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strong an arm as ever wielded a sword, dear mother, but my heart and my brain will tell me when it must sheath that sword.’
    The Queen Mother looked at her son with trepidation. She felt that her rule was coming to an end.
    There was feasting fitting for the occasion in the great hall at Tonbridge. Gilbert de Clare sat beside the King and expressed his pleasure in his return. This was an honest expression of his feelings, for Gilbert was not a man for pretence. Like all sensible men, he wanted to see the country at peace with itself, for only then could prosperity come. He was three or four years younger than Edward and had become the most powerful of the barons. There had been a time when he had supported Simon de Montfort against the royal party, but he was a man who would not hesitate to change sides.
    He would always prefer to support the King. Moreover there was a family connection. Twenty years before when the King’s half-brothers and sisters had invaded the country to see what advantages they could get, Henry had decided that he would be a good husband for his kinswoman, Alice of Angoulême. Gilbert had been not quite ten years old at the time and had had no say in the matter. The marriage had been quite unsatisfactory.
    Now as they drank wine together and listened to the minstrels who sang for the pleasure of the company Gilbert contemplated the happiness of the King and his Queen and his eyes grew a little wistful – a fact which was not lost on the King.
    ‘I trust we shall now enjoy a period of peace,’ said Gilbert. ‘The barons are hopeful.’
    ‘I shall do my best to see that their hopes are fulfilled, for I believe they want the prosperity of the country as much as I do myself.’
    ‘It is what the barons have always wished for, my lord.’
    A reminder of Gilbert’s honesty. He was not going to pretend to please the King and pander to some mistaken notion that the dead must be praised and that Henry was a saint. Henry had brought his troubles on himself and as he was King those were the country’s troubles. Gilbert implied that the barons would be behind the new King while the new King acted wisely and for the good of his country.
    As that was exactly what Edward intended to do he did not resent Gilbert’s attitude.
    ‘This is indeed a happy augury,’ went on Gilbert. ‘You have your crusade behind you. The people like a crusader king as long as his crusade is in the past and they cannot be taxed to pay for it while their king goes off and leaves his country in hands other than his own. So they like a crusader king who has proved himself in advance to be a great warrior and if that king has a loving wife and a family it pleases them. That is a great boon to a man.’
    ‘Forgive me, my friend,’ said the King, ‘but do I sense that you are not happy on that score?’
    ‘I will tell you this, my lord: if I could rid myself of Alice and take another wife, gladly would I do so. She comes from an overbearing family. Your grandmother was a wild woman, sire, and when she was Queen of England had power even over King John for long after their marriage, but when she married Hugh de Lusignan she bred a race of harpies.’
    Edward smiled faintly. Gilbert’s wife, Alice of Angoulême, was the niece of Alice of Lusignan who was Henry III’s half-sister.
    ‘You speak of my family, sir.’
    ‘And my own since I married into it. But truth is truth, and you, my lord, will be the first to recognise it as such.’
    ‘So you would divorce your wife and the Pope is proving intransigent, I’ll swear.’
    ‘You have guessed it. How easy it is to be trapped into marriage. I was a boy of ten. What can a boy of that age do but obey the wishes of his elders, and there he is saddled with a wife for the rest of his life.’
    Edward laughed. His wife had been chosen for him, and yet had he had a chance to choose from the whole world he would have picked her. He was lucky. He must be sympathetic with poor