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warmly on the cheek.
    John was asking impatient questions. How big was his bride? Could she play games? Was she pretty? Was she good at her lessons?
    ‘She is all these things,’ said the King, ‘and she is very happy to be my daughter and your wife.’
    John laughed delightedly. He was a charming little fellow, his youngest son. The others had always resented him in some way. That was their mother’s influence, he was sure. It was very different in the nursery now. He must visit it more often.
    Of course his illegitimate son Geoffrey was no longer there. He was being tutored in knighthood. A fine boy, Geoffrey. He had always preferred him to Eleanor’s brood. But his son Henry was so handsome that he would have liked there to be a closer bond between them. As for Richard he was so much his mother’s boy that it seemed they could never feel anything but enmity for each other.
    John was different – the youngest child whose love for his father had never been tainted by his mother’s venom.
    From now on John would be a favourite of his. He would visit the nursery frequently, and it would not be a duty but a real pleasure. The main reason was that enchanting little creature Alice. A little beauty in the making if he knew anything and from the experience he had had he should know a good deal.
    Dear sweet creature, what good she had done him. She had stopped him thinking of the changed attitude of Rosamund and chief of all the murder of Thomas à Becket.

    He would be ready to sail for Ireland in August. So far he had kept the papal legates at bay. They would not let the matter rest there, he knew. What would they want of him? Some sort of penance he supposed and if he refused to make it – excommunication. It was not good for a King to suffer that. His subjects were superstitious and if they feared that the hand of God was against him they would turn from him and even those who remained loyal would lose heart. He believed that when men went into battle they must be well equipped for the fight, not only materially but spiritually. They must believe in victory if they were to achieve it. This had been one of the firm beliefs of his great-grandfather, William the Conqueror, who insisted on seeing good in omens when other men feared they might be evil. I only believe in omens when they are good ones, his grandfather, Henry I, had said; and he had proved himself to be one of the most astute rulers ever known.
    Therefore he wanted no excommunication. But time was a good ally. The longer the delay between the murder and the bringing home of the guilt the better. Passions cooled and as long as there were not too many miracles at the shrine of Canterbury, he could weather this storm as he had so many others.
    Ireland now faced him.
    He was on his way to Portsmouth when news came to him that the old Bishop of Winchester was sick and thought to be dying, and was asking to see the King.
    There was nothing Henry could do but visit the old man; one did not refuse a dying request.
    Poor old man! He was indeed in his last extremities. No doubt he was ready to go, for he had been blind for a long time.
    He was the brother of Stephen who had usurped the throne which should by rights have belonged to Henry’s mother, Matilda; and the Bishop of Winchester had been one of his – brother’s main props, although there had been a time when he had been so exasperated by Stephen’s folly that he had been almost ready to turn to Matilda. That was long ago and wrong had been righted for he, Henry Plantagenet, grandson of King Henry I, was King of England.
    He found the Bishop very close to death but he seemed to revive a little when he realised the King had come.
    ‘My lord King is good to answer my last request.’
    ‘My dear Bishop, much as I dislike requests from my clergy, I hope it will not be the last from you.’
    ‘Ah, you see me, my lord, both frail and full of years, and you can have no doubt – as I have none – that my time is