“You have prepared chambers for them?”
“They are being made ready now, fires lit and the bedding aired and warmed. His retainers are already quartered in the stables and haylofts.”
“Good man.” St. Clair halted outside the doors to the anteroom, then spread his arms to settle his cloak more comfortably, and drew a deep breath. “Well then, let’s find out what our lord and master wants now.”
“HENRY, YOU SLUGGARD! By God’s holy legs, you took your time in coming to greet us!”
Richard Plantagenet had risen to his feet as Sir Henry entered, dropping the meat he had been eating and wiping his greasy hands on the sides of his much-stained leather jerkin. But despite the apparent harshness of his shouted rebuke, there was no doubting the obvious pleasure with which he stepped towards the older man, his arms spread wide to welcome him in a great embrace. St. Clair barely had time to register a second man, also rising from the table, before he was swept up in a bear hug and swung off his feet, incapable of doing anything other than clinging to his dignity as well as he might. The big man holding him swung him around only once, however, before releasing him and holding him at arm’s length, locking his eyes with the piercing blue of his own.
“You are looking wonderful, my old friend, as well as I had hoped to find you, and that is the best tidings these eyes of mine have looked upon in weeks. How long has it been, seven years? Eight?”
“Five, my liege,” Henry murmured, smiling, aware that Richard Plantagenet would know to the day precisely how long it had been since last they met. “But do not interrupt your meal on my behalf, for you have evidently traveled far and must be hungry.” A quick glance to the right had shown him a pair of wet, mudspattered riding cloaks thrown over the back of a high chair and two long swords lying across its arms. April had been a long and dirty month of hard rain and blustering gales, and May, mere days away now, seemed set to be even bleaker and more unseasonably hostile.
“You’re right, old friend, and I am ravenous.” Richard spun away and returned to the table, where he picked up his discarded joint of fowl again and waved it towards his companion before sinking his teeth into the meat and ripping off a mouthful, which he chewed a few times and then thrust into his cheek, permitting himself to speak around it. “You’ll know de Sablé, I suppose?”
The knight called de Sablé was still standing and he nodded courteously to St. Clair, who shook his head politely and stepped forward, offering his hand.
“No, I fear I do not know the gentleman, but he is most welcome here, as are you, my liege.” He sized the man up briefly as their hands came together, looking up a few inches to meet de Sablé’s bright eyes. The other bowed his head in return, smiling slightly, the pressure of his grasp tentative at first, then growing firmer in response to St. Clair’s warmth.
“Robert de Sablé, Sir Henry,” he said. “Knight of Anjou, and vassal to Duke Richard, like yourself. Forgive us for the lateness of the hour.”
“Nonsense,” Richard growled, then belched softly. “Forgive us? What is to be forgiven, that we remind him of his duty? Henry is my vassal, as you said, bound like yourself to keep the hours I keep, and if I am out and about all night, my vassals must resign themselves to accommodating me, even be it but once in five years. Is that not so, Henry?”
“It is, my liege.”
“My liege, my lord, my lord, my liege. You used to call me Dickon, and beat me if I failed to please your every whim.”
“True, my liege.” St. Clair permitted himself a tiny smile. “But that was many years ago, when you were but a boy and needed shaping, as all boys do from time to time. Now you are Count of Poitou and Anjou, Duke of Normandy and of Aquitaine, and Lord of Brittany, Maine, and Gascony. I imagine few would dare call you Dickon to your face today.”
“Hah!” Richard’s eyes gleamed with delight. “Dare call me Dickon? Few would dare even to say what you said there. I’m glad to see your balls have not gone soft.” He turned to de Sablé. “This is the man who taught me all I know of weaponry and warfare, Robert—taught me the elements of using sword and lance and axe and crossbow long before William Marshall of England came into my life, taught me to strive every day for perfection, to lift and throw, to build muscles. Marshall gets the credit for my youthful training, but I had learned most of what I know from this man here while I was yet a stripling lad. I’ve told you this before, I know, but now he stands before you in the flesh: the man who made me who I am.”
