to the hall and find Uncle Hamelin. I am going to make him very happy by telling him that he single-handedly brought about our reconciliation!”
At the door, he halted. “There is one more thing, Papa. I need to request a favor.”
Henry said nothing, all his suspicions flaring up again. Hal did not seem to read anything ominous in his silence, though, for his smile did not waver. “It was not just my anger that has kept me so quiet since we left Limoges. I’ve been coping with a wretched toothache. It comes and goes, but is worse when I eat or drink.”
Henry’s response was skeptical, not sympathetic. “And I suppose you want to go into the village in search of a barber who’ll pull it.”
Again, Hal surprised him. “Good God, no! I’d not let a barber get within a mile of me with a pair of pincers.” He gave a shudder of mock horror. “I would like you to send for an apothecary. Surely there must be herbs that I can take to ease the pain?”
So Hal had not been conniving to leave the castle. Henry had rarely been so happy to be proven wrong. “Yes…cloves might help. I will tell the steward to fetch the village apothecary straightaway.”
Hal looked pleased. “Thank you. For this fine cloak, too.” He ran his fingers admiringly over the softly woven material. “I suppose you’ll want it back…eventually.” This time his smile was full of mischief, and it called up memories Henry had been seeking to suppress, memories of the boy who’d been so quick to laugh, to tease, so proud to be a crowned king, not yet corrupted by the siren songs of the French court.
Henry stood motionless for a time after Hal’s departure, deliberately calling up echoes of the Count of Toulouse’s warning. They have played skillfully upon his lack of experience and his poor judgment. He’d spoken a harsh truth when he’d told Hal that nothing had changed. But he could not deny that the faintest of sparks had been kindled, a feeble glimmer of hope in the dark that had descended upon his world at Limoges.
Dinner, normally scheduled at noon, had been shifted to a later hour as part of the Lenten abstinence and was not served until after Vespers had rung. It turned out to be a pleasant surprise for Henry’s household knights and the castle garrison, who’d been anticipating gloom and bleak silence. Instead, the meal that evening was informal, enjoyable, and raucous in the absence of women. Hal was in high spirits, and had the men laughing uproariously over his extravagant account of what he called the Saga of the Royal Tooth. He claimed that Chinon’s barber, hearing of his malady, had stalked him relentlessly all afternoon, urging him to have the tooth extracted.
“He vowed that he need not use the pincers if I was skittish about them, that there were other ways. Only these ‘other ways’ made the pincers sound better and better. One method was to coat the ailing tooth with the ashes of earthworms. Another was to mix up a powder of ants and their eggs and blow it through a quill onto the tooth. Or smear on a concoction of newts and fen beetles. When I questioned where he’d find newts or ant eggs, he assured me that all the necessary ingredients were at hand. By then I realized that he and Master Gervase, the apothecary, were partners in crime, and I began to fear the worst!”
Chinon’s castellan, blinking back tears of mirth, offered to send to the nearest city, Tours or Angers, to find a surgeon who made his living by pulling teeth. Hal hastily made the sign of the cross, as if to ward off evil. “Jesu forfend, Sir Robert! My new friend, the barber, told me more than any man would want to know about their methods. He described a ‘popular procedure’ in which they cauterize the skin behind the victim’s ear, then heat henbane and leek seeds over hot coals and have him inhale the smoke through a funnel. Since I know henbane is a poison, I assume the next step in the process would be to hide my body afterward!”
Several knights chimed in with horror stories of their own, but Hal was not ready to yield center stage, and it occurred to his amused father that he’d have made a fine minstrel or player. Adroitly recapturing control of the conversation, Hal launched into the next chapter of his narrative: his meeting with Master Gervase, the apothecary.
“He said they think pain is caused by worms breeding in the tooth. That reassured me greatly, of course. He explained that the worms could be driven out by lighting a candle made of mutton fat and burning it as close to the ailing tooth as I could endure. Meanwhile, he’d hold a basin of cold water under my jaw and the worms would seek to escape the heat and fall into the water. I considered it, but then I started to wonder how we could be sure that the worms could not swim,” Hal said, with such tongue-in-cheek seriousness that the hall erupted into hilarity again.
