by Jean Plaidy
About the Book
News of Thomas à Becket’s martyrdom has spread throughout Christendom and the blame is laid at the feet of Henry Plantagenet, King of England. Two years later, with Becket canonised, Henry’s position is precarious: punished at the Pope’s insistence for his part in Becket’s death, he now also has an enemy in his Queen, Eleanor of Aquitaine, after her discovery of his longstanding infidelity with Rosamund Clifford. Eleanor is determined to seek vengeance, so, with King Philip of France, she encourages her sons to conspire, both against their father and each other.
Much embattled, the old eagle Henry struggles to fend off both rebellion and the plots of his aggressively circling offspring …
‘Miss Plaidy does full justice to the trials of Henry II’s last years. The demands of the vast Angevin Empire provide strong dramatic material which she handles with her usual skill.’ Sunday Times
‘It is hard to better Jean Plaidy when she is in form … both elegant and exciting as she steers a stylish path through the feuding Plantagenets.’ Daily Mirror
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Published by Arrow Books in 2007
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Copyright © Jean Plaidy, 1977
Initial lettering copyright © Stephen Raw, 2006
The Estate of Eleanor Hibbert has asserted its right to have Jean Plaidy identified as the author of this work.
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 9780099493273
Contents
Cover
About the Book
Title
Copyright
About the Author
Praise for Jean Plaidy
Available in Arrow Books by Jean Plaidy
I News of Murder
II Princess Alice
III The King and Queen
IV Castles for John
V The King’s Penance
VI The Rebellious Cubs
VII The King’s Choice
VIII The Queen comes to Court
IX The Young King
X The King’s Strategy
XI The Lady of Godstow
XII The Court of France
XIII Berengaria
XIV The Devil’s Strain
XV The Painting on the Wall
XVI The Curse of Heraclius
XVII The Fatal Joust
XVIII Philip and Richard
XIX The Death of the Eagle
Bibliography
Jean Plaidy, one of the pre-eminent authors of historical fiction for most of the twentieth century, is the pen name of the prolific English author Eleanor Hibbert, also known as Victoria Holt. Jean Plaidy’s novels had sold more than 14 million copies worldwide by the time of her death in 1993.
For further information about our Jean Plaidy reissues and mailing list, please visit
www.randomhouse.co.uk/minisites/jeanplaidy
Praise for Jean Plaidy
‘A vivd impression of life at the Tudor Court’
Daily Telegraph
‘One of the country’s most widely read novelists’
Sunday Times
‘Outstanding’ Vanity Fair
‘Full-blooded, dramatic, exciting’
Observer
‘Jean Plaidy conveys the texture of various patches of the past with such rich complexity’ Guardian
‘Plaidy has brought the past to life’ Times Literary Supplement
‘One of our best historical novelists’ News Chronicle
‘An excellent story’ Irish Press
‘Spirited … Plaidy paints the truth as she sees it’
Birmingham Post
‘Sketched vividly and sympathetically … rewarding’
Scotsman
‘Among the foremost of current historical novelists’
Birmingham Mail
‘An accomplished novelist’ Glasgow Evening News
‘There can be no doubt of the author’s gift for storytelling’
Illustrated London News
‘Jean Plaidy has once again brought characters and background vividly to life’ Everywoman
‘Well up to standard … fascinating’
Manchester Evening News
‘Exciting and intelligent’ Truth Magazine
‘No frills and plenty of excitement’ Yorkshire Post
‘Meticulous attention to historical detail’ South Wales Argus
‘Colourful … imaginative and exciting’
Northern Daily Telegraph
‘Effective and readable’ Sphere
‘A vivid picture of the crude and vigorous London of those days’ Laurence Meynell
Available in Arrow Books by Jean Plaidy
The Tudors
Uneasy Lies the Head
Katharine, the Virgin
Widow
The Shadow of the
Pomegranate
The King’s Secret Matter
Murder Most Royal
St Thomas’s Eve
The Sixth Wife
The Thistle and the Rose
Mary Queen of France
Lord Robert
Royal Road to Fotheringay
The Captive Queen of Scots
The Medici Trilogy
Madame Serpent
The Italian Woman
Queen Jezebel
The Plantagenets
The Plantagenet Prelude
The Revolt of the Eaglets
The Heart of the Lion
The Prince of Darkness
The French Revolution
Louis the Well-Beloved
The Road to Compiègne
Flaunting, Extravagant
Queen
Chapter I
NEWS OF MURDER
It was the first day of the year 1171 and in the Castle at Argentan they had been celebrating the passing of the old year and welcoming in the new. The King was in a good mood anticipating with pleasure his return to England and reunion with his mistress Rosamund Clifford.
