The Passionate Brood (24 page)

But Blondel stood absently pouring a cascade of familiar coins through his fingers, his eyes warm with memories. “I’ve seen them when they’ve penned their cattle and the evening shadows are lying across the South downs. They’ll lean on a gate and say, ‘That there bain’t a bad view.’ And what they really mean is, ‘That earth I’ve just furrowed and those fields where my beasts are pastured are the very heart of me, and all down the ages I’ll give my sons and my sons’ sons to defend it.’” Blondel knew well enough that his own sons would fight for it too, but because he had known Robin he grudged nothing to the land that was absorbing his ancestry.

And Berengaria, reaching out to it as the goal of her desire, said over and over during the next few days, “Richard and I will go home to England for Christmas.” Sometimes, however, she qualified it, thinking in the secret places of her heart, “
Iƒ that Cypriot bitch doesn’t interfere,
we shall go home together for Christmas.”

While Raymond was still scouring England helping Eleanor to raise her elder son’s ransom, John Plantagenet sat at ease before a leaping fire in Guildford Castle. Tired hounds sprawled at his feet, for the day’s hunting had been good. The firelight stabbed at first one ruby and then another in the circlet binding his ruddy hair and, because he had got rid of William of Ely, the Great Seal of the realm gleamed on his finger.

“He might almost be King!” thought Barbe of Chalus, rather overawed at the company in which he found himself. In Vienna and Paris—and even in Rome—he had been treated as a vassal rather than as a visitor. He had not expected England to be either so beautiful or so civilised. In fact, he had always wondered why so many European rulers had coveted the fog-ridden place. But his solitary ride from Dover had been a revelation. All the way from the coast he had seen prosperous towns and well kept priories. Because of the severe game laws, the autumn woods were well stocked with deer, and at sunset each manor looked like a delectable island marooned in a sea of red-gold rye. In a land left kingless for so long he had expected—and hoped—to find lawlessness bordering on civil war. But here were both order and resilience. Although the whole island must have been bled white to pay for a costly crusade and a king’s ransom, even the poorest serf, sweating to fill his lord’s granaries, seemed to bear his present hardships with an air of patient decency, as if someone he trusted had assured him that better times would come again.

Although this castle in the middle of the Surrey woods was a mere hunting lodge compared with Falaise or Gizors, there was a sort of careless dignity about the hall. Chalus looked round at the excellent tapestries and the silk standard which Avisa of Gloucester, his host’s meek Saxon wife, had dutifully embroidered with the single leopard rampant of a Plantagenet younger son. “You are very comfortable here,” he remarked, as one man of substance to another.

John yawned amiably, showing scant ceremony to his self-invited guest. “More comfortable than my adventurous brother at Triffels!” he agreed, with a grin. They had supped on wild boar and venison and sweet mulberry tart. The jug of good Kentish ale on the stool between them was almost empty and their speech less wary than it had been before the rest of the company withdrew.

Only Picot, the misshaped jester who was John’s shadow, was there to overhear. “Too comfortable to move!” he croaked, hovering round to refill their cups. His words might have meant little or much.

“I’ve a small son to think of now, you know,” said John.

“And I hear the ransom money is coming in more quickly than you—hoped?” probed Chalus.

“It’s that damned new brother-in-law of mine—coming over here like a whirlwind of efficiency,” complained his host. “Thank God with Richard shut up there’s no chance of Berengaria breeding.”

“Only bastards,” piped the lewd little hunchback, with a speculative eye on their guest.

“A Cypriot hostage your brother has been philandering with begged me to take her along to Triffels; so I left the little baggage on your brother’s doorstep and took care to let Berengaria know,” chuckled Chalus, betraying by his venom how little success he could have had in that quarter. “For all her chastity, she’s got plenty of spirit. So I don’t imagine there’ll be any inconvenient leopard cubs for a bit.”

“Good work!” approved John. “Then it appears you didn’t come here just for the hunting?”

But Chalus’s private motives were too disreputable to discuss even with John Plantagenet. So he merely remarked significantly, “I saw Philip as I came through Paris.”

John’s eyes narrowed calculatingly between their sandy lashes. He kicked at Picot’s unsuspecting rump, sending him sprawling among the sleeping dogs, and only laughed when a great wolf-hound snapped at his hand, biting it to the bone. “Get us some more ale, you misbegotten dolt, and then clear out!” he ordered.

