The Young Lion Read Online Free Page A

court stood. A layer of rushes softened the floor. All the laity were dressed in bright summer colours: greens and pinks, blues and yellows, lavenders and whites. The women covered their hair with veils that matched or contrasted with their gowns. Only the clergy wore sombre garments, although some of the deacons were as gaily dressed as the rest of the court. Young pages stood around, alert for a beckoning finger.
    As they’d entered the palace grounds, riding on horseback or in coaches, many courtiers had noted the youths sitting on the horse trough in the courtyard and a few had guessed their identity. Awave of speculation and gossip reared and crashed against the stone walls. Could it be? Was it really? How dare he! What did he want? What a nerve!
    Maybe it’s not him.
    Guards preceded the entrance of the King and Prince Eustace down the royal stairway. When they were enthroned, a page, a child of seven, on bent knee offered the Prince a cup of wine. As Count of Boulogne as well as Prince of England, Eustace affected a preference for wine rather than ale. The King waited for a reading plank to be placed across his knees. Then he rolled out Henry’s letter and silently studied it. Morning light from uncovered windows behind the throne fell on the document. The chamber hushed to respectful silence, except for the prelates who fingered rosaries and gossiped quietly among themselves. Courtiers fidgeted and stared at the King, or summoned pages to bring them a fan or a refreshment. Someone trod on a little dog belonging to one of the ladies. It gave a howl and rushed between people’s legs, whimpering. Prince Eustace glared at the woman and whispered something to his page. The child left his side and a few minutes later carried the squirming puppy outdoors where it howled for minutes from the kicking he gave it. The King persisted, although he had now read the letter four times. He sighed and his small pink lips moved as if forming a prayer. The hush evaporated as courtiers, one after another, commented to each other that His Highness seemed worried. At last he looked up.
    ‘Bring him in,’ he ordered.
    The court stared in wonderment. The boy who entered could have been the Lion from fifty years ago, clad once more in the garment of flesh. For some, a frisson of excitement shook them; in others, bowels turned cold.
    ‘Not even a beard yet!’ men muttered.
    ‘But a scoundrel, same as his father.’
    ‘From the Devil, like all the Anjevins.’
    Much as they wanted to think of him as a mere lout from Anjou who had failed in his first military adventure, they could not help admiring the confidence with which he strode towards the King. He had bright hair, a copper abundance that fell to his shoulders. In dirty clothes, his face bleeding and ruddy from the heat, he looked more of a prince than pale Eustace, whose robe was edged with ermine, and whose shoes tinkled with jewellery. The courtiers saw the FitzEmpress’s hard jaw and straight blue stare; only his brother saw a heart as awed as an altar boy’s on first entering the gloom of a great cathedral. All Henry’s life his mother had told him about the palace of Winchester where, briefly, she had captured Stephen the Usurper, and had herself been hailed as Domina.
    Guillaume murmured in Catalan, a tongue the youths had learned from Guillaume’s mother and were confident none of these courtiers would understand: ‘Don’t make eye contact with them.’
    A deacon whispered to his archbishop, ‘He’s actually very nervous.’
    ‘You read people well, Tom,’ the prelate murmured.
    ‘And I see Eustace has fixed on that large blue sapphire set in gold on the FitzEmpress’s middle finger,’ he continued.
    A few of the older earls knew whose ring it had been, although none had seen it on the hand of its original owner. Prince Eustace stared in disbelief. William the Conqueror, the first Norman King of England, was his ancestor too. ‘How dare you wear stolen goods