“John? Thank God you’ve come. He’s done little but fret over you. Could you not have sent word that you’d gotten away safe from Le Mans?”
Two weeks ago the town of Le Mans had fallen to the forces of John’s brother Richard and Philip, the young French King. Henry and his followers had escaped the burning city just as the French army moved in, and in the confusion John had gotten separated from the others, had passed some harrowing days himself, in consequence. But he was not about to explain that now to the speaker, his illegitimate half-brother Geoffrey. Like all of his brothers, Geoffrey was much older than John, well into his thirties, a tall, powerfully built man with sandy hair, Henry’s flint-grey eyes, and an acerbic tongue. John did not feel for Geoffrey the consuming, corrosive jealousy that he did for Richard, but he had no more liking for this Geoffrey than he’d had for the dead brother who’d borne the same name. Ignoring the accusatory, querulous tone of the other’s question, he said,
“Christ, but he looks bad. Is he in much pain?”
Geoffrey nodded. “All the time,” he said bleakly, and then turned toward the bed as Henry stirred.
The grey eyes opened, focused on John. “At last,” he said huskily, held out his hand. “You did give me some bad moments this past week, lad.”
John was much relieved at the hot, dry feel of the hand in his, having steeled himself for a touch cold and clammy. “You need not have worried, Papa. Are you not the one who always said I had more lives than a cat? Or was that the morals of a cat?” he added, coaxing from his father a grimacing smile, a cough masquerading as a chuckle.
“Johnny…I had William de Mandeville and William Fitz Ralph swear to me…swear that should any evil befall me, they’ll surrender my castles to you, and to you alone. Not to Richard, God rot him, not to Richard…”
To John, that sounded more like a concession of defeat than a declaration of trust. “Surely you do not expect it to come to that, Papa?”
There was a wine flagon on the bedside table, and Henry gestured, waited till John poured out a cupful. “Of course not, lad. You’ll never see the day dawn when I let them get the better of me,” he said, with a bravado that might have been more convincing had John not needed to help him up in order to drink. “Le Mans was not the first town I’ve lost in my life, will not be the last…” He drank deeply, signaled for John to lower him back against the pillows.
“Johnny…listen, lad. I have not forgotten my promise to you. I do mean to give you the earldom of Mortain, give you the revenues from Cornwall…”
John’s mouth twisted. For how many years had he been hearing this? Promises he had in plenty, but little else. His brother Henry had been the heir apparent, Geoffrey had been Duke of Brittany, and Richard was Duke of Aquitaine, Count of Poitou. But him? John Lackland. He’d been betrothed since age nine to his cousin Avisa, a bride to bring him the rich earldom of Gloucester, but that, too, was proving to be an empty expectation; the very least that could be said of a twelve-year-old betrothal was that his father was in no tearing hurry to have him tie so lucrative a nuptial knot. It was John’s private suspicion that his father denied him incomes of his own for the same reason he’d refused to name Richard as his heir, to keep them close, puppet Princes who’d dance to his tune only.
“I think you should rest now, Papa,” he said, and Henry nodded; sweat was breaking out again on his forehead, trickling into his beard.
“The fever is worse at night,” he mumbled. “Stay with me till I sleep.”
The chamber was heavy with the fetid odors of illness, with stifling summer heat. John soon began to sweat, too, began to yearn for a lungful of the cooling night air so fatal to the sickroom. At last Henry found relief in sleep; his hold slackened, fingers no longer clutched. John gently disengaged his hand, wiped his palm against the sheet, and came to his feet.
He stood for some moments looking down at his father, until joined by Geoffrey.
“He’s dying, is he not?”
“Yes.” Geoffrey gave John a thoughtful look. “You surprise me, John; you sound as if you care.”
John caught his breath. “Damn you, of course I care!”
Henry groaned, fumbled with the blankets, and Geoffrey at once bent over the bed, making soothing sounds, lulling the older man back into sleep. John watched until Henry quieted again, then turned away with such haste that, to Geoffrey, it seemed not so much an exit as an escape.
