The Passionate Brood by Margaret Campbell Barnes Read Free Book Online

most efficient, best equipped crusade—”
    The word “crusade” always provoked attention. “How you do listen to that madman’s ideas!” interrupted Henry.
    “So many people say mad when they mean new,” snapped Johanna, getting up from the window seat. “Of course, Robin’s kind of cleverness is quite different from yours. Much kinder, and more constructive.”
    Henry listened to her vigorous attack with lazy amusement. When she blazed into defensive anger like that she was quite a little beauty.
    “When I do get my crown, I suppose you’ll be wheedling me into letting you marry a tall, dark commoner,” he teased, remembering Ann’s spiteful innuendoes.
    “It will be too late then. I shall be Queen of Sicily. Oh God, I wish I were a goatherd!”
    “You’d hate their smell,” he reminded her.
    Johanna began pacing the floor as she and Richard both did in moments of strong emotion. “I shall tell the King I won’t be sold like a slave to an old horror whose touch must be revolting. I’ll tell him I won’t be a helpless brood mare in a horrible volcano-ridden country—”
    “Go to it, girl!” urged Richard, taking up a spectator’s seat on one of the retainers’ long tables as firm, familiar footsteps approached from the bailey steps. He had hardly said the words when the leather curtain by the serving screen was jerked sharply aside and Henry the Second stood, thick-set and capable, against a wall tapestry woven by generations of Plantagenet women to immortalise the exploits of his ancestors. At forty, there was nothing romantic about this Angevin who had once fluttered the dovecotes of Europe. His short, serviceable riding tunic was still dusty from the highways, and only a heavy-jowled bloodhound followed at his heels. With a shuddering breath his youngest daughter got up and ran to him. “Oh, Sir—” she entreated, from obeisant billows of green velvet at his feet.
    “My little maid! What brings you here so late?” His deep, husky voice was kind. He stooped to raise her, caressing her cheek with strong, spatulate fingers.
    It was his wrath the others feared but, being a girl, she found his kindness more difficult to bear. “This marriage—” she began bravely.
    He looked pleased. “So your mother has told you our wishes? And I suppose you are wanting some new gowns and pretty gewgaws?”
    Scorn of the way John traded on his affection made her slip from the comforting approval of his arm. “No, Sir. It isn’t that. Because I won’t—won’t—”
    “Be sold like a slave,” prompted Richard, from his seat in the shadows behind her.
    Half over-hearing him, the King turned in quick irritation and caught Henry making a gesture of ribald encouragement. His eyes were growing angry in his weather-beaten face. “My confessor is waiting, and I must get some sleep,” he snapped, crossing the hall towards his bedroom.
    He was going, and no one else could help her unhappiness. In her urgency, Johanna clutched at his arm. “Oh, please, please! It has all been so wonderful. The hawking on the dear English hills—the minstrels singing in the lighted hall—the fun we had when the river froze at Christmas,” she implored brokenly, clutching pictures at random to illustrate the short book of her life. “Don’t send me away! Don’t make me marry a stranger!”
    The King stopped in his straddling stride to stare down at her in amazement. The baffled, rather pathetic amazement of a parent seeing for the first time a stranger where his child has stood; humiliated, perhaps, by a glimpse of the pity with which the child has been defending him against the discovery for years. “Tch! A pack of whimsies!” he exclaimed, taking refuge in the thought-saving clichés that each generation in turn mouths at the next. “You modern girls, with your cruises to Palestine, and your hair worn without a wimple, and your new notions about choosing your own husband! I can see we have allowed you to run wild too