Henry looked amused. “You might say that. I am meeting the French king soon to discuss the future of the Vexin, amongst other matters. So I sent Thomas ahead to blaze a trail for me. I’d wanted to send Eleanor, for she’s had some experience at charming Louis-” He pretended to flinch when Eleanor jabbed him in the ribs with her elbow. “But she balked, so I had to settle for Thomas.”
“Tell Ranulf and Rhiannon about his entry into Paris,” Eleanor prompted her husband. “Better yet, read from his letter, for you’ll never remember all the glittering details otherwise.” Adding, “And whilst you’re up, I need a cushion for my back.”
Henry unfolded himself from the window seat. “Imagine how she’d order me around if I were not a king.” Tossing Eleanor a cushion, he began to sort through a pile of letters spread out on the table.
“Here it is. Envision this if you will. First came two hundred and fifty footmen, followed by Thomas’s hounds and greyhounds and eight wagons, each pulled by five horses and guarded by a chained mastiff. Ah, yes, each of the wagon horses also had a monkey riding on its back.”
Henry’s mouth twitched. “Then came twenty-eight packhorses laden with gold and silver plate, clothes, money, books, gifts, and such. After that came Thomas’s retinue: two hundred squires, knights, falconers with hawks, clerks, stewards, and servants. And finally came Thomas himself, mounted on a stallion whiter than milk, looking more like a king than most, I daresay.” With that, his grin broke free. “For certes, more kingly than me!”
“Well,” Ranulf acknowledged, “if his aim was to bedazzle the French with English wealth and splendor, he must surely have accomplished that. Mayhap too well! For how can you possibly overshadow him? You plan to bring along elephants and trained bears and Saracen dancing girls?”
Henry laughed, glancing over at Eleanor. “Saracen dancing girls? Alas, as intriguing as that suggestion sounds, I doubt that-” Interrupted by the sound of the opening door, he strode forward to confer briefly with the man who’d just entered, not loudly enough for the others to hear, and then startled them by plunging out into the stairwell. They could hear his boots echoing on the stairs, and then silence. No one spoke after that, waiting uneasily for his return.
He was soon back, a crumpled letter in his hand. “Will,” he said, and his brother tensed, for Maude had been ailing again. Henry read his fear and swiftly shook his head. “It is not our mother,” he said. “It is Geoff. Will… he is dead.”
His brother’s mouth dropped open. The others shared his astonishment, for Geoffrey was just twenty-four. “What happened, Harry? Was he thrown from his horse?”
“Or caught with another man’s wife?” Rainald blurted out, before thinking better of it, relieved when no one paid his tactless suggestion any heed.
Henry was shaking his head again. “He got a chill after going swimming, and a fever followed. It was very quick…” His voice trailed off, and as his eyes met Will’s, he saw the same thought was in both their minds. This was how their father had died, too, death coming without warning to claim him in his prime.
What puzzled Rhiannon was the lack of sorrow in their voices. They sounded shocked, but not grief-stricken. Tugging at her husband’s sleeve, she whispered, “Are there none to mourn him, Ranulf?”
“Yes,” he said somberly. “There is one.” Crossing the solar, he said, “Will you be going to France straightaway?” When Henry nodded, he said, “I want to come with you.”
Henry nodded again, unsurprised. But Rhiannon gasped and Ranulf heard. “I must go, lass. My sister has lost a son.”
Rhiannon could not hide her dismay. She did her best, murmuring that she understood. But Eleanor knew better. Leaning over, she touched Rhiannon’s hand in silent sympathy, for they would be stranded together in England. Once again, she thought morosely, Harry would be miles away when she gave birth to his child.
Thomas Becket was standing by an open window, watching as monks from the priory went about their daily chores. As soon as word had reached him in Paris of Geoffrey’s death, he’d ridden for Rouen to pay his condolences to the empress and to await Henry’s arrival. Knowing Henry, he’d known, too, that he would not have long to wait.
