June had been a cool, rainy month, but with the approach of July, the Breton summer finally put in an appearance. Constance had spent the morning dealing with tedious correspondence, and felt she deserved a respite for her diligence, so after dismissing her scribe, she headed for the nursery. Hearing the murmur of voices, she paused in the doorway, smiling at the sight meeting her eyes: her husband and Morna, the wet-nurse, hanging over the cradle, agreeing that they’d never seen a more beautiful baby.
“You just say that because she looks like you, Geoffrey,” she said, and he glanced up with a grin.
“I do not deny I’m a handsome devil,” he said, “but I think she looks more like you. She has your eyes.”
Morna giggled at that, for she’d already explained to Geoffrey that it was too early to tell the baby’s eye color. The infant had begun to whimper, and she reached for the child, but Geoffrey forestalled her.
“No, let me,” he insisted and showed some skill in gathering his daughter up into his arms.
As Morna discreetly withdrew to give them some private time with their infant, Constance joined Geoffrey by the cradle. She loved her child with a fierce intensity that she’d not expected, but she’d still been greatly disappointed that their firstborn was not a son, and she had been both relieved and surprised that Geoffrey seemed so content with a daughter. It was true that females could inherit the duchy, as she herself had done. She’d observed, though, that most men were set upon sons. Watching as he rocked their baby, she could not help asking, yet again, “You truly were not letdown that I birthed a girl?”
“Look at her eyelashes,” he marveled, “just like golden fans. I am beginning to think I’ll have to swear a blood oath to satisfy you. How could any man be disappointed in this perfect little pearl? I’ll not deny that I might become concerned if you give me four or five girls in a row, but I am not going to fret until then. We have time on our side, after all, and if it means I must pay more visits to your bed, well, I am willing to make the sacrifice.”
“How noble,” she said dryly, but once again he’d said what she needed to hear. He was right, for at twenty- three and twenty-five, they had all the time in the world. “I’m not sure I’d want to visit the birthing chamber as often as your mother, though,” she confided. “Two with Louis and then eight with your father-the woman is truly a force of nature!”
“She definitely had a surfeit of sons,” he agreed. The baby had begun to fuss, so he handed her over to Constance; he liked to watch as his pragmatic, commonsense wife melted as soon as she held that tiny bundle in her arms. Sitting down, Constance cradled their daughter, calling her “Aenor,” the Breton form of Eleanor.
“I have to confess,” Geoffrey said, “that I was surprised when you were so willing to name her after my mother. I’d thought for certes that I’d have to coax you into it.”
Constance thought it was more than a fair trade-off, a reward he’d earned after responding so graciously to the birth of a daughter. “Well, I’ll admit that I have never had any great interest in pleasing your mother,” she allowed, “but I’ve always had a very healthy interest in vexing your father and calling our daughter Eleanor was virtually assured to do that.”
As their eyes met over Aenor’s head, they both laughed. Just then a knock sounded on the door and a servant entered to announce the arrival of Geoffrey’s brother.
Geoffrey was taken aback. “Does he have an army with him?” When the puzzled servant said no, he glanced over at Constance with a shrug. “Then it cannot be Richard.” He did not think that John or Geoff were likely to come all the way to Brittany for a family visit, either, and he wondered if his father had a bastard they didn’t know about. The servant had departed before he could ask the identity of this mystery visitor, and he and Constance were unable to satisfy their curiosity until John was eventually ushered into the nursery.
Geoffrey stepped forward to bid him welcome, unable to resist joking, “In the neighborhood, were you?”
John smiled as if there was nothing out of the ordinary about his visit, and greeted his sister-in-law with his newfound gallantry, complimenting both her and Aenor lavishly even though he thought all babies looked the same. Some of his urbanity slipped, however, when Geoffrey mischievously asked if he’d like to hold his niece. Reacting like the typical adolescent, he hastily shook his head. “No, I might drop her.”
