corner of her soul, she was glad that Cecily remained unwed, so deeply had she come to rely upon the younger woman’s loyalty and devotion.
As they left the church, it began to rain, and they quickened their steps. A sheltered passage led from the cloisters to the Archbishop of Canterbury’s great hall, sparing them the worst of the weather. Shaking moisture from their mantles, they hastened into the hall, and then stopped in surprise, for a raucous celebration seemed to be in progress.
Trailed by a puzzled Cecily, Matilda made her way toward the dais. Just hours earlier, the atmosphere in the hall had been as cheerless as the rain, for they’d learned only that morning of the archbishop’s daring escape. What, Matilda wondered, could have happened to dispel all the gloom?
As she tried to catch Stephen’s eye, she was grabbed from behind, and found herself enveloped in a breath- stealing bear hug. Her son was grinning down at her; at eighteen, he was already as tall as his father and towered over the diminutive Matilda. “She is gone, Mama,” he laughed. “The bitch is gone!”
“Are you sure, Eustace?”
He nodded and steered her protectively toward the dais. “She sailed for Normandy a fortnight ago. We ought to have heard ere this; too often, Papa is poorly served. But all that matters now is that Maude is no longer a threat. My only regret is that she never had to answer for her sins.”
“I doubt that she came away unscathed from this war, Eustace. No one did,” Matilda said, and held out her hand to her husband. Reaching down, he swung her up onto the dais, as jubilant as their son, for the passing years had tempered neither his capacity for exuberant rejoicing nor his faith in happy endings.
“It took us more than eight years, Tilda, to drive Maude from our shores, but she has finally gone back where she belongs-to Geoffrey-and I am not sure which of them I pity the more!”
“I am so glad,” she avowed, “so very glad that it is finally over.” But honesty compelled her to add a realistic qualifier: “…at least until Maude’s son is old enough to renew the war.”
Her men regarded her indulgently. She would always remain earthbound as they soared up toward the heavens, and whilst they pitied her lack of wings, they could not teach her to fly. “I may have to borrow money occasionally,” Stephen joked, “but I flat-out refuse to borrow trouble. Maude’s son is but a raw lad, not worth losing sleep over.”
“You worry too much, Mama. How much danger can Maude’s meagre whelp be?” Eustace scoffed. “With men as with horses, breeding always tells.”
“Indeed it does,” Stephen agreed, smiling fondly at his prideful heir. He’d long wanted to follow the Continental practice, have Eustace crowned in his lifetime. What better way to please his son and secure the succession? And what better time than now, with Maude in exile and her supporters in disarray?
Matilda smiled at them both. “It would be so wonderful,” she said wistfully, “to have peace at last…”
Henry I’s royal manor at Quevilly, a suburb of Rouen, was adjacent to Notre-Dame-du-Pre, a priory of the great Benedictine abbey of Bec. Upon her arrival in Normandy, Maude chose to lodge in guest quarters at the priory rather than at her father’s palace or in Rouen’s formidable castle. And it was here that she was reunited with her husband, after a separation of more then eight years.
They were alone. Minna had reluctantly withdrawn, giving Geoffrey a baleful glance that catapulted him back in time, a time he did not want to remember, much less relive. Reaching for a wine flagon, he offered Maude wine and a sardonic smile. “I see the English climate has not mellowed your Minna any.”
Maude accepted the wine, ignored the sarcasm. Outwardly composed, inwardly she felt hollow, so tense it actually hurt to breathe. Much of it was nervous anticipation at seeing her sons again. But it was Geoffrey, too. Just the sight of him brought back too many ugly memories, churned up old emotions that had been stagnant, becalmed during her years in England. Why could this man disquiet her so? Why did she let him?
There was no longer a need for pretense, for the polite conversation they’d exchanged in front of the prior and Minna: queries about health, condolences over Robert’s death, those little courtesies that society expected of a man and woman nigh on twenty years wed. Geoffrey sat down in a high-backed chair, stretching long legs toward the hearth. It surprised her that he still looked so young. But why not? He was only thirty-four. She felt so much older, decades older.
