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coming to bed. His servant moved softly in the bedchamber, turning back the crimson covers and setting flaming torches in two tall sconces. He opened the exquisitely illuminated missal on the prie-dieu between them, and put out a pair of riding boots for the morning. And outside, in the great hall, the King’s eldest son waited.
    “How long is he likely to be, Gregory?” he asked, with a touch of subservience. For after all, the incorruptible body servant of a king knows more secrets than his sons.
    Gregory came down the two shallow steps, carefully closing the heavy oak door behind him. “He should be to bed early, Sir. What with his having to be up early for the assizes, and to-night being Friday—”
    “I wonder what he confesses?” speculated Henry.
    Gregory never speculated about his betters. Perhaps he had no need to. Instead, he crossed to the window with the dignified tread of the perfect indoor servant. Looking down on to the courtyard of the inner bailey, he was able to offer definite information. “Prince John has persuaded him to play a game of darts. It is getting dark, but I think the King must be staying to see your brother hit the bullseye.”
    “Then it looks as if I shall have to kick my heels here half the night,” yawned Henry, stretching them towards a dying fire on the central hearth. To his annoyance, he soon perceived that he would have to kick them in company, for as the departing Gregory flattened himself politely against the serving screen, Richard and Johanna came strolling into the hall.
    “Quite a deputation to-night!” remarked Henry, observing that the annoyance was mutual.
    Whenever the Plantagenets wanted anything they waylaid their father at this hour when he must pass through the hall to bed. Short of climbing the half flight to the Queen’s room and passing round the gallery and down by the garde-robe turret on the opposite side, he could not escape their importunities. And coming at the end of a hard day, their tactics seldom failed to enrage him.
    “What do you want?” enquired Johanna, coming to warm her capable little hands.
    Henry reiterated his constant grievance. Ann’s brother Philip, who was still only a spotty weed of seventeen, had been crowned in Paris. “And if the heir to the French throne is crowned during his father’s lifetime,” he argued, “why can’t it be done in this benighted island?”
    “You’re beginning to talk like Ann,” said Johanna. “And what does your token crowning matter, anyway, compared with our Mother’s freedom?”
    “Don’t worry!” he reassured her. “The King won’t revenge Rosamund’s death on her.”
    “But Blondel told us what the people are saying and that he is in one of his rages. He hasn’t seen anyone but Gregory since he came in.”
    “Yes, he has. He’s with John now, playing darts. And I rather fancy the rage was partly eyewash, my dear. He had to blame somebody.”
    “You think he was getting bored with this bower business and wasn’t altogether sorry?” asked Richard, in the impersonal way in which they always discussed their father’s love affairs.
    “And probably knows the real murderer. What is your grievance, Johanna?”
    “Sicily, of course.” She looked covertly from one to the other of them. They’d ruled their duchies on the Continent and been in battle, but she knew that in their hearts they were still half afraid of their affectionate, tyrannical father. “I wish you two would let me beard him first before my courage fails!” she sighed. It was a rule of their own making that they should do so in order of age, and she did not for a moment suppose that Henry would waive his priority.
    “And get the old lion thoroughly roused before I ask for Ann,” teased Richard, who would probably give way to her.
    “Why do you want Ann?” she asked, momentarily side-tracked from her own troubles.
    Richard laughed shortly, staring into the fire. “I don’t—particularly. But no man likes to