“I will be there straightaway,” Eleanor assured the doctor. “Keep him in bed even if you have to bind him hand and foot.” She drew Will aside, then, for a brief colloquy, praising his honor while reminding him that any guardian of Richard’s needed eyes in the back of his head and a strong sense of impending disaster.
Raoul had lingered and fell in step beside her as she moved away from Will. “That was a most impressive maternal lecture,” he said admiringly. “No one listening to it would ever guess that you’d committed the very same sin when you were… twelve, thirteen?”
Eleanor gave him a speculative, sidelong glance and then an unrepentant smile. “Twelve,” she admitted. “I’d just as soon you forbore to mention that to Richard, though, Uncle. He needs inducements to mischief like a dog needs fleas.”
“I am a safe repository for all of your guilty secrets,” Raoul proclaimed, with mock gravity. “Even the one I stumbled onto by mere chance this past week.”
“And what secret would that be?”
“That you have a spy at the French court.”
“Do I, indeed?”
Raoul nodded, watching her with a complacent smile. “You are asking yourself how I could know that. The answer is very simple. Spying is a demanding profession and the price of failure can be high, indeed. So the few who excel at their craft are much in demand. Your man is one of the best. I ought to know, for I have made use of his services myself from time to time.”
Eleanor shrugged, untroubled by Raoul’s discovery. She had a far more extensive surveillance system than Raoul-or even Henry-realized, and her French spy was only one of many irons in the fire. “You are right,” she said, “about his abilities. His last visit to the French court was particularly productive. It seems that the Countess of Boulogne is playing the spy, too, these days. She recently warned Louis that Harry met with envoys of the Holy Roman Emperor.”
Raoul’s dark eyes gleamed, for he liked nothing better than being privy to secrets. “And of course poor Louis panicked, sure that meant Harry is hip-deep in conspiracy with Frederick, making ready to recognize the emperor’s puppet Pope.” He paused deliberately. “So.. is he?”
Eleanor’s smile was cynical. “Harry likes to keep his foes off balance. I rather doubt that he is seriously entertaining the idea of accepting Frederick’s lackey as Christ’s Vicar, but he finds that a useful weapon to wield in his infernal feuding with the Church’s newest saint.”
Raoul correctly interpreted that as a sardonic reference to Thomas Becket. “That raises an intriguing question,” he observed. “Is the Countess of Boulogne playing the role of a double spy here, passing on information that Harry wants the French court-and the papacy-to have?”
“That thought sounds devious enough to have been Harry’s. But if so, the countess is Harry’s pawn, not his accomplice. She loathes him, you see.”
“Why?” Almost at once, though, a memory stirred, allowing Raoul to answer his own question. “Of course… she is the usurper king’s daughter!”
“I suspect she has a fresher grievance than Stephen and Maude’s squabble over the English crown. Or have you forgotten that Harry plucked her out of a nunnery to wed a husband he’d handpicked for her?”
As little as Raoul liked to defend Henry Fitz Empress, he could not find fault with that particular maneuver. “Well, he could hardly stand by whilst Boulogne fell into unfriendly hands, could he? Great heiresses ought not to take the veil, for it is a waste of valuable resources.”
“Like having a prize broodmare and refusing to breed her?”
Raoul laughed loudly. “I see marriage has not dulled your claws any!”
“Nor my wits, Uncle.”
As much as Raoul enjoyed bantering with Eleanor, he had a compelling question to put to her. “I heard a rather remarkable rumor in Paris-that your husband has a grand scheme afoot to partition his domains amongst his sons and get Louis to make a formal recognition of their rights.”
“Is that so surprising?” she parried. “You know Harry has long wanted to have Hal crowned in his lifetime and doubtless would have done so years ago if not for his quarrel with Becket.”
“Yes, I know about that. I know, too, that it was a highly controversial proposal, one that sent many of his most trusted advisers into a panic, for there is no precedent in English history for crowning a king’s son whilst the king still lives.”
Eleanor shrugged. “Harry has always seen himself as Angevin, not English, and such coronations are known in his continental domains.”
“But why make provisions for the younger sons during his lifetime? Did you happen to plant that particular seed, Eleanor?”
“No… I merely did what I could to nurture it once it had taken root.”
Raoul gazed at her in perplexity. “I understand why you would want to see Richard recognized as the heir to Aquitaine. But why would Harry want to see such a division of his empire?”
“Harry is a practical man. He knows full well how difficult it would be for Hal to control dominions that stretch from the Scots border to the Mediterranean Sea. If Richard inherits Aquitaine and Geoffrey takes Brittany, that still leaves Hal with England, Anjou, and Normandy. Moreover, he naturally wants to provide for all his sons; what father would not?”
“Why do it now, though? Does he not realize the dangers inherent in such a plan? What is to keep his enemies from playing his sons off against one another-or even against him?”
“You sound as if you assume there will be an actual transfer of power, Uncle. Knowing Harry as you do, how can you be so naive? Harry could learn to fly easier than he could learn to delegate authority. He’ll be seeking to run his sons’ lives and kingdoms until he draws his last breath. And if there is a way for him to rule from the grave, you may be sure he’ll try to find it.”
Raoul did not enjoy being called naive; to a lord of Aquitaine, that was the ultimate insult. Scowling at his niece, he said, “Of course I know Harry intends to keep the lads on a tight rein. I am not a fool, Eleanor. And neither is your high-handed husband. Surely it must have occurred to him that his sons will not be satisfied for long with merely the trappings of power? At fourteen, Hal might be content as a puppet king, but will he at twenty? I can only assume that Harry has some guileful stratagem in mind. What is it, though?”
“If you figure it out, be sure to let me know,” Eleanor said, blandly and mendaciously. It was simple, really, so simple that others overlooked it in their haste to ascribe complicated, calculating motives to an undeniably complex man. A man who’d been scarred by his prolonged and bitter struggle for the English crown. A man who loved his sons. A man who’d move Heaven and earth, if need be, to make sure they were not denied their rightful inheritance. Stephen was sixteen years dead, but not forgotten by Henry, never by Henry.
Eleanor could see the weaknesses inherent in Henry’s planning, for it was predicated upon the premise that he could control his destiny and that of those he loved, that he could mold and shape sons and wife to his will as if they were malleable clay, not flesh and blood and bone, with needs and hungers of their own. She had encouraged him in these protective, paternal instincts, knowing that she was no longer acting in his best interests. But she was not about to betray him to Raoul, to reveal that his “grand scheme” was motivated in great measure by a father’s fears.
They were nearing the great hall and she quickened her step, saying, “I hope Richard has not already bolted for freedom. He could have a broken leg and we’d still need to post a guard at his door to keep him bedridden. In that, he is his father’s son, for certes.”
Raoul hesitated only briefly and then said boldly, “But in all the ways that truly count, he is yours, Eleanor.”
She did not answer, but neither did she rebuke him, and that in itself was telling. He’d suspected for some time that she was now steering her own course, that the hand on Aquitaine’s helm was no longer Henry’s. She had stopped and was regarding him with a faint, feline hint of a smile, her eyes reflecting nothing but sunlight and sky, and he looked in vain for traces of his sister, a soft-spoken, gentle soul who’d lived quietly and died young, so very long ago.