advantage of English unrest. After that, the day’s business was done.
Robert waited until he and Maude were alone with their brothers, Miles, and Brien. Only then did he say quietly, “I fear, Maude, that you hold Matilda too cheaply. She could be more of a threat than you think.”
“Matilda? That little mouse? Surely you jest, Robert!”
“As long as she controls Kent and the coast, she is dangerous, Maude, for she could hire Flemish mercenaries, strip Boulogne bare to pay them, mayhap even blockade London-”
“She’d never have the stomach for killing, not St Matilda. She-” Maude stopped abruptly. “Rainald? You are going?”
Rainald nodded. “By your leave, Madame Queen,” he said jauntily, and kissed her hand with an exaggerated courtly flourish.
“Rainald…ere you go, I would put a question to you. I am curious about something. What were you finding so amusing with John Marshal and Baldwin de Redvers?”
“What?” Rainald looked blank, and then shrugged, too nonchalantly. “Oh…that. Just a jest.”
“I would like to hear it, Rainald.”
The others were now watching, for Rainald’s discomfort was too obvious to overlook. He scowled, ran his hand through his hair until it bristled like the quills of a ginger hedgehog. “Ah, Maude…it was a joke not fit for female ears. Can we not leave it at that?”
“I am not likely to swoon, Rainald.”
Rainald ruffled his hair again, at a loss. If only she’d give him enough time, he might be able to come up with a less objectionable joke. But she was not about to wait, had that stubborn look he knew all too well. No, best to tell her and get it over with, but why did she have to be so damnably difficult? “Have it your way, Maude, but you’ll not like it any. You asked what the Londoners wanted of you, and he…he said ‘ballocks.’”
It was passing strange. Maude had expected such an answer, and yet she still felt as if she’d been slapped in the face. From the corner of her eye, she saw Miles and Ranulf struggling to hide grins. Were Robert and Brien laughing at her, too? “Very amusing,” she said, with a smile that dripped icicles. “I want to be sure to give credit where due. Whose joke was it…John’s or Baldwin’s?”
Rainald’s mouth dropped open. “I do not remember!”
“Rainald, tell me!”
“No…no, I will not!” he snapped, and spun on his heel, ignoring her demand that he halt, that he come back.
No one else had moved. But the slamming door broke the spell, and Ranulf leapt to his feet. “I’ll go after him, Maude, talk to him once he calms down.” The door banged again, and a strained silence settled over the room. Miles had risen, too. Striding forward, he kissed Maude’s hand, then gave her a level look.
“You are too thin-skinned, Lady Maude. If you bleed so profusely from a mere scratch, how will you protect yourself from a much greater wound?”
“I am no fragile flower, Miles,” Maude said stiffly. “You need not fear. I will meet whatever challenges lie ahead, and prevail over them.”
“I do not doubt that, madame.” At the door, he paused. “Even so,” he said, “it was just a joke.”
Robert was the next to depart. More tactful then Miles, he kept his opinion to himself, but Maude knew him well enough to read disapproval in his very reticence. She spun around, crossed to the hearth, waiting for the sound of the door’s closing yet again. But it did not come, and she glanced over her shoulder, saw Brien still standing by the table.
“I suppose you think I made too much of it, too,” she said, seeking to sound matter-of-fact, but sounding defensive, instead.
“Yes,” he said, “but I think I understand why you did so.”
Maude’s smile was skeptical. “Do you, indeed?”
He nodded. “A joke about the gallows would find no favor in the house of a man who’d been hanged.”
Maude took a quick step toward him. “Mayhap you do understand. Brien, this is not at all as I thought it would be. Why is it still so hard? Why are they still fighting me?”
“Nothing frightens men more than the unknown. Stephen might be discredited and defeated, but his flaws are familiar and therefore, safer.”
Maude’s mouth twisted. “Better a weak king than a strong queen?” she said bitterly, and Brien nodded again.
