Welcoming this rare chance to be alone, Eleanor sat down in the window-seat. She approved of Richard’s move to circumscribe the Bishop of Durham’s authority, for he’d never impressed her, a courtier cloaked in the garb of a cleric. But there were risks, too, in the road Richard had chosen. Longchamp was now chancellor and chief justiciar, in possession of the king’s great seal and the Tower of London. If Richard’s request to make him a papal legate was granted by the Holy Father, he’d have a formidable arsenal of weapons, both religious and secular. Was it wise to give any one man that much power?
A soft knock interrupted her musings. “Enter,” she said with a sigh; she should have known her solitude would be fleeting. To her surprise, it was John. “May I speak with you, Madame?” he asked formally. “It is a matter of importance.”
“Come in, John.” When she gestured toward the window-seat, he declined with a quick shake of his head, keeping some distance between them by leaning against the table. Of all her children, he alone had inherited her coloring, dark hair and hazel eyes. He did not speak immediately and she regarded him pensively. How could she feel so detached from a child of her womb, her flesh-and-blood?
She supposed it was not truly so surprising, though, for he’d been six when she’d been captured and turned over to her wrathful husband. She had not been denied access to her daughter Joanna and eventually Henry had relented, allowing her older sons to visit her, too. But she’d not seen John again until he was twelve and then rarely, even after Henry had dramatically eased the terms of her confinement. He’d been Henry’s, never hers. As she gazed into the greenish-gold eyes so like her own, a memory flickered of an afternoon soon after Hal’s death. She’d confessed to Geoffrey that she did not really know John, and Geoffrey had proven once again that he was the family seer, predicting that Henry did not really know John, either.
“Mother . . . I fear that Richard may be making a mistake in investing so much royal authority in his chancellor.”
“Oh? Do you have reason to doubt Longchamp’s loyalty?”
“No, I do not. But loyalty is not the only consideration. There are men who function quite well as second in command, yet do not thrive when given absolute authority, and it can be argued that Longchamp will be acting as a de facto king with Richard away in the Holy Land for who knows how long. Especially if he is named a papal legate, as the rumors go.”
Eleanor was surprised that he knew about the papal legateship, for that was not common knowledge. But she was intrigued that John was showing such interest in political matters. He was twenty-three now. At that age, their eldest son had cared only for tournaments. Her face shadowed, for memories of Hal were always painful, their beautiful golden boy who’d had more charm than the law ought to allow and barely a brain in his head.
“I do not think Longchamp will be able to meet Richard’s expectations,” John said, choosing his words with care. “Our English barons are likely to balk at taking commands from a man of obscure birth. Yes, I know,” he said when Eleanor started to speak. “He is not the grandson of a peasant, as the Bishop of Coventry claims. But neither is he highborn, not like the men he must rule over. Mayhap if he were more tactful . . . but his arrogance beggars belief. He makes enemies easily.”
“So what are you asking of me, John? You want me to convince Richard not to leave the government in Longchamp’s hands? He’d not heed me.”
“I know. But he might listen to you if you argued against exiling me for three years.”
“I see,” she said noncommittally, and John moved closer, trying to read her face without success.
“I ought to be there, Mother. My presence might temper Longchamp’s more overweening inclinations. And then, too . . .” John paused, meeting his mother’s gaze steadily. “If evil befalls Richard in the Holy Land, would you want me in England, able to take control of the realm? Or hundreds of miles away in Normandy or Anjou?”
He knew he’d gambled with such blunt talk, but he saw that he’d won when she smiled ever so faintly. “I will give it some thought,” she said, and then, “I think I am beginning to see what Harry saw in you, John.” And when John flinched, that told her, too, much about this stranger, her son.
CHAPTER 6
MARCH 1190
Dreux Castle, France
It was customary for the kings of England and France to hold their conclaves out in the open to preclude treachery; a favorite site had been the Peace Elm near Gisors, until Philippe had lost his temper after an unproductive encounter with Henry and ordered the tree cut down. But because Richard and Philippe were purportedly allies, united in a sacred quest to recover Jerusalem, they’d chosen Dreux Castle for their meeting, a French fortress just eight miles from Richard’s stronghold at Nonancourt. Henri, the young Count of Champagne, was glad of it, for the sixteenth had been stormy, not a day to be huddled in a muddy field at the mercy of slashing March winds.