When the laughter subsided, Hamelin provided more fuel for the fire by asking Hal what treatment he’d finally settled upon. Hal grimaced and shook his head ruefully. “By that point, Uncle, I’d begun to fear that the only choice open to me was to drown the worms-and my sorrows-in drink. But when he saw that his sale was in danger, Master Gervase offered a few recommendations more tolerable than ant eggs or powdered newts. At first he suggested that I rub the oil of the box tree on the afflicted tooth, and I was tempted. But then he let slip that this remedy also cured piles, which I found right curious. Did I really want to put a potion meant for the arse into my mouth?”
With an actor’s innate sense of timing, Hal paused for the audience to react and was not disappointed. “Seeing that I was not keen on the box tree oil, Master Gervase advised me to rub the tooth and gum with betony or cloves-which was what my lord father had suggested hours ago!” Slanting a facetious glance toward Henry, he said, “So if you ever tire of governing, my liege, you can always earn a living as an apothecary.”
This time his sally was met with cautious silence, his audience waiting to see how Henry would react, for under the circumstances, that could have been a harmless jest or a barbed gibe. It was only after Henry smiled that the other men felt free to laugh, and he realized that some of their merriment was due to sheer relief that father and son seemed to have made peace.
Hal continued to amuse with his comic commentary, expressing his doubts about the draught that the apothecary had eventually prescribed to ease his pain and help him sleep, a blend of henbane, black poppy, and bryony root, for they were all poisons. He wondered, too, why the martyred maiden Apollonia was the patron saint for toothaches when she’d had all of her own teeth cruelly extracted by her pagan tormentors. Wasn’t that, he mused, rather like picking a virgin as the patron saint for whores or a miser as the patron saint for spendthrifts?
Henry enjoyed watching Hal’s performance; it had been a long time since he’d seen his son so lighthearted, so carefree. This meal was in such stark contrast to the tense, unpalatable dinners they’d endured since leaving Limoges that he found himself savoring the bland Lenten fare, even eating a few mouthfuls of salted herring, a despised dish that rarely appeared on a royal table. Chinon’s cooks had offered up a particularly mediocre menu, confident that Henry was not likely to notice. The final course was a soupy pudding made with almond milk and dried figs. But before the men could push away from the tables, Hal rose and banged on his wine cup with a knife to attract attention.
“I want to end dinner with a salute to my lord father,” he announced, and on cue, a servant entered with a flagon and two silver wine cups. Reaching for one, Hal handed the other to Henry. Puzzled, he followed his son’s lead and leaned over so Hal could ceremoniously clink their cups together. Taking a swallow, he looked at Hal in surprise, for the vessels were filled with hippocras, a costly spiced wine that was served only upon special occasions even by the wealthy and highborn.
Looking pleased with himself, Hal lifted his cup high. “You may not all know that this is a special day…my lord father the king’s birthday. I would have you drink to his health and good fortune!”
The men raised their own cups and the hall resounded with cries of “To the king!” Glancing back at Henry with a sly grin, Hal signaled for silence. “I am grateful to my uncle, the Earl of Surrey, for reminding me, as this is not a birthday to go unmarked. It is not every day, after all, that a man reaches the venerable age of fifty.”
Henry inhaled the wine he’d been about to swallow and began to cough. Again the audience quieted, watching Henry to see if he was amused or annoyed by his son’s jape. Getting his breath back, he laughed, and the men burst into applause and cheers, so grateful were they that the rift between their lord and his son was on the mend. None wanted to be forced to choose between them, for how could a man weigh the present against the future?
Rising, Henry lifted his cup as Hal had done. “Let’s drink now to my son, who has every attribute of kingship except the ability to count.” Midst the laughter, his gaze came to rest affectionately upon his beaming brother. Hamelin had given him a birthday gift more valuable than gold, silver, or myrrh: a new beginning.
Henry did not linger long in the great hall, for his hours in the saddle had caught up with him, and he felt unusually tired. After joking with Willem that his son’s jest had been on target, for tonight he felt far closer to fifty