Henry was now with Maude on the settle, their voices low, faces intent. When Will offered his mother a wine cup, she thanked him absently, setting it down untasted, and Ranulf felt a twinge of pity for the youth. Maude’s rapport with her firstborn was so complete that it inevitably and unintentionally shut others out, even Will. Ranulf had not seen his sister in seven years. His elder by sixteen years, she was fifty-six now, too thin for his liking and too pale. She was dry-eyed, which didn’t surprise him; Maude would let only the Almighty see her tears. But her pain was apparent in the rigid stiffness of her posture, in the lines grooved around her mouth, even in the unnatural stillness of the fingers loosely linked in her lap.
Rising, Ranulf crossed the chamber and joined Becket at the window. “How did your talks go with the French king?”
“Quite well.”
Ranulf glanced curiously at the other man. He knew his nephew had a specific purpose in seeking a meeting with Louis, and he would have liked to know what it was. But there was no point in asking, for Becket shared none of Henry’s secrets.
Feeling Ranulf’s gaze upon him, Becket smiled quizzically. He was in his thirty-eighth year, a man of intriguing contrasts, handsome but apparently chaste, educated but no scholar, an articulate and eloquent speaker who’d had to overcome a slight stammer, an archdeacon who’d not taken priestly vows, worldly and prideful and pious, closer to the king than any man alive, and yet with few other friends or intimates. People were invariably impressed by his competence, but he remained a stranger in their midst and they sensed that, however imperfectly.
“Is there some reason why you are staring at me, Ranulf?” Becket asked good-naturedly. “I get the uneasy sense that you are trying to see into the depths of my soul!”
“Actually,” Ranulf confessed, “I was speculating about your mission to the French court. It could not have been easy, acting as Harry’s emissary to his wife’s former husband. Even your powers of persuasion must have been sorely tried under those circumstances.”
Becket smiled, not denying that he was a gifted mediator or that this had been a particularly challenging task. “Harry does seem to enjoy sending me into the lion’s den.”
“And then wagering upon whether you’ll come out alive,” Ranulf joked. “But he often says that naming you as chancellor was one of the best decisions of his life, although he’s not likely ever to say it in your hearing.”
“I am gladdened that I’ve done well as chancellor. But I expected no less.” Becket flashed a quick smile to dispel any hint of arrogance. “I learned at an early age that an undertaking must be done wholeheartedly or not at all.”
“That may explain why you and Harry see eye to eye so often. God knows, he is half-hearted in nothing that he does!”
They turned then to welcome Will, who’d finally stopped hovering on the fringes of his mother and brother’s conversation. When Ranulf asked how he was faring, he shrugged. “I ought to be more grieved,” he said, sounding very young, “for we were brothers, after all. But I feel more pity than sorrow. I’m sorry Geoff was cheated of so much. But in truth, he could be such a swine.”
Will drew a deep breath then, as if unburdened by his honesty. Almost at once, though, his eyes flicked across the chamber, reassuring himself that his mother had not heard. When he spoke again, he sounded bemused. “Do you know what Harry and Mama are talking about, Uncle Ranulf? She is urging him to lay claim to the county of Nantes as Geoff’s heir.”
Ranulf and Becket were both amused by Will’s naivete. It would never have occurred to them that Henry would do otherwise than claim Nantes, for if he did not, the Duke of Brittany would swallow the county whole. When Will wandered away to the settle, Becket said softly:
“It was fortunate for all concerned that Harry was the eldest of the Lady Maude’s sons.”
Ranulf nodded slowly. Geoff would have been a disaster as king, and-in a different way-so would Will, for he was far too good-hearted and easygoing to command other men. “A king needs steel in his soul,” he agreed, thinking sadly of Stephen.
“Harry has that, in plenitude. But that raises an interesting point. Which comes first, the kingship or the steel?”
“Ah… so you are asking, Thomas, if Harry is ruthless because he is king? Or because he is ruthless, did he
