The Autumn Throne Read Free Page A

Henry, but I am desperate to see my children.’
    Alienor had just finished breaking her fast on bread and honey when John and Joanna arrived with their nurses and Isabel’s four offspring, their cousins. Alienor’s heart turned over, for she barely recognised the son and daughter whom she had bidden farewell at Sarum’s gates two years ago. Aged nine and ten they were still children, but standing on the final stepping stone before the perilous leap into adulthood.
    John was first to come forward, smoothly bending one knee. ‘My lady mother,’ he said. Joanna curtseyed and murmured the same. Her hair was plaited in a gleaming braid, the light brown shot with distinct glints of her father’s auburn.
    Theconstraints binding the situation were like taut ropes at full strain. In a sudden flurry, Alienor slashed through the formality and gathered her youngest children to her heart. ‘How you have grown!’ She fought tears. ‘Ah it has been too long but I have thought about you every day and prayed to see you again!’
    ‘We prayed too, Mama,’ John said, his expression innocent and open.
    ‘Yes, they did,’ Isabel confirmed. ‘I never had to remind them.’
    Wiping her eyes on her cuff, Alienor took John and Joanna to sit in the embrasure with her, while she recovered. Eventually she was able to greet Isabel’s son and three daughters with composure and was astonished at how they too were no longer tender little infants but thriving youngsters on the swift path to maturity. Isabel’s son William was the same age as John and the pair had formed the sort of young male bond that involved continually testing the boundaries and each other in cub-play while being united against the world. Isabel’s eldest daughter, Belle, was a similar age to Joanna and possessed the alabaster skin and striking green-blue eyes of her grandsire Geoffrey, Count of Anjou, who had been famed for his beauty. ‘I can tell this one is going to strew the road with broken hearts.’ Alienor smiled. ‘Have you betrothed her yet?’
    Belle preened at the compliment, but kept her lids modestly lowered.
    ‘No, we want her to be older, and to have a say in her choice.’
    Alienor raised her brows. ‘What if she sets her heart on a kitchen boy or a minstrel with pretty words in his mouth and nothing in his purse?’
    Isabel waved her hand. ‘Obviously there are limits, but within them she shall have a choice – as shall all my girls.’
    ‘What does Hamelin say?’
    ‘He agrees with me. There is plenty of time, and no one has yet made an offer we are unable to refuse.’
    Alienorsaid nothing. For a conventional woman, Isabel could be stubborn and wayward in matters of the heart and home. Some might call her brave and truthful, others indulgent and foolish. She could see why Hamelin would agree with her. Henry’s half-brother ruled his domestic household with benign but absolute authority and would be reluctant to change that state of affairs by giving his daughters in marriage at a young age and exposing them to the influences of other men. Alienor’s own daughters had made matches before puberty in order to secure binding political alliances, but there were fewer onuses on Isabel and Hamelin.
    She heard the sound of approaching male voices raised in jovial banter and an instant later her older sons surged into the chamber with their father, bringing with them the fresh scent of outdoors and stirring the atmosphere with vibrant energy. All four were laughing uproariously because Henry’s favourite terrier had absconded with the Bishop of Ely’s jewelled fur hat and had proceeded to murder it round the back of the stables.
    Alienor’s gaze went straight to Richard, the heir to her duchy. Her heart was open for all of her sons but Richard was its light. Count of Poitou, future Duke of Aquitaine. His red-gold hair gleamed with vitality, his eyes were the rich summer blue of cornflowers, and he was the tallest among them.
    Abandoning the joke,