“And what of your nephews’ claims?” Philippe demanded. “What of Constance’s sons? Are you truly going to stand aside whilst they lose their patrimony, Louis?”
Simon de Montfort thought there was a more compelling argument to be made than that. Raymond de St Gilles, Count of Toulouse, was a vassal of the French Crown. Louis had a legal responsibility to come to his aid; their society was predicated upon the mutual obligations of vassal and liege lord. But Louis seemed more distressed by his nephews’ plight. When he turned from the window, his misery was laid bare for all to see.
“I do not want to jeopardize my alliance with England,” he said plaintively, and Simon de Montfort rolled his eyes, thinking sourly that what Louis did not want to jeopardize was the chance to see his daughter as Queen of England one day.
“Is that what you told the Angevin?” Robert shook his head in disgust. “Little wonder he is now halfway to Toulouse!”
“I told him that I could not countenance the disinheriting of my sister’s sons.” Even Louis’s forbearance was not inexhaustible, and the look he now gave his brother was a mixture of wounded dignity and weary exasperation. “I fear that he did not believe me, though.”
“I’d say that was a safe wager.” This acerbic observation came from Theobald, Count of Blois, Louis’s future son-in-law, plight-trothed to Louis and Eleanor’s nine-year-old daughter, Alix. His elder brother, Henry, Count of Champagne, was plight-trothed to Alix’s older sister, fourteen-year-old Marie, and both young men were amongst the English king’s most implacable foes, for King Stephen was their uncle.
Louis’s mouth tightened. “I have no intention of abandoning my sister and her children.”
As sincere as that declaration sounded, his audience took little comfort from it, for the French king was the least warlike of monarchs; his attempt to punish Henry and Eleanor for their marriage had been a fiasco, with Henry needing just six weeks to send the French army reeling back across the border.
“So what mean you to do?” Robert scoffed. “Pray for their deliverance?”
“Yes, I shall pray. But I shall do more than that,” Louis said, so stoutly that he raised both eyebrows and hopes.
“You have a plan in mind?” Robert sounded skeptical. “Well, tell us!”
Louis did.
The response was not what he’d expected. Instead of congratulations and approval, he gained only blank looks. “Is that it?” Philippe asked at last. “That is your grand plan to thwart the Angevin?”
When Louis nodded, Robert spoke for them all. “God save Toulouse.”
“He will,” Louis said. “He will.”
The day was sweltering and the dust clouds churned up by the English army were visible for miles. Chestnut trees drooped in the heat, as did the men. They were more than twelve hundred feet above sea level, riding across windswept plateaus brown with bracken and wilted high grass. At dusk, they mounted the crest of a hill and had their first glimpse of Cahors, ensconced in a loop of the River Lot far below them.
Drawing rein, they gazed down upon the city. “Shrewsbury,” Hywel said softly, and Ranulf nodded somberly, for like that Marcher town, Cahors lay within a horseshoe curve of wide, swift-flowing water. Surrounded on three sides by a natural moat, the city’s only land approach was from the north, and it was well fortified by stone ramparts. Until now, they had advanced almost without challenge, castles and towns yielding to their superior show of force. But Cahors was no ripe pear for the picking. For this prize, there would be a price demanded, one paid in blood.
“Well?” Henry asked, and his herald slowly shook his head.
“They refused to surrender, my liege.”
Henry hadn’t truly expected any other answer, even though he’d offered generous terms. But he felt a sharp pang of disappointment, nonetheless. “So be it,” he said, gazing toward the city walls. “We attack at dawn.”
Thomas Becket was appraising their target, too. “I will tell the others,” he said. “I hope you will give me the honor of leading the first assault.” His face was deeply tanned, his eyes crinkling at the corners, filled with light. He was immaculately turned out, as always, wearing a finely woven slit surcoat over a chain-mail hauberk that glinted like silver in the last rays of the sun. Ranulf had never seen him as animated as on this campaign. He was showing an unexpected flair for soldiering and an equally unforeseen enthusiasm for his new duties.
Henry had been surprised, too, by his chancellor’s zeal, joking that Thomas had turned their campaign to oust Raymond de St Gilles from Toulouse into a holy quest to free Jerusalem from the infidels. But he made no jests now in response to Becket’s request. He merely nodded, then turned away from Cahors, heading back toward their encampment.
Ranulf, Hywel, and Rainald stayed where they were, sitting their horses on a rise of ground overlooking the city, which was on a war footing, gates barred, sentries patrolling the battlements. Those who’d wanted to flee were already gone; those remaining were making ready for the suffering of a long siege.
Hywel shifted in the saddle, watching as Henry’s stallion broke into a gallop. “Your nephew does not look nearly as eager to spill blood on the morrow as his chancellor.”
“Harry finds pleasure in many places, but not on the battlefield. He much prefers to get what he wants by other means, although he’ll do what he must if it comes to that. As for Thomas, he does seem keen to make a name for himself on the field; he brought fully seven hundred knights at his own expense, which has to be a staggering cost. Passing strange, for he never seemed to me to be a man ruled by his passions.”
“Your chancellor strikes me,” Hywel said, “as a man who throws himself totally into any role he undertakes. How else explain why he could have well served two such different masters as the Archbishop of Canterbury and the King of England? I understand the archbishop is a saintly soul, and not even the king’s mother would claim that could be said of him. Yet these utterly dissimilar men hold Becket in the highest esteem possible. Interesting, is it not?”
Rainald kneed his mount closer. “Are you saying Becket is a hypocrite?” he asked, and looked let down when Hywel shook his head.
“No… a chameleon.”
“What in hellfire is that?”
“A small lizard that possesses a truly remarkable talent. It can change its color to reflect its surroundings.”
Rainald considered that and then nodded emphatically. “By God, you’re right, Hywel,” he declared, mangling the Welshman’s name so atrociously that Hywel looked away to hide a smile. “Think on it, Ranulf,” he insisted, glancing toward his younger brother. “Whenever Harry wants Becket to act as the king’s envoy, he boasts a silvered tongue and a statesman’s fine manners. Then when Harry needs him to raise money, he counts every coin like an accursed moneylender. And now that he rides with the king to subdue our enemies, he fancies himself another Roland. I daresay he even sleeps with his sword!”
“I believe his weapon of choice is a mace,” Ranulf pointed out, “in deference to the Church’s stricture against ‘smiting with the sword.’ But it seems to me, Hywel, that you are indeed accusing the man of hypocrisy, for are you not questioning his sincerity? Unfairly so, I believe.”
Hywel looked amused. “Your loyalty to your friends does you credit. I hope you are so quick to defend my sins, too. But for your friend the chancellor, I was not impugning his sincerity. A chameleon cannot be faulted for following his own nature, after all.”