“Of course I will,” Justin said, doing his best to conceal his relief that she had not asked him to accompany her to France. If she had, he’d have felt honor-bound to accept. His own mother had died giving him birth, and the midwife had told him that Claudine had come fearfully close to trading her life for Aline’s. Had he ever loved Claudine? He remembered how much it had hurt to discover that she was John’s spy, and how troubling it had been to discover, too, that he could still desire a woman he could not trust. When she’d told him that she was pregnant, a very ugly suspicion had surfaced; had she been John’s concubine as well as his spy?
Claudine was a distant kinswoman of Queen Eleanor, and ostensibly this was why the queen had been so willing to help with Claudine’s pregnancy. Or was it that she’d wondered if Claudine could be carrying her grandchild? Justin had never discussed this with the queen. He’d had difficulty even admitting the suspicion to himself. He had no proof, after all, that Claudine had ever lain with John, much less that she’d been sharing his bed when Aline was conceived. The doubts had remained, though-until the first time he’d held Aline in his arms. But if he’d given his heart utterly and willingly to his baby daughter, it was far more complicated with Claudine.
“Justin…?” She was watching him intently. “What is it? Your words do not match your face. Surely it is not too much to ask?”
“Not at all! I’ll gladly take you to Southampton, Claudine.”
“I’d ask you to come with me to France, but I dare not-you understand.”
He did. She could hardly invite him to meet her family. How would she introduce him? As her lower-class lover? She was the daughter of one highborn baron, widow of another, and he was the bastard son of a bishop. Her father was not likely to be impressed that he was also the queen’s man. They were the queen’s kindred.
Claudine had wandered to the door. Opening it a crack, she turned to face Justin with a radiant, relieved smile. “Sarra and her husband are coming back, with a flock of children trailing after them. We ought to leave whilst there is still daylight, Justin.”
“I suppose.” As he reached over to make sure Aline’s blankets were securely tucked around her, she opened her eyes. They’d been blue at birth, but they’d been darkening daily, and Sarra had told him that they might eventually become as brown as Claudine’s. When he touched her hand, her tiny fingers clamped on to his thumb. “I have to go, Butterfly,” he said softly. “But I’ll be back.”
Winchester was on the Southampton road, and Justin suggested that they stop there for the night in order to visit with his friend, Luke de Marston, the shire’s under-sheriff. Claudine had met Luke during one of his London trips and they’d gotten along very well, so she was amenable to the idea. Reaching the city at dusk, they were made welcome by Luke and the woman he loved, Aldith. But within an hour of their arrival, Claudine sensed that they were sharing their cottage with trouble. It lurked in the corners, flitted about in the shadows, hovered in the air, and she was worldly enough to recognize that this was the age-old war that men and women had been fighting since God breathed life into Adam’s rib.
Justin was not oblivious to the tension, either. He caught the oblique glances that Aldith cast in Luke’s direction when he wasn’t looking. He felt the heaviness of the silences between them. He noticed how often Luke reached for the wine flagon. He noticed, too, how uncomfortable Aldith seemed in Claudine’s presence; Aldith usually made other women feel uncomfortable. But she knew Claudine was a lady-in-waiting to the Queen of England while she was a poor potter’s daughter of dubious reputation. Her unease told Justin that she’d learned Luke was under pressure to end their liaison, and he was sorry, for Aldith was his friend, the most seductive, shapely of friends, but a friend, nonetheless.
The only one who was enjoying the stay in Winchester was Justin’s dog, Shadow, for he was utterly and enthusiastically smitten with Jezebel, Aldith’s mastiff. Rescued by Justin from drowning in the River Fleet, Shadow had finally grown into his long, rangy frame, but he was still dwarfed by the enormous mastiff, who was not receptive to his wooing. He continued his high-risk courtship, though, until a snarl and yelp told them that Jezebel’s latest rebuff had drawn blood.
“Poor sap,” Luke said unsympathetically. “I have to make one last sweep of the town tonight. Come with me, de Quincy, and we’d best bring your besotted hound with us ere Jezebel bites him where it will hurt the most.”
Claudine and Aldith shared a common expression for a moment, one of dismay at the prospect of being left alone together. Justin snatched up his mantle, hoping he did not appear too eager to escape the stifling atmosphere of the cottage, and he and Shadow followed the under-sheriff out into the night.
They ended up in a tavern on Calpe Street. As usual, Luke insisted upon being the one to order a flagon of heavily spiced red wine. An under-sheriff could run up charges indefinitely, for no alehouse or tavern owner would be foolish enough to push for payment. Justin coaxed Shadow under the table where he’d be in no danger of being stepped on and then apologized for showing up at Luke’s door with no warning.
“What you really mean,” Luke said, “is that you’re sorry you did not want to pay for a night’s stay at a Winchester inn. The worst of our flea-ridden hovels is looking better and better when compared to the harmony and joy at Castle de Marston.”
“You know me, anything to save a few pence. So… Aldith knows?”
Luke nodded morosely and they drank in silence for several moments. They’d met when Justin had been investigating the death of a Winchester goldsmith the previous year. Aldith had been the man’s longtime mistress, but Luke had been willing to offer her what the goldsmith could not-marriage. When word of his intentions got out, though, he’d encountered opposition from the sheriff and the Bishop of Winchester. Marriage would elevate Aldith into the gentry, and Winchester society had far more stringent standards for an under-sheriff’s wife than for his bedmate. Unwilling to lose his office, and equally unwilling to lose Aldith, Luke had been concocting excuses for delaying the wedding while he tried to find a way out of the trap. Justin had advised him to tell Aldith the truth. Apparently that had not worked too well.
“She blames you for not defying them?” he asked in surprise, for that did not mesh with what he knew of Aldith.
“No, she says not. She said she understood and she chided me for not telling her sooner. But nothing has been right between us since then. We fight more and we watch what we say and…” Luke doused the rest of his words in his wine cup. When he set it down again, he signaled that he was done discussing his family woes by saying hastily, “Well, enough of that. What is the latest news about the queen and King Richard?”
The English king had been seized by his enemies on his way home from the Crusade, and after much negotiation and scheming, he was to be freed upon payment of a vast ransom to his royal captor, Heinrich, the Holy Roman Emperor. Queen Eleanor had sailed for Germany that past November to deliver the ransom. But Richard’s release was not a foregone conclusion. The French king, Philippe, and Richard’s younger brother, John, Count of Mortain, had been doing all in their power to prolong Richard’s confinement, and they were not known for being gracious losers. Rumor had it that they’d offered Heinrich an even larger sum to keep Richard prisoner, and Luke hoped that Justin, one of the queen’s men, might be a better source than local alehouse gossip.
He was to be disappointed, though. All Justin could tell him was that the queen had safely arrived in Germany and that John was still in France, reported to be at the French king’s court. Peering into the wine flagon, Luke motioned to the serving maid for another. He was about to recount a story about a local vintner who’d evaded the tax imposed to pay King Richard’s ransom, but remembered in time that Justin would probably not see the humor in it. The Crown had demanded that all of Richard’s subjects contribute fully a fourth of their annual income to the Exchequer, a huge burden that had eroded some of the king’s popularity, at least in Winchester. But Justin’s loyalty to his queen was absolute and Luke thought it was unlikely he’d question the exorbitant price the English were paying for the return of their king.