Madame, that you might have the latest news from Aquitaine. It has been almost a fortnight since we got word of the rebellion, and much could have happened since-”
“Rebellion? What are you talking about, Ranulf?”
“You do not know?” he asked incredulously. This was a complication that he’d not foreseen. “The Lady Emma heard that war had broken out in the Limousin, and she was kind enough to pass word along to me, knowing that my son Morgan is serving as your son’s squire.”
Eleanor had rarely been so bewildered. What did Geoffrey have to do with the Limousin? Unless he’d come to Richard’s aid? But that did not make sense, either, for why would that have sent Ranulf racing from Wales in such haste? “Did Viscount Aimar rebel again?” This was Harry’s fault, damn him. Aimar had been a faithful vassal until he’d been denied Rainald’s earldom.
“It is far worse than that, Madame. Your sons are at war with one another. Hal and Geoffrey have joined forces with the rebel barons against Richard. They aim for nothing less than to make Hal the Duke of Aquitaine, and my son is caught up in the midst of this madness!”
Eleanor stared at him blankly, as if she’d not been able to process what he’d just told her. It was the first time that Ranulf had ever seen her utterly at a loss. She swallowed with an effort, and her voice did not sound like Eleanor’s at all, barely audible, with a noticeable quaver. “What…what of Harry? What is he doing about this?”
Ranulf shook his head. “I do not know. Emma’s message made no mention of him.”
She turned away, blindly, and he instinctively put out a hand in case she needed his support. Amaria had also hastened to her side, her eyes wide with horror. But then Eleanor said, “Get my mantle,” in a very different tone, biting the command off so sharply that Amaria flinched away from the words as if they were weapons. Eleanor did not notice. She seemed to have forgotten Ranulf, too. Wrapping herself in her mantle, she moved swiftly toward the door, jerked it open, and plunged into the stairwell. Ranulf and his son exchanged glances, and then hurried after her.
Ralph Fitz Stephen looked utterly miserable. “My lady, it was not my doing. I would never have kept this from you if I’d not been ordered to do so by the king.”
The pupils of Eleanor’s eyes had contracted to slits. “Did he, indeed?” she said softly. But the reckoning with Harry could wait. “Tell me what you know of this war between my sons.”
He did, but he did not have much more information than Ranulf. The last he’d heard, Geoffrey had joined the rebels at Limoges, Hal had gone after him, and bloody fighting had broken out all across the duchy. He’d heard that the king was on his way, too, to Limoges, and there were rumors that the French king was coming to Hal’s support. He was confident, though, that the king would quell the rebellion and reconcile her sons.
Eleanor dismissed his reassurances with an impatient shake of her head, and the rest of his words trickled away into the silence enveloping the hall. No one else ventured to speak, all eyes riveted upon the queen. “From now on,” she said, “you will let me know as soon as you hear anything from Aquitaine, Sir Ralph-anything at all. Is that understood?”
He assured her that he understood, but over the years he’d grown protective of her, impressed by her courage. “Madame, if I may be so bold as to tell you what the lord king told me. He said that he meant to do all in his power to make peace between his sons, and that he hoped you would never need to know.”
Eleanor was not mollified, saying icily, “He did not have the right to keep this from me.” This was Eleanor at her most imperious, and none dared to argue with her. But it was, oddly enough, at this moment that Ranulf finally forgave her, for his father’s fear had sharpened his perception and he saw beyond the queen’s camouflage to the anguish underneath.
Andre de Chauvigny had been edgy and unsettled ever since they left Angers, for Henry had taken only his household knights, and Andre considered that an inadequate escort to ride into the lawless chaos that had descended upon Richard’s duchy. Henry had brushed aside his misgivings so curtly that he decided his king and his duke were more alike than either one wanted to admit. He was vexed, too, that so many of Henry’s men had elected not to wear their mail on the road. This was a common practice when speed was of the essence, and he was the only one clad in both hauberk and helmet.
