“No, she joined me at Rouen last month and tarried to visit with my mother for another fortnight. As loath as she is to admit it, this pregnancy has not been an easy one. She tires easily and her nerves are so often on the raw that the babe she carries must be a hellraiser, for certes!”
“And Maude? Is she still ailing?” Rainald asked, and gnawed his lower lip when his nephew gave him a terse confirmation. Maude had never lacked for enemies, but the most insidious one was proving to be her own body, nurturing a foe that stole her breath, sapped her strength, and alarmed her loved ones. Her spirit still burned with a blue-white flame-Rainald had heard how wroth she’d been when Henry captured a messenger of Becket’s and put him to the knife to reveal his secrets-but few doubted that her mortal days were finite enough to count. Fumbling to cast out the shadow that had so suddenly fallen between them, Rainald brightened, remembering a choice bit of gossip he’d picked up in Wales.
“Guess who Owain Gwynedd is locking horns with nowadays? None other than Thomas Becket!”
Henry’s interest was immediate. “How so?”
“Well… the see of Bangor has been vacant for nigh on five years now,” Rainald began, and Henry was hard put to conceal his impatience, knowing his uncle could spin a tale out till the cows came home. “But of course you know that,” Rainald conceded, seeing those grey eyes narrow tellingly. “Owain wanted the position filled and he rashly wrote to Becket at Pontigny, asking if, during Becket’s exile, another prelate might consecrate Bangor’s bishop. Obviously, he did not consult Ranulf beforehand, for he’d have warned Owain that Becket’s vanity would never allow him to delegate even a scrap of authority. Becket sent a curt refusal, ordering that no election be held. But Owain is a man for getting his own way, too, and he arranged for his candidate to be elected and then sent him off to Ireland to be consecrated.”
He’d hoped that Henry might be amused by this flouting of Becket’s will; instead he scowled. “Ere war broke out, Owain approached me about filling the vacancy at Bangor with a man of his choosing, a monk of Bardsey. I refused, for I knew what he was about, trying to subvert English control over the diocese. So he thought to checkmate me with Becket, did he?”
“Well, it did not work,” Rainald reminded him mildly, putting aside the heretical thought that his nephew was no less jealous of his own prerogatives than Becket. “He may have his man at Bangor, but the Church will not recognize him. Moreover, he has made an enemy of Becket, who is suddenly showing great interest in Owain’s marriage to the Lady Cristyn, warning Owain that if the rumors of their kinship be true, she is no lawful wife and must be put aside.”
Henry’s eyes glittered. “I wish Owain better luck than my brother Will had,” he said, and Rainald realized that he had stepped into yet another snare. If truth be told, it was impossible to talk about Thomas Becket without blundering into one quagmire after another.
He began to speak at random about any subject that came to mind-the sudden death of the Earl of Essex last month at Chester, after their rout by the Welsh; Richard de Lucy’s professed intent to take the cross and go on pilgrimage to the Holy Land-knowing that there was a need to exorcise more than one ghost. It had been clumsy of him to make mention of Ranulf, sprinkling salt into an unhealed wound. He knew his nephew wanted to ask if he’d heard from Ranulf. He knew, too, that he would not ask. They were a pair, Harry and Ranulf, stubbornly keeping silent whilst their estrangement festered, each one unwilling to admit his own pain. Upon his return to England, he would write to his niece, he decided. If anyone could make peace between these two balky mules, surely it was Maud.
Richard de Lucy was approaching and Rainald welcomed him heartily; let de Lucy be the one to blunder into pitfalls for a while. Not that he would; de Lucy was the perfect royal servant, with diplomatic skills worthy of a Pope and loyalty that would put a dog to shame. When Henry informed him now that he must postpone his pilgrimage, instead journey to Rome to appeal Becket’s latest excommunications, the justiciar didn’t even blink, agreed so smoothly that Rainald had not a clue as to what he truly thought. Camouflaging another yawn, he watched as a courier was ushered across the hall toward them, and made ready to ask his nephew’s permission to retire for the evening.
But before he could, the messenger thrust a letter from Henry’s mother into his hands. Henry swiftly broke the seal, unfolded the parchment, and held it up toward the wall sconce above his head. Rainald squirmed on the seat, trying to ease his aching back. His eyelids had begun to droop again when his nephew drew a sudden, sibilant breath.
Rainald’s first fear was for Maude. “Is the news bad?”
Henry shook his head. “No… just unexpected. My mother says that Eleanor has left Rouen and rumor has it that she took ship at Barfleur for England.”
Rainald gaped, for that made no sense at all. Why would a woman brave a November Channel crossing whilst great with child? “Why would she do that? Did you not say that you were holding your Christmas court at Poitiers this year, to please her?”
Henry was frowning over the parchment again. Richard de Lucy was his usual inscrutable self, but Rainald was too puzzled for tact. “Surely Maude must be wrong. Why would Eleanor take it into her head of a sudden to go to England, now of all times?”
Henry glanced up sharply, then shrugged. “I have no idea, Uncle,” he said, “none at all.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
November 1166
English Channel
Petronilla sat up with a jerk, her heart racing. No night should have been as dark as this, and the cold was so damp and penetrating that it seemed to have seeped into her very bones. She was astonished that she’d fallen asleep, for although she’d been blessed with a strong stomach and rarely suffered from the seasickness that afflicted so many others, she loathed sea travel as much as any mortal could, feared it even more. Each time she set foot on a rolling, wet deck, she remembered the sinking of the White Ship. When it had struck a reef in Barfleur Harbor on a November night much like this one, more than three hundred souls had gone to God or the Devil, many of them highborn.
Their canvas tent was cramped and dank, the women huddled together for warmth. Gradually Petronilla could make out their hunched figures in the shadows. Few were sleeping and, as Petronilla sat up, one of her sister’s ladies moaned and retched weakly into a bucket. A stench filled the air and Petronilla wrinkled her nose; the tent was already befouled with the acrid smell of sweat and fear and vomit, stronger even than the pungent salt-brine tang of the sea.
“Aunt Petra…” A slender form swaddled in blankets stirred at Petronilla’s elbow and she patted the child’s shoulder. “Go back to sleep, Tilda. When you awaken, we’ll be in sight of Southampton.” God Willing. Her niece burrowed deeper into her nest of covers and, with the resilience of the very young, soon slept again. Petronilla did not understand what had possessed her sister to allow the girl to accompany them. Granted, Tilda would be departing in the coming year for her new life in Germany as the bride of Henry the Lion, Duke of Saxony and Bavaria, and she’d pleaded poignantly with Eleanor that they not be apart till then. Petronilla still thought the girl’s presence was a mistake. But her sister had ignored her arguments, and Petronilla knew from past experience that when Eleanor got the bit between her teeth, the only thing to do was to get out of the way.
A martyr on the cross of sisterly rivalry, Petronilla sighed and made herself as comfortable as she could on her pallet. Sleep would not come back, though. She was preternaturally aware of every night noise: the relentless creaking and groaning of the ship as it sank down into a trough, then fought its way to the crest of the next wave, the rhythmic slapping sound of waves against the hull, the flapping of the sail as the wind picked up, Tilda’s soft snoring, an occasional moan from one or another of the seasick women, muffled curses from unseen sailors. When she could endure the tossing and turning no longer, Petronilla slid away from Tilda and rose to her feet.