Eleanor no longer doubted. There could be no better indication of John’s innocence than this, that he would willingly seek Richard out. When he was in the wrong, the last thing he ever wanted was to face his accusers, to confront those he’d betrayed.
Eleanor’s relief was inexpressible. Her easy acceptance of John’s guilt had been prompted as much by fear as by her son’s dismal record of broken faith and betrayals, the fear that she had misjudged him, after all, that he was not the pragmatist she’d thought him to be. Had he indeed been plotting again with Philippe, that would mean his judgment was fatally and unforgivably flawed, flawed enough to taint any claim to the crown. It was a conclusion she shrank from, for it would signify the end of all her hopes for an Angevin dynasty, and that was the dream that had sustained her even in the worst of times, just as it had sustained her husband.
She sat down abruptly in a cushioned chair. “Thank God,” she said simply, with enough feeling to soothe John’s sense of injury.
“But of course I accept your apology, Mother,” he said, very dryly. Righteous indignation was not an emotion indigenous to his temperamental terrain; he had too much irony in his makeup to be able to cultivate moral outrage, and now that he no longer feared being called to account for a sin that truly was not his, he was beginning to see the perverse humor in his predicament. “Be not righteous over much,” he quoted, and grinned. “But how can I help it? After all, how often have I been able to expose my conscience to your exacting eye . . . and live to tell the tale?”
Eleanor could not help herself, had to smile, too. “By what strange alchemy do you manage to make your vices sound so much like virtues?” She shook her head, gestured toward the table. “Fetch me pen and parchment. You’ll need to face Richard yourself, assure him that you are innocent—this time. But it will help if he knows I believe you.”
After he left, she leaned back in the chair, rubbing her fingers against her temples, for her head was throbbing. Richard would never get a son from Berengaria. Nor did he seem willing to put her aside. So John was all they had.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
MARCH 1199
Chinon Castle, Touraine
There was a chill in the air, the threat of winter lingering beyond its time. Lacking the patience to summon a servant, Richard crossed to the hearth and reached for the fire tongs, prodding the flames back into life. Returning to his seat then, he resumed the story of his January council with the French king, a meeting arranged by the new papal legate, Pietro di Capua.
“I’d taken a boat upriver from Castle Gaillard, but Philippe refused to join me on board. Apparently his bath in the Epte has made him leery of rivers, for he stayed on horseback and we shouted back and forth across the water. An utter waste of time and breath.”
“You did agree on a five-year truce, though,” Eleanor reminded him, and he shook his head wearily.
“And we know how much such truces mean—counterfeit coin, not worth a copper farthing. But the new Pope is bound and determined to make peace, so his legate came up with another proposal, suggesting that Philippe’s son wed one of my nieces.”
“Arthur’s sister?”
“No, one of Leonora’s daughters. I told them I’d consider these new terms once I return from Limousin.”
He’d already told Eleanor about his coming campaign. The Count of Angoulême and his half brother, the Viscount of Limoges, were conniving again with the French king, and he meant to teach them that there was a high price to be paid for such treachery. A lifetime of dealing with these rebellious southern barons had taught Eleanor that such lessons lasted as long as hoarfrost, and she was sure Richard knew it, too. But kings did what they must.
“I hear that the papal legate set your temper ablaze?”
“He did, by God. The lack-wit dared to demand that I set Beauvais free, insisting he is under the protection of the Church.”
“Is it true that you threatened him with castration, Richard?”
“Is that what he is claiming? Whilst I think society could benefit if some churchmen were gelded—keeping them from breeding, if nothing else—I did not actually threaten to turn him into a capon, merely reminded him that his papal legateship was all that was saving him from my righteous wrath. But he went scurrying back to Paris so fast that he might well have feared for his meager family jewels.”