changed his spots. As a young man, I remember, you were remarkably toothsome, if stiff and unyielding and greatly old-fashioned in your notions of fidelity. How is Amanda, by the way?”
St. Clair finally found his tongue. “She died, my lady, nigh on two years ago.”
“Ah, I can see it in your face. You miss her yet.”
“I do, my lady. Intolerably at times, but less now than before.”
“I know. Henry is barely in his grave and yet I find that I am mourning him too, and painfully, despite having hated him so long. The old boar kept me locked up in a tower for sixteen years, can you believe that?” She snorted, something approaching a laugh. “Oh, they call it a castle, and it’s rich enough to be called luxurious, but a prison is a prison.” She hesitated, then grinned. “But then, to tell the truth, I gave him little option. I am really going to miss him. Without him, I shall have little to rail about in future.”
“So he is truly dead then, my lady? We have heard rumors, all of them conflicting, so we did not know what to believe.”
“Oh, he’s dead. You may take my word on that. He died in Chinon, on the sixth day of July, and some say he was tortured to death by Richard. That is absolutely untrue, and you may trust me on that, too. Richard is no angel, and he was ever at odds with Henry, but my son as regicide and patricide? That is simply impossible. Believe me, as his mother.”
“I do, my lady.”
“I did not doubt you would. God’s throat, Henry, it’s good to see your honest face. You’re frowning. Why? Speak out. You always did before, uncaring what I might think.”
Emboldened, St. Clair shook his head. “Thinking about my people, my lady, no more. I have been out riding since before dawn, so they will be concerned when I do not return. It came to me that I should send word to them, tell them where I am. May I ask how far we are going?”
“Not far, but you have the right of things, as usual. Use the window. Call for de Neuville.”
St. Clair wasted no time, pulling back the leather curtains and leaning out. De Neuville was riding behind the carriage and trotted forward when Henry caught his eye. Eleanor, who had been watching, leaned forward.
“Francis, how much farther will we ride?”
“Less than ten miles, my lady. The advance party should be there by now, setting up your tents.”
“Send back word to Henry’s people, telling them he is detained but will return soon. You may use my name.” When Sir Francis had saluted and wheeled away, Eleanor settled herself on her seat. “There, are you at peace now?”
“I am, my lady … and grateful. But had I known you were coming this way, you could have stayed on my lands.”
She smiled, slowly. “And bankrupted your estate? Be thankful you knew nothing, my old friend. I have more than two hundred in my train. It would have caused you nothing but grief … although frankly, had I remembered where you live, I would have used you shamelessly. Queens and royal people do that all the time.” She paused, gazing at him with eyes that were no less spectacular than he remembered them from almost three decades earlier. “Well, I have told you how fine you look, so now it is your turn. How do
Henry found it surprisingly easy to smile at this woman who, at her glittering court in Aquitaine decades earlier, had fostered the troubadours who now swarmed everywhere throughout the land, singing their songs of courtly love and spreading her personal beliefs in the duties of noble men and the supremacy of women in teaching them those duties. “Before I set eyes upon you this day, my lady, I would not have thought it possible that you could be more lovely than you were when first I met you … But you are.”
She stared at him hard, then sniffed. “You disappoint me, Henry. I am an old woman and that is grossest flattery. The Henry St. Clair I knew before would never stoop to flattery.”
“Nor would he now, my lady. I speak the simple truth.”
“Then you never did before. I never had an inkling that you thought me lovely.”
His smile broadened. “Well, your husband, Henry, if you but recall, was notably jealous. Had he suspected that I saw in you anything other than my lady liege, he would have served me my own stones, sewed in their sack.”
“Hah!” Eleanor’s laugh was startling, full bodied and rich with earthy delight. “He would have had to vie with your Amanda. One ball apiece, they would have had.”
“Aye, they would …” His own laugh subsided. “But that was long ago, when the world was young …”
“How old are you now, Henry?”
“I will be fifty within the year, my lady.”
“Why, man, you’re but a child. I am sixty and seven, and my Henry was fifty-six when he died.” She paused. “Richard is to be King of England. Did you know that?”
“Aye, my lady, I know. I saw him recently. He stopped at my door on his way to Paris, bare two months ago.”
“Did he, by God’s holy blood?” Eleanor’s face had hardened. “And why would he do that?”
Henry half shrugged, his face void of expression. “He had need of me, he said. I am to sail with him to Outremer, as Master-at-Arms.”
“Master-at—” She checked herself. “Well, he is clearly not witless, for all his other faults. Misguided, certainly, but not witless.” Her eyes transfixed him, no whit less hypnotic than they had been decades earlier, when she could beguile even a pope. “And like a fool, you intend to go. I can see it in your face. You are going with him. Why, in the name of everything that’s sane? The Holy Land is a place fit only for
He raised one hand, then let it fall to his lap. “I have no choice, my lady. It is my duty, called upon by your son.”
“Balls, Henry. God’s entrails, man, you have spent a lifetime giving naught but the finest service to our house—to me and to Henry and to Richard himself. Enough, man. You have earned your right to die at home, in your bed. You could have declined with honor. Not even Richard would be so—” She stopped suddenly, her great eyes narrowing to slits. “No, there’s more to it than that. My son manipulated you somehow. Coerced you. That is his way … But what was his lever? What hold did he find over you, to bring you to this? Tell me.”
It was a command, peremptory and not to be evaded. Henry sighed and looked away from her to where the slowly passing countryside was visible between the curtain halves, seeing the dust lie thick and heavy on the cow parsley that lined the road. “I have a son, my lady.”
“I know. I remember him as a child. His name is … Andre, is it not?”
He looked back into her eyes, impressed again by her seemingly limitless capacity to remember such details. “Aye, my lady, Andre.”
“A man now … and a weapon against you. Is that not so? Tell me.”
He told her the entire tale, up to and including Richard’s intervention and solution, and throughout the hour that took she sat silent, her eyes never leaving his as she absorbed every nuance and inflection of his voice. When he finally fell silent, she nodded and pursed her lips, thinner than he remembered them, and the gesture drew attention to the hollowed cheeks beneath the high cheekbones that had always defined her startling and still- present beauty. He waited, and watched her eyes grow softer.
“And that, of course, explains why you look so
“The priests were tried before the Archbishop of Tours and their guilt clearly established beyond doubt, although, lacking the authority and single-mindedness of your son in prosecuting them, that might not have come to pass so easily. They were then disowned by the Holy Church and bound over to the secular law of the Duchy of Aquitaine for execution.”
“And in the meantime you and your son were bound to Richard by unbreakable ties of gratitude and fealty …”
Henry St. Clair noticed the irony in her tone, but he paid it no attention. “Aye, my lady. By gratitude more
