she ducked her head, he saw the tear tracks on her cheek. “What is wrong, lass?” he asked, wondering why she should be weeping alone out in the stairwell. This could be no lovers’ quarrel, for her tryst with Henry was a business transaction. He’d met Lora upon his visit to Salisbury, and had taken a fancy to the young prostitute, coaxing her into coming back with him to Devizes. Ranulf had approved of his nephew’s taste, for she was fair of face and lush of body and seemed quite worldly for her years, just eighteen or thereabouts. “What is it, lass?” he asked again, gently. “Why do you weep?”
She startled him, then, with a flare of temper, for until now, she’d always appeared cheerful and accommodating. “Did you think whores had no tears?” she snapped. “If we do not often weep, it is only because we learn early on that it avails us naught.”
Beneath the sarcasm was a genuine hurt, and he took no offense. “Can I help?” he asked, and she shook her head, swiping at her wet cheek with the back of her hand, a gesture he found plaintively childlike.
“I did not mean to bite your head off,” she said. “You’ve always been right good to me, Lord Ranulf, and deserve better than that. I was crying because Lord Harry told me he is leaving.”
“I see,” Ranulf said, for he did. Her tears made perfect sense now. Of course she would be sorry to see their liaison end, for she’d achieved the pinnacle of success for one in her precarious profession: she’d found herself a highborn protector, one who was young and personable in the bargain. Little wonder, he thought, that the lass dreaded going back to her old life in Salisbury.
Lora could not read books, but she’d learned, of necessity, to read men. “I’ll not deny,” she said, “that I shall miss the comforts of a castle. Servants and a feather bed and a roof that does not leak and no lack of candles or firewood-who would willingly give up such ease? But whether you believe me or not, it is Lord Harry I shall miss the most. He never made me feel like a whore. Not once!” she added defiantly, as if to fend off his disbelief.
“Is that so uncommon, Lora?” he asked, and she nodded, marveling that a lord like Ranulf could ask so innocent a question; she did not doubt that Henry, even at sixteen, already understood more than his uncle about mankind’s propensity for careless cruelties.
“Very uncommon, my lord,” she said bleakly. “But Lord Harry has a good heart. Moreover, he truly likes women.”
“Most men do, lass,” Ranulf pointed out in amusement, and was surprised when she shook her head again.
“No, my lord.” She contradicted him with an odd smile, one that was both cynical and sad. “Most men like to lay with women.”
Ranulf felt pity stirring, and he hoped it did not show upon his face. “Harry truly has no choice, Lora. He must return to Normandy…but not for good. He’ll be back.”
The smile she gave him now was polite and practiced and far too knowing for her years. “Yes,” she said, “but not for me.”
“ I ran into Lora in the stairwell. She said you’ve decided to go. For what it is worth, Harry, I think you made a wise choice.”
Henry shrugged. “Well…my father always said that if you want to get invited back, you’d best know when to go home.”
Ranulf was not fooled by the levity. “It sounds to me,” he said, “as if you’re uneasy in your own mind about this.”
Henry shrugged again. “It is just that if I go now, Ranulf, all my efforts will have been so…so damned inconclusive.”
“You’re going home alive, Harry. What is inconclusive about that? For nigh on a year, Stephen and Eustace did their accursed best to hunt you down, but to no avail. You think that went unnoticed? All over England, there are men thinking to themselves: If they could not bring the empress’s son to ruination at sixteen, how are they going to fare against him once he reaches nineteen or twenty? No, lad, this campaign of yours was a rousing success, for you opened the door wide for your next foray. And you’ve got a powerful ally on your side-time.”
“I’ve a better ally than that. I’ve got Eustace, too,” Henry said, and smiled at Ranulf’s surprise. “Fortune’s Wheel has turned with a vengeance, Uncle. Why was it so easy for Stephen to steal my mother’s crown? The country was not full of men afire to put Stephen on the throne. They just did not want the empress, Geoffrey of Anjou’s wife. And now…now none of them can be utterly sure that I’ll make a good king.” His smile flashed again, sudden and sardonic. “But there’s hardly a soul in England,” he said, “who doubts that Eustace would make a bad one!”
Ranulf accompanied Henry to Wareham, and promised to join him and Maude in Normandy after he paid a farewell visit to his Welsh kin. He and Padarn then started off on their long journey back to Gwynedd. Henry sailed with the tide for Barfleur.
Henry received a joyous welcome from his parents and partisans in Normandy. Geoffrey was pleased enough with his firstborn’s prowess to declare Henry legally of age. He then did something which greatly gratified his wife, horrified Stephen, alarmed the French king-newly back from the Holy Land-and astonished most of Christendom. He’d always contended that he was holding Normandy for Henry. But he’d won the duchy by his own efforts, and in their world, men rarely yielded up power of their own free will. That was what Geoffrey now did, though, relinquishing his rights to Normandy in his son’s favor. While still a month shy of his seventeenth birthday, Henry became Duke of Normandy.
45
Trefriw, North Wales
February 1150
It was a typical February afternoon-raw and grey. Selwyn, one of the youths honing his skills of manhood in Rhodri’s service, had built a fire in the open hearth, burying a log in wood ash so it would burn slowly and steadily. Bechan, the serving-maid, was dipping candles in sheep’s tallow, for only the very wealthy and the very extravagant burned wax candles for everyday use. Olwen, who attended Rhiannon and Eleri, had positioned a spindle close to the hearth so she could spin flax in comparative comfort. And Rhiannon had brought a mortar and pestle to the table, where she set about crushing wood betony. The cook had been ailing, she explained to the curious Selwyn, and when mixed with honey, powdered betony leaves eased coughing and shortness of breath.
Selwyn was never satisfied with a simple answer and he wanted to know all about the other uses of betony. Rhiannon answered patiently as he flung question after question her way, for she liked the boy, but she was glad, nonetheless, when he fetched a whetstone and began to sharpen his sword. He was touchingly proud of the weapon-his first-for he was only fourteen, and he was soon so intent upon his task that Rhiannon and herbal remedies were forgotten.
Rhiannon welcomed the silence, for she’d awakened that morning with a headache that was so far resisting both sage and pennyroyal. She’d been able, though, to use the headache to escape accompanying Enid and Eleri on a courtesy call to a neighbor who’d recently given birth to her first child. Enid and Eleri had not objected, for the woman invariably fluttered around Rhiannon like a deranged moth, so acutely uncomfortable with Rhiannon’s blindness that she made everyone else equally uncomfortable with her.
Rhiannon had another-secret-reason for not wanting to visit Blodwen. She agreed heartily with Eleri’s caustic assessment of Blodwen as a woman “who has feathers where her brains ought to be.” She could bear Blodwen’s twittering and fidgety hospitality-if she had to. What she could not endure was that the Almighty had seen fit to give foolish, shallow Blodwen what Rhiannon would never have herself: a newborn son.
Snatching up his mantle, Selwyn muttered something about an “errand.” Rhiannon suspected he was off to the kitchen, for he seemed to spend half of his time there, trying to inveigle cider and honeyed wafers from the cook. He’d been gone only a few moments when the door opened again and a familiar voice bellowed out an unnecessary proclamation of his arrival.
Rhiannon was delighted; her father had been at Aber for the past week, attending his king, Owain Gwynedd. “Papa, you’re back early!” Pushing her chair away from the table, she started toward the sound of his voice.
The warning was not in time. Her father cried out her name, but by then she’d already stumbled over something out in the middle of the floor, something hard and heavy, something that should not have been there. As