Rannulf shuffled his feet. “A few, sire, but I have paid them the heed that I would pay to a pile of dog turds and avoided them. I know they are untrue.”
“Then you know more than me.”
Rannulf said nothing, his expression carefully neutral.
“Do you know where Marshal is?”
“No, sire. Do you want me to find him?”
“No,” Henry said tersely. “I don’t want to see him. Indeed, if he seeks me out, deny him access to my presence. That’s an order and you are to pass it down to the guards and squires. He is not welcome.”
“Sire,” Rannulf said, but looked ill at ease.
“I mean it; I’ll not be made to look a fool by any man. It goes without saying that you will keep your silence on the matter.”
“No one shall hear anything from my lips, sire.”
With a stiff nod, Henry strode on to his chamber. Watching his retreating back, Rannulf pondered for a while on what he should do, and finally went in search of Baldwin de Béthune.
***
William woke to find himself being shaken like a rat in the jaws of a terrier. He squinted at the painful splinters of daylight poking through the shutters. The woman beside him sat up and drew the sheets around her body with a gasp of alarm.
“Jesu, are you set on destroying yourself?” demanded Baldwin de Béthune, his voice gruff with anger. “Get up, for Christ’s sake.” Bundling up the woman’s garments, he thrust them at her. “Out,” he snapped.
“It’s all right, leave her be,” William groaned. He peered through half-closed lids at Baldwin who was simmering like a cauldron with too much steam under the lid.
“That’s a fine thing for you to say. Do you know the trouble you’re in?”
William pushed his hair out of his eyes. Catching a stench of armpit he grimaced. “No, but I can guess.”
“No you can’t.” Baldwin flicked another look at the woman. With a sigh and a curse at the pain spearing through his wine-abused skull, William reached over the bed, found his pouch, and paid her with a handful of coins. Baldwin eyed her impatiently and tapped his fingers against the buckle of his swordbelt. She wasn’t one of the court whores, he knew all of them, but she was handsome and her clothes were of good quality. But then William had taste—Baldwin had to allow him that. The best or nothing…and it had just cost him far more dearly than a handful of Angevin silver pennies.
Knotting her pay in a kerchief, the whore retreated into the bay overhanging the street to don her clothes and braid her hair. William left the bed, washed his face and torso in a shallow brass bowl on the coffer and, drying himself on the coarse linen towel beside it, looked at his friend. “Tell me the worst.”
“That is yet to come,” Baldwin replied tersely. “Ralph Farci went to Henry last night and told him that you and the Young Queen were lovers—that you had committed adultery together, and Farci summoned witnesses, including Yqueboeuf and de Coulances, to confirm his accusation.”
William froze in mid-wipe. “What?”
“Rannulf the chamberlain came to me and told me to warn you. Henry has taken the news badly…”
William flung the towel towards the bed and dragged a clean shirt off the clothing pole. “I have to speak to him,” he said as he dived into the garment. He felt as if someone were determinedly screwing a knife into his left temple. The whore finished her toilet and quietly left the room.
“You can’t,” Baldwin said. “Henry has given orders that you’re not to be admitted to his presence. He doesn’t want to speak to you.”
William paused in the act of reaching for his tunic. He had known that the situation was serious, but this raised the stakes. “Surely he doesn’t believe the rumours? Surely he knows me better than that?”
Baldwin fixed him with a sombre stare. “I do not know how well he knows any of us, or how well we know him. All I can tell you is what Rannulf told me, and that was not a great deal.”
Slowly William donned his tunic. His headache and a general feeling of malaise made it hard to think. While he had been seeking oblivion in a flagon of wine and the embraces of a whore, Henry had been finding answers—most of them slanted in the wrong direction by the sounds of it. He concentrated on fastening his belt. “Yesterday, at the hunt, when we stopped to picnic, Marguerite came upon me by the banks of the stream…We talked of times past and she kissed me.”
Baldwin’s gaze widened with dismay. “Christ on the cross!” he muttered.
William flushed. “It was bestowed out of friendship—foolish and ill advised, yes, but with no intent to play Henry false. I swear to you on the body of our Lord Jesus Christ that I have never touched Marguerite in the manner of a lover, nor she me. Anyone who says that we have is a base liar.” He reached for his cloak. “I need to see Henry.”
“I’ve told you, you can’t,” Baldwin said in exasperation. “He won’t receive you.”
“But I need at least to try,” William said grimly. He started to the door, and then turned back to Baldwin. “I will understand if you choose to distance yourself.”
