A King's Ransom (59 page)

The bedding revelries showed no signs of winding down, and he was already growing bored. He’d left Ursula behind in Paris and regretted it now, for this was a night when he wanted a warm female body in his bed. Fortunately, that was an easy need to satisfy; a king’s son never went hungry. Thinking that Ingeborg was a delightful little morsel compared to his own wife, a great heiress whom he tended to forget unless she was standing right in front of him, he pushed his way toward the door. The night was young and he was not yet drunk enough to exorcise his ghosts.

J
OHN AWOKE
with the greatest reluctance. Squinting up at his squire, he flinched from the bright, blinding light and then groaned, for his head was spinning and his stomach was roiling as if he’d spent the night aboard ship in a monster gale. Beside him, his bedmate was stirring, too, saying, “Good morrow, my lord,” so cheerfully that he realized she was one of those odious souls who actually liked to rise with the sun. “The building had better be on fire, Giles,” he muttered. But the boy persevered, for all in John’s household were accustomed to his early-morning bad temper, reminding him that Lady Ingeborg’s coronation was scheduled for noon. John decided he could quite happily go to his grave without seeing Philippe’s bride crowned and he burrowed back under the coverlets with another groan. He remembered little about the woman in his bed, but he thought it was safe to assume she was a whore and not a nun, so he mumbled, “Pay her, Giles,” before pulling the pillow over his head.

When he awoke again hours later, he called at once for the herbal drink that he’d often used to combat these morning-after woes: a mixture of pennyroyal, betony, and peppermint in white wine. He felt marginally better once he’d forced it down and let Giles help him dress. He was debating whether he ought to go back to bed, when the door banged open with enough force to make him wince. “Hellfire and damnation, Durand, must you make enough noise to awaken the dead?”

The knight grinned. “I’m glad to see you’re finally up, for I have news you’ll want to hear straightaway.”

“Unless you’ve come to tell me that Heinrich has agreed to turn Richard over to Philippe, I am not interested.”

Durand was unfazed by the grumbling, for he knew how much John enjoyed gossip. “Not as good as that, I grant you. But you’ll still find it of interest. The coronation went as planned, although Philippe was squirming like a man with a stick up his arse during the entire ceremony, looking dour even for him. Some of us had begun to joke that his little Danish tart must not have been to his taste. Yet no one expected what came next. He announced that the marriage was over and he planned to seek an annulment as soon as possible.”

“He did
what
?” John stared at the other man, incredulous. “Is this a joke, Durand? Why would he do that?”

“The entire court is asking that, too, my lord. When one of the Danish envoys explained what had just happened to the bewildered little bride, she looked as if she’d been hit on the head by a hammer. Needless to say, the Danes are outraged and Philippe’s clerics are dismayed, seeing a God-awful fight looming with the papacy, since no one thinks he has grounds for annuling the marriage.”

John started to shake his head, then decided that was not a good idea. “And I missed all that? Just my luck.” He sat down on the bed, fighting back laughter. “Philippe must have gone stark, raving mad. You’ve seen the girl, Durand. Would you kick her out of
your
bed?”

“Not bloody likely. I’d have been glad to swive her for him if he was not up to it,” Durand said, with another grin.

John grinned, too, marveling that Philippe, of all men, should have blundered so badly. For one so cautious and calculating, this defied belief. “That must truly have been the wedding night from Hell!”

R
ICHARD ENJOYED GREATER LIBERTY
once he’d agreed to Heinrich’s exorbitant terms in late June. While he was still kept under surveillance, it was no longer so blatantly intrusive. Heinrich had even agreed to let him go hawking occasionally and Henry Falconarius, one of the royal falconers, hastened to Worms with several goshawks and a favorite peregrine falcon. And he had a steady stream of welcome visitors. He took great pleasure in the company of his friends and was grateful that so many churchmen and highborn vassals would make that long journey from England or Normandy. He knew it impressed the Germans and reinforced his status, showing Heinrich that even as a captive king, he retained the loyalty of his subjects. For he never forgot for a moment how precarious his position still was, at the mercy of a man who could decide on the morrow to accept the French king’s offer.

If he’d had any doubts that he was balancing on the thinnest of wires, like the rope dancers so popular at local fairs, they were dispelled in mid-August by Heinrich’s unexpected arrival at Worms. While their meeting was outwardly amiable, it swirled with undercurrents deep enough to drown in. Heinrich began by giving Richard unwelcome news: after being stricken with a serious illness, Archbishop Bruno of Cologne had resigned his archbishopric, choosing to spend his remaining days as a simple monk at the monastery in Altenberg. Richard did his best to hide his dismay, for the elderly archbishop had been one of his strongest supporters. Now he could only hope that the monks would elect a prelate who’d also be sympathetic to his plight.

Heinrich was not one for making idle conversation and he soon revealed the purpose of his visit. The Bishop of Bath had been grievously disappointed to learn that the Christchurch monks had disregarded Richard’s wishes and elected Hubert Walter as the new Archbishop of Canterbury, he reported, adding that he’d been surprised, too, by their defiance. Richard expressed his own surprise and offered his sympathies for the bishop’s thwarted hopes, all the while bracing for whatever was coming next.

