The Tavern in the Morning

Chapter Sixteen

‘I have the distinct feeling,’ de Courtenay began, ‘that much of what I would start by telling you will be a repetition of what you already know.’

‘How so?’ Josse asked.

‘Because I imagine you and your friend the Abbess Helewise have few secrets from one another, so that everything I told her at our first meeting, she will in turn have told you. Am I right?’

Josse thought quickly. There seemed no point in denying it. ‘Aye. I know that you are a relation of Joanna de Courtenay, now Joanna de Lehon, and that, following the death of her husband, she is alone in the world and, according to you, grief-stricken and without a protector. As a good kinsman should, you are searching for her and you have come to this region because Joanna has an old friend who lives here. You believe she might have come to see that friend.’

‘Ah, yes,’ de Courtenay sighed. ‘All of that is, alas, all too true.’

‘And you have received no news of Joanna?’

‘I have not.’ Another sigh.

‘What of her woman friend? Did you manage to locate her?’

‘Again, no.’ De Courtenay’s handsome face creased into a worried frown. Josse, observing that there was not the trace of a sign that the man had just told a lie, reminded himself that he was dealing with a very skilled opponent. A very calculating and devious one. And — as the only recently-healed wound on Josse’s head testified — a potentially violent one.

‘You yourself have friends here,’ he said. ‘The Clares of Tonbridge.’

De Courtenay’s head shot up. ‘The Clares friends of mine? No, Sir Josse, now there you are mistaken.’

Putting that denial aside as probably another lie, Josse said, ‘Obviously so. However, you did, I believe, visit Tonbridge.’

Would he deny that, too?

There was a brief pause. Then, as if de Courtenay had worked out that his presence in Tonbridge would be impossible to refute, since too may people might well swear they’d seen him there, he said, ‘I did indeed. I took supper at a tavern. Quite a pleasant inn — a fine mug of ale, and a fresh slice of pie. Rabbit, I seem to recall. Or was it chicken? No matter. Served by a scrawny, dim-witted girl with a drip on the end of her nose.’ He grimaced in distaste.

Poor little Tilly, Josse thought. So much for trying to win your handsome stranger’s favour by swapping the last of the old pie for the first of the new.

‘But, naturally, nobody there could give me any information about my cousin,’ de Courtenay was saying. ‘Not that I expected it — Joanna is a lady, not the sort of person one would find frequenting a bawdy tavern.’

A lady. Against his will, Josse had a memory of Joanna in bed. Making love to him, laughing at some vulgar remark of his, just like any tavern wench.

Deliberately shutting off the image, he said, ‘So you went to Hawkenlye Abbey, in case she’d sought refuge there.’

De Courtenay gave him a sharp look. ‘I did. Not once but twice, and the second time the gracious Abbess allowed me to have a good look around.’

‘No sign of your cousin?’

‘No.’ De Courtenay’s eyes seemed to bore into Josse. ‘No. No sign of her.’

Uncomfortable under the continuing scrutiny, Josse was prompted to speak more bluntly than he intended. ‘Why are you so keen to find her?’ he demanded. ‘The duty of a kinsman is all very well, but searching Abbeys and — ’ he had been about to say, and tormenting old women, but stopped himself — ‘and waylaying innocent men like Brother Saul is surely going too far. I think, de Courtenay, you had better explain yourself.’

De Courtenay was lying back on one elbow, long slim legs crossed, studying the toes of his boots. ‘Explain,’ he murmured. He shot a glance at Josse. ‘Yes. I, too, think I had better explain.’ Sitting up suddenly, he said, ‘You assume, Sir Josse, that it is Joanna for whom I am searching so diligently. Why?’

Taken aback, Josse said, ‘Because she is both an orphan and a widow, and likely to be wealthy. And, since you are not, as you say, her uncle, but her cousin, there is no reason why you should not try to acquire your dispensation and marry her.’

The surprise on de Courtenay’s face had to be genuine. He echoed faintly, ‘Marry her?’ and then, to Josse’s consternation, burst out laughing.

‘Do you deny that you have been posing as her uncle?’ Josse demanded, puzzled and irritated by the laughter.

‘No, no, I don’t deny it.’ A fresh chuckle burst from de Courtenay. ‘I never can get these complicated strands of family ties straight. I’ve always felt like Joanna’s uncle, that’s for sure.’ He was looking intently at Josse, no longer laughing. ‘But, uncle or cousin, you must believe me, Sir Josse, when I assure you I have no thought to marry her. Once, maybe, when she was virginal and unsullied, I might have, although even then I had — No.’

