She ignored his sarcasm, choosing her words with care. “You keep saying Hal is too young, too callow to rule in his own right. I do not deny that he may well make mistakes. But how else will he learn, Harry?”
“Do not make it sound as if I am fretting over the usual mishaps of youth-tavern brawls, getting a village girl with child, playing the fool with his friends. The stakes are far higher for Hal, and you well know it.”
“It is rather late to complain about that, is it not? The truth is that this is a coil of your own making. Hal is a king because you would have it so. You cannot change what is done, can only learn to live with it.”
“I could do that…if he were not taking his lessons at the French king’s knee!”
“You’ve forfeited the right to bemoan that, too. If you did not want Louis to have a say in Hal’s life, you ought not to have married him off to Louis’s daughter. Instead of deploring Louis’s malign influence, you need to do what he does-listen to the lad.”
“I do listen to him, Eleanor. The trouble is that I like not what I hear. I love him as my life, but I cannot trust him to rule on his own-not yet.”
“And when will that day come? When he reaches twenty and one? Thirty? Every apprenticeship has a set term. How many years do you mean to keep him a king in training?”
“I cannot answer that,” he said, so abruptly that she saw his temper was catching fire. “How can I? I know not what the morrow holds.”
I do, she thought, no less angry now than he was. If he were blessed to reach Scripture’s three score years and ten, Hal would still be on that “short leash.” Even on Harry’s deathbed, he’d be figuring out a way to rule from the grave. He had ever to keep his hand on the reins, which meant that Hal would be doomed to ride pillion behind him. And how much freedom would he permit Richard? She knew well the answer to that, too. She had never been allowed to be more than his surrogate in her own domains. It would be no different for Richard. Just as Hal was a shadow king, Richard would be a shadow duke, answerable to Harry, always to Harry.
Henry’s anger was cooling as fast as it had sparked. He supposed it was only natural that she’d come to Hal’s defense; all knew how protective a lioness was of her cubs. He did wish she could be more understanding of his plight, more like…well, like Rosamund. But if a man wanted comforting or cosseting, he’d need to look elsewhere. Those soft curves of hers hid some very sharp edges. He did not want to tarnish the afterglow of their lovemaking, though; this had been one of the best afternoons they’d had in a long while.
“Let’s not quarrel, love. We both want the same for Hal, differ only in how to achieve it. I daresay the lad and I will be working well in tandem long ere Louis goes to God.”
He’d touched unwittingly upon Eleanor’s greatest fear-that her sons would not be well settled in their own lands by the time they would face a more formidable foe than Louis. By all accounts, his Philippe was a sickly little lad and might not reach manhood. The boy’s death would pass the French crown to one of his sisters, the main reason that Henry had angled to wed Hal to Marguerite. But Marguerite had two older sisters, Eleanor’s daughters by her marriage to Louis, and they were both wed to highly competent, ambitious men, the Counts of Champagne and Blois. Eleanor had discussed this with Henry on several occasions, but there’d been no meeting of their minds. Henry thought the best way to counter the French threat was to keep power consolidated in his hands, a strategy that would work, she thought tartly, only if he did not intend ever to die. She said nothing, though, for why waste her breath?
Fully dressed now, he crossed the chamber and gave her a lingering kiss. “I shall see you, love, at supper, I trust?” He’d taken a few steps before turning back toward the bed. “I almost forgot to tell you. I’ve settled upon a successor for the Archbishop of Bordeaux: William, the abbot of Reading. I thought we could have him consecrated during our stay at Limoges.”
She drew a sharp breath. “I thought I told you,” she said, “that I favored the abbot of Tournay for that position.”
“Did you? It must have slipped my mind. But I daresay you’ll be well pleased with William, for he is a good man, pious and well educated.”
And English. She almost spat the words out, somehow held them back. This was not the first time he’d preempted her choice of prelates; the recently deceased Archbishop of Bordeaux and the Bishop of Poitiers were both his men. But her tolerance was no longer what it once had been, and slights like this stung more than they had in the past. Seething in silence, she was even more affronted that he seemed unaware of her outrage. Grasping for any weapon at hand, she asked him with poisoned politeness if he’d made any plans for the morrow.
Henry paused at the door, glancing over his shoulder. “No…why?”
“I thought you’d want to have a Requiem Mass said for his soul. Surely you have not forgotten, Harry? Tomorrow will be the second anniversary of Thomas Becket’s murder.”
He was very still for a moment, staring at her as if she were a stranger. “No,” he said tersely, “I have not forgotten.”
She knew she’d wounded him when he’d least expected it, and her satisfaction lasted until the door had closed behind him. Once he was gone, it ebbed away along with her anger, leaving her with naught but the ashes and embers of a dying hearth fire.
CHAPTER FIVE
February 1173
Near Limoges, Aquitaine
Eleanor’s eyes intently searched the sky. It was the blanched, faded blue of midwinter, leached of color and utterly empty barren of clouds and her missing peregrine. Her vexation was all the sharperbecause the hunt had begun with such promise. When a heron had been flushed from the rushes along the river, she’d detached the leash and the falcon launched itself from its perch on her leather glove, soaring up into the sun as it sought to gain height over its prey. And then it was diving down upon the heron, faster than any arrow, a dark angel bearing death in its talons. But the heron veered abruptly and the falcon missed. As it hurtled past, the heron turned upon its attacker, and suddenly the falcon was the one in flight, fleeing before the larger bird’s thrusting beak. The triumphant heron checked its pursuit and flew toward the safety of its river refuge, while Eleanor’s thwarted peregrine disappeared over the horizon.
Her falconer had repeatedly issued the recall and swung the lure up into the air, to no avail. A quarter hour had passed by now, with no sign of the errant falcon, but Eleanor continued to probe the sky, as if she could compel its return by sheer force of will, all the while muttering some of the most colorful, creative obscenities that the Countess of Chester had ever heard.
Moving her mare in closer, Maud looked at the queen with mock horror. “What language, my lady! Luckily my brother the bishop is not within earshot. Does your lord husband know you have such a command of curses?” she teased, and Eleanor tore her gaze away from the sky long enough to give Maud a look that was more impatient than amused.
“Who do you think I learned them from?” Her falconer had come back into view, shaking his head in defeat, and she swore again, as angry with herself as with the lost bird. “She was not ready,” she admitted, “needed more training. But I only brought two from Chinon and the other falcon is ailing with a catarrh.”
“Then you had no choice,” Maud pointed out, “for your royal guest was keen to go hawking. And he seems well pleased, so the day has not been a total loss.”
Following Maud’s gaze, Eleanor saw that the King of Navarre was indeed in a jovial mood, bantering with their host, the Viscount of Limoges, and Maud’s brother. Roger had taken no active part in the hunt, one of the few bishops who obeyed the Church’s ban on hawking for those in holy orders, and Sancho was joking about his abstention with the heavy-handed humor permitted to kings. Feeling the women’s eyes upon him, Roger sent a smile winging their way, and then turned back to deflecting the royal gibes.
“He does look content,” Eleanor conceded, and that was no small achievement, for the Navarrese king had been growing restless and irritable as the days passed and Henry did not arrive.
“Madame!” Aimar, the Viscount of Limoges, was guiding his stallion in her direction. “I am so sorry about the loss of your falcon,” he said, unhappy that the day’s success would be marred by this setback. “I took pains that all would go well, had my chaplain begin the hunt with a prayer that the birds would not stray. But I can assure you that she will be found. Each time I’ve been unlucky enough to lose one of my falcons, it has always been retrieved
