The Loves of the Lionheart Read online

  Richard felt his fingers bunch into fists as he stood and watched his betrothed, trying to assure himself that he was wrong. Perhaps it was the way she was lying that gave this illusion or perhaps she had merely put on weight. But he had seen enough female bodies to know the difference and he knew that if he did not retreat to his own chamber now, he might well do something he would regret.

  He was a warrior, a skilled military leader; he had never struck a woman and he had no wish to do so now. Tomorrow would be time enough to discover the facts of the matter, tomorrow would be time enough to return to France and break his promise to Philip.

  THE MORNING SUN FOUND Alys heavy headed and swollen eyed. Snow was beginning to fall in heavy flakes outside the windows and she wrapped her fur mantle about her shoulders and sat at the table on the seat closest to the newly lit fire.

  She recalled the day she had arrived in this cold land, how afraid she had been as a small child, but that fear was nothing compared to the terror which squeezed her heart now. She held no illusions that Richard loved her, or was even fond of her, but she belonged to him and he would not take losing a possession calmly.

  He could be violent. She knew that, knew from his reputation and from the gossip of the servants and people who knew him. Her heart quivered as she wondered what he would do; her status as Princess of France, as daughter of that nation’s King, would not save her.

  His expression was grim when he appeared at the table. Her eyes moved passed him to the doorway, hoping to see his father. At least if Henry were there, she would be saved from his son’s wrath.

  Richard sat at the table, poured himself ale and pulled a chunk of bread from the loaf. Taking a sharp knife, he sliced through the cheese in one angry stroke, as though it had offended him and must die for it.

  He nodded briefly to Alys but said nothing, though his eyes were cold and full of fury. He was enraged, she could feel it emanating from him like the heat from the fire. Immediately she knew he must have discovered her secret, for there seemed nothing else to make him so angry.

  She wasn’t hungry, did not think she would ever be able to eat again. She sipped a little of the ale she had already poured and tried to sit quiet, but the need to be away from this man, the need to be out of his presence and out of his reach was overwhelming.

  She pushed back the bench and stood, began to make her way to the doorway, but his voice stopped her.

  “You have eaten nothing,” he said.

  “I am not hungry, My Lord,” she answered.

  “A woman in your condition needs to eat.”

  She spun around so fast she almost slipped on the rushes which covered the stone floor. He knew! How? How could he possibly know? Pulling the front of her mantle closer, she took a step away from him, her eyes wide and terrified, as he turned in his seat and stared back at her. He held out his hand, but she was too afraid to take it. It could not be a gesture made in friendship. There was but one reason he would hold out a hand for her to take and that was so that he could pull her closer, make it easier to chastise her. She took another step away.

  Still, his hand reached out to take hers.

  “Come,” he said. “Have no fear. I will not hurt you.”

  She only stared at him, her heart pounding fast and loud, hammering against her ribs. She turned her head and looked behind, still hoping the King would appear, but it was yet early for him to be about.

  “We must speak of this, Alys,” Richard said. “I’ll not say what I have to say to you once my father appears, so do not think to wait for him. We have much to discuss.”

  She took one faltering step, then stopped.

  “Come, please,” he repeated, his voice rising a little. “I have said I’ll not hurt you. What more do you want?”

  “You promise?”

  “I swear on the holy cross.”

  She wiped the tears from her eyes and walked quickly toward him, before she had time to think and run away. She had heard many horrifying tales about this man, but she had never heard that he was a liar.

  “Sit,” he said.

  She slipped onto the bench beside him, watched him pour more ale and pass it to her.

  “Thank you, My Lord,” she muttered in a quivering voice, fingering the tankard for comfort.

  “Now, you have something to tell me I believe. But let us begin with where to place the blame, shall we? Did he force himself on you? Were you raped?”

  She wanted to say she had been; that might quell his fury, but she hadn’t objected, not really. She had been desperate for affection, had thought that the man to whom she had been promised had rejected her, no longer wanted her, and she had just begun to feel the cravings of a woman.

  But none of that was reason enough to betray this man.

  “Do you not want to know who?” She asked.

  “I know who,” Richard replied. “A beautiful princess, young and ripe, alone in this godforsaken castle with the most lecherous man in Christendom. I do not need to be told who.”

  Somehow his condemnation of his father made her feel better, less to blame. She drew a deep breath to aid her reply.

  “No, My Lord,” she answered at last. “I was not forced. I betrayed your trust and I do not expect you to forgive me.”

  “Twas not you who betrayed my trust,” Richard replied quietly. “That was the King. He was the one who betrayed the trust of us both. He should have been caring for you, protecting you, keeping you chaste and away from harm. Instead he has stolen that which was mine and that can never be undone.”

  Alys’ eyes met his and her lip turned down. She did not expect him to be so understanding; she expected him to blame her, because the woman was always to blame for tempting the poor helpless man. Richard was the very last man she had expected to place the blame where it belonged.

  And now she had lost him.