There was a silence. Josse, fighting to control his rage — when she was virgin and unsullied, indeed! And who was responsible for the ending of that innocent state? — wanted very much to slam his fist into de Courtenay’s pensive face.

Eventually, mastering himself, he said, ‘So what do you want with her?’

De Courtenay looked up. ‘I have not, Sir Josse, been entirely frank with you,’ he said. ‘I have spoken all along as if Joanna were alone, whereas in fact that is not true.’

‘Indeed?’ Josse said coldly.

‘Indeed. She has a son, a boy of seven years. I do not know his name — I have never met him — but I do know of his existence.’

Of course you do, Josse wanted to say. It was Joanna’s pregnancy with that very child which led to you arranging for her the hell on earth that was her marriage to Thorald de Lehon.

He managed to keep the accusation back. ‘What of it?’ he said instead.

De Courtenay seemed to be thinking. ‘Joanna was married to a man named Thorald de Lehon,’ he said, ‘but the child was not his.’ He looked up at Josse, his face expressionless. ‘The boy was conceived at court, in Windsor, during the Christmas festivities of the year 1184.’

‘Ah, Christmas at court,’ Josse said, putting on a smile as if happily reminiscing. ‘Fun and games under the Lord of Misrule, eh?’

‘Quite so,’ de Courtenay agreed. ‘You’ll recall, Sir Josse, how it is? How we all tend to forget ourselves in the celebrations, when we’ve been dancing all evening and have had more to drink than is wise?’

‘Oh, aye.’

‘Especially — ’ de Courtenay was leaning closer now, watching Josse for any nuance of reaction — ‘when there is such a clear lead given from the top.’

‘From the top?’ Josse tried to work out what de Courtenay was implying. Then, remembering Joanna speaking of the old King and his numerous mistresses, he nodded. ‘Aye. King Henry, they do say, enjoyed the company of many women. Rosamund Clifford, the princess Alais, and-’

‘And?’ de Courtenay prompted.

Josse shrugged. ‘Any number of other passing fancies, I dare say.’ He was beginning to have a dreadful suspicion. ‘And, where the King leads, his sons will follow,’ he murmured, horrified at his own tentative conclusion yet, at the same time, appreciating how very possible it was.

‘His sons?’ de Courtenay said.

Josse was picturing Ninian’s brilliant blue eyes. Why on earth had he not realised sooner? Not Joanna’s eyes, not inherited from his mother.

Blue eyes, the like of which Josse had been so sure he’d seen once before.

In the face of the boy’s father.

‘I speak,’ he said softly, ‘of King Richard.’

De Courtenay stared at him. ‘Do you?’

‘Aye.’

De Courtenay leaned back on his elbow again. ‘Are you often at court, Sir Josse?’

‘Infrequently.’

‘Yet they speak of you as a King’s man.’

‘I have had the honour to serve King Richard and I await any further instruction he should care to give me.’ Good God, but if Josse were right about this …

‘But you do not attend your King at court,’ de Courtenay was persisting.

‘No. Not often.’

‘Then,’ the voice was low now, ‘you will not know how our blessed King Richard used to comport himself during such festivities as the Christmas season. He was not a man to dance and to carouse, Sir Josse, not once he had put in the appearance which court etiquette demanded of him. Do you know what our beloved King was wont to do then, as soon as he could make himself scarce?’

Josse shook his head. He was intent on what de Courtenay was saying — how, indeed, could he not be! — but, at the same time, he was wondering, with a grim feeling of foreboding, why the man insisted on speaking of his King in the past tense.

‘King Richard preferred to retire to his room with his men and play at mock battles,’ de Courtenay said. ‘I have it on the best authority that his favourite was a re-enactment of the battle of Jericho, and that he himself would blow the trumpet that brought down the city walls.’

Josse said firmly, ‘I don’t believe you.’

De Courtenay shrugged. ‘Please yourself. It is of no import. But what you must rid yourself of, Sir Josse, is any idea of King Richard summoning pretty young maidens to his bedchamber and seducing them. He was never, I do assure you, that sort of man.’

‘I-’ Josse couldn’t think how to go on. De Courtenay’s words had the ring of truth, that was the problem; what little Josse knew of King Richard made him believe his sovereign far more likely to prefer discussing ancient battle tactics to deflowering virgins.

But if not Richard, then who?

‘I believe Prince John was at court that Christmas,’ he began, hating himself for the questioning tone.

‘Why do you speak of the sons,’ de Courtenay murmured, ‘when there was then so much life and vigour still in the father?’

