not pause until he found Eleanor. She’d drawn her hood forward to shadow her face, careful to keep on the far side of her palfrey, but he did not hesitate. “Welcome to Touraine, Madame.” He doffed his cap in a deferential gesture that somehow seemed sincere despite the incongruity of the circumstances. “I am Sir Herve de Monbazon, the new provost of Loches. We have been awaiting your arrival since Nones rang, had begun to fear that you’d chosen another route.”
Shock rendered Eleanor speechless, and then she swung around to confront Porteclie. Even as her eyes swept from the hermit’s hut to his supposedly lame stallion, her heart was unwilling to accept what her head was telling her, for Porteclie de Mauze was one of her most steadfast barons, a distant cousin on her father’s side of the family. But as she looked into his face, she saw the ugly truth written in his ducked head, his averted eyes, and his silence.
“You Judas!” Nicholas had reached the same appalled conclusion and lunged for Porteclie’s throat. As they crashed to the ground, Eleanor’s two knights drew their swords, urging her to flee. When she’d been ambushed by the de Lusignans five years ago, William Marshal and his uncle, the Earl of Salisbury, had done the same, offering up their lives for her safety. The earl had died and Will had been wounded and captured, but their blood had bought her the time she needed to escape. Now, though, there was nowhere to run, and even as she struggled with the enormity of this betrayal, she saw the futility of resistance.
“No!” she cried sharply. “I’ll have no bloodshed, will have no men dying in vain! Lower your swords- now!”
They hesitated and then slowly obeyed. Porteclie’s knights stood rooted, no one moving, not even to come to their lord’s aid. It was easy for Eleanor to tell which ones had been in the know and which had not, for the latter looked stunned and the former either grim or shame-faced. The provost had swiftly dismounted and ordered two of the men to separate Nicholas and Porteclie, who were rolling about in the dirt, locked in a death grip. When they were pulled apart, Porteclie stayed down, gulping for air, his throat scratched and bruised, already showing clear imprints of Nicholas’s clutching fingers. Nicholas was bleeding from a deep cut to his leg, slashed by one of Porteclie’s spurs. When Eleanor told him to surrender his sword, he looked at her in anguish, dark eyes glittering with blinked-back tears, but he did as she bade, offered his weapon to the provost before limping over to stand protectively at her side.
Herve de Monbazon passed Nicholas’s sword to one of his men. “If you will, Madame,” he said politely. It was a moment before she realized he wanted her own sword. Unbuckling the scabbard, she handed it to him. “Thank you. Now…may I help you to mount?” he asked, still so politely that she wanted to slap him. Did he think that his feigned courtesy could make this anything but what it was? He might act as if she was his queen, but she was his captive and they both knew it.
But if he could pretend that this was a perfectly ordinary encounter, then by God, so could she. “Be sure to bring my sumpter horse,” she said, in the brusque tones of one who never doubted her orders would be obeyed. “It carries my clothes.” When he cupped his hands, she stepped into them and swung up into the saddle, inclining her head in aloof acknowledgment of his help. When he ordered her men to be bound before they mounted their horses, she voiced no protest, knowing it would be futile. When he snapped a leather lead upon her palfrey’s bridle, she kept silent, staring straight ahead as if his action was of no interest to her. And when they rode off, she never looked back at Porteclie de Mauze, standing with his men by the side of the road.
Eleanor had never liked Loches Castle. Situated upon a rocky outcrop far above the River Indre, its stark, rectangular shape was silhouetted ominously against the evening sky. Made of grey-white freestone, it reminded her of the Tower of London’s great keep, and she’d never liked that stronghold either. Loches’s ancient donjon-more than one hundred twenty feet high, with walls nine feet thick, its few windows not much bigger than arrow slits- proclaimed that this was a wartime fortress, not a royal residence. It had been built by one of Henry’s more infamous ancestors, Fulk Nerra, in the eleventh century, and she’d found it to be utterly lacking in comfort during her infrequent visits. But if it had always seemed primitive to her, there was something almost sinister about it now, looming out of the darkness like some hulking beast of prey.
