Here Be Dragons - 1

thanking him for saving her from Martin Algais. John choked back an unsteady, mirthless laugh, raised her up."Lucy, listen to me. Dry your tears and go down to the hall. Find my squire, tell him to get up here. Then go to the kitchen, tell the cooks I said to give you mutton fat for that bruise." As he spoke, he was steering her toward the door. "After that, lass, go to bed . . . your own."Giving him an incredulous look, she fled. Within moments his squire was panting up the stairs. "My lord, what is amiss? That girl acted so strange . ..""Get our men together. I want us ready to ride within the hour.""Ride where? My lord, it's full dark. Where would we go? At such an hour, we might well have to bed down by the roadside""I was giving you a command, not inviting a debate. I want to be gone from here as soon as we can saddle up, and if you make me repeat that, you'll have more regrets than you can handle. Now see to it!"Hastily the man said, "I will, my lord, indeed. But. . . but what of your lord father? I've been told he sleeps; is it your wish that he be awakened ere you depart?""No," John said. "Let him sleep.""i KNOW you Angevins have ever been short of brotherly love, but surely John is not as worthless as you think? Admittedly, I know him not well, but he never struck me as a fool.""Oh, John is clever enough. But what do brains avail a man if he does lack for backbone?"In Richard's lexicon of insults, that was the most damning accusation he could make, and to Philip, it cast a revealing light upon Richard's relationship with his younger brother. He found himself feeling a touch Of sympathy forJohn, who'd been weighed against Richard's exacting standards of manhood and found wanting, for he knew that he, too, had failed to measure up in Richard's eyes; their friendship had never been the same since Richard discovered that he had an irrational fear of horses, rode only the most docile of geldings."But to be fair," Richard said grudgingly, "my father has ever played the same game with John as he did with me and, whilst they lived, Geoffrey and Henry, promising all and delivering nothing. Although the one time he did entrustJohn with power of his own, sent him to Ireland, it was an unmitigated disaster. So badly did John bungle his rule that he achieved the all but impossible; he got the Irish chieftains to stop squabbling with one another and unite against him!""Surely that was Henry's blunder as much as John's. You do not send a boy of seventeen to do a man's work."
"When I was seventeen, I was putting down a rebellion in Poitou," Richard said pointedly, and Philip, conceding defeat with a wry smile, signaled to a servant."We'll see Lord John now."John had rarely been so nervous; eleventh-hour allies were not always welcomed with open arms. He was much relieved, therefore, when the French King smiled as he knelt, at once motioned him to rise."Your Grace," he said, with an answering smile that lost all spontaneity, all sincerity, at sight of his brother. Even in the dim light of a command tent, Richard's coloring had lost none of its vibrancy, eyes blazingly blue, hair bronzed even brighter now by a summer in the saddle. Most likely, John thought sourly, he did glow in the dark. "Richard," he said, as if they'd been parted just that morning, and Richard gave him an equally indifferent greeting in return."You did surprise me, John," he said dryly. "I'd expected you to turn up weeks ago. Cutting it rather close, were you not, Little Brother?"Fortunately for John, hatred choked all utterance. He stared at Richard, reminding himself this was but one more grievance to be credited to Richard's account, promising himself that payment would be in the coin of his choosing.Philip had been watching the Angevin brothers with covert amusement. Now he asked the question John most dreaded. "John . . . how does Henry?"
42John had given this a great deal of thought in the hours since his midnight flight from Chinon. He had no way of knowing if Philip and Richard were aware of the gravity of Henry's illness, could only hope they were not; an infidel who converted at knife-point had, of necessity, to count for less than one who willingly renounced his heresy."I do not know, Your Grace. I've not seen my father since we fled Le Mans."Richard and Philip exchanged glances, and then Richard said, "Rumor has it he is bedridden, but I expect it's yet another of his damnable tricks; he could teach a fox about slyness."John said nothing, concentrated his attention upon a nearby fruit bowl.Picking out two apples, he tossed one to Richard, a sudden, swift pitch that disconcerted Richard not in the least. He caught it with the utmost ease, his the lithe coordination, the lazy, loose grace of the born athlete. John doubted that Richard had made a careless misstep, a clumsy move in all of his thirty-one years.Richard crunched into the apple. "Let's talk about you, Little Brother. What is the going price for" He caught himself, but not in time."Betrayal? What game are we playing now, Richard? If we are tallying up sins, I rather doubt you're in any position to cast the first stone."There was a silence, and then Richard gave a short laugh. "Fair enough. Ideserved that. Let me put it another way. What do you want for your support?""Only what be my just due," John said cautiously, "what I've been promised since boyhood. The county of Mortain, the earldom of Gloucester, the incomes from the lordship of Ireland, Nottingham Castle."Richard did not hesitate. "Done," he said, so readily that John regretted not asking for more.He murmured a perfunctory expression of appreciation, and then said, "You might want to do