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look a fool. She and I have been betrothed since we were about six, and he still won’t let me have her. Besides, I suppose I shall have to marry someone , and at least I’ve known Ann too long to have to pay her silly compliments.”
    Johanna regarded him with puzzled concern. “But you don’t love her.”
    “My dear Johanna,” remonstrated Henry, kicking the embers into a blaze, “I should have thought that after learning your own fate you would realise that the last place one looks for love is in a marriage of our kind!”
    It seemed unbelievable that they should accept it so casually, like having an ugly dance partner or a fever; while to her it was everything—and final. But then, of course, for a man it was so different. “Oh, well, you can always shut her up in one of your grimmest castles with her everlasting needlework and ride off on a crusade or something. And I suppose her dowry would come in useful,” she agreed.
    “If I ever get it!” said Richard. “I’m sure the King is holding up my marriage because of John.”
    Johanna went and sat by the narrow window from which she could watch the filial little scene in the courtyard. John must have said something excruciatingly funny because the page who was scoring was doubled up with laughter, and even the servants were tittering as they stooped to pick up the darts. Although he often got them punished, they liked him because he listened to their gossip and mimicked the priests and learned professors who thronged the town. He had none of his brothers’ fierce, competitive pride, and his cheerful acceptance of defeat in the darts contest had flattered his middle-aged father into the mood of jocular indulgence natural to his leisure hours. “What has John to do with it?” she asked.
    Richard came and set a foot on the window seat beside her. The supper torches had almost burned out and a full moon rising above the river threw a bar of silver across the floor. “Don’t you see, Joan,” he said, beginning to talk in the intimate way she loved, “that if Henry got killed and Ann and I had children, they would come between that little lap-dog and the throne?”
    “If Henry got killed?” Her startled gaze wandered to the fair, clever face of her eldest brother thrown into relief by the flickering firelight.
    “Modern warfare is such a gamble,” he pointed out. “I once saw six knights wiped out by one stone from a catapult.”
    Johanna was too absorbed by a new idea to care about war statistics. Her gaze came back to the beloved face so near to her own. “Why, if Henry got killed you would almost certainly become King of England! ‘Richard the First.’” She savoured the title slowly. “Doesn’t it sound strange?”
    “Not very,” answered Richard lightly. “You see, I’ve had to think of it before—when Henry and I have been at each other’s throats, mostly. It’s the one thing that’s restrained me from killing him when he’s being clever.”
    He threw an apologetic smile over his shoulder and Henry—who was only half listening—grinned back without resentment. “Most ambitious men wouldn’t let it restrain them!” he remarked absently.
    For the first time Johanna saw these two brothers of hers not merely in relation to herself, but in relation to the world. Not just as Henry and Richard, who had played at “Christians and Saracens,” but as people of great potential importance. She realised that the knowledge of their destiny must always have been in their hearts, setting them apart even from Robin, and that the loneliness they shared forged them together more strongly than their feuds of temperament drove them apart. “Don’t you want to be king, Richard?” she asked.
    The silvery half-light seemed to have softened his hard young face into unwonted thoughtfulness. “Robin thinks that kings are consecrated to their countries and ought to stay and look after their people instead of fighting abroad. And I want to lead the