Chapter 5
Five
Eleanor’s three sons had been riding their ponies all morning, practising at the quintain with blunted lances fashioned to their size and playing at jousts with the sons of the knights and lords billeted at Lusignan.
The quintain post had been lowered to take account of the stature of the children and their mounts.
Richard was proving more adept than Henry, although both lads possessed natural ability.
There was intense rivalry between them. Resenting being younger than Henry, Richard had set out to prove that age was no indicator of skill.
Henry was enraged at being defeated by Richard because it undermined his natal superiority and made him look less glorious in the eyes of the other children and their nurses who were watching from the sidelines.
“That’s twelve to me and nine to you,” Richard declared, returning to the start of the quintain run, his teeth bared in a triumphant grin, a withy ring decorating the end of his lance. His pony was sweating hard, its sides working like bellows.
“Ten.” Henry thrust out his lower lip. “I hooked the last one.”
“Yes, but it dropped off, so it doesn’t count.”
“Yes it does.”
“I’m still winning,” Richard scoffed. “I bet I could beat you at swordplay too. William Marshal says I’m good,” he added, as if that clinched the matter.
Henry glared at Richard. Praise from William Marshal was an accolade sought by Eleanor’s sons—not the courtly sort provided by William’s ready smile, but the approbation that sometimes showed in his eyes when one or all of them had been particularly good during battle practice.
Not that William was their tutor or involved in any aspect of their training, but Henry, Richard, and Geoffrey often contrived to be around when William was honing his skills.
They became his shadows; they tried to emulate, and sometimes, if he had the time and his mood was right, he would give them an impromptu lesson.
“He says I’m good too,” Henry declared haughtily.
He didn’t particularly want to fight Richard.
His brother’s pure aggression made him a difficult opponent.
Henry had the advantage of two years’ growth and a longer reach, but he preferred things that came easily; that did not have to be fought for quite so hard.
Richard had been a lot worse since the skirmishing in Poitou and kept talking about becoming Duke of Aquitaine and riding to war himself instead of following in the army’s tail.
Henry couldn’t wait until he was King of England, Duke of Normandy, and Count of Anjou, but that was different.
“Not as good as me.”
Henry’s jaw tightened. “He didn’t say that.”
“No, I did.” Leaping from his pony, Richard drew his practice sword from his belt. It was made of whalebone and the grip was bound just like a true knight’s with overlapping layers of buckskin. “Come on—or are you afraid?”
The words goaded Henry. He always swore that he would not rise to Richard’s bait, but he always did.
Giving his pony to a groom, he drew his own whalebone sword and prepared to do battle.
Richard came at him like a fury, as if it were a fight to the death.
Henry parried and tried to hold his ground, but Richard pressed him back towards the watching children, his eyes glowing with relish.
With a thrust and a flick, he struck Henry’s sword from his hand.
The suddenness of the blow stung Henry’s palms and fingers, but not as much as his pride.
He made a sideways lunge for his dropped blade, but Richard got there first and brought the tip of his play sword to Henry’s throat.
“Yield.” The gleam in Richard’s eyes was almost incandescent.
Henry glowered at him. To complain that it wasn’t fair would only allow Richard to prove again and again that it was.
“Yielded,” Henry muttered. Richard made his point by keeping the weapon at his brother’s throat an instant longer than necessary, then withdrew it and smugly sheathed it through his belt.
“Just remember that you’ll have to kneel to me in homage when I’m King of England,” Henry snarled, fighting the shameful heat of tears.
“I won’t ‘have’ to do anything,” Richard retorted. “And you won’t be able to make me.”
“I will. You’ll only be a duke, after all.” Flinging away from Richard, Henry snatched his pony from his groom and heeled it towards the stables.
The farrier had been reshoeing some of the castle horses and an acrid stench of hot metal and burning horn filled the air.
