Here Be Dragons - 1 by Sharon Kay Penman Page B

maidenheads in a royal bed?" He laughed, moved on to other matters, and Lucy was forgotten.
She stood there, rooted, until Agnes stepped forward and slipped a supportive arm around her waist. "Shall we get you that bath?" she said, and giving Lucy no chance to balk, she guided the girl toward the door. "Do not look so stricken, lass. It'll not be as bad as you think; you might even enjoy it."
"But . . . but he's so old and sickly!" Lucy shuddered. She'd seen the old
King infrequently since his arrival at Chinon. There was in his face the haggard, grey gauntness of coming death; it would, she thought with horror, be like embracing a corpse.
"Old?" Agnes echoed and then laughed. "You need not fear, Lucy, you're not for poor King Henry. God pity him, he's beyond feeling the itch that only a woman can scratch. No, his son rode in within the hour, and it is a rare night when that one does not want a wench to warm his bed."
"Lord John?"
"Well, for certes not Richard!" Agnes giggled, but thought better of pursuing that particular brand of high-risk humor; instead, she took it upon herself to allay Lucy's fears. "He's handsome, is Lord John. Not as tall as Richard, of stocky build like his father, although dark as a Barbary pirate. And young, one and twenty against his sire's six and fifty, a far better age for bedding!"
But Lucy did not seem to appreciate her good fortune; she looked dazed. Agnes thought she knew why, and glanced about to make sure no others were within earshot.
"You must not believe all you hear, child. It is true John does have men about him who'd make even Hell the fouler for their presence. He might not rein them in as he ought, but he does not seem to be one for sharing their nastier sport. In the five years I've been at Chinon, I've never heard it said that he takes pleasure in a woman's pain, and whilst I cannot speak firsthand, mind you, I've been told he has no quirks a woman would not enjoy, too. And he's ever been generous in the past, will be sure to give you something after."
She hesitated. "But in all honesty, his temper's like to be on the raw. God knows, he has reason and more, with his father ailing, with Richard and the
French King encamped outside Tours, just a day's
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march from here. Richard has much to answer for, in truth. To war upon his own father . . ." She shook her head. "At least John is loyal."
HENRY moaned, turned his face into the pillow. His shirt was soaked with sweat; so, too, were the sheets, damp and darkly splotched. A servant had removed his shoes and chausses, and his legs looked absurdly white and frail, utterly incongruous supports for that barrel chest, those massive shoulders.
But even that once-mighty chest seemed somehow shrunken, diminished. It was impossible for John to recognize in this bedridden invalid the father who'd cast so colossal a shadow, larger than life, omnipotent: King of England, Lord of Ireland and Wales, Duke of Normandy and Gascony, Count of Anjou, Touraine, and Maine, liege lord of Brittany, Auvergne, and Toulouse.
Henry was breathing through his mouth, gulping air as if each breath might be his last. Saliva had begun to dribble down his chin, but John could not bring himself to wipe it away, shrank from touching that wasted flesh. He was profoundly shocked that in a mere fortnight his father's illness should have made such lethal inroads; until this moment he'd not acknowledged that the illness might be mortal.
"John? Thank God you've come. He's done little but fret over you. Could you not have sent word that you'd gotten away safe from Le Mans?"
Two weeks ago the town of Le Mans had fallen to the forces of John's brother
Richard and Philip, the young French King. Henry and his followers had escaped the burning city just as the French army moved in, and in the confusion John had gotten separated from the others, had passed some harrowing days himself, in consequence. But he was not about to explain that now to the speaker, his illegitimate