A King's Ransom Read Free Page A

spreading lies about Richard in his wake, accusing the English king of every sin but the murder of the sainted martyr Thomas Becket in his own Canterbury Cathedral. And if Richard had not been just thirteen when his father had uttered those heedless words that would result in the archbishop’s death, Morgan did not doubt that Beauvais would have blamed him for that, too.
    Guillain de l’Etang wandered over, suggesting a dice game while they awaited the king’s return, and they cleared a spot on the deck as he dug in his scrip for the dice. Not all of the knights had liked Guillain at first, for he was so taciturn that strangers sometimes thought he was mute. His size was intimidating, too, for he was even taller than Richard, with shoulders so broad that men joked he had to enter doors sideways and powerfully muscled arms that a blacksmith might have envied. He’d kept to himself, seeming aloof and even arrogant. But then he’d attracted Richard’s attention by lifting a Cypriot soldier over his head and throwing him into a horse trough during the fighting in the streets of Amathus. When they saw that he had the king’s favor, the others began to show him greater friendliness, and discovered that he was not haughty, merely shy, with a placid, easygoing nature and a very dry sense of humor. He still was not much of a talker, and he was observing Warin’s antics with quiet amusement as the Norman knight loudly bemoaned his bad luck and offended Richard’s chaplain by asking him to bless the dice.
    They were beginning another game when a sailor signaled that the king was coming back. Getting to his feet, Morgan was brushing off his mantle when he glanced toward the men in the approaching longboat and felt a sudden unease, for both Richard and the bishop were as impassive as statues carved from stone, their faces utterly blank. If the king was employing his court mask, that meant the news he’d gotten was not good.

    R ICHARD HAD BEEN GIVEN a wine cup, but he set it down, untasted, as his men crowded into the tent. “We dare not land at Marseille,” he said abruptly, for he knew no other way than to say it straight out.
    His words stirred a startled ripple, one of alarm and confusion, for Marseille was under the control of an ally. They exchanged baffled glances and Warin Fitz Gerald exclaimed, “Why not, my liege? I thought you and the King of Aragon were friends!”
    “So did I,” Richard said, with a tight smile that held no humor. “Whilst we were in the Holy Land, some of you may have heard a Saracen proverb: ‘The enemy of my enemy is my friend.’ Well, that cuts both ways, for ‘The enemy of my friend is my enemy, too,’ and it seems that Alfonso has become friends with the Count of Toulouse.”
    The mere mention of the count’s name was enough, for they all knew that Raimon de St Gilles was an inveterate foe of the English Royal House. The dukes of Aquitaine had long advanced their own claim to Toulouse, and Richard was more than England’s king; he was also Duke of Aquitaine and Normandy, Count of Poitou and Anjou. They still did not understand why King Alfonso would have chosen to deal with the Devil, but they waited for Richard to answer that unspoken question.
    “St Gilles is a cankered, malevolent weasel,” Richard growled, with a vitriol he usually reserved for the French king and the Bishop of Beauvais. “When that treacherous whoreson balked at taking the cross, I knew he meant to take advantage of my absence to ravage my lands in Aquitaine, and that is indeed what he did. He got those malcontents the Count of Périgord and the Viscount of Brosse to rebel after my seneschal took ill. Fortunately my queen’s father came to my aid, sending his son Sancho to put down the rebellion. Sancho had such success that St Gilles realized he had to take Navarre off the chessboard, and so he approached the King of Aragon, whose rivalry with the Navarrese king proved stronger than his friendship with me.