Entering his own chamber, John was reaching for a wine flagon when he caught movement from the corner of his eye, spun around to see the girl cowering in the shadows.
“Who are you?”
“Do not be angry, my lord,” she pleaded, stumbling forward to make an exceedingly awkward curtsy. “I…I am Lucy, and I am here because Master Randolph…he thought…”
Her painful stammer, her flaming face told John quite clearly what Master Randolph thought. His first impulse was to get rid of her, but even as the dismissal was forming on his tongue, he changed his mind. What better way to exorcise the horrors of the sickroom than with flesh that was smooth and whole and healthy? Moreover, he had ever hated to be alone. Tonight of all nights, even the company of this timid little maidservant was preferable to his own.
“Remind me to thank Master Randolph,” he said and smiled at her. “Be a good lass now and fetch me some wine.”
But the wine did not help as he’d hoped. Instead of dulling his anxieties, it acted as a stimulant, spurring his imagination into unpleasant excesses, conjuring up half-forgotten fears of boyhood and projecting them into a future that suddenly seemed fraught with menace.
“He’s dying, Lucy. Did you know that?”
“Yes, my lord,” she whispered. Hastening to refill his wine cup, she approached the bed and then skittered back out of range, putting him in mind of a squirrel caught between trees.
He’d sent Lucy down to the buttery for another wine flagon when he heard a commotion in the stairwell. He sat up on the bed as Martin Algais and Lupescaire burst into the chamber.
“Look what we found in the stairwell.” Shoving Lucy forward into the room. “What is that saying about a bird in the hand?”
John was not amused. Algais and Lupescaire were Brabançons, men who sold their swords to the highest bidder. In the past he had permitted, even encouraged, familiarity, dicing and drinking with them, treating them as intimates. But tonight he had no desire for their company, and he found himself resenting the way they were making free with what was his, Lupescaire helping himself to the wine while Martin Algais backed Lucy into a corner, laughing at her ineffectual attempts to fend off his roving hands.
“I do not recall summoning you,” John said irritably, as Lupescaire handed him a brimming wine cup.
“The talk amongst our men is that the old King is in a bad way. You did see him, my lord; how does he, in truth?”
John could not, in fairness, fault them for their concern; their future, like his own, rose and fell with each labored breath Henry drew. But they were servants, companions, handpicked hirelings—not confidants.
“Well enough,” he said, had his cup halfway to his mouth when Lucy screamed. His hand jerked, and wine splashed onto the bed, splattered his tunic. John jumped to his feet with an oath. “Damn your soul, Martin, look at this!” He stared down at the wine spill in disgust, then turned to glare at Algais. “Must you ever have your hand up a woman’s skirts? If you want to tumble a wench, you can damned well do it someplace else than in my chamber. Let that girl be, and get a servant up here to change these bedcovers.”
But Algais did not move. Holding the weeping girl with one hand, with the other he reached for the neck of her gown, jerked until the material tore, baring her breasts.
“Did you not hear me?” John demanded, astonished. “I told you to let the girl alone.”
“Why?” Algais sounded sullen, defiant. “We’ve shared women before; why not now?”
Lupescaire put his wine cup down, eyes suddenly aglitter, cutting from John to
Algais and back again. John’s mouth went dry; never had either of them dared to defy him before. “Because I say so, Martin. You take what I choose to give you, no more and no less.”
Algais had very pale eyes, an unblinking, feral stare. But after a few frozen breaths, he loosened his hold on Lucy. “You want me to ask? Then I’m asking. I have taken a fancy to this one; let me have her for an hour.”
It would be so easy to agree, a face-saving solution for them both, and John was very tempted; he’d never had a stomach for confrontation. But he knew better, knew it had to be all or nothing with a man like Martin Algais.
“No,” he said.
Algais’s fingers clenched, dug into Lucy’s upper arm, and she sobbed anew. But then he pushed her away.
