all are, but a little flat too—if anyone dared admit as much.” He approached a bay stallion tethered outside while the groom mucked out its stall. “So what do you think?” he asked, running his hand down the animal’s neck.
“About the horse? A fine beast.”
“Oh come.” Leicester gave him a sharp look. “Do not play the wide-eyed fool with me, D’Albini. Neither of us is going to desert Stephen, but it will not be long until that boy is a man in body as well as in mind. How many here are likely to follow Stephen’s heir, and how many that red-haired youngster, if it comes to the crux?”
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Will made a face. “It is a great pity all this could not have been settled ten years ago without a war.”
“In hindsight yes, but not at the time,” Leicester said. “We were not to know what the empress’s son would become, nor Eustace. Now we have been given a chance to judge.” He gave Will an astute look. “Henry FitzEmpress knew exactly what he was doing when he turned up here. However disastrously his escapade in England might have begun, he has turned it to his advantage. How many others here are having the same discussion as us in quiet corners? The time is not right even now, but it is coming, and it is our duty not to squander it—for all our sakes.” ttt
Matilda bit her lip as the messenger bowed from the room. She did not know whether to laugh or be appalled that Henry had gone to Stephen to ask for the money to return home.
“It is audacious, you must admit,” she said to Robert, who had received the news in stony silence.
“That is one way of putting things,” he growled. “You might as easily say foolish and wilful. What if Stephen had cast him in prison? What if he had been killed? This has been a hare-brained enterprise from beginning to end.” Matilda tapped her forefinger against her chin. “At the outset it was, I agree with you, but now he has been able to infiltrate Stephen’s camp more deeply than we ever could even with the most accomplished of spies.”
“And what sort of impression do you think Stephen’s barons have garnered?” Robert said with a jaundiced curl of his lip.
“They will have seen his daring and initiative—that he was able to persuade funds out of Stephen.”
“That would not be difficult. Look at the way Stephen drained your father’s treasury in the early days.”
“Yes, but his men will view it as a further example of his weakness, not largesse. By believing he is ridding himself of a 466
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bothersome gnat while showing magnanimous scorn, he has misread the situation.”
“Then let us hope you have not,” Robert said, then heaved a sigh and pinched the bridge of his nose. “I know Henry’s presence has put new heart into our men, but he is not ready for full command.” He gave her an exhausted look. “You may believe me to be hostile towards him, but in truth I am not.
I will welcome the day when he is old enough to take this burden from my shoulders.”
“I know you are not hostile.” She came to embrace him, worried by how grey he looked. “I welcome it too. When I hold the imperial crown between my hands, it is Henry I see wearing it. But I am still the bearer and the custodian, and it is because of that duty I must carry on. It is like finding the final scraping in the bottom of the barrel when you thought there was nothing left.”
“Yes,” Robert said wearily. “The final scraping.” 467
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Fifty-four
Devizes, November 1147
Brian rode into Devizes, his stomach churning and his lips pressed tightly together. Twice on the journey from Wallingford he had had to dismount and vomit at the roadside.
He felt as if he was losing himself and becoming his own shadow. Matilda’s people watched him ride by, their faces filled with trepidation before they looked at the ground or away. In a few eyes he saw sparks of relief, and turned away in shame, because he was here to add to the burden, not relieve it.
In the castle bailey, the grooms greeted him with mumbled words. The few people about hurried to cross the open ground and avoid the blustery spatters of rain. Brian dismounted from Sable and watched the old horse being led away to a