Richard glanced at the chair, and then at her. Finally he nodded. “Why not?”
She reached for his robe at the foot of the bed, and helped him slip it on over his shoulders. She kept her gaze averted from his long, muscular body, and he seemed almost shy, as though he had forgotten he had once strutted before her naked, his erection jutting before him. She felt an unexpected twinge of tenderness for his weakened condition.
She stepped back and watched as he walked slowly to the chair. He sank into it carefully, as if feeling his way down into it, and looked up at her. This time, to her astonishment, he smiled unmistakably. “Sit?”
Wondering, she sat down in the chair opposite. His dark hair curled in unruly locks about his face, but his eyes were bright with health, not fever, and he gazed eagerly about the room as though seeing it for the first time. There was nothing of his usual customary disdain. His eyes met hers and she dropped them under that intense scrutiny. What was he thinking when he looked at her that way?
Someone knocked on the door. “Come in, Ursula,” she called, forgetting that Ursula was unlikely to knock. It was Geoffrey de Courville who stepped into the room. He barely glanced in her direction, but he smiled broadly upon seeing Richard sitting by the fire. “My lord. My lady.” He spoke directly to Richard. “A message has come from the Marshal.”
“From William himself?” Eleanor cried. Perhaps Hugh would be home by Christmas.
“Yes, my lady,” said Geoffrey. “I brought you the message, my lord. His messenger awaits a reply in the hall.” Geoffrey proffered a sealed scroll.
Eleanor took the scroll. Richard gestured to her with a hint of his old impatience. “Read,” he rasped.
Geoffrey’s dour face brightened considerably when he heard Richard speak. “You sound much better, my lord.”
Richard nodded. “Tomorrow. I dress. Go down—” he hesitated, as if groping for a word.
“To the hall, my lord?” Eleanor supplied. “Join us in the hall for dinner?”
Richard nodded. “Yes,” he said finally. “Hall. Dinner.”
Geoffrey beamed. “That’s truly good news, my lord. The men will be glad to hear of your improvement.”
Eleanor broke the seal and scanned the parchment letter. A pall of disappointment fell over her like a shroud and she had to struggle to hold back her tears. Nothing in the letter spoke of Hugh, or of their situation. It was addressed to all the barons who owed the Marshal fealty. It wasn’t a personal response to their letter.
She controlled her emotions and looked at Richard. “Shall I read it, my lord?” When he nodded,
she began, “It’s to all those who owe fealty to the king through William, Earl of Pembroke and Striguil, the Marshal of England. The Archbishop of Canterbury and other barons are fomenting rebellion in the realm, and he bids you remember your oaths you swore as his liegemen. He calls you to meet with him or his appointed representative at Pembroke Castle a fortnight hence, to take counsel. Any grievances that you may have against the king he will hear at that time. And he bids you stand fast, and to trust in the Lord, and not in the force of arms against your king.” Eleanor looked at Richard once more when she finished reading.
His brow was furrowed, and he was staring into the fire. He seemed to be deep in thought.
“Of course we’ll stand fast,” said Geoffrey. “What does the Marshal take us for? I will tell him so when I see him. ’Twould be best for us to forget that puppy and muster the support we can so that we are ready for whatever the spring brings us.”
Richard did not react. His eyes were fixed on the leaping flames. His expression was grim.
“My lord?” said Geoffrey.”Shall I tell his messenger that I will answer in your place?”
Richard turned to look at Geoffrey, shaking his head no. “Must think first.”
“What is there to think about?” Geoffrey stared at Richard with disbelief.
Richard only shook his head. Even Eleanor was surprised. Richard discussed everything with Geoffrey.
“Enough now.” He shook his head. “Must think. Tomorrow. Talk.”
Geoffrey narrowed his eyes and glanced at Eleanor as though he held her personally responsible for the change in Richard, but the custom of obedience was too strongly ingrained for him to challenge Richard outright. He said nothing more, but squared his shoulders and bowed stiffly. “My lord.”
