The Passionate Brood by Margaret Campbell Barnes Page A

Aquitaine some water.”
    Nando was fat and the well was in the Keep. He didn’t see why the Duke’s own energetic page shouldn’t get it, but Blondel was already on his knees struggling with leather thongs. Besides being unbearably set up about his master’s victory, he had the soul of a budding poet and understood that any man to whom a beautiful girl throws roses wants to meet her at dinner looking his best. He seized the filled ewer from the sulky young Spaniard and poured its contents over his master’s naked body, then requisitioned for him one of their host’s clean shirts and set Nando to polishing the Plantagenet leopards. And all the time Richard—usually the soul of good-natured indifference where clothes were concerned—cursed and fidgeted and fussed. “These cloth chausses are too clumsy to the leg…I need another shave…Nobody wears a nose piece to his helmet nowadays. Take the damn thing off. I’ll go bareheaded…”
    “What a pig to work for!” remarked Nando, when at last they had cleaned him up and sent him forth fit to feast with ladies. Had either of them understood more than six words of the other’s language it would probably have started a Toulouse versus Plantagenet fight before the final.

Chapter Nine
    The banquet, as Raymond had prophesied, was interminable. At any rate, it seemed so to Richard. Being only a second son, he was placed at one of the side tables between Henrietta and a fat bishop; whereas Raymond of Toulouse sat at the family table with the principal guests. Not only was he Berengaria’s cousin but his province adjoined Navarre. Richard found it tantalizing to hear their laughter and not be able to join in their jokes. His own conversation in Spanish was as limited as Blondel’s, so he was glad when the servants began clearing the tables. “What is this game they are preparing to play?” he asked Henrietta, when King Sancho had risen and the trestles were set against the wall.
    “‘Hoodman Blind,’” answered Henrietta, explaining it in dumb show. “You know. The one where all the men wear a capuchin back to front and have to catch a girl. I’m sure to get caught with a dress that rustles like this.”
    But Richard did not avail himself of the hint. He borrowed Blondel’s capuchin, cut two holes in it and managed to steer a tolerably straight course through groping men and shrieking girls to the window recess where Berengaria sat talking with Raymond.
    “My quarry, I think!” he interrupted in a muffled voice, seizing her wrist.
    “Really, Richard!” laughed Berengaria.
    “A little too swift to be plausible, my friend!” accused Raymond, releasing him from the hood and poking two searching fingers through the holes.
    “Don’t tear it any more, Toulouse,” besought Richard, smoothing his ruffled hair. “I borrowed it from my page.”
    “That nice boy with the long lashes?” asked Yvette, who was standing beside them.
    “I can’t say I’ve noticed his eyelashes, but he seems pretty capable.”
    “I must mend it for him,” she promised, rescuing the thing from Raymond.
    “Do you always cheat at games?” asked Berengaria.
    “I had to get away from a repulsive bishop and a girl who giggled.”
    “I have to put up with her all day,” said Berengaria. “ And with this incurable chatterbox. She has nearly exhausted me talking about your fight.”
    Face to face with her new hero, Yvette became covered with confusion. “At least she speaks very good Norman,” commended Richard.
    “She went to school in Normandy. What was the name of the place, Yvette?”
    “Fontevrault, Madam.”
    “Fontevrault!” repeated Richard. “Where the nuns grow such beautiful roses, and the Abbess is a delightful old aunt of mine with hands like a carved ivory saint. Were you happy there?”
    “Oh, yes. You sound as if you knew it well. Have you been there often?”
    “Never in my life, Yvette,” he said, smiling at her eagerness. “But I shall one