They traveled fast, pushing their mounts and making no allowances for the winter weather, but Andre was accustomed to that from years of riding with Richard. Despite his qualms, they encountered no troubles on the road, and at dusk on the fourth day, they were within sight of Limoges. Andre was not happy about their destination, either, but he’d failed to convince Henry that it made more sense to rendezvous with Richard at Aixe before attempting to contact the young king and the rebels. He could only wonder which contributed more to the royal family’s stubbornness-their Angevin blood or their high birth.
The gates of the ville were closed tight, a sign that the city was on a war footing, and Henry was displeased to see how much progress had been made in restoring the walls torn down at Richard’s command two years ago. Aimar was becoming more than a nuisance, a burr under the saddle. His habitual rebellions were causing too much havoc in the Limousin. If there were any more intractable, troublesome vassals than Eleanor’s barons, he hoped to God he never encountered them. They made the Welsh seem downright tame and docile.
As they approached, bells began to peal loudly. When one of Henry’s men demanded entrance in the name of the king, there was no indication that he’d been heard, although they could see men’s heads bobbing up in the embrasures. The church bells were still ringing, and they could hear men shouting, dogs barking. They drew closer, but before they could shout out again for admittance, they were met with a hail of arrows.
In the confusion, two men were thrown from their horses. Henry saw one of his knights take an arrow in the shoulder, and then he was rocked back in the saddle, slamming into the cantle. He felt no pain, just the impact, but Geoff was pointing and shouting, and he glanced down, saw the arrow shaft protruding from his mantle. They were all in retreat by now, and as soon as they’d gotten out of arrow range, the men clustered around Henry, the wounded knight temporarily forgotten.
“You’ve been hit,” Geoff gasped, the soldier totally submerged for the moment in the son. Henry had already pulled his mantle back, and they all stared at the arrow caught in the metal links of his hauberk.
“I am not hurt,” Henry insisted. “The point did not penetrate the mail. I may have a bad bruise, but the royal hide is not even scratched.”
His attempt to make light of the hit did not convince the other men, for they knew that mail had no magical properties that would always deflect arrows; injuries depended upon such variables as the size of the arrowhead and the angle of the shot and simple luck. Moreover, some of them remembered that Henry had wavered about wearing a hauberk on the journey, prudence finally prevailing over comfort. Henry remembered that, too, but he took it as a sign of Divine Favor. This was not his closest call; when he’d been ambushed in the deep forests of Wales, an arrow had almost grazed his cheek. Still, though, it was a shocking assault upon the person of the king, upon God’s Anointed, assuming it had been deliberate.
When Willem and Andre de Chauvigny insisted they must ride for Aixe, Henry did not protest. After tending to the injured knight as best they could, they detoured widely around Limoges and headed south to ford the River Vienne. And as he rode, Henry refused to let himself dwell upon that near-miss, for then he’d have had to confront questions he was not ready to face, questions about the complicity of his sons in those arrows raining down upon his men. Had it been an accident? Or an assassination attempt?
Geoff had been taken aback by Richard’s outraged reaction to their father’s narrow escape. He found it difficult to dismiss his suspicions, though, and later could not resist commending his brother sarcastically upon his sudden filial devotion.
Richard liked Geoff no more than Geoff liked him, and he gave the older man a suspicious look of his own. “What did you expect-that I’d not be angry if some damned fool nearly kills the king? If his aim had been a little better, we might have found ourselves facing calamity. The surest sign of the coming Apocalypse will be the day Hal gets to call himself a king in fact and not in name only.” Catching the vexed expression on Geoff’s face, he frowned. “What?”
“Our father was almost slain this afternoon, and you’re just thankful that Hal will not be king? I swear the lot of you make Absalom look like a dutiful, loving son!”
“Why…because I spoke the truth? Sorry to disappoint you, but I am not a good liar. I could not hope to compete with Hal in that arena.”