“Tell Ursula to be sure that the messenger be treated with all courtesy,” said Eleanor.
Geoffrey paused with his hand upon the latch. “Yes, my lady.” With another dark look at Richard, he was gone.
Richard had turned back to the fire. A lock of hair fell across his forehead. Shadows from the flames danced across his roughly shaven cheeks. He drew a deep breath, and turned back to Eleanor. “Read. Again.”
Eleanor fingered the thick parchment, and read the message again, slowly, carefully. Although the words themselves were simple enough, there was a world of meaning in the message. Could it be that Archbishop Langton really intended to incite a rebellion among the barons against the king?
Richard rubbed his hand across his chin and stirred in his chair as she finished. He looked at her as if waiting for her to say something.
“My lord?” she asked finally, baffled by what he could be waiting for.
“You—what you think?”
Eleanor’s eyes flew open. He was asking her for her opinion? She drew a deep breath, hoping to cover her confusion. “W-well,” she stammered, hoping to buy a few minutes to collect her thoughts. “The Archbishop is no friend to the King. And John has ever been in a mort of trouble with the Church—”
Richard looked down at his hands. “King John,” he muttered. A line creased his forehead, as though he were trying to remember something. He looked back at the bed, almost longingly, and Eleanor anticipated his need. “To bed, my lord? Do you grow tired?”
He shook his head. “Go. Leave me. Must think.”
With a puckered little frown, she rose. He held out his hand for the parchment, and a little surprised, she handed it to him. He turned away, his eyes fixed once more on the flickering flames. He leaned his chin upon one hand. He looked so troubled, so lost and alone, she found she had to stifle the urge to speak a word of comfort. But Richard had never brooked unnecessary words from her, and she was the last person whose opinion he would have sought.
The flames danced with maddening unconcern. Richard tightened his fingers on the parchment, feeling the thickness of the material, the rough texture. How could this be real? he wondered. And then again, how could it not? Delusions didn’t come with their own sets of complexities, did they?
He unrolled the parchment scroll and stared down at the writing. The neat script flowed across the page, and here and there he discerned letters and what had to be words, all in French. Old French, he thought. The language he was slowly learning to speak. He fingered the wax seals, the pale blotch where the message had been closed, and the red blob that carried the imprint of a rough symbol. He stared closely at the signature, the clumsy penmanship of a man who had spent his life fighting, to whom books and paper and pens were the domain of the priests and the scribes, whose duty it was to support the men who fought.
Richard racked his brain, trying to remember as much as he could about the time and place he’d found himself. John was King of England. John—called Softsword and Lackland, the most hated of all England’s kings—the one of whom Lucy claimed it had been declared: “We’ll have no more kings named John.”
And there hadn’t been, he knew. Never again had a king named John reigned on an English throne.
So, he thought, taking a deep breath, scanning the words over and over. Where did that leave him? In the early thirteenth century—but what was happening in England?
Something rang a bell, tantalizing him, something he ought to know, something important, something so important even schoolchildren in the United States were taught it. l2l3-l2l4—what had happened in the early thirteenth centu
ry?
The barons and King John—he struggled to remember. John had been challenged by his own barons, and what had been the result? The recollection burst from his memory: the Magna Carta, the foundation of English law, and the very earliest beginning of what would one day give rise to the American legal system.
Now the memories came flooding back.
The Magna Carta had been signed in 1215. In actual fact, it was less than the sweeping document it was sometimes purported to be, but what was more important than the individual parts of it was the concept that had created it—that by implication, it reflected the rudiments of a coherent political philosophy. The barons sought not to exclude or overthrow the royal government, as similar charters of the period had, but to influence it—to make it act in their interest and respect their customary rights.
Incorporated into the charter was the concept that the king is limited by tradition and by custom in his relations with free men of every class, not just the knights and the nobility. It was the first time that the concept of the common law, overarching and circumscribing the power of the king, had been in any way expressed.
