She compressed her lips and her chin dimpled. “Indeed yes. But Henry…his grief is different to mine. I have scarcely seen him since we have been in England. He…He pretends that nothing has happened, and that I am nothing too. If he looks through me, if he does not see me, then he does not have to acknowledge our failure. I wish…I wish that…” She swallowed and shook her head. Her brown eyes locked on his, beseeching and tear-filled.
William’s heart wallowed. “The Young King cares for you,” he said and felt the lie burn his tongue.
“Does he?” Her tone was dull. “Then it is probably as much as I care for him. We have our duty, but God alone knows how we will manage to perform it. I heard Yqueboeuf tell Henry that all cats and coneys were dark at night…”
William’s face twisted with revulsion. “If I had been within hearing, Yqueboeuf wouldn’t have had a mouth left to make his confession,” he growled. “What did Henry say?”
Her chin dimpled. “He was very drunk,” she said with careful dignity.
William swore under his breath. Reading between the lines, Henry had said and done nothing, perhaps even condoned the remark. Excuses were always made for Henry’s behaviour. It was never his fault, but there came a point when the blame had to come home to roost.
Marguerite bit her lip. “If you interfere, you will only make matters worse,” she said with dismay. “I should not have told you. For my sake and yours, I beg you say nothing.”
William clenched his jaw.
“Please…”
“Very well, madam,” he said stiffly, “since that be your wish, but if it happens again and I am by, I won’t hold back.”
“Thank you.” She looked relieved.
He left her side and went to watch the chess game, although what he really wanted to do was go and wash his hands and rid himself of the feeling that he had somehow smirched his honour.
Ancel was holding his own against a fiercely determined Eleanor. Her full lower lip was thrust out and the frown lines between her eyes were heavily demarcated. She made her move and looked up at William. “He’s not afraid to risk all,” she said, a gleam of approbation in her eyes.
William found a smile, although it was difficult after what Marguerite had just said. “No,” he said. “He’s not.” And thought of the risks facing himself and the dangerous temptation to take them.
Fourteen
Lagny-sur-Marne, Champagne, November 1179
There was a new Young King and he was French. The fourteen-year-old son of Louis of France, Philip the God-given, so called because he was born when his father had relinquished all hope of siring an heir, had been crowned at Reims on All Saints’ Day and a grand tourney was being held to mark the occasion. All the magnates and lords who had attended the coronation had come to the field with their retinues. Tents and striped pavilions were pitched as far as the eye could see. The weather was cold but clear, the horizon a grainy haze and, as it had been dry recently, the ground was firm for the horses.
William glanced towards the recently risen sun and inhaled deeply. The smell of bread, bacon, and pottage wafted from numerous camp fires and the cookstall booths were doing brisk business as men stoked their bellies for the hard day’s fighting to come.
Adjusting his surcoat, Ancel emerged from William’s pavilion. The garment was parti-coloured green and yellow with a red lion rampant snarling across the background—William’s chosen device. There were several knights kitted out in this barding, their surcoats and shields proclaiming William’s blazon. Like William and Ancel they were of English birth and provided for by the Young King from the expenses given to him as his father’s representative at young Philip’s coronation…expenses that were vanishing faster than water down a piscina with the plug removed.
William admired his brother. “You look a veritable King’s Champion,” he said.
Ancel flashed him a nervous grin. “Let’s hope I perform like one.”
“I have no doubts on that score.” It was true. Ancel had tourneyed throughout the summer at William’s side. Nervous and uncertain at first, his skills had blossomed as his confidence had grown. He was never going to dazzle, but he was a competent fighter, always aware of where others were and what they were doing.
Adam Yqueboeuf and Thomas de Coulances were passing and had overheard the brothers’ exchange. Yqueboeuf’s lips parted in a sneer. “You are the one reckoned to be Lancelot, Marshal, didn’t you know?”
William’s eyes narrowed. “Meaning?” The antipathy between the men had increased of late, fuelled on William’s part by knowledge of what Yqueboeuf had said about Marguerite. Yqueboeuf’s hostility stemmed from envy and the higher William rose at court, the more it festered. He would not compare William to King Arthur’s best knight unless there was an insult in it somewhere.
“It’s obvious, isn’t it? You deserve all the accolades that come your way, King’s Champion that you are.”
The knights went on their way. Out of hearing, de Coulances leaned towards Yqueboeuf and said something that caused both men to laugh and glance over their shoulders.
“Pity they’re not opposing us,” Ancel said, hands on hips. “I’d enjoy choking them with their own teeth.” He gave William a perceptive look. Only last night in Henry’s chamber, a troubadour had been retelling Chrétien de Troyes’ story of Lancelot, the greatest of King Arthur’s knights who had betrayed his lord by sleeping with his wife. “Do you think they are insinuating that you and Queen Marguerite—”
William raised his hand to interrupt his brother in mid-sentence. “Say no more.” His features twisted with revulsion. “I will not countenance such filth.”
“No, but they might.”
“They have no grounds. I am never alone with the Queen. If I talk to her or dance with her at court, I don’t linger, and I don’t flirt with her either.”
