Lionheart A Novel - By Sharon Kay Penman Page 0,43

and Henry had made with Hal and Geoffrey could never be made right. But John was still alive. Was it truly too late?

ELEANOR HAD RETIRED for the night soon afterward, dismissing all of her ladies-in-waiting but Amaria, who’d served her so loyally during those long years of confinement. When she began to tell Amaria of the French queen’s death, she was surprised to find tears welling in her eyes. How fragile life was, how fleeting their days on earth, and how fickle was Death, claiming the young as often as the old, the healthy as often as the ailing, cruelly stealing away a baby’s first breath, a mother’s fading heartbeat. And if he showed so little mercy in the birthing chamber, what pity could he be expected to display on the bloody battlefields of Outremer?

Sensing Eleanor’s dark mood, Amaria did not try to engage her mistress in their usual nightly conversation. As she moved unobtrusively about the chamber, there was a sudden rap on the door, startling both women. Eleanor came quickly to her feet as soon as she saw her sons standing in the doorway, a premonition of trouble prickling down her spine.

After assuring Amaria that she need not withdraw, Richard crossed the chamber to his mother, with John trailing a few feet behind. “It was not the news of the French queen’s death that brought Henri back to Nonancourt tonight, Maman; that could have waited till the morrow. Whilst he was at Dreux, another courier arrived, bearing papal letters for Philippe and for me. After talking with the messenger, Henri took the liberty of opening my letter to confirm what the man said. He thought it best to confide its contents to me in private first, ere announcing it in the great hall. The King of Sicily is dead.”

Eleanor sat down upon the bed, biting her lip to keep from crying out at the unfairness of the Almighty. Was it not enough that Joanna had been denied the child she so desperately wanted? Must she lose her husband, too, be widowed at the age of twenty-four? “My poor girl . . .”

“I could scarcely credit the news,” Richard confessed. Like his mother, he ached for Joanna’s pain. However little love there’d been between him and his brothers, he’d always cared for his sisters, especially Joanna, the youngest, the family favorite. But he did not have the luxury of responding merely as a brother, for William de Hauteville’s unexpected death could have dire consequences for the king. William had offered Sicily’s ports and riches and its formidable fleet to aid in the recovery of Jerusalem. Losing him as an ally was a setback of monumental proportions. And the silence surrounding his death held sinister implications of its own.

“When did he die, Richard?” At his answer, she stared at him incredulously. “November eighteenth? And we are only hearing of it now?”

“I know,” he said. “It makes no sense. If a courier can travel from England to Rome in one month’s time, why would it take four months for us to receive news of such magnitude?”

“Well . . . the roads south of Rome are dreadful, little better than goat tracks in places,” Eleanor said, the memories of her Italian sojourn still vivid despite the passage of forty years. “And they were even more deplorable in Sicily. But why was the letter sent by the Pope? Why have we not heard from Joanna?”

“I was wondering that myself. Henri had the wit to bring the courier back to Nonancourt, and from him I learned that this was the second papal messenger. The first one mysteriously vanished en route. The Pope was too wary to commit his suspicions into writing, but he entrusted his man with a verbal message, too. He suspects that the Germans may have intercepted his first courier.”

John had so far been a silent witness. During his childhood, he’d been either ignored or bullied by his brothers, and he’d never been one to forgive and forget. His two oldest sisters had been sent off to foreign lands when he was too young to remember them, but Joanna had been his companion and playmate and fellow pupil at Fontevrault Abbey, and he’d missed her very much after her departure for Sicily. John’s family feelings were ambivalent at best, but not where Joanna was concerned, and he was genuinely distressed on her behalf.

“Germans?” he interjected before he could think better of it. “You mean the Holy Roman Emperor? I thought Frederick set