The great hall was crowded with dignitaries—barons of the two kings and princes of the church. Richard and Philippe had formally sworn to serve each other faithfully and to defend the other’s lands as if they were his own. Their lords also agreed to honor the peace, and the prelates then vowed to excommunicate any man who broke this covenant.
But there were still issues to be hammered out, and Richard, Philippe, and their most trusted advisers were seated at a long trestle table in the center of the hall, discussing those matters with tight smiles and barbed courtesy. Henri was watching them with keen interest, for he was uniquely bound to both kings. When he was in a mischievous mood, Henri liked to boast of his convoluted family tree, explaining that his mother, Countess Marie, was the child of Queen Eleanor’s first marriage to Louis of France, and thus a half-sister to Richard on her maternal side and half-sister to Philippe on the paternal side. Moreover, Henri would continue gleefully, his father was the brother of Philippe’s mother, thus making him nephew to Philippe twice over. By then his listeners’ heads would be spinning and Henri would be laughing so hard he rarely got to reveal that his mother and his aunt Alix were sisters by blood and marriage, for they’d wed brothers, his father and his uncle Thibault, who were therefore also brothers and brothers-in-law. Or what Henri considered the greatest oddity of all, that his grandfather had been both father-in-law and brother-in-law to the same men, for Louis had wed his two daughters by Eleanor to the brothers of his third wife, Philippe’s mother.
Not only was Henri blood-kin to Philippe, the French king was his liege lord; he held Champagne from the French Crown. And he and Philippe were of an age, twenty-three and twenty-four, respectively. But Henri had ridden into Dreux in Richard’s entourage, not Philippe’s, even though he knew the French king would not be pleased by his presence in the enemy camp. Henri was young enough, though, to delight in tweaking the lion’s tail. And he enjoyed his uncle Richard’s company, whereas his idea of Purgatory was more than an hour alone with his uncle Philippe, for they had nothing whatsoever in common as far as Henri could tell.
Like most young men, Henri loved the hunt, tournaments, horses, gambling, troubadour songs, wine, women, and war. Philippe was bored by hunting, had banned tournaments in France, disliked horses and only rode the most docile mounts, never gambled or swore, cared nothing for music, and saw war as the means to an end, not as a way to test his manhood. He did like wine and women, although he’d been wed since he was fifteen, and if he strayed from his queen’s marital bed, he was discreet about it. Moreover, Philippe was of a nervous disposition; he was known to flinch at sudden loud noises and was rarely without bodyguards. Henri much preferred spending time with Richard, who swore like a sailor, loved spirited stallions, wrote both courtly and bawdy poetry, had done his share of youthful carousing, and gloried in the challenges of the battlefield.
Above all, Henri admired Richard for being one of the first to take the cross. Philippe was a reluctant crusader, and that alone was enough to damn him in the eyes of his nephew, for Henri’s own father had taken the cross twice.
He’d participated in the disastrous second crusade led by Louis of France, and then made another pilgrimage to the Holy Land with the Count of Flanders; on his way home, he’d been captured and held for ransom, dying soon after his release, his health broken by that stint in a Turkish prison. Henri had been fourteen at the time, and he saw the coming crusade as a sacred quest to honor his father’s memory.
Richard and Philippe were exchanging gritted-teeth smiles, and it looked to Henri as if they’d be at this for the foreseeable future. He was turning away to find a wine bearer when he was waylaid by his uncle Thibault. “It is one thing to go hunting or drinking with Richard, Henri. But when you rode into Dreux at his side, you risked stirring up suspicions about where your true loyalties lie. Please tell me you are not now planning to travel with him to the Holy Land.”
