Sharon Penman: Dragon's lair

Standing on the outer ring of the circle, Justin and Will exchanged wry looks. The queen had shared her suspicions about John's involvement with very few, and Arundel had not been one of them. Even those not privy to the truth had been quick to suspect the queen's son, though, and there was some rolling of eyes now as Arundel blundered on with his theories about the theft. John cast a long shadow, all the more obvious for being so studiously ignored.

Eleanor was losing patience with the garrulous earl and interrupted brusquely with a question about the ship. It was Hamelin who answered, saying regretfully that by the time they'd gotten the false de Mydden to talk, it was too late. When they reached Billingsgate, they'd found that the ship had already sailed.

"So they were clever enough to keep St Paul's under watch, and to anchor on the seaward side of the bridge," Eleanor said thoughtfully. "Why does that not surprise me?"

She was not disappointed, either. At least that was Justin's reading of the inscrutable expression on the queen's face. It was a look he'd seen before, whenever one of John's misdeeds came to light. Justin had always had an instinctive sympathy for mothers, in part because he'd idealized his own, the unknown woman who'd died giving him birth. He believed that a mother's love was pure and eternal and unconditional, despite evidence to the contrary all around him. He was sure that Eve must have wept a river of tears over the fratricidal strife between Cain and Abel. As a boy, he'd felt great pity for the mother of Moses as she set him adrift in a basket of bulrushes. And he never doubted that in her heart, Eleanor still saw John as the "son of her womb."

It occurred to him that John was protected by a great conspiracy of silence. Eleanor cared only about foiling his designs on the crown, not about punishing him for them. And the lords of the realm were willfully blind, too. Luke de Marston had spoken for legions during their search of Southampton. "We cannot very well arrest him by ourselves, and I do not fancy arresting him at all, not when the man might well be king one day."

As Justin had expected, Eleanor showed no interest in speculating upon the identity of the thieves. "What matters," she declared, "is that the thieves failed and not a halfpenny was lost. We have collected enough to convince Emperor Heinrich's envoys of our good faith, and they are making plans to return to Germany with the ransom. It is my intention to do the same as soon as our fleet can be made ready."

She paused and then smiled at the men, a mother's smile as memorable in its own way as the seductive, bewitching smiles of her celebrated youth. "God willing," she said, "I will be spending Christmas with my son, the king. And then… then we'll come home."