Geoffrey was regarding her over the rim of his wine cup, an old trick of his, one that invariably made her shift self-consciously. “Since you chose to stay with the monks at the priory rather than with me at the castle,” he said dryly, “I suppose that is your subtle way of hinting that you are not overeager to sleep in our marriage bed.”
Maude sipped her wine. “I can assure you, Geoffrey, that I want to be in your bed just as much as you want to have me there.”
An eyebrow shot up, another familiar mannerism. “A jest…from you? You have changed, dear heart!”
“Jesu, I hope so!” she said, with such intensity that he stopped in the act of pouring more wine and stared at her. “I do not want to go back to the battlefield that was our marriage, and I cannot believe that you do, either, Geoffrey. I do not want to be held hostage to memories anymore, or to keep paying for past mistakes. I want…” She faltered then, for what did she want of this man? Her husband, her intimate enemy, poisoner of her peace. But how long ago it all seemed. What had happened to that wronged young wife, so choked with helpless hatred? England had happened.
“Can it be,” he said, “that you are offering to make peace, Maude?”
She swallowed a sharp retort. “And if I am?”
“You ask too much.” But he was smiling faintly. “Suppose we start with a truce…see how many days that lasts.”
His humor still held its buried barbs; they did not sting as much, though, as she remembered. “I’ll try if you will, Geoffrey.” Setting her wine cup down, she leaned forward. “Tell me of our sons.”
“They are good lads, for the most part. Geoff has a temper and Will is somewhat lazy, has to be prodded. As for Harry’s flaws…well, I need only remind you of last year, when he decided that invading England would be a marvelous way to get through the boredom of Lent. But why not judge for yourself?”
Maude stiffened. “They are here? You brought them?”
“The younger lads. Harry had gone off into town, but I left him word that you’d arrived.”
Rising, he looked down at her, and she realized that some things would never change; she still had no idea what he was thinking. But when he smiled, it caught unexpectedly at her heart, for it was so like Henry’s smile. What of her younger sons? Would their smiles be familiar, too? Would they know her? For so long, she’d yearned for this reunion, so why did she feel so nervous? He was holding out his hand. “I am ready,” she lied, and let him help her to her feet.
What shocked Maude the most was that she would not have recognized her own son. When she’d last seen Will, he was a chubby-cheeked child of three, and that was the image she’d kept in her mind for the past eight and a half years. But that little boy was forever lost to her, replaced by a russet-haired stripling in his twelfth year, as skittish as a young colt.
Geoffrey-or Geoff, as he’d brusquely corrected her-was no less unfamiliar, for great was the gap, too, between a five-year-old and one not far off from fourteen. Geoff had the same fair coloring as his brothers: bright, curly hair, a sprinkling of freckles, and wide-set grey eyes; no matter how troubled her marriage had been, not even Maude’s most virulent enemies could ever have challenged Geoffrey’s paternity. Geoff had some of his father’s swagger, too. He was leaning against the wall, arms folded, eyes guarded, for Maude had yet to recover from her initial misstep, when she’d remarked, before she could think better of it, that he bore a strong resemblance to Henry.
Geoffrey was also leaning against the wall, their poses too similar for coincidence; it was obvious to Maude that her sons sought to emulate him in all particulars, and that was not a comforting thought. This was not going well, not at all. The boys were wary, not readily tamed, and conversation was painfully stilted. They were just shy, Maude told herself, and that would pass. “I almost forgot,” she said, with forced cheer. “I brought you back presents from England.”
Putting Henry’s gift aside, an ivory and ebony chess set, she gave Will his gift first, a rare lodestone that acted as a magnet. Will seemed pleased, but her present for Geoff was not as successful. It was a book handsomely bound in red leather, The Song of Roland; she’d remembered Ranulf’s saying how much he’d enjoyed Roland’s adventures as a boy. Geoff thanked her politely enough, but then added snidely, “Harry is the only one who likes to read.”
“And the only one with manners, too,” Geoffrey observed. Although he’d spoken with a smile, it was clearly