Well, thought Richard, as a log split and the shower of sparks brought him back to what was now the present, it was all well and good that he remembered so much legal history. But what was the situation in England in the years prior to the signing of the Great Charter which gave rise to it? What led to the meeting at Runnymede in June of l2l5?
He stared into the dancing flames and tried to fit present-time information with that which he dimly remembered from history class. John was an autocratic king, he remembered, not necessarily a bad king. He lacked a crucial attribute—he didn’t know how to get people to do what he wanted them to do. He lacked political savvy. He didn’t have the charisma to make people follow him because they loved him, as they had his brother, Richard the Lion Hearted, and he somehow managed to antagonize almost everyone around him.
But not William the Marshal, thought Richard, musing. Who was this William, who held so much sway and influence over, Richard realized with a sudden start, his own life?
William the Marshal—he searched his memory. A great warrior, a man respected by all who knew him, including John. Otherwise he wasn’t much more than a footnote of history.
Richard slumped in his chair. He’d better come up with more information on the political situation in which he was obviously expected to play a part, albeit a peripheral one, but a part just the same. He turned what he knew over and over in his mind. The Welsh had Eleanor’s brother, and expected ransom—or maybe they didn’t.
Maybe they expected him to invade. Giscard Fitzwilliam was involved in some way—his one meeting with Giscard was enough for him to know that the man was not to be trusted. If he was the sort of man the king kept in his confidence, maybe the Archbishop of Canterbury was correct in his grievances.
Richard pressed the tips of his fingers together. Giscard coveted what Richard had. That was easy enough to understand—he wanted Eleanor, and the lands that were her patrimony. And in order to acquire them, he needed Richard out of the way. If only he knew, thought Richard ruefully. If only Giscard knew that the Richard he now faced was a man who had little knowledge of the language, and even less of anything else that had value in this time and place. He was going to have to win as many friends as he could and learn as much about the allegiances here as possible—and judging from the way everyone looked at him—that wasn’t going to be easy.
And there was Sir Geoffrey, the captain of the guard, or whatever his title was. Geoffrey knew there was something different about the man he called his lord, which jeopardized Richard’s own position with a man he would have to trust implicitly.
Eleanor sensed it, too, he was sure of it. Abruptly Richard forced thoughts of Eleanor out of his mind. There was too much at stake right now for him to indulge in pleasant daydreams of the past few weeks of his recovery. Not only was his personal position precarious and fraught with uncertainty, there was a greater drama developing, one whose implications would reverberate down the centuries.
It was obvious what the answer had to be. Loyal as Geoffrey might be—might be, for Richard suspected that if Geoffrey knew the truth, he would be less than faithful—Richard knew he couldn’t trust Geoffrey to handle matters at the upcoming meeting as he would. Geoffrey might not even mention Eleanor’s brother at all.
In fact, Richard was sure he wouldn’t. Geoffrey didn’t care about the fate of a bastard son. The “real” Richard obviously hadn’t. But he was the real Richard now, the only one there was, and not only would the meeting give Richard the opportunity to try to learn where matters stood in the nation, it would give him the chance to prove to Eleanor that he was not the man she had married.
There was simply no other solution. He would have to appear at Pembroke Castle and learn all he could from this William the Marshal. Perhaps he would even be able to speak to the Marshal alone, although he was lucky his throat wound prevented clear speech. He just hoped he’d be able to make himself understood. What was even more important, though, was to understand what was said.
He closed his eyes as a wave of exhaustion overtook him. He straightened up with an effort. He’d been weak long enough. He had to learn just how matters stood, or he might make some mistake, a mistake for which in this brutal time and place he and all those around him were likely to pay with their lives.
CHAPTER 9
It was now or never, thought Richard, as he walked slowly and carefully down the winding staircase—the same one—if he could believe all the evidence—from which he had fallen from his present into this past. A chill ran down his back as he leaned against the roughhewn stone. His body was still stiff and sore in many places, and his throat ached if he tried to say more than a few words at a time, or forgot to chew his food carefully and thoroughly.