Since his wife, Queen Eleanor, had become aware of her existence, there was no longer the need to keep the liaison secret. Not that he, King of England, Duke of Normandy and the rest, was afraid of his wife, although she could be formidable. His anxiety had been that she might take some revenge on Rosamund before he could prevent her doing so. Eleanor must learn that he was master, but it was a conclusion which she had evaded for the nineteen years of their marriage.
Yet he supposed theirs had not been an entirely unsatisfactory union. She had provided him with four sons and two daughters – a good tally – and not only that: her rich lands of Aquitaine, which she had brought to the marriage, had extended his possessions and made the King of England the most powerful man in Europe.
He had much on which to congratulate himself. He had brought that justice back to England which under the reign of weak Stephen the country had lost; he had managed to cling to his possessions overseas; he had skilfully arranged the marriages of his children – all but six-year-old Joanna and five-year-old John – to bring him the utmost advantage, and he was in fact feared and respected throughout his kingdom – and others.
Although on this New Year’s Day he was in a benevolent mood, all men knew that his notorious temper could be aroused at any moment. Then his pinkish skin would become dull red and his eyes would grow fierce, his nostrils flare until he would resemble the lion to which he was so often compared. He had never been able to control those tempers, nor did he see any reason why he should. When he was angry he wanted men to know it. His rages were terrible. During them he lost all control of his actions and would vent his fury on any inanimate objects which happened to be at hand, often causing damage to himself. He had been known to roll on the floor and gnaw the rushes at such times.
Eleanor had said: ‘One day when you are in one of your rages you will do yourself a mischief.’
He remembered the glint in her eyes, and he had cried: ‘You would not be displeased if I did, my lady, I fancy.’
She had not denied it. She had always been defiant, never showing fear of him, constantly reminding him that though he might be King of England, she was the Duchess of Aquitaine.
He doubted she would care if he were dead. In fact the event might please her. There was their son to follow him to the throne. Young Henry, already crowned King, handsome, with all the charm imaginable, already binding men to him by the sheer attractiveness of his personality. It was unwise to crown a son King while his father still lived. Becket had been against it.
‘Ah, my Lord Archbishop,’ muttered Henry, ‘was that perhaps because you were not the one to perform the ceremony?’
Young Henry was now leaving boyhood behind him. He was sixteen. Boys did grow ambitious at such an age. The King admitted to himself that he did now and then feel uneasy and had asked himself whether he had acted thoughtlessly during the preceding year when he had allowed his son to be crowned.
Well, it was done; and if he, the King, were to die within a few weeks – which was not unlikely for he was constantly leading his armies against some rebel who had thought to take advantage of his many commitments – then England would have an undisputed king who had already been crowned and bore the title.
He would not allow such thoughts to disturb him on this day. He would think of home and Rosamund and their two boys and the domestic peace he could find with no one but her. He was glad Eleanor had walked through the maze of trees that day and discovered the Bower where he had hidden Rosamund. He was tired of Eleanor. It suited him well that she should go to Aquitaine; he hoped she would stay there; he no longer desired her. She was nearly twelve years older than he was; and there was no need to get more children by her, when they already had six and in any case she was now past the age of childbearing. It was good to be rid of her spiteful tongue, for she made no effort to control it now that she had a reason in Rosamund for hating him. As if she, a woman of such worldliness, could have expected him to be faithful to her! That was not exactly the case. Like so many women of her kind she would accept the casual adventure. The fact that galled her was that he could actually love someone as he loved Rosamund, and let her continue to bear his children, that she was someone to whom he could go for peace and comfort, someone who could be to him a wife as his Queen could not be. That roused her venom and set her thinking of how she could most effectively revenge herself on him.
Let her try.
Rosamund was so different. He brooded on how he had first seen her in her father’s castle in Shropshire where he had rested on some expedition into Wales; she had been an innocent young virgin; he had desired her and there had been no one to deny him – not Sir Walter Clifford, her father, nor the fair Rosamund herself; and ever since … she had been as a wife to him. A dear docile creature, never complaining of his infidelities, never seeking prizes for herself, always there when he needed her to comfort him.