It took a moment or two for it to sink in.

The father.

Henry Plantagenet, Richard’s father, the man who had passed down to this son, too, those bright blue eyes. Strong and bull-headed ruler of England for thirty-five years, and, at a generous estimate, some fifty or more years old that Christmas when Joanna’s son was conceived.

And she a child of sixteen!

Was it true? Was Henry of England truly the father of Joanna’s son?

Josse leaned forward and took hold of de Courtenay by the shoulders. Tightening his fingers till they dug deep into the sinewy flesh — he could sense de Courtenay brace himself against the pain — Josse said, ‘If I ever discover that you are lying to me, and that Joanna’s son is not the child of Henry Plantagenet, then, so help me, I shall find you and kill you.’

De Courtenay met his eyes. You could not, Josse had to admit, fault his courage. ‘It is the truth,’ he said simply. ‘Believe me, I led her to his bed. I was there when he took her.’

Josse almost killed him there and then. Digging in his fingers still further, eliciting a faint moan from de Courtenay, he said, ‘She was a child, man! Your own kin! And you sacrificed her to an old man’s lust!’

‘He’d had his eye on her from the moment she arrived,’ de Courtenay panted. ‘If it hadn’t been me, then somebody else would have fetched her to him. Aaagh! And I thought — aaaagh!’

Josse slackened his grip a fraction. ‘You thought you might as well gain the glory,’ he finished. ‘Attract a little of the royal benevolence for yourself. Eh?’

‘Why not?’ de Courtenay countered. ‘And he was grateful — you had to give the old King that, he never forgot when you’d done him a favour.’

‘And, not content with that, you then gave your beautiful niece to an old goat who used her like a whore throughout her marriage,’ Josse breathed. ‘Why Brittany, de Courtenay? Why send her so far afield?’

De Courtenay was looking at him strangely, an expression of calculation mixing with the pain in his face. ‘You’ve spoken to her,’ he said softly. ‘Great God, but you know all about this from her! Don’t you?’

Josse tightened his hands again and de Courtenay screamed in agony. ‘You haven’t answered my question,’ he said. ‘Why dispatch her to Brittany?’

De Courtenay’s face was dead-white. ‘Because I wanted everyone to forget about her,’ he said, gritting his teeth. ‘To forget she’d been at court, to forget, if they’d ever known it, that she’d slept with the King. To be ignorant — aaagh! — of the fact that she was pregnant when she wed de Lehon.’

Josse was nodding his understanding. ‘So that nobody but you and she would know that the boy was King Henry’s son. So that you could keep that precious piece of information secret. Yes?’

‘Yes.’

Josse relaxed his grip. Instantly de Courtenay curled in on himself, nursing his shoulders with the opposite hands.

‘And,’ Josse went on, thinking out loud, ‘now that Joanna is a widow, you think to persuade her to join you in whatever you are plotting and-’

‘You don’t see it, do you?’ de Courtenay said, his voice husky. ‘You don’t understand why I want the child now.’

‘Now that his father — his adoptive father — is dead. No, I can’t say that I do.’

De Courtenay gave a sigh of exasperation. ‘It has nothing to do with de Lehon,’ he said. ‘Forget about him, everyone else has, he was a terrible old man. Think more widely, sir knight. Think, if you are able, of court circles.’

Court. The old King dead, King Richard away in Outremer, Prince John putting it about that he might not come back and dropping heavy hints that he would make a better King than his absent brother. But, despite his progressions around the land, failing to win popular support.

‘Who,’ de Courtenay prompted, ‘stands to be King if Richard does not return?’

‘Prince John believes it should be him, but-’

‘But Richard instructed that Arthur of Brittany be confirmed as his heir. Yet who in England wants to be ruled by a four-year-old baby, with a Breton mother into the bargain?’

‘Well, I-’

De Courtenay was kneeling up in front of Josse now, face alight. ‘Don’t you see what a pearl we have, Sir Josse, very nearly within our grasp? If I can only find him, what a prize! Eh?’

‘You mean Ninian,’ Josse whispered.

‘Ninian? Is that what she calls him? Well, we can soon change that — William, perhaps, or Geoffrey, and we’ll tack on a FitzHenry, heaven knows the lad’s entitled to it. Then we’ll present him. Look, we’ll say, King Henry’s true son, of the blood royal, conceived at Windsor, with witnesses to prove it!’

‘Prove it?’ Panicked, Josse lit on the one thing that was at all approachable. ‘How so?’