  “This is why he did not send me word of the Pope’s command; he didn’t want me to come back and discover his sin.” He paused to drink a little of his ale, glanced at her with a look of contempt. “Did he think perhaps he could pretend none of it had ever happened, wait until after the birth, then pass you off to me as a virgin?”

  His words made her angry and she clung onto that anger to give her courage. She had woken this morning afraid to face this man; now she wanted to slap him.

  “You talk as though I was nothing but a possession,” she said. “But I suppose that’s just what I am, is it not? The King has taken what he wanted of his possession. He lied to me, Richard. He told me you no longer wanted me. Had I known you would return for me, things might have been different.”

  The silence that followed her words hung heavily in the air. He would not tell her that she had not been lied to, that he really did not want her. There was no need for her to know that.

  “Whatever his scheme, I now know about it and he needs to be told. You had best tell him this morning, before I return to France. If you don’t, I will have to tell him myself and I would rather not be the one to do that. It will take all my strength not to kill him as it is.”

  Her lip tremored again and this time Richard’s patience had run out. He pushed himself away from the table and stood up.

  “Please,” he said. “Do not start weeping again. It is over between you and I. You do realise that, I suppose? You can never be my wife now.”

  “It would be incestuous.”

  “Possibly. I expect the church would see it that way, but that is not my reason.”

  “What then?”

  The anger was back in his eyes and something else with it; hatred.

  “You are sullied, unclean. I cannot go where he has been.”

  His words cut as though he had taken his sword to her and she had no power over the wail of despair which erupted from her throat as she leapt to her feet. Not quite straightened up, she wondered if he had, indeed, sliced his sword through her for the pain was just as great. But this was a physical pain, a pain that made her clutch at her stomach and do
uble over, a puddle of red pooling around her feet as she collapsed among the rushes.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Son of the Lionheart

  ALYS COULD DO LITTLE after the loss of her child other than comply to King Henry’s wishes. Her promised marriage to Prince Richard now lost in the past, she could do nothing but hope for Henry to keep his promise to annul his marriage and make Alys his Queen.

  But Alys was no fool. She had been used by two royal families for their own ends, for as long as she could remember, and while she might pretend to accept Henry’s promises, she never really believed them.

  One thing she did believe was that now Rosamund Clifford was finally dead, she, Alys, was Henry’s only mistress. She still felt the shame of the position in which she found herself and always would. It seemed unlikely she would ever marry now, unless Queen Eleanor were to meet with a fatal accident or contract some terminal illness. Then Henry might marry her, but only then.

  After Richard returned to Aquitaine, Alys waited for some letter of condemnation from her father as well as her brother, but none came. She could only suppose that Richard had decided to keep the affair to himself, perhaps out of shame for her betrayal. It hardly showed him in the best light, that his betrothed had chosen his aging father over him.

  What she did not know and could never know, was that although Richard had been angry when he learned the truth, a huge part of him was relieved. He would have reluctantly gone through with the marriage, but her affair with his father had given him the ideal excuse to reject her.

  Young Henry arrived shortly after his brother left to escort his sister, Joanna, part of the way to Sicily for her marriage to the King of that country. He looked well and King Henry was happy to see him, but he also seemed melancholy. Marguerite had lost the child she had been expecting. It seemed it was a son who had lived but a few hours.

  He was to escort Joanna as far as Aquitaine, where he would hand her over to Richard to guide her the rest of the way.

  Alys hugged Joanna as she said goodbye, kissed her cheek and wished her happiness. She was but eleven years old, not much older than Alys when she came here, but her marriage would take place almost at once and the man she was to wed was no young boy, but a king of more than twice her age who had been married twice before.

  Alys worried for her. Her own first intimate encounter with a man had been as a more mature woman. She was older than Joanna, so they had not been very close, but nonetheless Alys regretted that she would likely never see her again.

  Eleanor was still locked away at Henry’s pleasure, moved around from draughty castle to draughty castle and never allowed to see the sunshine of her beloved Aquitaine. Alys thought that too cruel and her courage had grown since Henry took her to his bed.

  She sometimes thought that he, too, felt the shame of it and she was not above using that for her own ends.

  “Would it be too much, Your Majesty,” she asked him, “to allow the Queen to return to her own lands of Aquitaine?”

  He had been sitting quietly, reading from a book, and now he glanced up and smiled.

  “You are kind, Alys,” he said, “but you do not know Eleanor. She would use the privilege to mount a new campaign against me, she would rally my sons to her cause. They need little excuse as it is. No, she is better where she is.”

  “But, Sire, if you released their mother, the princes might well look favourably upon you. It could be the start of a new peace between you.”

  “Peace, you say? My sons don’t know the meaning of the word. Even now they are waging war against each other.”

  “Because of Richard’s vicious rule in Aquitaine. If you were to send his mother back there, things would change without bloodshed.”

  He smiled, a condescending smile which made her shudder. He was looking old and not for the first time, she wondered what would become of her when he finally died. If Eleanor outlived him, Alys could expect no mercy from her.

