Free Elizabeth Chadwick by The Outlaw Knight

colonist barons had joined them, their own facial hair clipped within orderly bounds and their dress less flamboyant. Of John and his retinue, there was no sign, although de Burgh was doing his best to play the welcoming host. There was a grim expression on his face and he kept casting expectant glances in the direction of the stairs to the private apartments.
    “He’ll be lucky,” Jean said from the side of his mouth. “The Prince swallowed enough wine last night to sink a cog. Even if he does appear, he’ll be in no fit state to greet important guests.”
    Jean’s words were borne out. As he and Fulke presented wine to the guests, there was a fanfare of trumpets from the far end of the room and two guards emerged from the stair entrance to flank the arrival of the royal retinue.
    Fulke almost overflowed the cup, but the chieftain did not notice for his own attention was fixed on the group emerging from the darkness of the stairway into the daylit great hall.
    John was plainly still suffering from the excesses of the previous evening. His tread was unsteady and if he had been to bed, it was in his clothes, which were rumpled and stained. His dark hair stood up in spikes around the gold circlet binding his brow. He resembled a beggar in borrowed robes, or a boy masquerading as a man, trying to hide his inexperience behind a keg of wine. His companions were in no better case, all of them lurching and red-eyed.
    Ignoring the group by the hearth, John tottered over to the dais and slumped down in the high-backed chair that stood behind a napery-covered trestle. His retinue arranged themselves around him like a throng of half-dead butterflies.
    “Wine,” John snarled and clicked his fingers.
    Fulke watched a hapless junior squire scurry to the Prince’s bidding and felt great sympathy for the youth and contempt for John. To avoid the royal eye and with it the royal malice, he busied himself among the guests where John’s blatant bad manners and ignorance had caused the muttering to grow more vociferous.
    “I’ll not bow the knee in homage to a conceited little arsewipe like that,” growled one of the Gael lords in labored French to a Norman settler. “I’d rather give King Dermot the kiss of peace first.”
    The Norman lord looked uneasy. “The Prince is in his cups,” he excused. “I do not imagine he was expecting our arrival.”
    “That’s pigswill, man.” The Irish chief made an angry gesture and Fulke had to step smartly backward before the flagon was knocked from his hand. “He knows that the lords of Ireland are riding to Waterford to greet his landing—to see for themselves what manner of man has been sent to rule over us.” He jutted his beard contemptuously in the direction of the dais. “I don’t see a man; I see a spoiled and useless child. How will he exert control when he cannot control himself?”
    Striving to soothe ruffled feathers, William de Burgh brought the Irish and Norman lords to the dais to present them to the Prince.
    One elbow resting on the board, jaw propped on his hand, John watched them approach and gave a theatrical yawn behind his other hand. Then he looked around to meet grinning approbation from his companions.
    “Can this charade not wait?” he demanded over loudly of de Burgh. “My brains are fit to split from my skull and I’ll never remember their names. They all sound like someone being punched in the gut anyway, and God knows what’s nesting in those beards.”
    One of John’s companions choked on a guffaw. Fulke winced. In private, the remark would have been amusing, but ridiculing allies and vassals in public was stupid, dangerous, and shameful.
    “What’s nesting will be a serious rebellion unless you mend your attitude,” de Burgh muttered. “Sire, you cannot afford to antagonize these men.”
    “I can afford anything I want,” John slurred.
    “Including a bloody war when you could have peace?” de Burgh hissed. “Many of them speak French. You