to me,” she said, “that you and I have never talked about the rebellion or my part in it.” When he did not respond, she prodded gently. “Surely you’ve talked about it with your father.”
“Yes…he said it was all your fault,” he said, slanting her an oblique glance through surprisingly thick lashes, and she thought she caught a glimmer of humor.
“Most of Christendom agrees with him,” she conceded lightly. “But I thought you might have questions that only I could answer. Ask whatever you want, John, and I will try to be as honest as I can.”
John gnawed his lower lip, and she saw his eyes dart across the solar, where his father was talking with Hal and Marguerite. “I do have a question,” he said, just when she was about to give up hope of cracking that turtle’s shell. “Did you…did you really put a snake in Richard and Geoffrey’s bed?”
Eleanor blinked in surprise. “I was not expecting that query,” she confessed. “So they told you about that, did they? Alas, I must plead guilty. In my defense, I can say only that your brothers were born hellions. Lord, the trouble they could get into!” Smiling at John, she said, “I will make a deal with you, lad. If I tell you about some of their more hair-raising mischief-making, will you promise not to try any of these tricks yourself?”
John ducked his head, his face hidden by a tumble of unruly dark hair. But then he shot from his seat as if fired from a crossbow. “I am sorry, Madame. I think my lord father has need of me.” And before she could protest, he fled.
Eleanor watched as he threaded his way among their guests, finally surfacing at Henry’s side. Henry stopped in mid-sentence, slipped an affectionate arm around the boy’s shoulders before he resumed his conversation with Hal. Marguerite also gave John a welcoming smile. But Eleanor could not help noticing how brusquely Hal treated his younger brother, barely according John a nod, and she frowned. It was true that John’s castles in England and Normandy had come at Hal’s expense, but it was not fair to blame the lad for that. It was not John’s fault that his mere presence conjured up unpleasant memories for Hal.
Her frown deepened, for she was suddenly thinking of her own unpleasant memories, those connected with John’s birth. Warned by her sister, she’d made a foolhardy winter crossing of the Channel, stubbornly set upon determining if the gossip was true, if Harry had really dared to install Rosamund Clifford openly at their Woodstock manor. She’d been feeling ungainly and clumsy in the late stages of a difficult pregnancy, feeling every one of her forty-two years, only to come face-to-face with a radiant young girl, young enough to be her daughter. She’d told herself it was her pride that was bruised, not her heart, and during those pain-filled hours as she struggled to give birth, she’d vowed that she would not die so Harry’s child might live. John had finally been brought into the world as the midnight hour drew nigh, a small, feeble shadow of the robust, sun-kissed children who’d come before him.
“Eleanor?” She was so focused upon the awful night of John’s birth that she started at the sound of Maud’s voice, and the other woman said with a smile, “I did not mean to startle you so. You have such an odd look upon your face. Are you all right?”
“I was just thinking that you may have been right, Maud.”
“Must you sound so surprised by that? I am always right. About what?”
Shaking off the past, Eleanor returned Maud’s smile. “That I may have changed, after all.”
C HAPTER T WENTY-EIGHT
May 1179
Taillebourg, Aquitaine
Perched on a steep crag overlooking the River Charente, the castle of Taillebourg seemed to be scraping the clouds, so high above the valley was it. Protected on three sides by sheer cliffs, its one accessible approach was so well defended that none had ever dared to lay siege to it, for its fortifications boasted no less than three deep ditches and triple walls. Within those bastions nestled a small town, now filled with the inhabitants of the nearby villages, who’d taken shelter there as word spread of an advancing army. Despite the crowding, their mood was calm, for the town and castle were well provisioned with enough supplies to endure a long siege.
The castle garrison was even more confident than the townspeople and villagers, for more than a thousand men patrolled those battlements and ramparts, answerable to one of the greatest barons of Aquitaine, Geoffrey de Rancon, and none doubted that their lord was more than a match for the Angevin king’s cub. Richard had laid siege to de Rancon’s stronghold at Pons early in the new year, and made so little progress that after three months, he’d given up and gone looking for easier prey. He’d had better luck than he had at Pons, taking five castles in less than a month. But Pons still held out defiantly and Taillebourg was even more formidable, so safe that de Rancon himself had chosen to defy Richard from within its redoubtable defenses. Upon being told by his scouts of Richard’s approach, Geoffrey de Rancon had laughed and his knights began to wager how long it would be until the foolhardy stripling crept away with his tail between his legs.
Richard had ridden ahead of his army with a handful of his household knights, and as they gazed upon the rebel lord’s rock-hewn citadel, their spirits plummeted and their cockiness ebbed away. As they exchanged glances, the same thought was in all their minds: that Taillebourg made Pons seem as exposed as a nunnery. Only Richard and his young squire Rico were not disheartened, for Rico was convinced that Richard could walk on water if he put his mind to it, and Richard would not admit that failure was possible, not even to himself. He knew he’d been damaged by his inability to take Pons, and he knew, too, that he needed a dramatic victory if he hoped to prevail over de Rancon and the Count of Angouleme and their allies. There was no way on God’s green earth that he would slink back to England and confess defeat to his father. No, if he could not take Taillebourg, then better he die in the attempt. At least there was honor in that.
Noticing that his squire had drawn up beside him, he glanced at the youth with a sidelong smile. “Well, what do you say, Rico? Shall we give it a go?”
Rico’s eyes were shining. “Indeed, my lord!” The past year had been the best one of Rico’s young life. He knew his half sisters and their husbands were embittered by the king’s refusal to let them lay claim to Rainald’s earldom, but Rico had always known it would never pass to him, the son born out of wedlock, and so he’d been indifferent to its disposition. He’d jumped at the chance to learn the arts of war from Richard, and reality had exceeded all of his expectations. He was utterly convinced that his twenty-one-year-old cousin was the most valiant man ever to draw breath and would soon bring these disloyal, contemptible rebels to heel.
While the knights shared Rico’s appreciation of Richard’s courage, they did not have his starry-eyed faith, and could muster up no enthusiasm for an assault upon Taillebourg. They would not be getting a vote, though, and so they girded themselves for the worst as Richard turned back toward them.
Glancing at Theodore Chabot, the captain of his routiers, Richard wasted no time declaring what he wanted done. “Send men out to forage,” he instructed Chabot. “Check every barn and chicken roost and be sure to search the woods, for that’s where the peasants will have hidden their livestock.”
“It will be done, my lord,” Chabot said matter-of-factly; the knights thought he’d have sounded as imperturbable if Richard had ordered him to make a lone assault upon the castle walls. Guillaume de Forz and Andre de Chauvigny were young Poitevin lords who’d been with Richard since his ill-fated rebellion, and it never occurred to either of them to question his decision, for it had long been a joke between them that it would be easier to teach Richard to fly than it would to get him to back down once he’d made up his mind. They’d expected his order to forage, for armies lived off the land. It was what came next that troubled them. How could Taillebourg be taken?
“After we gather whatever food we can find,” Andre said, with a brave attempt to sound as nonchalant as if they were discussing a day’s hawking, “what then?”
Richard knew they were uneasy, but he did not fault them for it. Although he did not understand the fear that surged through other men’s veins, he asked only that they not give in to it, for he’d come to realize that few shared his utter contempt for danger or death. “Then,” he said, “we show them what Hell is like.”
Chevauchee was the term used for the most common tactic of warfare-the ravaging of an enemy’s lands. But the people of Taillebourg had never seen a raid as deadly or destructive as the one launched by Richard that May. Church bells sounded the alarm as his routiers spread out across the countryside. Those who’d not already taken