John’s breathing slowed, steadied. “Go down to the great hall,” he said. “Send a servant up to me. You need not come back after. I’ve no use for you tonight.”
He’d won. They did as he bade, if not docile, at least unrebelling. John moved to the table, poured the last of the wine with a shaking hand. He knew them for what they were, his pet wolves, but he’d never thought they might turn on him. He knew why, of course. For the same reason that Geoffrey had suddenly dared to voice his dislike. The scent of blood was in the air.
Lucy was still sobbing, and he snapped, “Will you stop your whimpering, girl? You were not hurt, after all!” But as he turned toward her, he saw that was not true. There was an angry red welt upon her left breast; there would soon be an exceedingly ugly bruise.
“Do not cry, lass,” he said, more gently, and then she was on her knees before him, clinging to his legs, weeping incoherently. It was some moments before he could make sense of her sobbing, before he realized that she was feverishly, hysterically thanking him for saving her from Martin Algais. John choked back an unsteady, mirthless laugh, raised her up.
“Lucy, listen to me. Dry your tears and go down to the hall. Find my squire, tell him to get up here. Then go to the kitchen, tell the cooks I said to give you mutton fat for that bruise.” As he spoke, he was steering her toward the door. “After that, lass, go to bed…your own.”
Giving him an incredulous look, she fled. Within moments his squire was panting up the stairs. “My lord, what is amiss? That girl acted so strange…”
“Get our men together. I want us ready to ride within the hour.”
“Ride where? My lord, it’s full dark. Where would we go? At such an hour, we might well have to bed down by the roadside—”
“I was giving you a command, not inviting a debate. I want to be gone from here as soon as we can saddle up, and if you make me repeat that, you’ll have more regrets than you can handle. Now see to it!”
Hastily the man said, “I will, my lord, indeed. But…but what of your lord father? I’ve been told he sleeps; is it your wish that he be awakened ere you depart?”
“No,” John said. “Let him sleep.”
“I know you Angevins have ever been short of brotherly love, but surely John is not as worthless as you think? Admittedly, I know him not well, but he never struck me as a fool.”
“Oh, John is clever enough. But what do brains avail a man if he does lack for backbone?”
In Richard’s lexicon of insults, that was the most damning accusation he could make, and to Philip, it cast a revealing light upon Richard’s relationship with his younger brother. He found himself feeling a touch of sympathy for John, who’d been weighed against Richard’s exacting standards of manhood and found wanting, for he knew that he, too, had failed to measure up in Richard’s eyes; their friendship had never been the same since Richard discovered that he had an irrational fear of horses, rode only the most docile of geldings.
“But to be fair,” Richard said grudgingly, “my father has ever played the same game with John as he did with me and, whilst they lived, Geoffrey and Henry, promising all and delivering nothing. Although the one time he did entrust John with power of his own, sent him to Ireland, it was an unmitigated disaster. So badly did John bungle his rule that he achieved the all but impossible; he got the Irish chieftains to stop squabbling with one another and unite against him!”
“Surely that was Henry’s blunder as much as John’s. You do not send a boy of seventeen to do a man’s work.”
“When I was seventeen, I was putting down a rebellion in Poitou,” Richard said pointedly, and Philip, conceding defeat with a wry smile, signaled to a servant.
“We’ll see Lord John now.”
John had rarely been so nervous; eleventh-hour allies were not always welcomed with open arms. He was much relieved, therefore, when the French King smiled as he knelt, at once motioned him to rise.
“Your Grace,” he said, with an answering smile that lost all spontaneity, all sincerity, at sight of his brother. Even in the dim light of a command tent, Richard’s coloring had lost none of its vibrancy, eyes blazingly blue, hair bronzed even brighter now by a summer in the saddle. Most likely, John thought sourly, he did glow in the dark. “Richard,” he said, as if they’d been parted just that morning, and Richard gave him an equally indifferent greeting in return.
“You did surprise me, John,” he said dryly. “I’d expected you to turn up weeks ago. Cutting it rather close, were you not, Little Brother?”
