from the harbor at Barfleur. How long shall I have the pleasure of your company ere you must seek out your lord father?”
Hal’s shoulders twitched in a half shrug. “In truth,” he said, “I am in no hurry to see my father.” Finding a smile, he said wryly, “The Church holds that fighting during Christmastide is a sin, a violation of the Truce of God.”
“Are you so sure that you and your father will quarrel once you are together?” Louis asked, and Hal raised his head, his eyes searching his father-in-law’s face. He seemed to be making up his mind how much to confide, and Marguerite leaned over, whispered something in his ear too softly for Louis to hear.
“Am I sure that we will quarrel?” Hal said at last. “No…it need not be. I have only to defer to my father in all matters, stifle my complaints, accept his judgment without question or qualm, and we will be in perfect accord.”
Louis was faintly surprised that the wound had already begun to fester. The lad was like his father in one way if no other-their mutual lack of patience. “If you were to defer to Henry in all matters,” he said mildly, “you would be a puppet prince, not an anointed king.”
Hal stood up suddenly, began to pace. “If you see that so clearly, why cannot my father?”
“Well, we shall have to make him see.” Turning then to his daughter, Louis suggested that she make sure that her little brother Philippe did not get into any mischief whilst he and her husband continued their discussion.
Marguerite had been taught that obedience was a woman’s duty, and she did not object to being dismissed so summarily. As she exited the garden, she glanced back and smiled at the sight meeting her eyes-Hal and her father talking quietly together, their heads almost touching, their faces intent. He has found an ally in Papa, she thought, and with a light step, she went to find Philippe.
Normandy was a land honeycombed with castles, but none were as formidable as the cliff-top stronghold overlooking the River Ante. Beneath the walls of Falaise, the village straggled down the steep slope, its narrow street deserted in the chill November twilight. From a window in the upper chamber of the castle’s great keep, Meliora looked in vain for signs of life. The villagers were huddled by their hearths, secure in the shadow of the royal fortress as night descended over the Norman countryside.
Meliora pulled the shutters into place with a shiver, went to stand by the chamber’s sole source of heat, a brazier heaped with charcoal. She knew her mistress did not like Falaise and she understood why. The castle had dominated the valley for one hundred years, and had been designed for defense. The towering rectangular keep was impregnable, but not particularly comfortable. Rosamund Clifford’s chamber was neither spacious nor well lighted, although the wall hangings were made of costly Lincoln wool and the canopied bed was piled high with plush coverlets. Since Henry was so rarely there to keep her warm at night, he at least saw to it that she did not lack for fur-lined blankets.
Rosamund was seated before a wooden frame, working upon an altar cloth of finely woven Spanish linen. She was an accomplished needlewoman and passed much of her free time embroidering church vestments. She had recently finished a beautiful cross-stitched chasuble for the priest at Godstow priory, and Meliora supposed that the altar cloth was meant for Godstow, too, as Rosamund was very generous to the nunnery where she’d been educated. She looked up with a quick smile as Meliora drew near and the older woman smiled back, wishing that Rosamund did not look so pale, so fragile.
When the king had engaged her for Rosamund, she had accepted eagerly, for she was a widow twice over with grown children and she preferred life on a larger stage than her home village back in Cornwall. She’d assumed that the king wanted her to act as a shepherd, keeping his little lamb safe from wolves. She’d not expected, though, that his lamb would become so dear to her.
Nor had she expected that her employment would last so long. Far more pragmatic than the convent-reared Rosamund, she’d assumed that the king’s passion for the girl would soon flame out. But seven years later the fire still burned, although she wondered cynically if their frequent separations played a role in that. She often thought Rosamund must be the most neglected concubine of all time, for her royal lover practically lived in the saddle, patrolling the length and breadth of his empire with a speed that seemed to defy the laws of nature. When the French king had remarked sourly that he could almost believe Henry had learned how to fly, he was speaking for legions of frustrated adversaries and thwarted rebels. But to Meliora, Henry’s remarkable mobility meant only that most of Rosamund’s nights were lonely ones.