They entered the bailey through the Porte Royale gatehouse, were soon being ushered into the great hall that occupied the second story of the keep. Unlike the provost, the man standing by the smoking hearth was well known to Eleanor. Maurice de Craon was the same age as her husband. He was of average height like Henry, and like Henry, he gave the impression of being larger than he actually was, with a wrestler’s well-muscled build and stocky legs. Only in coloring did he differ from his sovereign, for he was as swarthy as Henry was fair. Eleanor’s heart sank at the sight of him, for Maurice de Craon was one of Henry’s intimates, a powerful Angevin baron and a battle commander of some note. His presence at Loches showed how important her capture was to her wrathful husband.
Raising her chin, she moved toward him with all the hauteur at her command. “My lord de Craon.”
“Madame.” If Eleanor’s voice had been coolly clipped, his dripped with icicles. His eyes were almost black; they took in her appearance with a disdain he did not bother to conceal. “I am surprised that Sir Herve was able to recognize you. You could hardly look less queenly, could you?”
When Nicholas bristled, Eleanor shook her head almost imperceptibly. “But I am the queen,” she said, “and you’d do well to remember that. One of my men has a wound in need of tending. I wish him to be seen by a doctor without delay.”
“Do you, indeed? Well…if wishes were horses, beggars would ride.” Turning, he gestured toward two of his men. “Take these prisoners down to the dungeon.” Adding “without delay,” with a mocking glance over his shoulder at Eleanor.
“I’d have thought you had better breeding than that, my lord. Only a churl would not know that men of Sir Nicholas’s rank are to be well treated until their ransoms can be arranged.”
“Ransom?” he echoed and laughed. “What a droll wit you have, Madame. But if you are so fretful about their well-being, mayhap you should join them in the dungeon so that you can look after them yourself.”
Eleanor caught her breath, quickly reached out to still Nicholas’s outraged protest. But it was easier to control Nicholas’s anger than her own temper, for she’d had little practice in biting back intemperate words. She opened her mouth to throw down a challenge that might well have gotten her incarcerated with her men. Before she could defy Maurice de Craon, though, Sir Herve de Monbazon stepped between them.
“May we have a few words in private, my lord?” he asked smoothly, favoring Maurice with the same disarming smile that he’d turned upon Eleanor. Maurice did not seem pleased by his intervention, but after a brief hesitation, he nodded and followed the provost toward the stairwell in the east wall.
Eleanor gave Nicholas a critical scrutiny, her eyes flicking from his pallid face to his bloodstained chausses and boot. “Come with me,” she said, taking his arm and steering him toward the closest bench. “You, too,” she directed her other knights, Gerard and Guyon. Once the three men were seated, she glanced around the hall, finding what she sought when she noticed a plate of bread and cheese on a nearby trestle table. Bringing it back to them, she directed Nicholas to hold out his bound wrists and cut the rope with the bread knife, then did the same for Gerard and Guyon. She was watched all the while by the other men in the hall, but while some of them murmured among themselves, none attempted to stop her, and whenever she met an individual’s gaze, he quickly looked away.
When the door opened, she stiffened warily, as did her knights. But the man emerging from the stairwell was not Maurice de Craon. The new arrival was an elderly priest, who stared at Eleanor with round eyes and open mouth. Like the others in the hall, he seemed hesitant, but after an irresolute moment, he gripped his cane firmly and hobbled toward her.
“Madame, you are truly here! Do you remember me?”
Like Henry, Eleanor had been blessed with a remarkable memory, and like him, she’d taken pains to cultivate the talent; for a prince, that was a survival skill. Now, as she studied the priest, it stood her in good stead. “Father Lucas,” she said and smiled. “Of course I remember you. You were very helpful when that baby was found abandoned on the Loches Road.”
Pleased color rose in his cheeks. “It was my pleasure to serve you, my lady.”
“I need your help again, Father Lucas. This is Sir Nicholas de Chauvigny, a knight of my household. As you can see, he has a leg injury that ought to be cleaned and treated as soon as possible. Will you take care of that for me?”
He did not answer immediately, casting a revealing glance over his shoulder toward the stairwell. But then he
