For the King's Favor by Elizabeth Chadwick

gloom. Sitting in a window seat, glad of the sable-lined mantle covering her gown, Ida played dice-chess with Henry’s youngest son, John, who had recently turned eleven years old. He was a quick, intelligent child with a vibrant smile and a misleading air of innocence masking sly cruelty. He couldn’t be trusted; he was apt to cheat in order to win, which was why people were reluctant to play with him. He had cornered Ida in the window seat before she could make her escape. Ida didn’t like John, but she did feel sorry for him and it was not in her nature to rebuff a child. Queen Eleanor his mother was under house arrest at Salisbury for her part in fomenting the rebellion of three years ago, and John seldom saw her. His brothers were already grown men with their own entourages and concerns and, as the lastborn child, his inheritance was an uncertain one.
    Looking up, having cast his dice and made his move, John’s hazel glance followed the progress across the chamber of a sombrely dressed woman with two young men trailing at her heels.
    “Gundreda, dowager Countess of Norfolk, and her sons, come to pay their respects to my father,” John announced. A sardonic gleam, older than his years, kindled in his eyes. Politics and intrigue were as much a part of him as his father’s build and his mother’s colouring. Bred into him, blood and bone.
    Ida glanced across. “You know them, sire?” The Countess Gundreda was her second cousin, but she had never met or spoken to her.
    John shook his head. “Only of them. They attempted to speak with my father earlier this morning but he was too busy. I heard her trying to wheedle John Marshal into letting her past the ushers, but he refused.”
    Ida remembered hearing that Gundreda’s husband, Earl Hugh Bigod, had died in Flanders. The rumours several months ago about him taking the Cross had been true but, despite his oath, he had never set foot beyond Saint-Omer, his health being too poor. His widow wore hard lines between nose and mouth corner and her eyes were full of watchful suspicion. Her older son was about the same height as Henry, with a pale complexion. A yellow beard fuzzed a prominent jaw, and he had the same wary gaze as his mother. The younger one, dark of hair, slouched in his wake, his belly hanging over his tunic like a lump of dough.
    “I don’t think my father will be very interested in her,” John said with a sneer. “Not unless she’s got something good to bargain. She’s got a face to curdle milk and a body like a sack of turnips.”
    Ida pressed her lips together and didn’t give John the pleasure of a shocked response, because that was what he wanted. She threw the dice, moved her piece, and put him in a difficult position. He scowled at her and she knew she had committed the error of not letting him win. Where Henry would have laughed and called her a clever girl, John narrowed his eyes. “Still,” he said, “at least you won’t have to worry; you’ll still be my father’s favourite mattress, I’m sure.” He swept the pieces to one side of the board so that no trace of their former positions remained, rose to his feet, and stalked off with the air of someone who owned the world.
    Seething with fury and humiliation, Ida carefully returned the pieces to their casket. Whatever hurts in his own life he was compensating for, he had no right to say those things to her. She would not stoop to John’s level and carry tales to Henry, who would likely laugh anyway and call them no more than a boy’s impudence, but she vowed that from now on she would avoid the youth whenever possible and feel sorry for him no longer.
    “May I join you, mistress?”
    Looking up, Ida found herself being addressed by the dowager Countess of Norfolk. Her sons were no longer at her side, but had drawn off to talk to some other young men and warm themselves at the hearth.
    Ida rose and curtseyed, then sat down again, making room for her kinswoman. “The lord John told