“I did my best to persuade Heinrich to take Otto with him when he invaded Sicily, for I thought the lad would be better off with the army than sequestered away in some Godforsaken German castle. Heinrich refused, of course, being Heinrich, but I was told by friends in Germany that he has since ‘eased’ the conditions of Otto’s confinement.”
That sounded as ominous to Eleanor as it had to Richard. They looked at each other in silence for a few moments, frustrated that they could do so little for Tilda’s children. “There is more,” Richard said, “both good and bad. The good is that the Empress Constance was delivered of a son in December; I know that will give Joanna great joy. The bad is that four days after his coronation as King of Sicily, Heinrich claimed that a plot had been discovered against him and he arrested Tancred’s widow, her children, and the leading Sicilian lords. He sent Sybilla and her daughters to a German convent and her small son to a German monastery. Admiral Margaritis and the Archbishop of Salerno were imprisoned at Trifels Castle, which will be their tomb.”
Eleanor suddenly felt very cold, thinking of the horrors hidden away behind the walls of Trifels Castle, thinking that the fate of these Sicilian lords could have been her son’s fate, too. “God help them,” she said bleakly, “for no one else can.”
RICHARD’S MEETING WITH CONSTANCE at Angers Castle was more cordial than he’d expected, for she was so thankful that her daughter was on her way home from Austria that she was less hostile than usual. Her face had always been the mirror to her soul, and her distaste at the thought of reconciling with Randolph was obvious to every witness in the great hall. But she realized that Richard’s interest in having her son raised at his court could be the first step toward naming his nephew as his heir if his queen did not give him a son. So she agreed to discuss his proposal with her barons and even to make Randolph welcome in Brittany if they consented. Richard realized this was the best he could hope for, and he could only marvel that his brother Geoffrey had been so happy with this woman, for he found her as prickly as any hedgehog.
By the seventeenth of March, he’d reached the Earl of Chester’s castle at St James de Beuvron, where he discovered that the earl was just as stubborn as Constance. When a man wed a woman of higher rank, he expected to share that rank, to be entitled to the possession, use, and income of his wife’s lands. But Constance and her barons had never recognized Randolph’s authority as Duke of Brittany, which was a long-festering grievance with him. Richard had to spend several days assuring him that if he returned to Brittany, he would be able to exercise his full rights as duke jure uxoris.
After securing Randolph’s cooperation, Richard intended to meet the Lord of Fougères on the twenty-fourth of the month. Raoul de Fougères had been one of the most notorious of the Breton barons, a man who’d been constantly in rebellion against his Angevin overlords, but he’d died in the past year and Richard hoped his brother would prove to be more tractable. He decided to take a day for himself first, as the hawking season was coming to an end, and before departing for Fougères, he and Randolph and his household knights rode out to try their falcons against cranes along the rushes of the River Beuvron.
They had an unanticipated addition to their hawking party, for his brother John had made an unexpected appearance at the castle, in what he claimed was a visit to Earl Randolph, expressing surprised pleasure to find Richard there, too. Richard was not deceived; he knew full well that John had heard of his meeting with Constance at Angers, and he was desperate to find out if Arthur was now the favorite in the royal heir race. But he said nothing and hid his amusement at the Earl of Chester’s bafflement when he found himself acclaimed by John as a dear friend of long standing.