Free The Autumn Throne by Elizabeth Chadwick Page A

steal everything from you, and when that happens, the betrayal will be so bitter it will choke you.’
    John picked up the sheath from the stool and drew the knife to examine the blade and make sure the rat blood hadn’t rusted it. He had reached that conclusion himself. And that the world was a place where those who had power could do what they wanted and those without it were the victims. The world would try to make him its victim, so it was always best to strike first. ‘You can trust me, Papa,’ he said. ‘I won’t betray you.’
    Henry watched him sheathe the knife and sighed. ‘You’re a good boy. Come here.’
    John joined his father at the fire and Henry ruffled his hair. ‘You are my youngest, but that does not mean I value you less – indeed perhaps the opposite. I see myself in you and what you could become; I do not see your mother.’
    John didn’t see that either and his father’s words were like being given a glowing jewel worth braving his chamber for. One day he would be a king and of more than just Ireland. And he would be better than his father.
    At Sarum, Alienor listened to the wind whistle around the keep as dusk fell. Summer’s heat was over and this chilly autumn bluster had snatched the first of the leaves from the trees. She had been sewing until it grew too dark to see the thread against the cloth. Amiria had gone to fetch food andcandles, but Alienor had grown accustomed to sitting in darkness and to eking out the light. No more profligate use of wax and lamps, burning into the night, sometimes until matins. The thought of spending another winter at Sarum did not bear contemplating.
    Breathless from her climb up the tower, Amiria returned bearing a tray of food and the requisite candles. As she set the bread and wine on the trestle she said, ‘I heard some news in the courtyard just now.’
    Alienor eyed her maid with cautious interest. Not all news was equal, but if it was sufficient to animate Amiria, it must be important. ‘Indeed?’
    ‘They are saying that Rosamund de Clifford has died in childbed and the baby too – a boy stillborn.’
    Alienor experienced no flood of triumph at the information, rather a weary trickle. What did it matter? It was just more detritus. ‘God rest her soul,’ she said.
And damn Henry’s.
    Amiria set about lighting the few candles she had brought. ‘Forgive me, madam, I thought it would please you to hear it.’
    ‘I am more saddened than anything.’
    Amiria chewed her lip, clearly agitated about something, and eventually she could not contain herself. ‘She is to be buried at Godstow and the King says he will pay for a shrine before the choir for her and daily prayers. It is not fitting!’
    ‘No, it is not, but much good it will do her now.’ Alienor imagined Rosamund lying in state at the nunnery like a queen. How often would Henry visit? As often as he went to see Thomas Becket? More often than he visited Reading and the tomb of their firstborn son? ‘I pity her, and that is the truth.’
    She attended to her simple meal of bread and cheese and thought with longing of beef stew simmered with cumin and ginger, of spiced wine and her favourite sugared pears. She was not starved here, but the food had no savour. She had long ago finished the gingerbread from Isabel and Hamelin even though she had eked it out.
    Hermeal over, she retired to pray at her small portable altar. It was one of the few items of high wealth in her chamber, studded with sapphires and rock crystal, and under the marble top was a fragment of the finger bone of St Martial. She prayed for Rosamund because it was her Christian duty. She felt angry contempt for Henry for the way he had paraded the girl at court, but Rosamund had only possessed the fleeting power of the bedchamber and Alienor had never seen her as a serious threat to her queenship. Poor, silly girl.
    Amiria came back from returning the used food bowls to the scullions and announced that she had more