Henri had adored his father, his uncle not so much. But Thibault was the head of the House of Blois and Henri had been raised to respect his elders. So instead of responding as he’d have liked—telling Thibault that he and Philippe could both piss in a leaking pot—he said mildly, “You need not fret, Uncle. I still intend to accompany you and my uncle Etienne and the Count of Clermont.” That had been an easy decision, for they’d be able to depart after Easter, whilst he thought they might see the Second Coming ere Richard and Philippe finally got under way. “I know it is no easy task to transport an army,” he conceded. “Richard told me that he had to order fifty thousand horseshoes from an iron mine in Devon and he expects to bring at least ten thousand horses.” Henri shook his head, marveling at the magnitude of such an undertaking. “Fortunately, it is much easier for us; we need only hire ships in Marseille and, God willing, we’ll reach Tyre ere it falls to the Saracens.”
Henri stopped, seeing that his uncle was not listening. Following Thibault’s gaze, he saw that Philippe was no longer at the table, nowhere in the hall, and the English did not look very happy. What now? he wondered, and headed toward Richard to find out what was going on.
Richard didn’t know much more than Henri, though, saying that Philippe had been called away by the castle steward. “I am guessing a courier has ridden in,” he said, “but I cannot see what would be important enough to interrupt these discussions. Unless we get these matters settled, we’ll have to delay our departure yet again. We’ve lost enough time as it is. It has been over two years since I took the cross, Henri, two years!”
Richard signaled to a wine bearer, and Henri stayed to commiserate with Richard and Will Marshal and Hubert Walter, the newly named Bishop of Salisbury, who’d be accompanying Richard to the Holy Land. But the longer Philippe was gone, the more impatient Richard became, and by the time the French king finally returned to the hall, the English king’s temper, never dormant, was beginning to smolder. Striding over to confront Philippe, he said, with pointed politeness, “Are you ready to resume our talks now, my lord?”
“No, I am not. We’ll have to address these matters at a later time.”
Richard’s mouth tightened. But his protest never left his lips, for he was becoming aware that something was not quite right with Philippe. The younger man had a naturally ruddy complexion, but now his face had taken on a sickly ashen hue, and his voice sounded oddly hoarse, as if his words had been forced from a throat swollen and raw. “Are you ailing?” Richard asked abruptly, dispensing with court etiquette, but Philippe merely looked at him stonily.
“We are done here,” he said curtly. “We’ll meet at Vézelay in July as previously agreed upon. Any remaining matters can be resolved then.” And to the astonishment of Richard and the others within earshot, he then turned on his heel without another word and walked away.
No one knew what to make of this, and speculative murmurs swept the hall. Richard was angry, but puzzled, too. Drawing Henri aside, he said quietly, “If he is playing some damnable game to delay our departure yet again, he’ll regret it. Can you find out what he’s up to, Henri?”
“If I have to sneak into his chapel and overhear his confession,” Henri promised cheerfully, and when Richard departed soon afterward, the Count of Champagne remained behind in Dreux, eagerly embracing this new role—that of royal spy.
MOST PEOPLE ARRANGED their lives around the cycles of the sun, rising at dawn and going to bed once darkness descended, for candles and lamps were expensive, and few could afford the vast numbers of tapers, torches, and rushlights needed to keep night at bay. As kings did not have that concern, Richard and Eleanor felt free to follow their own inner clocks. After a late supper upon his return to Nonancourt, Richard was holding court in the great hall. A minstrel and musicians had entertained, followed by a jape in which a motley-clad fool juggled balls and knives, accompanied by a small dog that danced on her hind legs, turned cartwheels, and balanced on a beam set between wooden trestles.