“It is so unfair, Brien! For five years, I fought to reclaim the crown that Stephen stole from me, and it cost me dear. Now that crown is within my grasp, and still there are men who would deny it to me. Miles says I am too easily wounded. Not by my enemies, by my friends, my own kinsmen. Those are the wounds that fester…”
“Maude.” It was the first time he’d used her given name, but in the intensity of the moment, neither noticed. “You will be queen,” he said, “and I will serve you faithfully until my last breath, that I swear upon the surety of my soul.”
He raised her hand to his lips, and for a moment, their fingers entwined. “May I speak freely?” She nodded, but still he hesitated. “I would cut out my tongue ere I’d offend you. But there is this I must say to you, my lady. Fear cannot always be banished by force of will. Sometimes it needs to be coaxed away. Mayhap if you sought to sooth their fears with soft words…”
“Oh, no, Brien,” Maude said earnestly, “you are wrong. I dare not, for they would take that as weakness. I must prove that I am my father’s daughter, in deed and word as well as blood. It is the only way.”
IF fortune had been fickle in April, it proved bountiful in May. Maude enjoyed some signal successes. Her uncle David, the Scots king, arrived. In Normandy, Robert Beaumont made a truce with Geoffrey. Geoffrey de Mandeville came to terms with her, too, and promised his aid in bringing the recalcitrant Londoners to heel. That did not prove necessary, though. A delegation of Londoners met Maude at St Albans, had a long discussion with Robert, and bowed to the inevitable. During the third week in June, Maude was given a subdued but courteous welcome into the capital, and was finally installed in the royal palace at Westminster.
Robert had just met with the Archbishop of Canterbury, discussing the plans for Maude’s coronation. He was on his way back to the great hall when he was waylaid by his daughter. The Earl of Chester had yet to put in an appearance at Maude’s court; rumor had him busy settling scores with William Peverel and the Earl of Richmond. But Maud was not about to miss her aunt’s coronation, and she’d joined them at Reading. Robert was delighted to have her with them, for Amabel had been forced to remain at Bristol to watch over Stephen. He followed Maud now into the gardens, and soon unbent enough to play with her exuberant little lapdog. But this rare moment of relaxation was fleeting, for Gilbert Foliot was striding up the path toward him, with a haste that bespoke urgency.
“My lord earl, I’m indeed glad I found you. The Bishop of Winchester has arrived, and he no sooner paid his respects to the empress than they got into a right sharp argument. I thought it best to come looking for you, for they’re going to be sorely in need of a peacemaker, and you’re the only one they’re both likely to heed.”
Robert swore, profanely enough to startle his daugther. “Wherever did you learn such foul language, Papa… from Mama?” But her teasing was wasted, for Robert was already heading for the great hall, and she had to hurry to catch up.
“If I may be blunt,” Gilbert Foliot continued, “the fault lies with the Scots king. If he were not so set upon having his chancellor named as the next Bishop of Durham-”
“Let me guess,” Robert interrupted wearily. “Maude told the Bishop of Winchester that she’d approved the appointment of David’s man to the Durham see, and the bishop took it amiss-badly amiss.”
“You must have second sight, for that is indeed what happened. Lady Maude’s temper could melt wax at twenty paces, and Bishop Henry is no meek Lamb of God. When I left, they were shouting at each other in a most undignified way, to the wonderment of a hall full of witnesses.”
Robert swore again, quickening his stride, and Foliot did, too. “You know I have no great regard for Bishop Henry, my lord, but he has the right of it in this quarrel. The monks of Durham do not want the King of Scotland picking their bishop. Moreover, Lady Maude did promise the bishop that he’d have the final say in all Church appointments. As little as I like the man, I can understand his anger. It was very foolish of him, though, to scold the empress as if she were a wayward child. Any chance he may have had of prevailing ended as soon as the words ‘I forbid it’ passed his lips.”
“He said that? Christ!”