May God forfend! The thought sprang unbidden to Sir Henry’s mind, for although the compliments were flattering, there was much about who Richard Plantagenet was that scandalized every moral fiber in the elderly knight’s being. He had taught the boy to joust and fight, that was certainly true; he had dinned weapons craft and military discipline into him from the age of eight until he was fourteen. And he had done it with a stern, single-minded tenacity born not of love, or even of admiration, but of duty, because in those days Henry was Master-at-Arms to the boy’s mother, Eleanor, Duchess of Aquitaine. Eleanor who had been the Queen of France before she divorced her husband and married King Henry II of England to become Queen there, retaining her Duchy of Aquitaine, the largest and most powerful fiefdom in France. She had once been called the strongest woman in Christendom, but her strength had somehow failed her sons, of whom Richard was the third born and said to be his mother’s favorite. Even in his boyhood, notwithstanding that he was soon known as a swordsman and fighter without equal among his peers, there were aspects of the young man’s character that both chilled and repelled Henry St. Clair. And now, after long years of not having set eyes on his liege lord, he found he had no slightest wish to be regarded, even in error, as the man who had made Richard Plantagenet into who he was.
“Sit, man, sit you down. This is your own house and I am but a guest in it. Sit you and join us and tell us what you have been up to, hiding yourself away here for all these years.”
Ector stepped forward and pulled a seat out from the table for his master, and Sir Henry sat, arranging the folds of his cloak carefully so that they did not impede his movements.
“Here, have some capon,” Richard growled, pushing the serving platter towards his host before Henry could say anything. “Nothing wrong with your kitchen staff, I’ll give them that. My meat never tastes this good. Spices or something …” Richard savaged his meat again, his short red beard glistening with grease. De Sablé ate more fastidiously, nibbling at his fowl rather than rending it, and St. Clair took the opportunity to examine him more closely. The Angevin knight appeared to be in his late thirties, perhaps five years older than his liege, and his face was nobly formed, with clear brown eyes above a long, straight nose and a jaw that was clearly square beneath his spade-shaped dark brown beard. It was a stern face, yet not devoid, Henry guessed, of either humor or compassion, and he wondered briefly who the fellow was and why he should be here alone, in the company of Richard Plantagenet, one of the most powerful and mercurial men in all Christendom. Henry pulled a wooden trencher towards him, then served himself a wing from one of the cold capons. It held little meat, but he was not hungry. His mind was racing with the possibilities and portents of this unexpected visit. He picked up the meat and then laid it down again untasted.
“I was saddened to hear but recently that your father is still at odds with you over the succession. I had hoped that question might have been resolved long before now.”
“Aye, as did we all. And it was, in truth, until the old boar changed his mind again. He is a stubborn old pig, for one who thinks of himself as a lion. I will have the better of him yet, though. God’s throat, I will. Wait you but a while and see with all the world. He’ll make me heir to England ere he dies, and he will not last long now, pray God.”
Even although he knew there had been little love between the father and son, and he had heard reports of how the old King was visibly and rapidly declining, Henry St. Clair was nonetheless affronted to hear the son speak of his father’s i
mpending death so callously. Before he could think of anything to say, however, Richard continued.
“Still, the old boar did well for himself during his life, I’ll grant him that … and for me, as well, now that I think of it. Built me an empire, did he not? I’ve detested him all my life and even hated him at times, and yet I can weep for him, too, upon occasion. He may be a miserable tyrant but by God, he has been a man, and a king, to reckon with. I swear I know not how he and my mother lived together for so long without killing each other.”
“Perhaps because he has kept her in jail for the past sixteen years.”
Richard’s head jerked back and he looked at his old tutor in shock, and then his face broke into a grin and he loosed a great guffaw.
“By God, you have the right of it. That probably had much to do with their mutual survival.”
“How is your mother now?”
“Wondrous well, from what my people in England tell me. But one of these fine days she will regain her freedom, and then she will probably become more dangerous and unpredictable than ever! Eleanor will never finish pursuing her own designs.”
