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parricide by bringing her family’s heroics down to everyday sanity.
    “What can you see to laugh at, Madam?” reproved Hodierna.
    “The silk, my dears!” explained Eleanor, looking back at their shocked faces. “What an old fool I’ve been all these years not to think of it!”
    Richard stood nonplussed.
    “You heard what she said?” asked Ann, when they had finished staring after the Queen, and the sound of Blondel’s following footsteps had died away down the dark turret.
    “Of course we all heard,” retorted Hodierna, turning back to her work. “And we all know it’s only people with something on their consciences who need guard their tongues.”
    “Besides,” added Henry, moving lazily from the window, “if that malicious sort of gossip means anything you had as much cause for jealousy yourself.”
    The French girl, conscious of the shrewdness of his glance, began putting away her embroidery. “Sometimes I hate you so much, Henry, I hope you will die young!” she said, with one last vindictive thrust of her needle.
    He smiled imperturbably and, crossing to the littered table, began playing with Hodierna’s great shear-like scissors. “I don’t mind going when the Almighty sees fit to oblige you, of course,” he drawled. “But poisoning, I’m told, is becoming quite a pretty art in France!”
    They were always sparring like that, but Richard became aware of some unusual tension. “What the devil d’you mean?” he asked, pushing between them.
    Henry dropped the scissors and the light, mocking tone he always adopted with Ann. He surveyed his brother through narrowed eyes, half affectionate and half contemptuous. “To be blunt, my blind armament builder,” he explained suavely, “it’s high time you asked the royal old rip for your betrothed.”
    “God damn your insolence!”
    Ann screamed as Richard lunged at him, trying to choke the words in his throat. The heavy oak table crashed against the wall, dragging work and scissors with it. The women crouched against it. Although of lighter build, Henry held him off with the cool, maddening smile on his bruised lips. Richard’s eyes went light and golden as an angry, watchful cat’s—the way they always changed in battle. Their auburn heads swayed levelly, and they struggled in silence save for their panting breath and the shuffling of their feet among the rushes.
    When Johanna could bear it no longer she slid from the protection of Robin’s arm. “Stop them now!” she begged, and he intervened instantly, dodging their blows with the litheness of some wild forest creature and parting them with such superior strength that he flung each of them to a different corner of the room.
    “He’s stronger than either of you!” yelled John, dancing on the stone window seat in an ecstasy of excitement.
    “I ought to be strong,” smiled Robin, almost apologetically. “My own father bequeathed me the muscles of a lumberer, and your father had me taught how to use them.”
    “Then is it because you’re half a peasant that you use them only to protect old women and to keep the peace?” asked John, jumping down to start one of those interminable arguments which helped them all to bridge over the embarrassment of their ill-controlled passions.
    Robin laughed his great, carefree laugh, and Richard joined in sheepishly. Johanna rescued her wooden knights and Ann her silks. Henry’s first thought was for his precious plans; and even while he was wiping the blood from his mouth he remembered that there was something he wanted to ask Richard about that clever curtain wall.
    “Peace!” snorted Hodierna, beginning almost automatically to put her Tower room to rights again. “I doubt if you crazy Plantagenets know the meaning of the word!”

Chapter Five
    The curfew had clanged from the Keep, echoing through the barbican as the drawbridge was raised for the night, and down in the town the friendly fires were damped out one by one. The King would soon be