened after him.

“You are a fool, Harry Fitz Empress!” The French king’s voice shook with fury as he confronted the man he blamed for most of his life’s disappointments. “Do you not see what you are throwing away? You are losing your sons! Do you truly value your pride more than you do them?”

“They were not lost,” Henry snarled, more than willing to turn upon Louis the anger he’d not wanted to let loose upon his sons. “They were lured away, and if there is any justice in this world, you’ll answer to the Almighty for it. You may not even have to wait till Judgment Day to atone for this particular sin. You have a son, too. Who knows—one day he might grow restless under your tutelage, look elsewhere for advice and support. If so, I will most gladly return the favor.”

“You can rant and threaten all you want, blame me, your queen, blame everyone but yourself. It changes nothing. You had a chance today to win your boys back, and you trampled upon it. It is not a chance that will come again. Do you know how we celebrated your son Richard’s sixteenth birthday? I knighted him, Harry. I knighted him, not you!”

Louis’s taunt drew blood. Henry looked at the other man with loathing, and then turned accusing eyes upon his second son. “My congratulations, Richard,” he said scathingly. “What an honor for you, to be knighted by the victor of Verneuil.”

Richard’s reaction was unexpected; he grinned. But then Henry realized why; Richard had not been at Verneuil, felt none of the shame. And as their eyes met, they shared a moment of odd understanding, one of mutual contempt for the French king.

It was very different, though, for Louis and Hal. Louis turned beet-red and spun on his heel. Hal flushed darkly, too, and cried out that Verneuil was not his doing.

Henry turned back toward his son. “Yes, it was your doing, Hal. All of this is your doing. Part of being a man is taking responsibility for your actions. I hope you learn that one day. But based upon what I’ve so far seen, I doubt that you will.”

Hal went white. Humiliated, hurt, indignant, he glared at his father, sure in that moment that he hated Henry, that he would always hate him. “It will be war then,” he warned, his voice hoarse and none-too-steady. “And you may be certain of this—that I will never offer you terms as generous as those you offered me! If you want peace, you will have to beg for it on your knees!”

Henry’s eyes glittered. “What do you know of war, boy? It is not dressing up in scarlet boots and wearing a sword on your hip, or promising half your kingdom to the Scots and the Flemings, or swaggering about like the hero in a minstrel’s chanson. You want to know about war, you ask the Count of Boulogne, the Earl of Chester, and the burghers of Verneuil. But you cannot, can you? The Count of Boulogne is rotting in his grave, the Earl of Chester is rotting in one of my prisons, and the citizens of Verneuil are too busy grieving for their dead and the French king’s lost honor.”

Hal started to protest again that he was not responsible for Verneuil, realized just in time that he’d only be proving Henry’s point, as Henry continued remorselessly. “I suppose you could ask the allies you have left, but they are dwindling rapidly in case you’ve not noticed. The Count of Flanders and the Scots king have cut you loose. So have the Breton rebels, who were only too happy to surrender to me at Dol. So who does that leave? Your brothers, who’ve yet to bloody their swords? Your formidable father-in-law? The fearsome Earl of Leicester? Indeed, Hal, I am shaking in my boots at the very thought of facing such worthy adversaries!”

That provoked a choked cry of utter outrage, but it did not come from Hal. Thrusting aside the French lords in his way, the Earl of Leicester strode over to confront Henry. “Are you calling me a coward?”

Henry found it remarkable that his late justiciar, a man of honor and integrity, could ever have spawned such a worthless whelp as this. “I’d say your conduct at Breteuil speaks for itself,” he said contemptuously.

The look Leicester gave him was murderous. “I retreated in good order when I saw that I could not hold the castle!”

That was so preposterous a claim that Henry laughed in his face. “You bolted at the first sight of my banners. I daresay I could have sent our camp laundresses to take the castle and you’d still have run like a spooked sheep.”

Leicester saw Henry through a red mist of rage. “I am not running now, you Angevin son of a whore!” he shouted and drew his sword.

There was instant pandemonium. Amazed, Henry dropped his hand to his own sword hilt, making ready to defend himself. But his men were already in motion. Willem’s blade caught the sun as it slid from its scabbard, and Geoff, not as experienced but just as eager, unsheathed his weapon almost as swiftly. The others were no less quick to react, though. Hal and Richard were yelling at Leicester, the Count of Champagne had darted forward to get between Henry and the earl, and Will Marshal, appearing from nowhere, was there, too. But the French king was the most horrified of all.

“Have you gone mad?” He was staring incredulously at Leicester, as if the earl had suddenly sprouted horns and a tail. “How dare you draw your sword upon a king?”

“I have a right to defend my honor!” But as he glanced around, Leicester saw this was a cock that wouldn’t fight. He’d managed to do the well-nigh impossible—temporarily unite them all in a common cause, for there could be no greater crime in their world than to kill a man who was the
christus domini,
the Anointed of the Lord. Jamming his sword back into its scabbard, Leicester shouted defiantly at Henry, “This is not over! When we next meet, it will be on the battlefield in England!” Whirling then, he shoved his way through the press of men, yelling for his men and horses.

The Archbishop of Rouen had taken it upon himself to lecture them all on the sin of spilling blood during God’s Truce, and Louis’s brother, the Archbishop of Rheims, added his moral authority to Rotrou’s, both men uneasily aware of how contagious violence could be. With that same thought in mind, Henry’s men had brought over his stallion. Swinging up into the saddle, he paused to stare down at his sons and the French king.

