Chinon’s Great Hall was crowded, for Henry’s own retainers were augmented by the new arrivals from England and a sizable contingent of Poitevin lords, squirming under the king’s watchful eye. After a time, Rainald took refuge in a window seat alcove, where he made himself as comfortable as his aching muscles would allow, occasionally intercepting a passing wine-bearer or nodding with forced joviality if he happened to spot a familiar face. The night was mild and the hearth fires well tended; Rainald was soon dozing, his chin resting on his chest, fingers loosening around the stem of a tilting wine cup. But when another hand reached over to steady the goblet, he jerked upright, blinking blearily until his tired brain processed the information that the wine thief was his nephew.
Henry was grinning. “I think you’d rally on your very deathbed if someone waved a flagon under your nose.” Sitting down in the window seat, he waved aside the inevitable flock of hangers-on, indicating he wanted some semiprivacy with his uncle. As they reluctantly retreated, he handed Rainald back his wine cup. “Feeling your age, Uncle?”
Rainald’s answering grin was swallowed up in a huge yawn. “Aye, lad, I am, and why not? When you reach the advanced age of fifty and six, too, you’ll find that even your vast stores of energy will be well nigh empty.” He was not surprised by Henry’s amused disbelief. Still in his high noon at thirty-three, how could he envision a twilight waning?
“These old bones are getting too brittle for journeys like this,” Rainald complained good-naturedly. “Lord knows why de Lucy was in such haste to find you, what with all our news being so bleak!” He glanced toward the center hearth, where the justiciar was chatting amiably with several bishops and the Earl of Salisbury, Henry’s military commander in Aquitaine. “At least Becket’s curse has gone astray,” he said, pointing out the obvious: that none were obeying the Church’s dictate to shun the excommunicate justiciar as one of God’s castaways.
The mere mention of Thomas Becket’s name was enough to sour Henry’s mood. “Have you heard the latest about our archbishop in exile?” he asked, the words dripping with sarcasm. “Becket left his refuge with the Cistercians of Pontigny, is now under the protection of that fool on the French throne. Louis even dispatched a three-hundred-man escort to welcome Becket into his new roost, the abbey of St Columba, outside Sens.”
“It is difficult to understand how a man of God can stir up so much of the Devil’s mischief.” Seeing that his commiseration had chafed rather than soothed, Rainald marveled how easy it was to misspeak if Thomas Becket was the topic of conversation, and hastily sought to change the subject. “How does Eleanor these days? Is she still at Angers?”
“No, she joined me at Rouen last month and tarried to visit with my mother for another fortnight. As loath as she is to admit it, this pregnancy has not been an easy one. She tires easily and her nerves are so often on the raw that the babe she carries must be a hellraiser, for certes!”
“And Maude? Is she still ailing?” Rainald asked, and gnawed his lower lip when his nephew gave him a terse confirmation. Maude had never lacked for enemies, but the most insidious one was proving to be her own body, nurturing a foe that stole her breath, sapped her strength, and alarmed her loved ones. Her spirit still burned with a blue-white flame-Rainald had heard how wroth she’d been when Henry captured a messenger of Becket’s and put him to the knife to reveal his secrets-but few doubted that her mortal days were finite enough to count. Fumbling to cast out the shadow that had so suddenly fallen between them, Rainald brightened, remembering a choice bit of gossip he’d picked up in Wales.
“Guess who Owain Gwynedd is locking horns with nowadays? None other than Thomas Becket!”
Henry’s interest was immediate. “How so?”
“Well… the see of Bangor has been vacant for nigh on five years now,” Rainald began, and Henry was hard put to conceal his impatience, knowing his uncle could spin a tale out till the cows came home. “But of course you know that,” Rainald conceded, seeing those grey eyes narrow tellingly. “Owain wanted the position filled and he rashly wrote to Becket at Pontigny, asking if, during Becket’s exile, another prelate might consecrate Bangor’s bishop. Obviously, he did not consult Ranulf beforehand, for he’d have warned Owain that Becket’s vanity would never allow him to delegate even a scrap of authority. Becket sent a curt refusal, ordering that no election be held. But Owain is a man for getting his own way, too, and he arranged for his candidate to be elected and then sent him off to Ireland to be consecrated.”
He’d hoped that Henry might be amused by this flouting of Becket’s will; instead he scowled. “Ere war broke out, Owain approached me about filling the vacancy at Bangor with a man of his choosing, a monk of Bardsey. I refused, for I knew what he was about, trying to subvert English control over the diocese. So he thought to checkmate me with Becket, did he?”
“Well, it did not work,” Rainald reminded him mildly, putting aside the heretical thought that his nephew was no less jealous of his own prerogatives than Becket. “He may have his man at Bangor, but the Church will not recognize him. Moreover, he has made an enemy of Becket, who is suddenly showing great interest in Owain’s marriage to the Lady Cristyn, warning Owain that if the rumors of their kinship be true, she is no lawful wife and must be put aside.”
Henry’s eyes glittered. “I wish Owain better luck than my brother Will had,” he said, and Rainald realized that he had stepped into yet another snare. If truth be told, it was impossible to talk about Thomas Becket without blundering into one quagmire after another.
He began to speak at random about any subject that came to mind-the sudden death of the Earl of Essex last month at Chester, after their rout by the Welsh; Richard de Lucy’s professed intent to take the cross and go on pilgrimage to the Holy Land-knowing that there was a need to exorcise more than one ghost. It had been clumsy of him to make mention of Ranulf, sprinkling salt into an unhealed wound. He knew his nephew wanted to ask if he’d heard from Ranulf. He knew, too, that he would not ask. They were a pair, Harry and Ranulf, stubbornly keeping silent whilst their estrangement festered, each one unwilling to admit his own pain. Upon his return to England, he would write to his niece, he decided. If anyone could make peace between these two balky mules, surely it was Maud.
Richard de Lucy was approaching and Rainald welcomed him heartily; let de Lucy be the one to blunder into pitfalls for a while. Not that he would; de Lucy was the perfect royal servant, with diplomatic skills worthy of a Pope and loyalty that would put a dog to shame. When Henry informed him now that he must postpone his pilgrimage, instead journey to Rome to appeal Becket’s latest excommunications, the justiciar didn’t even blink, agreed so smoothly that Rainald had not a clue as to what he truly thought. Camouflaging another yawn, he watched as a courier was ushered across the hall toward them, and made ready to ask his nephew’s permission to retire for the evening.
But before he could, the messenger thrust a letter from Henry’s mother into his hands. Henry swiftly broke the seal, unfolded the parchment, and held it up toward the wall sconce above his head. Rainald squirmed on the seat, trying to ease his aching back. His eyelids had begun to droop again when his nephew drew a sudden, sibilant breath.
Rainald’s first fear was for Maude. “Is the news bad?”
Henry shook his head. “No… just unexpected. My mother says that Eleanor has left Rouen and rumor has it that she took ship at Barfleur for England.”
Rainald gaped, for that made no sense at all. Why would a woman brave a November Channel crossing whilst great with child? “Why would she do that? Did you not say that you were holding your Christmas court at Poitiers this year, to please her?”
Henry was frowning over the parchment again. Richard de Lucy was his usual inscrutable self, but Rainald was too puzzled for tact. “Surely Maude must be wrong. Why would Eleanor take it into her head of a sudden to go to England, now of all times?”
Henry glanced up sharply, then shrugged. “I have no idea, Uncle,” he said, “none at all.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
November 1166
English Channel
Petronilla sat up with a jerk, her heart racing. No night should have been as dark as this, and the cold was so