Several animals were tethered to a hitching bar, awaiting collection and return to their stalls, among them William Marshal’s two stallions, Blancart and Fauvel.
The latter was plucking in desultory fashion at a net of hay and resting on one hip, eyes half closed.
Henry had ridden him several times. For a destrier he was good-natured and indolent.
It took a sharp dig in the flanks to remind him that he was a warhorse at all.
Blancart, however, was gazing around with pricked ears and flaring nostrils, every inch the stallion.
Now and then, he sidled, giving a flash of his new iron shoes, and his tail swished like a fly whisk.
He was saddled which meant that Sir William intended riding him before he was returned to his stall.
Henry gazed at the horse, his winter coat now grown out and his hide the colour of damp cream silk.
Richard kept talking about riding him; he had tried to do so several times but had been thwarted by a mingling of circumstance and the vigilance of others.
Henry glanced around; the horses were momentarily unattended, the opportunity was God-given and it would be a sin not to take advantage.
It would counter the recent humiliation tenfold and wipe the smug expression off Richard’s face.
William was in the armoury having his hauberk mended and altered.
Some links had been broken during a skirmish with the Lusignan rebels a fortnight ago.
The damage had been simple enough to repair, but William had put on weight and muscle during the months since his knighting and the garment was now too snug across his chest.
The armourer sat on a bench outside his workshop, making the most of the good March light.
His tools were laid to hand and a shallow wooden bowl contained a coruscation of several hundred mail links.
Another dish held masses of tiny rivets the size of pinheads.
The armourer had been painstakingly inserting new links into the garment and closing each one by hammering in a rivet.
Finished, he rose to his feet, shook out the mail shirt, and requested that William try it on over the quilted tunic he was wearing.
“Much better.” William nodded his approval as he flexed his arms and peered at the mended links in his armpit.
The new rings were a shade darker than the old ones.
There was another small patch of a different hue across the shoulder of the garment where the gaff had caught him at Drincourt.
He wondered how much of the original would remain by the time he died.
You could always tell the hardest fighters by the dappled patches of repair on their hauberks…
the most fortunate too. Now all he had to do was wear it for a while to grow accustomed.
“I swear you live in that thing,” Salisbury remarked, pausing by the armoury on his way elsewhere.
William looked rueful. “I have to, the amount of battle we have seen these past few months.”
Salisbury nodded and turned his mouth down at the corners to show that William had a point.
“You’ve earned your keep of late, I’ll give you that,” he admitted.
“If you need new rings in your hauberk, it’s due to hard work, not gluttony.
” His glance flickered to a platter occupied by a half-eaten pie and a substantial chunk of bread.
William noticed the direction of his uncle’s gaze and said sheepishly, “I didn’t have time to dine in the hall. ”
“You need make no excuses to me,” Salisbury laughed. “As long as you perform your duties to my satisfaction, what you eat and when is your own business. Do as you will.”
William drank a mouthful of wine from the cup beside the platter and turned sharply as a groom’s lad burst upon them.
“Messire Marshal, come quickly! Prince Henry’s up on Blancart in the tiltyard!” the youth panted.
William and Salisbury looked at each other and, with one accord, sprinted towards the sward, arriving in time to see the heir to England and Normandy white-faced, grimly determined, cantering Blancart towards the quintain.
A lance wobbled under the boy’s arm. Through his anger and alarm, William noted that the Prince had about as much control of horse and weapon as a drunkard did of his senses.
The wonder was that Blancart had not yet bucked him off into the mud.
To run out and stop the boy on his approach to the quintain would cause more harm than good and William halted at the front of the gathering crowd.
Princess Marguerite looked up at him, her expression filled with fear and guilt on her boy husband’s behalf.
“Don’t be angry,” she pleaded anxiously. “Henry didn’t mean to do it.”
“If Henry hadn’t meant to do it, Princess, he would not be riding at the ring on a warhorse worth a hundred marks without seeking my permission,” William said grimly.