St. Clair dipped his head in acknowledgment. “I cannot speak to that, my lord, for we live quietly here and are seldom made aware of what is happening beyond our gates. We seldom receive company nowadays, and since my wife, Amanda, died, more than a year ago, I have sought little to do with the world beyond my walls.”
Richard’s response was instantaneous, emphatic and not at all what St. Clair had wished to hear: “Then you need to get out more and move about in the world. Which is why I am here this night.” Having uttered these ominous words the Duke fell silent, kneading a ball of bread between thumb and finger, his face pensive as he stared towards the roaring fire in the great hearth. When he spoke next, his words surprised the older man. “I had not heard of your lady wife’s death, and I know how much she meant to you … That must have hit you hard, my friend, and it most certainly explains your ignorance of affairs in the world beyond your gates, as you say, so we will talk no more of that.”
He stood up and removed his leather jerkin, and tossed it behind him to land on the chair that held their weather-stained cloaks. Sir Henry raised a beckoning finger to Ector and pointed to the garments, and his steward moved immediately to collect them.
“Your chambers should be ready soon, my liege, and you’ll sleep warm and comfortably. In the meantime, we will have your mantles dried and cleaned, ready for you when you arise.”
Richard grunted and watched idly as Ector left the anteroom, his arms laden with the two heavy cloaks and the Duke’s jerkin. Then, when the doors closed behind the steward, he took his chair from the table and dragged it close to the roaring fire, where he subsided into it again, his feet stretched out towards the flames. His golden-bearded chin rested upon his chest, lower lip jutting in thought, and his fingers brushing absently at his personal crest, with its single left-facing rampant lion richly embroidered in gold wire against a blood-red shield-shaped background on the left breast of his tunic. The silence stretched, and when it became clear that the Duke had nothing more to say for the time being, St. Clair cleared his throat gently and spoke over the crackling of the fire, attempting to ignore the fluttering apprehension in his breast.
“You began to speak of why you came here tonight, my liege, something to do with my need to go out and about more. Am I permitted to enquire more closely about what you meant?”
Richard’s eyes flared open, betraying that he had been on the point of nodding into sleep. He made a harrumphing noise in his throat and sat up straighter, turning in his seat to look over to where St. Clair sat opposite de Sablé at the table. “Aye, you are. I have need of you, my friend. I need you with me, by my side.”
Henry fought to quell a surge of dismay upon hearing that. He allowed his face to express a lack of understanding as he asked, “Here, my liege, in Anjou?”
“No, damnation! In Outremer—the Holy Land.” He glared at St. Clair for a moment, then clearly remembered what the older man had said about his detachment from worldly affairs. “I have been in close communication with the new Pope, Clement, these past few months. It seems we have had a plethora of popes in this past year, would you not agree? Urban the Third, dead in December of the year before last, then another Gregory, the Eighth, for two short months until last March, and now the third Clement, anxious to proceed with this new war after barely a year in office … I suppose you heard about my father’s commitment to winning back the Kingdom of Jerusalem and the Holy Cross for Gregory, last January?”
St. Clair shook his head, wide eyed. “No, my lord, I think not. Or if I did, the tidings did not penetrate my grief. My wife died mere weeks after Pope Urban’s death.”
Richard looked hard at the older man, then jerked his head in a terse nod. “Aye, well, Henry swore an oath to Pope Gregory in Gisors, about a month before we heard of Gregory’s death, hard on the heels of Urban’s passing. In truth, he made the pledge in Gregory’s absence, to Archbishop Josias of Tyre, the only Christian see left occupied in all of Outremer. Anyway, the old man committed us all to the war, myself and Philip in particular, even though I was not there—but that should not surprise you, as well as you know him and me. The old lion saw my mere absence as no impediment to his paternal dedication of my life to the papal cause.”
