A King's Ransom (96 page)

“Well, first I have to quell a rebellion in the making. Some of the more disgruntled Bretons have even dared to raid Normandy. And then I am going to try again to secure Arthur’s wardship ere Constance’s barons attempt to send him to the French court. Even sheep know better than to seek safety in a wolf’s den, but not those fools.” He frowned, shaking his head in exasperation. “Philippe would like nothing better than an excuse to meddle in Brittany. If he controlled the duchy, he’d be able to disrupt the sea routes between England and Aquitaine and use it as a base to launch attacks upon Normandy and Anjou. I’ll be damned ere I let that happen!”

Catching her concern, he attempted then to reassure her, saying he expected that a show of force would be enough to make the Breton barons see reason and it would not come to serious bloodshed. Eleanor did not believe him and after he departed, she went for a solitary walk in the gardens, accompanied only by her greyhound.

She wondered if a time would ever come when she did not fear for her son’s safety whenever he ventured into enemy territory. She’d not worried as much about Harry’s safety. But Harry had never been as reckless as Richard. For certes, he would not have challenged the entire line of the Saracen army to combat. Sitting down on a wooden bench, she sighed as she began to ruffle her dog’s soft fur. Somewhat to her surprise, she felt a twinge of reluctant sympathy for Constance. As little as she liked the woman, Constance’s abduction by her husband cut too close to the bone. Even after more than twenty years, she still remembered her despair on the day of her own capture, still remembered the sinister sound of the key turning in the lock of her bedchamber at Loches Castle. Had it sounded like that to Constance?

R
ICHARD’S CAMPAIGN IN
B
RITTANY
was brief but bloody; a French chronicler noted in pious disapproval that he continued to fight even on Good Friday. Although the Bretons were no match for him in the field, he failed to secure custody of his nephew; André de Vitré managed to keep Arthur hidden. He did succeed, however, in reminding the Bretons of the high price they’d pay for rebellion, and upon his return to Normandy, they sent envoys to negotiate terms for peace and for Constance’s release.

D
ESPITE THE
A
UGUST HEAT,
the garden of the palace at Le Mans was a scene of exuberant activity. Anna was playing a game of
jeu de paume
with Berengaria’s brother Fernando, batting the ball back and forth with great zest. Seated in the shade of a medlar tree, Berengaria watched her brother with a smile as Joanna watched her. She was glad that her sister-in-law was enjoying Fernando’s visit, glad that he’d thought to seek out his sister on his way home to Navarre, for it had not been a happy year so far for Berengaria.

She’d been very disappointed by Richard’s cancellation of his Easter Court, for that was a rare opportunity for her to act in public as his queen, and she’d been distressed to learn that he’d shed blood on one of the holiest days of the Church calendar. Joanna knew Berengaria was even more troubled by Richard’s intensifying quarrel with the Archbishop of Rouen over Andely, an island in the Seine owned by the archdiocese of Rouen, for this clash of wills had the potential to flare up into a full-blown crisis with the Church.

Andely was highly profitable for the archbishop, allowing him to collect tolls from passing river traffic. But the island’s location also gave it great strategic importance and Richard wanted to build a castle there. He’d offered several manors and the prosperous port city of Dieppe in exchange for Andely, and when Archbishop Gautier continued to balk, he simply seized Andely and began construction, much to the archbishop’s fury. Berengaria believed that to defy the Church was to defy God, and she’d sought to convince her husband of that on one of his infrequent, brief visits. Joanna had been an uncomfortable witness. Richard had seemed willing to humor Berengaria when she took him to task for his Good Friday fighting, but as soon as she broached the subject of Andely and his dispute with the archbishop, his temper had quickly kindled. They’d continued their argument in private, but the coolness between them when Richard departed told Joanna that they’d not resolved their differences.

The game had ended, for it was too hot even for youthful enthusiasm. Fernando was now pushing Anna in a garden swing, and she shrieked with laughter as she soared higher and higher. Joanna half expected such behavior to offend Berengaria’s Spanish sensibilities, but she continued to watch with a smile, happy enough to overlook minor breaches of decorum. “Fernando says he was well treated at the imperial court,” she confided to Joanna. “I almost think he enjoyed his time in Germany.”

Joanna thought he might have, indeed, for he was young, handsome, and charming, and she suspected he’d not often slept alone. Berengaria was continuing to speak about Fernando, saying he was very surprised to hear of Sancho’s marriage. Joanna had been surprised, too, by the Navarrese king’s recent wedding to the fifteen-year-old daughter of Raimond de St Gilles, for there had long been bad blood between Toulouse and Navarre. She was about to tease Berengaria about having Raimond as a family member when she caught movement from the corner of her eye and turned to see her Welsh cousin coming up the path. Mariam was not with him, and the expression on Morgan’s face told Joanna that their visit had not gone well. When she beckoned, he hesitated, but then joined them, gallantly kissing her hand, bowing to Berengaria, and smiling at Dame Beatrix; Morgan’s manners were always beyond reproach.

“You did not get Mariam to change her mind about marriage?” Joanna said sympathetically, and he shook his head in frustration.

“She is so stubborn!” He muttered something in Welsh that they did not understand, but it sounded like an obscenity. “I am at my wit’s end,” he confessed, “for she refuses to listen to reason. She respects your opinion, my lady. Can you not get her to see that her refusal makes no sense?”