When the poor, devoted fool had limped away, leaving a trail of blood across the fragrant rushes, John got up and poured the drinks himself. He could be an amusing and agreeable host. Although he bade fair to become stocky like his father, he was slightly taller. Good living had not yet coarsened his body, and rich clothes became him. Not having been born a duke, he was more democratic than the rest of his family. He was popular with shop keepers and could understand the crafty outlook of sheriffs. Riding down the street, he would wave an affable hand to any townsman who happened to have a pretty daughter, and most of them forgave the copper-headed brats he added to their burdens because he granted them trade charters and kept his furious insolence for the barons and the clergy. The presumption of ill-bred, second-rate men like Chalus, which his elder brothers would never have tolerated, merely amused John. “Frankly, I can’t make out where all the ransom money is coming from,” he admitted, handing the man his drink. “Of course, the people adore my mother. My father always said she cast a spell on them. But there’s more to it than that. I’ve waylaid her messengers and bribed some of the wealthier barons to withhold payment. But if the collection goes on at this rate, Toulouse will be taking the first instalment to Austria before Christmas.”

Barbe of Chalus put down his empty tankard and belched. “The King of France is no more anxious to see that ransom paid over than you are,” he said.

John fiddled with the Great Seal on his finger. “When Philip Capet came over to see his cat of a sister he used to admire every hare-brained thing Richard chose to do,” he recalled doubtfully.

“Well, he’s jealous of him now that your spectacular brother has stolen his thunder,” Chalus assured him, dabbing at some spilled liquor with the soiled velvet of his sleeve. “Can’t you have Toulouse murdered?”

As if to provide suitable accompaniment to his sinister words, a sharp spatter of rain lashed the window shutters and a heavy door banged somewhere in the rising wind. John strode to an archway and jerked aside the leather curtain. But there was no one there. Not even Picot. When he came back he had shed the last shred of pretence. “You know I can’t,” he said testily. “He’s too well connected. I should have old Sancho on my trail. And even Philip wouldn’t stand for it.”

Chalus rose to his feet unsteadily. “He could be robbed on his way back,” he suggested.

John met a shrewd glance from his little, simian eyes and grinned. “Not such a bad idea for a crafty antique collector in his cups!” he approved shamelessly. He walked to the window and pushed open a shutter. A blustering inrush of air extinguished most of the torches. The soft west wind disarranged his smoothly bobbed hair and beat against his face. He didn’t mind it. It was all part and parcel of the land he coveted. The sweet smell of damp earth came up to him. It was not yet quite dark and a watery moon bathed her shadow in the winding Wey. The last jovial party of pilgrims had passed over on their way from Winchester to Canterbury, and John could just make out the figure of the ferryman, like a hooded Charon, tying up his boat. Here and there a light from some house in the huddled town warmed the dank and cheerless evening, and from the foot of the steep street leading up to the castle the silent, sleeping woods stretched in a soft blur towards Albury and Shere where he had been hunting all afternoon. “Those woods down there are infested with robbers,” he remarked, drawing in his rumpled head and tapping his short, square teeth with a thoughtful finger.

“I know,” agreed Chalus, steadying himself against a heavy iron torch sconce. “But most of them are bungling amateurs.”

John eyed him curiously. “How do you know?” he asked.

“I was held up by a band of ’em and robbed.”

“More fool you to travel alone!” John told him bluntly.

“I didn’t want to be conspicuous—seeing I’d brought you a letter from the King of France.” Chalus tapped the wallet at his belt secretively. After all, he was far more afraid of Richard than of robbers.

John closed the shutter and fastened it carefully. “I didn’t know Philip hated Richard as much as that!” he said softly, padding back into the room like a pleased cat.

They sat down again in front of the fire. The draught of fresh air had cleared some of the fumes from the head of the Duke of Normandy’s treacherous vassal. “Your Kentish ale is very potent,” he remarked apologetically.

“It makes men talk,” agreed his host cynically.

Barbe of Chalus began to talk to some purpose. “Everybody knows Philip is really the cleverer of the two, but all the time we were out there the Cœur de Lion dominated everything,” he explained. “Just took everything he wanted—quite casually—and enjoyed it.”

John laughed, brushing the wood dust from his hands as he replenished the dying fire. “Poor Barbe!” he mocked. “I prefer blondes myself, but my mother says Berengaria is very beautiful. Now, seriously, what does Philip suggest?” He held out an eager hand for the letter, and Chalus unfastened his wallet with maddening clumsiness. A small roll of parchment passed from his stubby fingers to John Plantagenet’s fine ones. Plain and terse ran the suggestion that they should out-bid the English ransom by offering Leopold fifty thousand marks apiece to keep the world’s most famous crusader in captivity. Even in the glowing firelight the words stood black as the treachery of Judas. A pretty bargain between a comrade-in-arms and the brother of a man whose name would stand for courage down the ages. The words were written by Philip’s pedantic quill for John’s eyes alone to read. But the seal had been broken. “Why has it come like this?” he demanded, holding half a waxen fleur-de-lis in either hand.