“I was sure that you’d share our disappointment,” Heinrich said smoothly. “So I daresay you’ll be pleased to hear that there is a way to compensate my cousin for his loss. He tells me he wants to annex the abbey at Glastonbury to his See of Bath.”

“Does he, now?” It took all of Richard’s self-control to remain impassive, for Glastonbury was one of the most important English abbeys, and since the recent discovery in the monastery cemetery of the graves of King Arthur and his queen, Guinevere, it had become an even more popular pilgrimage site. He could well understand why Savaric wanted to get his greedy hands on such a prize. “I doubt that the monks would take kindly to that, my lord emperor.”

Heinrich dismissed the monks’ objections with a negligent wave of his hand. “Savaric will deal with their complaints. What he proposes is that he grant you the city of Bath in exchange for the abbey, with the two churches united as one. I told him that I felt confident we could count upon your cooperation, my lord king. So . . . can we?”

Richard wondered if Savaric was truly so stupid that he did not realize there’d be a day of reckoning for this bit of banditry. He did not doubt that Heinrich knew it, but his concern was not with his foolish cousin’s future. He cared only about reminding his prisoner that he was one, whatever amenities and civilities he now enjoyed. Richard returned the emperor’s smile, although under the table, his hands had clenched into involuntary fists. “Of course,” he said, with a nonchalance that cost him dearly. “We are allies, after all.”

U
NDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES,
Richard was not looking forward to his thirty-sixth birthday on September 8; why would a prisoner celebrate one more day of captivity? To his surprise, it turned out to be an enjoyable occasion. The Bishop of Worms insisted upon hosting a festive birthday dinner for his royal guest and afterward, he engaged several of the German minnesingers to perform for them. Music always raised Richard’s spirits, and he was in a mellow mood even before the arrival of a messenger from one of his new allies, the Duke of Brabant.

The duke’s news could not have been better. The newly elected Archbishop of Cologne was the provost Adolf von Altena, who’d been very friendly with Richard since their first meeting during his trial at Speyer. He could not have asked for a more effective champion than Adolf, and Richard felt as if he’d been given an unexpected birthday gift.

After the meal and the entertainment, they went out into the palace gardens. Some of the men began to play a boisterous game of quoits, throwing horseshoes at a wooden hob. Richard was sitting on a turf bench, watching the game and bantering with Morgan and Warin Fitz Gerald when he was given a letter from the German emperor. At the sight of the imperial seal, it was as if the sun had suddenly gone behind a cloud, for any communication from Heinrich could not be good. Feeling as if he were about to lift a rock and find a scorpion lurking underneath, he broke the seal. Those closest to him also tensed, and were relieved when Richard looked up from the letter, for he seemed startled, not dismayed.

“Some of you may have heard that the French king agreed to wed the sister of the King of Denmark. My lady mother and my justiciars believe that Philippe hoped to get the use of the Danish fleet for an invasion of England. If that was indeed his motivation for this marriage, he has a most peculiar way of courting the Danes, for he disavowed his bride the day after the wedding.”

This astonishing news halted the quoits game and they clustered around him to hear more. Returning to the letter, Richard read rapidly and by the time he was done, he was grinning. “According to the emperor’s sources at the French court,” he said, careful to accord Heinrich the respect due his rank since there were Germans present, “Philippe privately contended that he’d not consummated the marriage, but he was reminded that nonconsummation alone is not enough for an annulment. His advisers must also have pointed out that if he made such a claim, people would naturally assume that he’d been unable to pay the marital debt.” Richard had been circumspect in his choice of words out of deference to the Bishop of Worms and the other clerics, but as he glanced up, he saw that there was no need for discretion. They were obviously as amused as his own men that the French king had gotten himself into such an improbable, embarrassing predicament.

Richard’s kindhearted chaplain, Anselm, felt pity for the repudiated bride and asked what would become of her now.

“Philippe had her taken from Amiens and she is being held at the monastery of St-Maur-des-Fossés near Paris. She is showing admirable spirit, balking at being sent back to Denmark like defective goods. She insists the marriage was indeed consummated and they are man and wife in the eyes of God and the Church. But the emperor’s spies—I mean his sources,” Richard corrected, with another grin, “say that Philippe plans to convene a council of bishops and barons to argue that the marriage is invalid because he and Ingeborg are related within the forbidden degree. Although that is not so, I’d wager the French bishops will pretend to believe it.” No longer smiling, he said, “And, of course, that bastard Beauvais is ready and willing to do Philippe’s bidding in this, for perjury is the least of his sins.”

There was no topic of conversation after that except the French king’s marital woes, and the jests got bawdier and cruder once the bishop and archdeacons departed. It was well known that Philippe had an aversion to horses, and men now joked that he must be particularly skittish at mounting mares. It was suggested that Philippe’s crown jewels were so meager that Ingeborg had been unable to find them, or that her first sight of a naked man may have stirred mirth instead of desire, especially if his flag was flying at half-mast. Warin speculated whether Philippe could have discovered she was not a maiden, and evoked loud laughter by adding, “Of course, would he have been able to tell?” Several wondered whether a lack of virginity could invalidate a marriage, and looked disappointed when Longchamp said it could not. But Morgan turned all heads in his direction when he said that it was one of the grounds for dissolution of a marriage under Welsh law.