Although St. Clair was feigning interest in this information, he felt that his persistent ignorance was irritating Richard, who cleared his throat noisily and returned to what he had been saying. “Well, it is all arranged, it seems. The French levies are to wear red crosses on white surcoats, the English white on red, and the Flemish green—presumably on white. All highly colorful and rich with meaning, I suppose. We are all agreed to set out next year, but of course my father has no intention of going with us. This is all a ploy to set me safely out of the way while he goes about his own designs of putting my useless brother John on England’s throne. He’ll plead infirmity, sickness, and old age when it comes time to rally to the standards, you wait and see.
“But this third Pope Clement is not a stupid man, and he has made that more than plain to me. He can see clearly what’s afoot here—thanks to the snouting and burrowing of his bishops here and in England—and he knows I will not meekly step aside for my useless, halfwit brother. And so he has expressed his sympathy for my concerns, because he has need of me—wants me to take up arms on behalf of Mother Church, in Jerusalem, as leader of his new Frankish army of deliverance that will win back the Frankish Kingdom from the infidels.
“That desire, were it the sole wish that Il Papa had, would leave me unimpressed, since I have intended to lead the army anyway, ever since I first heard of it. But the German Emperor, Barbarossa, jumped into Gregory’s plans headlong before the old Pope died, swearing to raise an army of Teutons more than two hundred thousand strong. And that, of course, has all of Rome, Clement and all his cardinals, a-chittering in terror, because the last thing they need, or want, is to have the Holy Roman Church beholden in any way to German Barbarossa and his Holy Roman Empire, to say nothing of his unholy Roman armies. They could lose the papacy and all the world, were they to sit back and do nothing. And so, I represent the only hope they have of salvaging their Empire of Men’s Minds.”
The Duke plucked at his lower lip and gazed at Henry through narrowed, unfocused eyes before continuing. “Clement is wooing me, seducing me into leading a Frankish host that will counter-balance Barbarossa’s presence in Outremer and keep the scales of power balanced in favor of the papacy. Our force will be no more than half the size of the German levies, for Barbarossa has almost three times the manpower available to him that we have, but Barbarossa is almost as old as my father, and I intend to use that age difference to my advantage. Our Franks will outfight and outperform his stolid German Goths and his Teutonic knights. And in return for providing that superiority, the Pope has offered me a guarantee—but nothing yet in writing, mind you—of the succession to England upon
my father’s death.”
St. Clair wrinkled his nose. “I see. And do you trust this pope, my lord?”
“Trust him? Trust a pope? Do you think me mad, Henry?” Richard was grinning now. “What I trust, my friend, is my own ability to know, and to do, what is best for me and for my people. And so I have agreed to his request. I will command the army if he will aid me in the raising of it.
“Philip will be involved in the expedition, of course—but he already is, since the original agreement at Gisors. Since then, of course, in August, he alienated my father forever by chopping down the old man’s favorite elm tree there, the so-called Gisors Elm, beneath which the King had signed so many treaties, including the one of which I speak. We came close to open war over that incident, and I was forced to side with Philip again, in order to protect my own holdings in France, where my liege loyalties are to him.
“Imagine what an upheaval that caused—the threat of a new war among ourselves in Christendom when the major threat to the papacy lies in Outremer! There was panic in the Vatican, and a flurry of papal ambassadors appealing to all of us individually. Philip allowed himself to be persuaded back into the fold and has restated his commitment to the Holy War. With him, to the prosecution of it and hence to our advantage, he will bring the most powerful vassals in his kingdom: Philip the Count of Flanders and Henry of Champagne. For his sins, poor Henry is nephew to both Philip and myself—did you know that? My mother is his grandmother by her first marriage in France. And, for a certainty, Count Stephen of Sancerre will be there. But I will hold command. The new Pope Clement is sworn to that, albeit I am not yet King and Philip has been crowned for ten years now. He is an organizer, our Philip, an administrator without equal, but it is I who am the warrior. If my father lives long enough to see the army raised, he will make noises about wanting to lead it, but that will be a nonsense, as I have said, presented for the show of it.