Almost as if she were reacting to his rejection, Aenor startled John by beginning to wail, making a surprising amount of noise for such a small creature. Morna hastened back into the chamber, took the baby from Constance, and retreated across the nursery to satisfy her hungry little charge. Much to Geoffrey’s amusement, John seemed unable to take his eyes off Morna’s exposed white bosom. Remembering what it was like to be seventeen and utterly obsessed with the female body, he took pity on his bedazzled young brother and suggested that Morna continue feeding Aenor in the antechamber. Feeling very benevolent at the moment, he even refrained from teasing John about his obvious distraction, instead asked for the latest family news.
As it happened, John had quite a bit of news to relate. Their mother was in England again, sent back by their father after his Easter Court. Henry had spent the spring seeking to bring about a truce between the French king Philippe and the Count of Flanders, and once he succeeded, he sailed for England in mid-June. Tilda and her children soon followed. Upon their arrival, he’d made his customary visit to the shrine of St Thomas at Canterbury, while Tilda continued on to Winchester as she wanted Eleanor with her in the birthing chamber.
“Maman was very pleased that you named your daughter after her,” he reported, “but Papa not so much.”
“Really?” Geoffrey said blandly, managing to sound surprised. His curiosity was getting the better of him by now, though, and he decided to nudge the conversation in the right direction. “Why did you not accompany Papa to England, Johnny?”
“I told him that I wanted to visit my estates in Mortain.” John leaned forward, keeping his eyes intently upon his brother’s face. “If you have some free time this summer, Geoffrey, I thought we might pay a visit to Richard in Poitou.”
Constance frowned, but Geoffrey had been expecting an answer like this. “Did you, lad? Who do you have in mind to accompany us? Some of my knights and routiers hired with Breton gold?”
“You have the money; I do not,” John said matter-of-factly. But then his eagerness surged to the surface. “He told us to do it, Geoffrey, said Aquitaine was mine if I could take it. So why not? I’ll make it worth your while; will give you all the Poitevin castles that Hal promised you. And it is in your interests to overthrow Richard, for I’d make a far better neighbor, would not be constantly testing the borders between Brittany and Poitou. Nor would we lack for allies. Richard’s barons loathe him, so why would they not rally to me as they did to Hal?”
“Hal was a king,” Constance pointed out, “so they could claim they were not truly in rebellion.”
“From what I’ve heard of lords like Viscount Aimar and the de Lusignans,” John countered, “I doubt that any of them lose sleep at night about legal niceties like that,” and Geoffrey began to laugh.
“Bless you, Johnny, you’re proof that blood breeds true,” he declared, and Constance felt a prickle of foreboding.
“Then we have a deal?”
“Not so fast, lad. I’ll give it some thought, but I’m not ready to commit myself to another war just yet. Why not go back to the great hall and see if my steward has gotten your chamber ready for you?” Getting to his feet, Geoffrey deftly steered his brother toward the door, and once he was alone with his wife, he said playfully, “What is the name of the maidservant with the red hair and freckles? I doubt that Johnny will want to sleep alone tonight and that lusty little wench would like nothing better than to warm a prince’s bed.”
Constance had no interest in her brother-in-law’s sleeping arrangements. “You are going to do it,” she said slowly. “Good God, Geoffrey, why? Do you hate Richard so much?”
“There is no love lost between us,” he conceded, “but can you truly see me fighting a war merely to settle a grudge?”
“No, I cannot. So why do it?”
“Darling, what else can I do? When opportunity falls into a man’s lap like a ripe peach, he’d be a fool not to taste it. It is not as if I am corrupting an innocent, after all. Johnny came to me.”
“That begs the question. What do you gain by joining with him against Richard?”
He could tell from her tone that she was fast losing patience and, no longer teasing, he crossed to her side, gently propelling her to her feet. “I think we’d have a good chance of winning. Richard’s barons are not vanquished, are merely biding their time. I think Johnny is right and they would join with us against Richard. And who would you rather have as a neighbor, my little brother or Thor, the pagan god of war? By Richard’s calculations, we owe him a blood debt and it is just a matter of time until he seeks to collect it. So it makes sense to strike first, does it not?”
“And what of your father? What do you expect him to do whilst you invade Aquitaine? Do you truly think he’d forgive two rebellions in less than a twelvemonth?”