He was fortunate in Rosamund and now that Eleanor was away he could safely bring her to Court. He hoped his wife would never come back to England.
A shout from below broke into this pleasant reverie.
He called out: ‘What goes?’
One of his attendants was hurrying to him.
‘My lord, riders are coming to the castle.’
He was at the window. Riders, yes. And they came from England. Trouble! It could only mean trouble. Who had risen against him now? Well, it would hasten his return and the sooner he would be with Rosamund.
He was in the hall when they came in. They threw themselves at his feet and he cried impatiently: ‘What news? What news?’
‘The Archbishop of Canterbury is dead, my lord.’
‘Dead!’
‘Murdered, my lord, in his own Cathedral.’
‘Oh, my God, no. This cannot be true. Who has done this deed?’
‘Four of your knights, my lord. Reginald FitzUrse, William de Tracy, Hugh de Morville and Richard le Breton.’
‘My knights,’ he said.
The messengers bowed their heads.
‘Why did they do this?’ muttered the King. ‘What can have made them commit such a crime?’
The messengers remained silent. They dared not tell him that the knights had said they had done the deed at the King’s command.
‘Thomas … dead!’ went on the King talking to himself. ‘It cannot be. It must not be.’
‘My lord,’ said one of the messengers, ‘the deed was done but three days ago and we came with all speed, knowing it would be your wish to be acquainted with the fact.’
‘Go … refresh yourselves … leave me with my grief,’ said the King. He called to his servants. ‘Bring me sackcloth. I shall change my robes. This for me is a day of mourning.’
Thomas … dead! Old friend and now enemy, dead! So many memories came crowding into his mind. The jokes they had shared when Thomas had been his Chancellor and best friend. ‘Do not make me your Archbishop,’ he had said, ‘for that will be the end of our friendship.’ Was that a premonition? For how right he had been and what bitter enemies they had become. What had he said to those four knights that they should have taken their swords and stormed the Cathedral? What part had he played in this?
Solemnly he took off his royal robes and wrapped himself in a cloak of sack-cloth.
‘Leave me,’ he said. ‘Leave me to my grief.’
He went into his bedchamber and buried his head in his hands.
‘I did not want this,’ he murmured again and again.
He dropped his hands and stared before him, not seeing the tapestried walls but the past … and the future.
Thomas was too well known a figure for his death to go unnoticed. Unnoticed! There was no hope of that! There would be an uproar. It would spread throughout Christendom. Thomas would be as tiresome in death as he had been in life. He would become a martyr. Henry was not afraid of any general, but he was terrified of martyrs.
What had he said to those knights? He remembered well the occasion when they had been present. He had heard
that Thomas had threatened to excommunicate all those who had been concerned in young Henry’s coronation and as none had been concerned more than he himself that meant him also; and one of the bishops – it must have been Roger of York – had said that while Thomas Becket lived he would never have a peaceful kingdom. And then a sudden rage had possessed the King. He had cursed them all. He had maintained them and they were false varlets. He could hear his own voice now shouting to those cringing men, ‘You have left me long exposed to the insolence of this low-born cleric and have not attempted to relieve me of him.’
They had taken those words to heart, those four knights; they had interpreted them as a command to murder. It must be so, for they had made their way to Canterbury and there slain Thomas in his Cathedral.
‘That this should have happened!’ he cried; and he was thinking: They are going to blame me. The whole world is going to blame me. Those four knights dealt the blows but I shall be named the murderer.
What could he do? He could see the Pope and the whole world rising against him. They were going to make a martyr and a saint of Thomas and the more reverence they showered on him the stronger would be the odium poured on the one they would blame for his murder.
He needed time to think. His actions now were of the utmost importance. He had come a long way in the last twenty years, when, as son of Matilda, daughter of Henry I of England, and the Count of Anjou, he had had a not very steady grasp on the crown of the Dukes of Normandy. He had married the richest heiress in Europe and had taken the crown of England and there was not a man who could stand against him. The King of France feared him; he had defied the Pope; he had had his way and it had brought him great power.
But now he was in danger, and all through Thomas à Becket. The Church would sing the Archbishop’s praises, for Thomas had been slain in the battle between Church and State which had been raging for years and would doubtless go on. And Thomas would be a saint and a martyr.
‘You always tried to get the better of me, Thomas,’ he muttered and a grim smile appeared on his lips. ‘And I always fought you … often in jest and latterly in earnest and you have to learn that I always win.’
