Henry laughed. ‘Delightful notion,’ he said.

She sat upon Rosamund’s bed and held out her hands to him.

He took them, kissed them fervently.

He said: ‘There is nothing in the world I would not give you.’ She was happy; she was content; she was glad he had been lenient to the mad priest.

It was past midnight when they wandered back into the palace.

In their bedchamber was noise and confusion. A babble of voices, a man bound by robes trussed in a corner.

In the light of the torches the King looked round the room and saw a knife embedded in the straw of the bed he would have shared with Eleanor.

A guard said: ‘We caught him as he was making away, my lord. And when we came here we saw what he had done. God’s mercy was with you tonight, my lord, for had you been in your bed the madman’s knife would have been buried in your heart.’

The priest began to shout, ‘I am the true King. You stole my crown.’

Henry looked at the pale face of Eleanor, the terror in her eyes and he thought of her lying in that bed, covered in blood, dead … beside him. Two of them victims of the madman’s knife.

‘This is a dangerous madman,’ he said.

There was a sigh of relief. It was clear that the guards had feared he might have wished to save Ribbaud’s life yet again.

‘Take him to the dungeons,’ said the King. ‘We will decide what to do with him tomorrow.’

When they had gone he turned to Eleanor and took her into his arms.

‘He might have harmed you,’ he said; and a terrible anger took possession of him.

He had been a fool and seen to be a fool. He had once more shown himself to the world as a weak man. His act of mercy in the great hall might have cost both him and his Queen their lives. It would be whispered of … remembered.

Eleanor was shivering.

‘Have no fear, my love. He shall pay for this. No more mercy for the mad priest.’

Nor was there. The next day the man was tied to four wild horses and when they rode off in different directions he was torn to pieces.

Chapter VI

BIRTH OF EDWARD

The Queen believed that that night there had been a miracle. In Rosamund’s Bower there had come to her the desire to stay there, and so they had while a madman tried to kill them and would certainly have done so if they had been asleep in their own bed. And when she discovered that she was indeed pregnant, she was certain of the miracle.

This was happiness indeed. There was only one irritation and that was the rejection of her Uncle William and the inability of Henry to force his acceptance at Winchester. Moreover Uncle William was not in very good health which was a great concern to her.

But the fact that she was to have a child superseded all minor irritations. Henry was beside himself with delight. He agreed with her that there had been a miracle that night and although they could not be absolutely sure that their child had been conceived in Rosamund’s Bower, that mattered little now. It had actually happened.

Henry cosseted her more than ever. He regarded her with a kind of wonder; he admitted that he had feared they might never have a child but so much did he love her that even that had not made him regret the marriage.

She became very friendly with her sister-in-law Eleanor de Montfort. Eleanor was herself the proud mother of a boy – Henry – and was therefore knowledgeable about pregnancies, having just emerged from one.

The Princess was happy in the Queen’s company because she was missing her husband who had gone to Rome to get a dispensation regarding their marriage.

The two found great pleasure in sitting together stitching and embroidering – and it was their joy to make garments for their children. The Queen dismissed her attendants and set them to work in another chamber so that she and the Princess could talk more intimately.

They had a great deal in common – two contented wives. The Queen thought it strange that the Princess had found happiness in marrying beneath her when she, the Queen, had found hers in the grandeur of her marriage. She could never have been content, as the Princess was, with the lowering of her status.

Yet there were compensations she realised. Simon de Montfort was a strong man; a forceful and ambitious man. Could it be that he had married the Princess because she was the King’s sister?

Henry was a weak man; she knew that. But he made up for his weakness in the strength of his passion for her.

The Princess talked as they stitched; Simon would be home soon, she believed. It was her fault that he had had to go away. ‘I should never have made that foolish vow,’ she added.

Then she told the Queen how when she had been very young she thought she would like to go into a convent and Edmund the saintly Archbishop of Canterbury had made her take a vow to embrace the vestal life.

‘And you made this vow?’ asked the Queen.

‘Well, I did not really take it seriously. I was staying with poor Isabella – Richard’s wife – at the time; and I knew how unhappy she was and I thought: So that is married life. I want none of it. And with Edmund almost forcing me, I suppose I did agree.’

‘And then you married Simon.’

‘Yes, I married Simon. I was determined to. For me no one else would do … nor any other life. And you see how right I was. I have my little angel Henry now … and soon Simon will be back with his dispensation and that will silence old Edmund.’

‘I doubt anything would silence him. What a trial saints can be.’

The Princess agreed. ‘Oh how fortunate we are in our marriages,’ she cried. ‘I often wonder if you realise it. Henry adores you. In his eyes you are the perfect Queen. He has changed since you came.’

The Queen nodded in agreement.

‘You have made him so happy,’ went on Eleanor the Princess. ‘When I think of Richard’s marriage … Well, that was why I decided I would never marry. Of course I had been married to William Marshal … if you could call that a marriage. I was a child and only sixteen when he died. Perhaps I should have accepted my life if he had lived, but now that I have met Simon I realise what I would have missed.’

So they stitched and talked and the Queen told the Princess of Richard of Cornwall’s arrival in Provence and how the poem she had written had brought her to Henry’s notice; and the Princess told of poor sad Isabella who had borne six children to her first husband and had given Richard only one.

‘Of course he dotes on young Henry. A fine boy he is too. I think Richard loves him more than anything else in the world. He is fond of women though and has a host of mistresses, I hear. Isabella knows it. It breaks her heart. She always said she was too old for him and she was right.’

So they talked of poor Isabella at length because talking of her brought home to them more clearly their own happy state.

And while they stitched they each looked into the future. The Princess for the return of her husband with the dispensation from the Pope because of the vow she had carelessly made, and the Queen for the birth of her child.

Simon returned with the dispensation and the Princess was happy. The Queen had to wait a little longer for her contentment. On a hot June day her child was born in the Palace of Westminster.

There was great rejoicing throughout the land, for the child was a healthy boy.

Henry could not tear himself away from the nursery. The child must be brought to him, examined, and embraced. He was overcome with anxiety lest it might not have the best of attention. Nothing must be spared in the rearing of this important boy.