  “You do not understand the ways of men, my love,” Henry said. “You should leave these things to better brains than yours.”

  Better brains? Left alone, she might have been the Duchess of Aquitaine by now, she might have been ruling that land at Richard’s side instead of living out uncertain days as the King’s whore.

  There were no tears left in her. If there had been she might have shed them, but they had done her no good so far in her life. She expected no better from them now.

  “I have a letter from my sister, Sire,” Alys said.

  She had been holding the parchment close, between her breasts, ever since it arrived yesterday, unsure whether to tell the King the news Marguerite had sent her.

  “Is she well?” Henry asked.

  “She is. It seems there is no sign of another child.”

  “That is a shame,” Henry replied. “What will happen to the succession? She must have another child and it must be a son. Tell her.”

  Tell her? Did he think perhaps she had not thought of it for herself?

  She wondered how a great king and warrior, such as Henry Plantagenet, could also be so clueless. If a woman could simply wish herself into motherhood, there would be a lot less heartache in the world.

  “Do you think it that simple, Sire?” She answered. “You command her to give birth to a healthy son. I will tell her that. She has likely not thought of it herself.”

  He closed his book and gave her a weary look.

  “Sarcasm does not become you, Alys,” he said. “What I meant was that she should make a pilgrimage, pray at a shrine. There is more to getting a son than merely bedding with a man.”

  Alys resisted the urge to shake her head in disgust.

  “Marguerite also tells me my father has died.”

  The words were said in the same tone as she might have reported on the weather. King Louis the Monk, whose piety had made for a dull court and driven away his first Queen, never showed Alys one iota of concern. Nor that of her sister. She had no reason to mourn him, neither did she feel the need to do so. His death meant nothing to her, nothing except that her brother would now be King of France and if Henry refused to send her back to him, there could be a war.

  “Did you know?” She asked Henry.

  “No, my dear, I did not know,” he replied. “Do you think I would have kept such news to myself?”

  She made no reply. Was it likely that the death of the King of France would not have been relayed all over Christendom at the first opportunity? She would never know.

  Once more, she wondered if Philip was aware of her current position, wondered if Richard had yet told him. They were great friends, after all, but that very friendship could well be a reason for Richard to keep the knowledge to himself. It couldn’t stay hidden now, though.

  Henry had made excuses to King Louis; he would not succeed in making those same excuses to Philip. He would not be prepared to spend his reign in prayer and austerity and if he chose to take the Cross and go on crusade, he would do so for the glory of war, not for any holy quest like his father.

  Richard would do the same. Her eyes skimmed once more over the part of the letter which had jolted her when first she read it. It had hurt to read the words, to know that while she was discarded by her betrothed, he was not without a companion with whom to sate his appetites.

  She swallowed hard. She had no wish to let Henry see the tears which bunched in her throat when she spoke the words aloud.

  “Marguerite also writes me that Prince Richard’s mistress has given birth to a healthy son. That should please you.”

  He dropped his book and stared at her angrily.

  “Please me?” He yelled. “Why should it please me that he can have a bastard son, but not even a wife on which to get a legitimate one?”

  She could scarcely believe she was hearing such words from him. That he would criticise his son for failing to take a wife, he who had taken for himself the one who should have been that wife.

  “And whose fault is that?” She snapped, jumping
to her feet.

  “Mine? Is that what you say? Well, Alys, I don’t remember you resisting too much.”

  She clutched the precious letter in her hand and fled from the room, went to her chamber and threw herself down onto the bed. It had been more than two years since Richard came here to claim her, since the Pope had made his threats which had come to nothing, and during that time she had been sharing the King’s bed and the King’s lust, but not the King’s love. She would never share any man’s love.

  She was not even certain a man was capable of such an emotion, certainly not any of the men she had known. Her father used her and her sisters, her brother would no doubt do the same. If Henry had loved any woman, it had been Rosamund Clifford, not Eleanor and not Alys. It was all too late now.

  Never in all the time she had been here had she thought for one moment that the knowledge contained in this letter could hurt so much. Richard had a mistress. Of course he did; he was a handsome, virile man. He couldn’t be expected to stay celibate; that was the purview of women, not lusty men. But this mistress had given him a son. That son, according to Marguerite’s letter, he had named Philip after their brother and who would be showered with all the honours and titles due to the son of a Prince.

  That son should belong to her, not some French whore who had taken his fancy. She wondered if he loved her, this mother of his son. Did he whisper endearments to her? Did he bed her with tenderness as Alys had once imagined he might do with her? It hardly mattered.

  The woman’s name might never be known. If she were anyone of worth, he might have married her, but even though he would never wed the mother of his son, she had known what it was to have his love.

  PHILIP WAS FURIOUS. The first thing he did after his crowning as King of France was to write to Henry demanding that he proceed with the marriage between his son and Philip’s sister. It had been years since the Pope demanded the same, since Richard went to England to claim her, but for some reason nothing came of it.