“You wanted war?” he said. “Then by God, that is what you’ll get!”

 
THE LADY BEATRIZ,
one of Eleanor’s attendants, halted in surprise as she entered the queen’s bedchamber, for it was dusk but the hearth had not been lit and no lamps burned on the table. Glad that she’d brought a candle, she hastened over to light the oil wicks, intending to have some harsh words with the servants for being so neglectful. As an oil lamp sputtered and ignited, she caught movement from the corner of her eye, turned, and then recoiled in surprise.

“Oh, my lady, how you startled me! I had no idea you were here.” Moving toward the silent figure in the window-seat, she gasped as her candle illuminated the queen’s face. “Madame, are you ailing? Shall I fetch a doctor?”

“I am well, Beatriz,” Eleanor said, but the girl was not convinced, for the older woman was ashen. Her gaze darting from Eleanor’s hollow eyes to the parchment crumpled in her lap, Beatriz dropped to her knees, stretching out a hand in mute entreaty. “My lady…forgive me if I have overstepped my bounds, but you look so troubled. Something is wrong, I can tell. Is there nothing I can do?”

Eleanor looked down at the kneeling girl. Most of her ladies-in-waiting did not serve her for long, eager to find husbands at the royal court. But Beatriz, a young widow and distant cousin on her mother’s side, had been with her for more than four years. Her uncle Raoul had recommended Beatriz, and at first Eleanor had wondered if he’d put the girl in her household to spy upon her. But Beatriz had passed every test she’d set for her, and Eleanor had no doubts about her loyalty or her love. She’d only had two female confidantes in her life, though, her sister Petronilla and Maud, the Countess of Chester, and she was not about to confess her heart’s pain to a sweet child young enough to be one of her daughters. Yet Beatriz was right. She was in great need of solace, in need of one she could truly trust.

“There is something you can do for me, Beatriz,” she said, and managed a flickering smile. “Fetch my constable.”

A
S HE’D AGED,
Saldebreuil de Sanzay’s eyes had begun to fail him, and his vision was tolerable only at a distance these days. It did not help that the letter was in Raoul de Faye’s own hand, for his scrawl was not as legible as a scribe’s uniform script. He was too proud to ask Eleanor to read it to him, though, and she was too distracted to notice his difficulties. He eventually solved the problem by holding the letter out at arm’s length. When he looked up, there was an expression upon his face that she’d rarely seen before, one of fear—for Richard, for Aquitaine, above all, for her.

Fear. She’d not often had to deal with it, for hers had been a privileged life. She’d been insulated from fear by her high birth, her crown, and her headstrong nature. In her forty-nine years on God’s Earth, she could honestly say that she’d rarely been afraid. Even during those times when she’d been placed in physical peril—the assault by the Saracens in the Holy Land, the capture of her galley by pirates in the pay of the Byzantine Emperor, the ambush by the de Lusignans—there’d been no time to dwell upon the danger until it was over, and then there was no need. Now…now there was nothing but time, and as she’d sat in her darkened bedchamber after reading Raoul’s letter, she’d thought of the unforgiving wrath of the man she’d married and could not deny that she was afraid of what the future might hold, afraid that she may have made the greatest mistake of her life.

“You were not told of this peace conference, then?” Saldebreuil asked quietly, and she shook her head.

“I knew nothing of it until Raoul’s letter arrived.” She gazed down at her clasped hands, noticing the golden glimmer of her wedding ring. Why was she still wearing it? “I expected the Count of Flanders to take charge of the rebellion. Had I thought the reins would be left in Louis’s hands, I’d never have risked it.”

He nodded bleakly. “It has gone wrong from the first, my lady. If Hal had not fled from Chinon when he did, we’d have had the time we needed to complete our plans, to coordinate our strategy. They ought to have attacked all at once, on multiple fronts. The assault upon Normandy began promisingly enough, but it all fell apart when the Count of Boulogne was slain, and gave your husband the chance to quell the rising in Brittany. If the Scots king had only persevered, if they’d invaded England at the same time…” His words trailed off, for he recognized his complaint for what it was, a soldier’s lament for lost opportunities and bungled choices.

“Raoul thinks I ought to have gone to Paris with him and my sons. But how could I do that? How could I leave Aquitaine? What sort of a message would that have sent to my lords and vassals if I’d run away like…like a flighty, fainthearted woman?”

“In all honesty, Madame, I doubt that your presence in Paris would have changed things much. You have more common sense than any man I’ve ever known, and more courage. But we both know they’d not have heeded you. You’re crippled by your skirts, and your lads by their years. Had he only been older, Richard could have…”

Again, he left the thought unfinished, for he was too much of a realist to embrace those most frivolous of regrets, the ones rooted in the barren soil of What If and If Only. Instead, he said briskly, “Well, at least we’ve been granted a second chance. I think it likely the Count of Flanders will soon rejoin the hunt, for he is not a man to mourn for long, not when all of Kent can be his for the taking. And when he does, the French king’s mishaps will not matter as much. We must remember, too, that the Scots king is still a player in this game. And whilst he may not be your husband’s equal on the field, he has something the other rebels do not—the resources of a kingdom to draw upon.”