But the time had come for him to begin to try and fill the role of the lord of the manor. The magnitude of the task sometimes made him wake in the middle of the night in a cold sweat. He took a deep breath and deliberately banished all doubts from his mind. He would never win Eleanor otherwise, and besides, whether she liked it or not, he knew that she had come to rely upon him. Otherwise, her choices were Giscard, someone else of the king’s choosing, or the Welsh.
As he reached the bottom of the steps, he saw Sir Geoffrey across the hall. The man was watching him closely. Geoffrey would have to accompany him to Pembroke. There was no doubt about that. Richard didn’t even know the way. He raised his arm and beckoned.
At once Geoffrey broke off his conversation with one of the soldiers—his soldiers, Richard now understood, who seemed to have no other purpose than to ride to war with Richard. Geoffrey was beside him faster than Richard would’ve thought possible. “My lord?”
Richard paused, taking a moment to assess the burly warrior who stood before him. Geoffrey was tall and barrel chested, his shoulders and upper arms huge hams of muscle. Richard gazed thoughtfully into Geoffrey’s eyes. Beyond the surface suspicion, Richard read abiding loyalty. This man took his oaths to his lord very seriously. He wondered what history these two men shared. “Must talk about the journey. My horse—” He broke off, hoping he had a horse.
But Geoffrey was talking, with an eagerness that told Richard he was anxious for his lord’s complete recovery. “I’ve seen to his exercise, my lord, but he’s eager to be out—a journey will suit him well. Would you like to see him?”
Richard nodded. What better time than the present, he thought, as Geoffrey called for their cloaks. He thanked God he’d had some experience riding, and hoped that this body had some memory of its own. He followed Geoffrey out of the hall, realizing that this was the first time he’d ventured so far. The cold air was refreshing, although many odors, some good and some not, blew by on the cold gusts.
His boots crunched over the gravel in the courtyard. Everyone they passed paused and bowed as he walked by. He nodded here and there, and a few smiled tentatively, fearfull
y, back at him. The original occupant of this body must have kept absolute control of the entire household, he mused.
In the stables, the grooms bowed and stammered, staring with open mouths, and Geoffrey cuffed one on the side of the head. “Get to work, boy, before Lord Richard makes your face uglier than it already is.”
From the eagerness with which the boy bolted, Richard wondered just exactly how formidable a threat that was. They continued down a row of stalls until Geoffrey paused at the end. The huge black head of the occupant of the last stall swung in their direction, whickering a greeting. “He’s glad to see you, my lord.”
Richard nodded and reached for the bridle. He stroked the animal’s nose. The horse was huge. Richard gulped inwardly. He hoped he remembered enough horsemanship to control such a big beast.
“Do you mean to ride, my lord?” The high-pitched voice of a young groom interrupted his thoughts.
“Tomorrow,” answered Richard. He already felt weak from his walk to the stables and he didn’t think he should push himself too much.
“After drill, my lord?” asked Geoffrey. “The men will be eager to see you.”
Richard gave Geoffrey a dubious glance. Somehow, judging from the cowed looks of the people he’d seen so far, he doubted that the men would be any happier to see him than anyone else appeared to be. But maybe not. Maybe someone as obviously brutal as Richard de Lambert would only attract soldiers as brutal as he.
Richard shuddered at the thought of being the leader of a pack of rapacious opportunists—armed opportunists, at that—which had never been one of his life’s ambitions. “After drill. You—” He pointed at Geoffrey “—come with me.”
“Of course, my lord.”
Richard turned away as he broke into a cold sweat. Geoffrey fell in step beside him. “I must say, my lord, I admire your determination to see the Marshal. But I—I’m afraid—”
“Don’t think I am ready to travel?” Richard paused beside a cart to catch his breath. The world was tilting out of focus, but until he crashed to the cobblestones, he wasn’t going to admit to weakness.
[1997] Once and Future Love Page 8