“I do not suppose,” she said, “that the king told you how long our stay at Falaise will last?”
Rosamund shook her head. “I doubt that he knows himself. He expects to be in Normandy for the rest of the year, and so it makes sense for me to be here. Falaise is conveniently located, accessible from most areas of the duchy.”
Meliora agreed that Falaise was well situated, but she suspected that Henry’s choice had also been influenced by the fact that it was not a castle favored by his queen; he would not want to risk another awkward Woodstock encounter. Given Falaise’s history, Meliora found it rather ironic that he should have tucked his mistress away here of all places, where one of Christendom’s most notorious liaisons had begun. From these castle battlements, a Duke of Normandy had noticed a young girl washing laundry in the village stream below. Bedazzled by her beauty, he took her as his bedmate, and the following year she gave birth to a son. Marriage was out of the question for Arlette was only a tanner’s daughter, but the duke recognized their son as his, and when he later took the cross, he named William as his heir. Against all odds, the boy known as William the Bastard would lay claim to the duchy and end his days as King of England. As for Arlette, she’d married well after her lover’s death, and this tanner’s daughter would be remembered as the mother of a king, a bishop, and a count.
During these past weeks at Falaise, Meliora found herself thinking often of Arlette, her duke, and their bastard-born son who would become the great-grandfather of England’s current king. She wanted to believe that Rosamund would be as lucky as Arlette, but she did not think it likely. Arlette had been strong enough to defy the world, prideful enough to ride through the main gate of the castle when the duke summoned her; no back alleys for her. Whereas Rosamund reminded Meliora of a flower set down in alien soil; she was too tender, too delicate to thrive at the royal court. The two women were unlike in another way, too; Arlette had been fertile, while Rosamund was barren.
Meliora supposed that it was not entirely accurate to apply that cruel term to Rosamund, for twice she’d gotten with child, only to miscarry in the early weeks of the pregnancy. What saddened Meliora the most was Rosamund’s lack of hope. As much as she yearned for children, even children born out of wedlock, she had no expectations of motherhood. She loved Henry enough to live in sin with him, but she never forgot that they were sinning, and she saw her failure to conceive as God’s punishment for those sins.
Rosamund’s head was bent over the altar cloth, and Meliora reached out, brushed aside the long, blond braid dangling across the embroidery frame. She was not usually given to whimsical notions, but it seemed to her that she could sense Arlette’s bold spirit in the chamber with them, a ghostly presence watching over Rosamund with that most condescending of emotions-pity.
Rosamund’s breathing had quickened, coming in audible gasps, and she was clutching at the sheets like one grasping for a lifeline. When Henry gently shook her shoulder, she jerked upright, eyes wide and unfocused, and he said soothingly, “It was but a bad dream, love, no more than that.”
She rolled over into his arms, clinging with such urgency that he gazed down at her in surprise. “You truly are disquieted. What did you dream to give you such a fright?”
“I do not remember,” she lied. In truth, she remembered all too well, for this was a recurrent nightmare, one that troubled her sleep several times a year. It was always the same: she was lost in the woods, alone and afraid as darkness came on. “It matters for naught,” she assured him, “just a silly dream. I am so sorry, beloved, for awakening you!”
“I was not asleep,” he admitted, and she strained to make out his features in the shadows. A faint glimmer of lamplight filtered through the slit in the bed hangings, not enough to illuminate his face. He’d arrived long after nightfall, as usual without warning, and wasted no time in carrying her off to bed, so the only conversation they’d had so far was carnal in nature.
“What chases away your sleep?” she asked, so solicitously that he brushed her mouth with a quick kiss.
“My eldest son.” Sitting up, he shoved a pillow behind his shoulders. “Hal came back from the French court
