The Witch of Eye by Mari Griffith Page A

‘Humphrey, do be careful!’
    ‘Why? Are you wearing mistletoe in your garter again, Nell?’
    Eleanor smiled. ‘That is for you to discover, my Lord,’ she murmured, and gently bit his earlobe. Humphrey, well aware that mistletoe aided conception, anticipated the night ahead with relish: his voracious sexual appetites were always more than adequately satisfied by a wife so desperate for a child. He gave her thigh a playful pinch.
    The Duchess of Gloucester was at her brightest and best on this glittering occasion. She and her husband were among King Henry’s principle guests and were seated with the fourteen-year-old monarch on the royal dais. He had given them both the most generous of New Year gifts. Eleanor had received a gold brooch, set with a diamond and five large pearls, from which hung three little pendants adorned with smaller pearls and rubies. He had presented Humphrey with a tablet of gold bearing an image of Our Lady, decorated with six diamonds, six sapphires and, by Eleanor’s excited reckoning, no less than one hundred and sixty-four pearls. Eleanor caught King Henry’s eye as he was finishing his last mouthful of roast swan. She smiled at him, making a great show of lovingly stroking the new gold brooch she was wearing with pride.
    The King gave her a shy smile in return and immediately dropped his eyes, not wanting to appear to be staring at the bodice of his aunt’s gown, where the brooch was so prominently pinned.
    The adolescent monarch was at a vulnerable, suggestible phase in his life, acutely aware of embarrassing changes taking place in his own body and troubled by his lack of control over his physical reactions to women. He was prone to blushing furiously. Only last week, he had felt compelled to cancel a performance being given at court by a group of jongleurs as part of the Christmas celebrations, because a woman dancer was scantily dressed in a costume which left nothing to the imagination. The King tried his best not to look at her and yet his eyes were drawn inexorably to the soft curve of her voluptuous breasts, swaying hypnotically to the rhythm of the dance.
    The gift of the brooch had clearly pleased his aunt. It was easy enough, he thought, to give gifts. All it required was enough money to pay for them. Perhaps he should have given that money to some cause where it would really make a difference, to the building of a new church, perhaps, or to endow a school. The Duchess could so easily lose the brooch if she was careless with it and all the money that had been spent on it would have no meaning.
    This worried him. He was quite fond of his Aunt Eleanor because she sometimes made him laugh, but he also knew she could be very frivolous. Moreover, the Earl of Tankerville, one of the older boys being educated with the King in the royal schoolroom, had dropped heavy hints that the Duke and Duchess had known each other intimately before their marriage, describing their imagined activities in shocking detail and using words Henry had never heard before. Henry was appalled by this information and refused to believe it was true. Surely, no uncle of his, no chivalrous royal duke, could behave in that way! The young Earl had simply laughed and boasted that, since he himself was betrothed to Antigone, the Duke of Gloucester’s natural daughter, he had inside knowledge of the affair. He also claimed Antigone was a chip off the old block when it came to pleasurable dalliance.
    Henry was glad his uncle was now safely married to the Duchess, their union sanctified by the church. He had no idea what actually went on between a man and a woman in the privacy of their bedchamber, but he was quite sure it was immoral and sordid unless it had God’s blessing. And he was quite certain he would never be able to do it, whatever it was, with or without approval from on high.
    ***
    I n the barn, the Twelfth Night celebration was in full swing. Abbot Harweden’s traditional contribution to the feast for