Sharon Penman: Time and Chance

What did trouble Geoffrey, though, was his brother’s silence. The young king was notorious for his scorching temper, but those who knew Henry best knew, too, that these spectacular fits of royal rage were more calculated than most people suspected, deliberately daunting. His anger was far more dangerous when it was iced over, cold and controlled and unforgiving, and Geoffrey was soon squirming under that unblinking, implacable gaze. When he could stand the suspense no longer, he snapped, “What are you waiting for? Let’s get it over with, Harry!”

“You have no idea what your rebellion has cost me,” Henry said, much too dispassionately, “or you’d be treading with great care.”

“Need I remind you that you won, Harry? It seems odd indeed for you to bemoan your losses when I’m the one who is yielding up my castles.”

“You think I care about your accursed castles?” Henry moved forward into the chamber so swiftly that Geoffrey took an instinctive backward step. “Had I not been forced to lay siege to them, I’d have been back in England months ago, long ere Eleanor’s lying-in was nigh.”

Geoffrey knew Eleanor was pregnant again, for Henry had announced it at their Christmas court. Divorced by the French king for her failure to give him a male heir, Eleanor had then borne Henry two sons in their first three years of marriage. To Geoffrey, her latest pregnancy had been another drop of poison in an already noxious drink, and he could muster up no sympathy now for Henry’s complaint.

“What of it? You’d not have been allowed in the birthing chamber, for men never are.”

“No… but I’d have been there to bury my son.”

Geoffrey’s mouth dropped open. “Your son?”

“He died on Whitsunday,” Henry said, softly and precisely, the measured cadence of his tones utterly at variance with what Geoffrey could read in his eyes. “Eleanor kept vigil by his bedside as the doctors and priests tried to save him. She stayed with him until he died, and then she made the funeral arrangements, accompanied his body to Reading for burial. He was not yet three, Geoff, for his birthday was not till August, the seventeenth, it would have been-”

“Harry, I… I am sorry about your son. But it was not my fault! Blame God if you must, not me!”

“But I do blame you, Geoff. I blame you for your treachery, your betrayals, your willingness to ally yourself with my enemies… again and again. I blame you for my wife’s ordeal, which she need not have faced alone. And I blame you for denying me the chance to be at my son’s deathbed.”

“What do you want me to say? It was not my fault! You cannot blame me because the boy was sickly-” Geoffrey’s breath caught in his throat as Henry lunged forward. Twisting his fist in the neck of his brother’s tunic, Henry shoved him roughly against the wall.

“The boy has a name, damn you-William! I suppose you’d forgotten, for blood-kin means nothing to you, does it? Well, you might remember his name better once you have time and solitude to think upon it!”

Geoffrey blanched. “You… you cannot mean to imprison me?”

Henry slowly unclenched his fist, stepped back. “There are men waiting outside the door to escort you to a chamber in the tower.”

“Harry, what are you going to do? Tell me!”

Henry turned aside without answering, moved to the door, and jerked it open. Geoffrey stiffened, eyes darting in disbelief from the men-at-arms to this stranger in his brother’s skin. Clutching at the shreds of his pride, he stumbled across the chamber, determined not to plead, but betraying himself, nonetheless, by a panicked, involuntary glance of entreaty as the door closed.

Will untangled himself from the settle, ambled over to the door, and slid the bolt into place. “Harry… do you truly mean to imprison him? God knows, he deserves it…” He trailed off uncertainly, for his was an open, affable nature, uncomfortable with shadings or ambiguities, and it troubled him that his feelings for his brother could not be clear-cut and uncomplicated.

Henry crossed to the settle and took the seat Will had vacated. “If I had my way, I’d cast him into Chinon’s deepest dungeon, leave him there till he rotted.”

“But you will not,” Becket predicted, smiling faintly as he rose to pour them all cups of wine.

“No,” Henry admitted, accepting his cup with a wry smile of his own. “There would be two prisoners in that dungeon-Geoff and our mother. She says he deserves whatever punishment I choose to mete out, but that is her head talking, not her heart.” After two swallows, he set the cup aside, for he drank as sparingly as he ate; Henry’s hungers of the flesh were not for food or wine. “I’m going to try to scare some sense into Geoff. But since he has less sense than God gave a sheep, I do not have high hopes of success.”

“Just do not give him his castles back this time,” Will chided, in a tactless reminder of Henry’s earlier, misplaced leniency. “It would serve him right if he had to beg his bread by the roadside.”

“Sorry, lad, but Scriptures forbid it. Thomas can doubtless cite you chapter and verse,” Henry gibed, “but I am sure it says somewhere that brothers of kings cannot be beggars.”

“I thought it said that brothers of beggars cannot be kings.” Becket tasted the wine, then grimaced. “Are your servants trying to poison you with this swill, Harry? Someone ought to tell them that hemlock would be quicker and more merciful.”

“This is why men would rather dine with my lord chancellor than with me,” Henry told Will. “He’d drink blood ere he quaffed English wine. Whereas for me, it is enough if it is wet!” Becket’s riposte was cut off by a sudden knock. Henry, the closest to the door, got to his feet; he was never one to stand on ceremony. But his amusement faded when a weary, travel-stained messenger was ushered into the chamber, for the man’s disheveled appearance conveyed a message of its own: that his news was urgent.

Snatching up the proffered letter, Henry stared at the familiar seal, then looked over at Will. “It is from our mother,” he said, moving toward the nearest lamp. Will and Becket were both on their feet by now, watching intently as he read. “I have to go to Rouen,” he said, “straightaway.”

Will paled. “Not Mama…?”

“No, lad, no. She is not ailing. She has written to let me know that Eleanor is in Rouen.”

If the English King’s wife had a remarkable history, so, too, did his mother. Sent to Germany as a child to wed the Holy Roman Emperor, Maude had been summoned back to England by her father, the king, after her husband’s death. Forced into a miserable marriage with the Count of Anjou, Maude had sought comfort in their sons and in her hopes of succeeding to the English throne. But her crown was usurped by her cousin Stephen, and she’d fought a long and bloody civil war to reclaim it, fought and failed. She would never be England’s queen, and that was a grievance she’d take to her grave. But she’d lived to see her son avenge her loss, and she took consolation in his kingship, a bittersweet satisfaction in his victory, one that had been denied her.

Maude had continued to make use of the regal title of empress even after her marriage to Count Geoffrey of Anjou, and she still did so, although she no longer lived in a regal style. The woman who’d sought a throne with such single-minded intensity had chosen to pass her twilight years in the cloistered quiet of Notre-Dame-du-Pre, dwelling in the guest quarters of the priory on the outskirts of Rouen. But upon her grieving daughter-in-law’s arrival from England, she’d made haste to join Eleanor in residence at the castle.

A summer storm had drenched the city at dusk, and rain still fell hours later. Maude had ordered a fire built in the great hall’s center hearth, and she was stitching an elegant altar cloth by the light of the flickering flames; needlework was the lot of all women, even queens. She was not surprised when a servant announced that her son had ridden into the bailey, for Henry never let the weather interfere with his plans; he’d sailed in a winter gale to claim England’s crown.