“Ah, Morgan . . . I am on your side in this, but I do not want to meddle—” Joanna got no further, as Dame Beatrix was laughing outright and Berengaria was smiling, while Morgan chivalrously but unsuccessfully attempted to keep a straight face. Joanna couldn’t help smiling herself. “Well, I may have been known to meddle occasionally,” she admitted. “But in truth, Morgan, I have already urged Mariam to accept your offer of marriage, to no avail.”

Morgan’s shoulders slumped, for Joanna had been his last hope. “I will be leaving on the morrow,” he said, thanking them again for their hospitality. He half expected them to urge him to stay longer, but they were nodding understandingly.

“I expect that you need to get back to the siege at Aumale,” Joanna said, to his surprise.

“You heard about the siege?”

She nodded. “Well, only that the French king had arrived at the castle with an army. I just assumed that Richard will race to the rescue and Philippe will flee the way he always does, like a rabbit with hounds on his heels.”

Morgan was quiet for a moment, deciding how much to tell them. He finally decided upon the truth, for it was best that they know Aumale would be a very sensitive subject with Richard for the foreseeable future. “Actually, the king already attempted to raise the siege and failed,” he said, and almost smiled at their expressions of stunned disbelief. Not that he blamed them; he could not remember himself the last time Richard had suffered a military defeat.

“When we arrived at Aumale, we saw that we were outnumbered and the French siege camp was so well entrenched that the king’s first instinct was to back away. But he felt honor-bound to do all he could for the trapped garrison, and so he led an attack on the camp, only to be driven off.”

The women were silent, digesting this startling turn of events. “That must have been difficult for him to accept,” Berengaria said at last, in what Morgan thought was a classic understatement.

“It was, my lady. He intends to make another attempt as soon as he gathers more troops. Whilst waiting for them, he went off to besiege Gaillon Castle, which is held by Philippe’s routier captain, Cadoc.” At that moment, he saw Mariam entering the far end of the garden and he scowled, thinking that he ought to ride away for good; why pine over a woman who did not want him?

Mariam had halted at the sight of Morgan, and Joanna sought to dispel the sudden tension by snatching at the first topic to come to mind—the recent marriage of the French king to a German duke’s daughter, Agnes of Meran. Since the Pope had adamantly refused to recognize the divorce that Philippe had procured from the Bishop of Beauvais and other compliant French prelates, this remarriage had created almost as much of a scandal as Philippe’s repudiation of Ingeborg. Fernando and Anna had approached in time to hear Joanna’s remark and an animated discussion now ensued about Philippe, Ingeborg, and Agnes, who was acknowledged as queen only at the French court. None of them could understand why Agnes’s male relatives had been willing to make such a match, knowing she’d be viewed as Philippe’s concubine throughout the rest of Christendom. Fernando had just made a bawdy jest about Philippe and Agnes’s wedding night, earning himself a mildly reproving look from his elder sister, when a servant approached to murmur a few words in Joanna’s ear.

“Good heavens,” she blurted out, so great was her surprise. “Mercadier has just ridden in!”

Berengaria frowned, for she shared the view of routiers as lowborn killers. It troubled her greatly that her husband had admitted a man like Mercadier into his inner circle, that he showed the routier such favor. He was Lord of Beynac now, for Richard had given him the lands of a Périgord lord who’d died without an heir, and he’d even married into the local aristocracy, wedding the sister of the Seigneur of Lesparre. But to much of their world, he would always remain the scarred, brutal outsider, one of the Devil’s own.

Yet there was no way they could have refused to receive him; he was Richard’s most trusted general. Berengaria and Joanna rose to their feet, waiting for him to be ushered out into the garden, wondering how he’d even known they were at Le Mans, and wondering, too, what he wanted. Morgan was of no help; all he could tell them was that Richard had sent Mercadier into Berry last month to deal with a troublesome lord. Not all of them were disconcerted by Mercadier’s unexpected arrival. Fernando was intrigued, for the routier’s notoriety had reached as far as Navarre, and Anna was excited to finally meet a man so often spoken of as the Antichrist.

As Mercadier sauntered toward them, Joanna took the lead in making him welcome, knowing she’d be more convincing than her sister-in-law. She’d met him at Lisieux, so she knew what to expect. The other women did not and stared with morbid fascination at the livid, satanic scar and eerie, colorless eyes as opaque as stone. He bowed correctly, for he’d been in Richard’s service long enough to have any rough edges smoothed away, but Joanna thought he was a wolf masquerading as a domestic dog. “I apologize for intruding upon you, Madames,” he told the queens, “but the king’s messenger who found me in Berry said that Sir Morgan was with you in Le Mans, and I was instructed to bring him back with me.”

“Of course,” Morgan said promptly, pleased that Richard wanted him to take part in the second attack upon the French. “Are we to meet the king at Aumale?”

“You have not heard then? The king was wounded at the siege of Gaillon Castle.”

There were gasps from the women and they were not reassured when Mercadier told them what little he knew—that Richard had been struck in the knee by a crossbow bolt shot from the battlements by Philippe’s routier captain, Cadoc. If infection set in, even a minor injury could quickly become life-threatening, and the wound had apparently been serious enough for Richard to summon Mercadier back from his
chevauchée
in Berry.

As Joanna continued to pelt the routier with questions he could not answer, a shaken Berengaria sat down on the closest bench. She’d long feared that she’d be a young widow, yet in the past, she’d not expected to be one of the last to know. She did not hesitate, though, when Joanna said she would accompany Mercadier and Morgan on the morrow, for she knew a wife’s duty. Her place was with her husband in his time of need—whether he wanted her there or not.