Fortunately for John, hatred choked all utterance. He stared at Richard, reminding himself this was but one more grievance to be credited to Richard’s account, promising himself that payment would be in the coin of his choosing.
Philip had been watching the Angevin brothers with covert amusement. Now he asked the question John most dreaded. “John…how does Henry?”
John had given this a great deal of thought in the hours since his midnight flight from Chinon. He had no way of knowing if Philip and Richard were aware of the gravity of Henry’s illness, could only hope they were not; an infidel who converted at knife-point had, of necessity, to count for less than one who willingly renounced his heresy.
“I do not know, Your Grace. I’ve not seen my father since we fled Le Mans.”
Richard and Philip exchanged glances, and then Richard said, “Rumor has it he is bedridden, but I expect it’s yet another of his damnable tricks; he could teach a fox about slyness.”
John said nothing, concentrated his attention upon a nearby fruit bowl. Picking out two apples, he tossed one to Richard, a sudden, swift pitch that disconcerted Richard not in the least. He caught it with the utmost ease, his the lithe coordination, the lazy, loose grace of the born athlete. John doubted that Richard had made a careless misstep, a clumsy move in all of his thirty-one years.
Richard crunched into the apple. “Let’s talk about you, Little Brother. What is the going price for—” He caught himself, but not in time.
“Betrayal? What game are we playing now, Richard? If we are tallying up sins, I rather doubt you’re in any position to cast the first stone.”
There was a silence, and then Richard gave a short laugh. “Fair enough. I deserved that. Let me put it another way. What do you want for your support?”
“Only what be my just due,” John said cautiously, “what I’ve been promised since boyhood. The county of Mortain, the earldom of Gloucester, the incomes from the lordship of Ireland, Nottingham Castle.”
Richard did not hesitate. “Done,” he said, so readily that John regretted not asking for more.
He murmured a perfunctory expression of appreciation, and then said, “You might want to do something for our brother Geoffrey, too. If I were you, Richard, I’d keep Geoffrey in mind when it comes time to fill the next vacant bishopric.”
Richard frowned, but after a moment he began to laugh. “An excellent thought, Little Brother. I shall do just that.”
Philip looked from one to the other in bemusement. “I seem to have missed something. Correct me if I be wrong, but I never thought either one of you to be overly fond of Geoffrey. Why, then, do you want to make him a bishop?”
“Geoffrey has no more calling for the p
riesthood than I have,” Richard said with a grin. “Some years ago, our father sought for him a career in the Church, tried to make him Bishop of Lincoln, but he balked, refused to be ordained. So we’d be doing him no favor.”
“Brother Geoffrey has ambitions ill befitting his base blood,” John added softly. “Too often have I heard him remind people that William the Conqueror was himself bastard born.”
Philip saw the light. “And as a priest, he would, of course, be barred from ever laying claim to the crown. Clever, John, very clever. But risky. What’s to keep Richard from concluding that Holy Orders might do your soul great good, too?”
Richard laughed until he choked, sputtering something unintelligible about “Father John.” John laughed, too, but his eyes narrowed on Philip with sudden speculation. Philip, he decided, was one for muddying the waters. That would indeed bear remembering.
“You did arrive just in time, John. We are about to lay siege to Tours, for its fall is sure to force the old fox from his lair. This campaign has dragged on far too long. It’s nigh on two years since I did take the cross; I’d hoped to be before the walls of Jerusalem months ago.” Richard paused, then said with sudden seriousness, “Philip will be leading a French army, and we expect men to flock to our standards. You ought to give some thought to taking the cross yourself, John. What better quest can a man have than pledging his life to the delivery of the Holy City from the infidels?”
John was appalled, forced a strained laugh. “The truth now, Richard,” he said with what he hoped would be disarming candor. “Can you truly see me as a pious pilgrim on the road to Damascus?”
Philip laughed; so did Richard. “No,” he admitted, “I confess I cannot, Little Brother. You’d disappear into some Saracen harem, never to be heard from again!”