‘There were more than just the King, Joanna and I in that bed,’ de Courtenay murmured. ‘And I already have assured myself of their support. In return for what I have sworn to pay them, they will attest to the dates and identify Joanna. The child’s date of birth is on record. Anybody who can do simple addition can work out the rest for himself.’

‘And there’s the eyes,’ Josse muttered. ‘I knew I recognised those brilliant blue eyes.’

‘Ah, all to the good!’ de Courtenay cried. ‘A family resemblance was almost too much to hope for.’

Joanna, oh, Joanna, Josse was thinking, this was why you were on the run. Not escaping from de Courtenay for your own sake, as I thought, but for Ninian’s. Because you could not stand by and see your precious child made a pawn in a desperate power game. A pawn who, if de Courtenay were to miss his footing for an instant, would be swiftly and silently disposed of. Never to be heard of or seen again.

That’s why she let me bring her here! he realised in a flash. Why she agreed to the plan to lodge Ninian at Hawkenlye, while she laid a false trail elsewhere! That was why, of course, she asked those strange questions. Was New Winnowlands far off the beaten track? Could somebody find it if they were determined? I, poor fool that I was, believed it was because she feared for her own safety, feared that de Courtenay would find her. In fact, it was quite the opposite.

She wanted de Courtenay to find her.

Because, all the while he was pursuing her, it meant that Ninian was safe.

Feeling sick, he realised that she had used him. Oh, aye, she had her reasons — he had never doubted the power of mother-love — but, remembering those passionate nights with her, he felt as if she had just spat on him.

He raised his head and saw that de Courtenay was watching him, with what looked remarkably like compassion.

‘She can be very charming,’ he said. ‘It runs in the family. She quite won the old King’s heart that Christmas. He couldn’t take his eyes off her, he’d have given her anything she asked. Only she was too proud.’

‘She-’ Josse’s voice broke. He began again. ‘She would never agree to her son being put forward, being paraded openly as Henry’s son.’

‘No, I fear you are right,’ de Courtenay admitted. ‘But then it is not crucial to have her agreement. If I can only find the boy, tell him who he is and spirit him away to where I have friends and supporters waiting, then Joanna swiftly becomes irrelevant.’

‘You-’ Josse started. Then he made himself stop. Better, surely, to let de Courtenay continue. At least then Josse would know what he was planning to do.

‘Join us!’ de Courtenay said eagerly. ‘What a future we could have, Sir Josse! You could say, quite reasonably, that as a loyal follower of King Richard, you were keen to do what was best for the realm he left behind, and what better, from Richard’s point of view, than a new start? God knows, he detested all the kin he knew about, why not crown one he’d never met? It could scarce be worse!’

‘Aye, aye,’ Josse said, ‘you may be right. And we could win popular support, think you?’

‘Of course!’ de Courtenay said confidently. ‘The people are so fickle, so shallow of thought, they’ll believe anything if it’s presented to them plausibly enough. And, in all conscience, they won’t take readily to either John or Arthur of Brittany.’

‘No, no, I can see that.’ Josse was thinking hard. ‘So, we take the boy off to London or to Winchester, proclaim his parenthood, get your witnesses to swear that it’s all true and then have him adopted as heir?’

‘Yes!’ De Courtenay was on his feet now, almost dancing. ‘Why, man, he could be crowned King before we know it! And then we’ll be sitting pretty. The power behind the throne, eh? What a prospect! What do you say?’

Josse, too, got up. Slowly, pretending to stretch, pretending still to be working it all out. But, as he straightened up, he reached down surreptitiously to ensure he still carried his dagger. His sword, he could see, was within reach, propped beside the fireplace.

‘I think,’ he said, keeping his tone calm, ‘that it is an outstanding plan.’

‘I thought you would!’ de Courtenay said gleefully.

‘Except you’ve forgotten something.’ Josse tried to sound merely a little worried, as if the objection were only a small point.

‘Oh, there are any number of details still to be worked out,’ de Courtenay agreed. ‘What has occurred to you?’

‘What has occurred to me,’ Josse said, pretending to reach for another log to throw on the fire, ‘is this.’ His hand flew past the stacked logs and landed on the hilt of his sword.

Swinging the blade up, aiming its awesome point straight at de Courtenay, he said coldly, ‘You are premature, Denys. Clever, devious, but premature.’

He took in the surprise on de Courtenay’s face, the very first look of doubt. He found that, despite everything, he was quite enjoying himself.

‘What you have forgotten,’ he said pleasantly, ‘is that, as far as we know, King Richard is still alive.’