Richard had enjoyed the minstrel’s songs, but he soon lost interest in the antics of the fool and his dog, and withdrew to a window-seat for a low-voiced conversation with his chancellor and Will Marshal. From her seat upon the dais, Eleanor glanced his way from time to time, knowing he was trying to anticipate any crisis that might arise in his absence. The coordination of a crusade of this size was more than daunting. While lords and knights would provide their own weapons and armor, infantrymen would have to be outfitted. The army would need horses and fodder, crossbow bolts, beans and cheese and salt and dried meat, blankets, wine, barrels of silver pennies for expenses abroad, medical supplies—the list was endless. Richard was doing what no other crusading king had dared—assembling and equipping his own fleet of more than a hundred ships, and the cost of these ships and wages for the crews was likely to reach fourteen thousand pounds, more than half the royal revenue from England. Richard had raised huge sums by methods that sometimes verged upon extortion, dismissing all his sheriffs and making them buy their posts back, levying heavy fines, offering town charters, forest rights, earldoms, lordships, and bishoprics for cash, recognizing Scotland’s independence in return for ten thousand marks. Men joked, some bitterly, that it was a wonder he’d not taken bids on the very air the English breathed, and Richard himself had jested that he’d have sold London if only he could have found a buyer.
Eleanor was uneasy about such massive expenditures, wondering how the royal treasury could ever be replenished, for she’d been spared the crusading fever that had infected her son and so many others. But she took comfort in Richard’s strategic sense, his impressive grasp of logistics. Her French husband’s crusade had been a catastrophe of inept organization and shortsighted mistakes. If Richard must do this, she wanted the odds to be in his favor, and she was grateful that he seemed to be so adept at comprehensive planning.
She was dreading his departure as she’d dreaded few events in her life, well aware that he’d be wagering with Death on a daily basis. And each morning she would awaken not knowing if he’d survived another day in that earthly Hell. Could the Almighty take yet another of her sons? She knew the answer to that, knew the cemeteries of Christendom were filled with the children of grieving mothers. And if Richard was slain on a distant, desert battlefield, the empire his father had forged at such great personal cost might well die with him.
“Grandame?” Richenza had reached out to touch her hand, concerned by the faraway look in her grandmother’s eyes, sure that whatever Eleanor was seeing, it was not the great hall at Nonancourt Castle. Relieved when Eleanor blinked and then summoned up a smile, she asked if it would be permissible to seek out Alys, a forlorn figure hovering on the edge of the festivities.
“She looks so lonely, Grandame,” she said forthrightly. She knew, of course, that Alys would never be her uncle Richard’s queen. So, too, did everyone else at court and they preferred to keep Alys at a distance, either because they found her presence uncomfortable or because they did not want to risk royal disfavor. It had not been so awkward, Richenza thought, whilst the Lady Denise, the Duchess of Brittany, and Isabel Marshal had been present, for they’d been Alys’s friends. But Cons
tance and her Breton lords had ridden off that morn, having gotten permission from Richard to visit her daughter in Rouen; Denise and André had departed, too, and Isabel was absent from the hall tonight, suffering from the queasiness of early pregnancy. Now that Alys was alone with her ladies-in-waiting, Richenza could not stand by and watch her be politely shunned for no sin of her own.
Eleanor glanced toward Alys, then back at her granddaughter. “Of course you may, child. You need not seek my permission to perform a kindness,” she assured the girl, thinking that it would be best for all concerned, including Alys, when she was settled at Rouen Castle. “Richenza . . . first tell your uncle John that I wish to speak with him.”
Richenza fulfilled her errand with her usual dispatch, and John was soon approaching the dais, looking pleased but wary, too. Once he’d seated himself beside her, Eleanor said, pitching her voice for his ear alone, “You were at Dreux this afternoon. What do you think happened?” When he admitted that he did not know, she divulged the real reason why she’d summoned him. “I have never met the French king,” she said regretfully, “so I have to rely upon the opinions of others. Richard believes Philippe to be a coward, so that naturally colors his judgment.”
“Naturally,” John echoed, thinking that Richard’s sole measure of a man was his willingness to bleed. “So . . . you want to know what I think of Philippe?” His question was a delaying tactic, for he sensed that she was testing him, and he wanted to be sure that he did not disappoint. “I agree that Philippe is a cautious sort,” he said carefully, “but I do not know if that makes him craven. Most men are more familiar with fear than my brother. I do think Philippe is more dangerous than Richard does, for he is clever and ruthless and utterly single-minded. And he loathes Richard with the sort of passion that burns to the bone.”