Minna carefully set her burden upon the table, smiling fondly at the man reclining in the window seat. Henry looked younger in sleep, piercing hawk’s gaze veiled by golden lashes, mouth curling up at the corners in a dream-smile. He was usually too fair to tan. But he’d passed the entire spring and summer in the saddle, and his face was evenly sun-browned, aside from an incongruous pale strip that had been shadowed by his helmet’s nasal guard.
“How bone-weary he looks,” Minna said softly. “Now that he has made a truce with the French king, you must insist that he stay in Rouen for at least a fortnight and take his ease, Madame.”
“To get him to rest, I’d have to slip a sleeping potion into his wine.”
Minna chuckled. “Even as a little lad, he was a veritable whirlwind of motion, never sitting still unless he was tied to the chair.”
“I remember your threatening to do that more than once,” Henry said, without opening his eyes, and Minna matched his grin with one of her own, protesting that she’d done no such thing. Maude watched in bemusement, for she’d never bantered with her sons, never fully understood Henry’s humor, considering it to be-like his infamous Angevin temper-one of his father’s more dubious bequests. To Maude, life was far too serious to be laughed at.
Minna had begun talking about Henry’s attack in July upon the castle and town of Chaumont, where the French king had stored his arsenal. Maude shared Minna’s pride in Henry’s feat, for it had been a remarkable achievement. He had lured the castle garrison out to meet his frontal assault while he sent a band of Welsh mercenaries to enter the town through a channel of the River Troesne. The resulting victory had been a dramatic triumph for Henry and a great humiliation for the French king. But Maude had contented herself with a “Well done,” whereas Minna was so lavish in her praise that she made Henry sound like the most brilliant battle commander since the days of Julius Caesar. After listening impatiently for several moments, Maude reclaimed control of the conversation by asking Henry if all had gone as planned at Andeley.
“Indeed it did,” Henry said gravely, although his eyes were agleam with silent laughter, for he understood his mother far better than she understood him. Andeley had been evacuated of all its citizens, the town abandoned to the approaching French army. The scheme had been hatched by the Count of Flanders and Maude, who’d persuaded Henry that the French king needed a sop for the debacle at Chaumont. Henry had been skeptical, for he’d never been overly concerned himself with saving face and could not imagine gaining satisfaction from such an empty victory. But the count and Maude had accurately assessed the depths of French mortification, and once Andeley had been sacked by his army, Louis and his advisers offered a truce. Henry had been quite willing to accept, for he had rebellious barons still to be subdued in Brittany and Aquitaine. And so the war had come to a mutually satisfactory if ironic end, with the French king applying the balm of Andeley to soothe his bloodied pride and Henry getting the time he needed to put out fires in other corners of his vast empire. As for the unhappy townspeople of Andeley, they had their lives and the dubious consolation that whenever elephants fought, it was invariably the mice underfoot who were trampled first.
“You read men well, Mother,” Henry said now, giving her the compliment she craved while thinking that this was a skill she’d unfortunately learned late in life. Had she not misjudged the English temperament so abysmally, she’d not have been chased out of London by her own subjects. “My truce with Louis is supposed to endure until Easter next. It will be interesting to see if it lasts that long.”
Maude nodded somberly. “Where are you off to next, Henry… Brittany?”
“I hope not,” he said with feeling, for he considered the Breton realm to be a king’s quagmire. Nothing was ever resolved, troubles merely deferred. It was more than ten years since Duke Conan had overthrown his mother’s husband, Eudo, Viscount of Porhoet, sworn allegiance to Henry, and been recognized in turn as Brittany’s duke. Conan had proved unable to control the volatile, strong-willed Bretons, though, and Henry had grown weary of having to put down their rebellions. He’d thought he’d solved the problems posed by Brittany last summer by deposing Conan and betrothing Conan’s daughter to his young son Geoffrey. But the Breton lords had rallied around Conan’s one-time rival, Eudo of Porhoet, amid reports of spreading mayhem and bloodshed.
“The Bretons are as hardheaded as the Welsh,” Henry complained. “But after campaigning all year in Auvergne and the Vexin, I’d like a chance to catch my breath ere I have to head back to Brittany.” He also had it in mind to bring Rosamund Clifford over for a clandestine visit, as only the Lord God Himself knew when he’d be able to return to England.
He glanced away, no longer meeting Maude’s gaze, for he was determined to keep her in ignorance of his plans, knowing she’d disapprove. She’d occasionally displayed a disconcerting ability to discern when he’d sinned, and he could only attribute it to some uncanny maternal instinct, as she’d always scorned gossip. She was regarding him pensively now, dark eyes too probing for his comfort. He’d been shocked to find her so frail, to see how much ground she’d lost since his last visit. His brain knew that she’d reached the advanced age of sixty-five and her health was failing; his heart still saw her as the fearless woman who’d once escaped a castle siege by walking right through the enemy lines under cover of darkness and a swirling snowstorm.
He was right to be wary, for Maude did sense that he was keeping something from her. She suspected it concerned Eleanor, who remained in England months after giving birth to John, a land for which she’d never shown much fondness. “I finally heard from Ranulf,” she said at last, watching closely for his reaction.
His eyes flickered, no more than that. But Minna took the hint for what it was, a signal that Maude wanted to discuss matters of family, and found a pretext to excuse herself. As the door closed behind her, Maude slumped in her chair, allowing Henry to position a cushion behind her back. “It was not much of a letter,” she said, “notable mainly for all that it left unsaid. I suppose he wanted to reassure me that he was still amongst the living. Henry… you’ve had no word from him?”
“No.”
She suppressed a sigh, for she grieved over this estrangement between the two people she loved best, but her attempts at mediation had been rebuffed by both men. They would have to find their way back to each other in God’s Time, not hers. “When is Eleanor coming home?” she asked instead, and saw the wine in his cup splash as his hand jerked involuntarily.
“Soon, I expect,” he hedged. “She had much to do, after all, to prepare for Tilda’s marriage to Henry the Lion. We want to send our lass off with a wardrobe to bedazzle even the jaded courtiers at the German court.”
Maude forbore to comment that Eleanor could as easily have arranged for Tilda’s departure on this side of the Channel. That there was trouble in his marriage, she did not doubt. “You’ve been apart for many months, Henry. Do you not miss Eleanor?”
For a fleeting moment, he looked startled. “Of course I do!” And he did, for his absent wife was more than a sultry bedmate, a shrewd confidante. She was good company, too, and he missed their bawdy banter, her irreverent humor, the unspoken understanding that had been theirs since their first meeting in the great hall of Louis’s Paris palace. She was as close as he hoped to come to a kindred spirit in this world, but unfortunately she was a kindred spirit with a just grievance. He ought to have been more careful, should never have brought Rosamund to Woodstock like that. How could Eleanor not take that amiss? Who knew her pride better than he? It would be no easy task to placate her, and he could not help feeling a certain relief that she’d chosen to extend her stay in England. At least she’d had time for her temper to cool and he’d had time to acknowledge he was in the wrong about Rosamund. He ought to have been more circumspect.