“I told you,” muttered his fellow conspirator. “I was held up by robbers.”

John looked up quickly. There was fear in his light-blue eyes. Fear of the fettered lion. “You mean—someone has seen this—besides us three?”

Chalus would have dismissed the matter with a shrug. “They rifled my wallet. But what matter? A lot of ignorant peasants—”

John sat back in his chair. In sterner moods he was beginning to look like his father. “Tell me exactly what happened,” he ordered.

There was nothing for it but to describe the humiliating incident. “I was riding leisurely through those woods enjoying the first glimpse of your towers—congratulating myself that my journey was almost done—when a band of home-made desperadoes sprang out on me. They seemed surprised that I should be travelling alone and had to content themselves with the money in my pouch.” Chalus chuckled reminiscently. “They were so simple they didn’t even search for the gold stitched in the leather padding of my mail. And when I asked for that letter back the fellow who seemed in charge let me have it without much ado.”

“What sort of a fellow?”

“Oh, a tall, brownish man—about thirty. An impoverished gentleman of sorts, judging by his speech. Reminded me of someone, if only I could think who…Not in face, you know—just his mannerisms. The way he threw back his head when he laughed—and the crisp, careless way he gave his orders—as if he were cocksure they would be obeyed.” The elusive likeness still seemed to worry him. “But there…You wouldn’t know the man, even if I
could
remember…”

John smoothed the crumpled letter uneasily. “Some of these swashbuckling ne’er-do-well sons of squires have a smattering of Latin these days,” he said. “You don’t suppose he could read?”

“Lord, no!” Chalus reassured him. “Why, the fellow held it upside down most of the time and wanted to know what it was. ‘Some important business tally, I suppose?’ he asked, seeing I was so set on retrieving it. And when I said it was just a record of a private bargain between friends he laughed and said, ‘Well, what’s a scrap of parchment worth anyway?’ and handed it back to me as unconcerned as could be.”

“This one may be worth a crown!” chuckled John, relieved.

Chalus leaned forward eagerly to tap the letter on his host’s crimson-clad knee. “If you can’t manage the whole fifty thousand,” he offered, “I can lend you some.”

“Sounds as if you stand to get something out of this too!” jeered John, pealing at the pages’ bell to annoy him.

“There are other things a man wants out of life—besides gold, and a crown,” admitted Chalus.

“Richard’s wife, for instance?” suggested John.

The man was too anxious to implicate an accomplice to resent his rudeness. “Then you’ll write to Philip?” he persisted, trying to forestall the approaching footsteps of an intruding page.

But John was too clever for him. “No, I will write nothing,” he said. “But you can take him what money I have.” As the page bowed at his elbow he threw Philip’s crumpled letter into the heart of the fire. “Light me to bed,” he ordered, stretching himself as he rose. “And tell the Constable we shall be leaving in the morning.”

Next morning they rode to London. They stayed at the Conqueror’s Tower. And what more natural than that Prince John should show a foreign guest the sights? Among others, the crypt at Westminster which his father had converted into a stronghold for the royal treasure. John showed Chalus the false step and the seven keys. He loved showing people the false step because it precipitated anyone who tried to rob his family down a slimy stone oubliette into the black swirl of the Thames. The seven keys, he explained with a grin, were really supposed to be kept by seven different barons so that no one—not even the king himself—could unlock the great chest and dissipate what was left of the wealth of England without the knowledge and consent of them all. But he—John Lackland—had done away with all that nonsense. Ever since he had succeeded in getting rid of that bandy-legged Frenchman, Longchamps, he had kept all seven keys himself. And whenever a baron started shouting at him, he jangled them jocundly at his belt. It gave him childish pleasure, healing past slights. It was the kind of jest proud barons don’t appreciate—the kind of thing that ends up in revolt. But John could not foresee that. And he enjoyed opening the great chest and handing over the remains of his brother’s heritage to a money-grubbing, double-crossing rustic count who lusted after a Plantagenet queen. He hated parting with the money, of course, but of what use would it be to him if Richard and Berengaria came back to England and bred sons?