CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
July 1168
Poitiers, Poitou
The sun was scorching, the air so still and sweltering that Eleanor felt as if she were suffocating. The sky was blanched whiter than bone, bereft of clouds and birds. People were gesturing, mouths ajar, their words thudding after her like poorly aimed stones. But the only sound she could hear was the wild hammering of her own heart, the pulsing of fear. Ahead was a clot of men, clustered in a noisy, shifting circle. Picking up her skirts, Eleanor began to run.
The crowd broke apart as she reached them, scattering like leaves before the wind. Dropping to her knees beside her son, Eleanor eased his head onto her lap. Blood matted the brightness of his hair, freckles glowing like fever spots against the ashen pallor of his skin, and a reddish bubble of saliva dribbled from the corner of his mouth. For a heartbeat of horror, she thought he was dead and her faith turned to ashes. But then she saw the reassuring rise and fall of his chest and her fingers found a pulse in his throat.
“Richard,” she said, throwing out his name as a lifeline. “Richard, open your eyes.”
His lashes quivered, then soared upward, giving her a glimpse of blessed blue-grey. “Am I hurt?” he asked plaintively and she choked back a sound that was neither laugh nor sob, but akin to both.
“Not as much as you will be.” An empty threat and they both knew it. When had she ever punished him for showing too much spirit, too little caution? He was struggling to sit up and she hastily bade him to lie still, wiping away some of his blood with a hanging silken sleeve.
Richard grimaced and then spat into the dust. “I bit my tongue.”
“Better a bitten tongue than a broken neck,” Eleanor said unsympathetically. By now her physician had arrived, flushed and panting, vastly relieved to see his royal patient was conscious and complaining. Her uncle, Raoul de Faye, had gotten there, too, and she let him assist her to her feet, her eyes narrowing as she looked over at the men who’d failed to keep her son safe.
“Whose horse was he riding?”
The question was posed in level, measured tones, but it sent a ripple of unease up numerous spines. William Marshal stepped forward, shoulders squaring as if bracing for a blow. “It was mine, Madame.”
Eleanor could not hide her surprise. “You, Will? You were the one who let a ten-year-old boy ride a battle destrier?”
Will was almost as pale as his young charge. “It was my stallion,” he said hoarsely, “and my fault.”
“It was not!” This indignant protest came from Richard. Ignoring the doctor’s futile attempts to restrain him, the youngster lurched unsteadily to his feet. “Will forbade me to ride Whirlwind! And… and I am nigh on eleven, Mama!”
Eleanor glanced from one to the other, seeing the truth writ plain upon their faces. “It is commendable that you do not want blame to be placed unfairly, Richard. But you need not sound so proud of your disobedience. A borrowed horse is a stolen horse if taken without consent.”
“Even if taken by the heir to Aquitaine?” Richard asked, with such overdone innocence that Eleanor had to smother a smile. As young as he was, her son knew full well that many of their society’s strictures would never apply to him. She was also amused-and pleased-that he’d cast his identity in terms of Aquitaine, not England. But he needed to learn a lesson and she set about teaching him one now by going unerringly for the vulnerable spot in his armor.
“Putting your own neck at risk is foolish but forgivable, Richard. After all,” she said dryly, “your father and I are fortunate enough to have sons to spare. A pity Will does not have stallions to spare. If you’d crippled or lamed his destrier by your recklessness, what was he supposed to do? Walk into battle? Mayhap ride pillion behind another knight?”
Her sarcasm stung. For the first time, Richard looked genuinely contrite. Turning toward Will, he mumbled an apology that was awkward, unwilling, and heartfelt, and when Eleanor instructed him to accompany the doctor back into the castle, he did not object.
“I will be there straightaway,” Eleanor assured the doctor. “Keep him in bed even if you have to bind him hand and foot.” She drew Will aside, then, for a brief colloquy, praising his honor while reminding him that any guardian of Richard’s needed eyes in the back of his head and a strong sense of impending disaster.
Raoul had lingered and fell in step beside her as she moved away from Will. “That was a most impressive maternal lecture,” he said admiringly. “No one listening to it would ever guess that you’d committed the very same sin when you were… twelve, thirteen?”
Eleanor gave him a speculative, sidelong glance and then an unrepentant smile. “Twelve,” she admitted. “I’d just as soon you forbore to mention that to Richard, though, Uncle. He needs inducements to mischief like a dog needs fleas.”
“I am a safe repository for all of your guilty secrets,” Raoul proclaimed, with mock gravity. “Even the one I stumbled onto by mere chance this past week.”
“And what secret would that be?”
“That you have a spy at the French court.”
“Do I, indeed?”
Raoul nodded, watching her with a complacent smile. “You are asking yourself how I could know that. The answer is very simple. Spying is a demanding profession and the price of failure can be high, indeed. So the few who excel at their craft are much in demand. Your man is one of the best. I ought to know, for I have made use of his services myself from time to time.”
Eleanor shrugged, untroubled by Raoul’s discovery. She had a far more extensive surveillance system than Raoul-or even Henry-realized, and her French spy was only one of many irons in the fire. “You are right,” she said, “about his abilities. His last visit to the French court was particularly productive. It seems that the Countess of Boulogne is playing the spy, too, these days. She recently warned Louis that Harry met with envoys of the Holy Roman Emperor.”
Raoul’s dark eyes gleamed, for he liked nothing better than being privy to secrets. “And of course poor Louis panicked, sure that meant Harry is hip-deep in conspiracy with Frederick, making ready to recognize the emperor’s puppet Pope.” He paused deliberately. “So.. is he?”
Eleanor’s smile was cynical. “Harry likes to keep his foes off balance. I rather doubt that he is seriously entertaining the idea of accepting Frederick’s lackey as Christ’s Vicar, but he finds that a useful weapon to wield in his infernal feuding with the Church’s newest saint.”
Raoul correctly interpreted that as a sardonic reference to Thomas Becket. “That raises an intriguing question,” he observed. “Is the Countess of Boulogne playing the role of a double spy here, passing on information that Harry wants the French court-and the papacy-to have?”
“That thought sounds devious enough to have been Harry’s. But if so, the countess is Harry’s pawn, not his accomplice. She loathes him, you see.”
“Why?” Almost at once, though, a memory stirred, allowing Raoul to answer his own question. “Of course… she is the usurper king’s daughter!”
“I suspect she has a fresher grievance than Stephen and Maude’s squabble over the English crown. Or have you forgotten that Harry plucked her out of a nunnery to wed a husband he’d handpicked for her?”
As little as Raoul liked to defend Henry Fitz Empress, he could not find fault with that particular maneuver. “Well, he could hardly stand by whilst Boulogne fell into unfriendly hands, could he? Great heiresses ought not to take the veil, for it is a waste of valuable resources.”
“Like having a prize broodmare and refusing to breed her?”
Raoul laughed loudly. “I see marriage has not dulled your claws any!”
“Nor my wits, Uncle.”
As much as Raoul enjoyed bantering with Eleanor, he had a compelling question to put to her. “I heard a rather remarkable rumor in Paris-that your husband has a grand scheme afoot to partition his domains amongst his
