The Passionate Enemies by Jean Plaidy Page B

for attack but smarting from the news that the Pope had given judgement against the marriage of Clito and his daughter.
    Henry knew that if he left Normandy the rebels would immediately return. Clito was still free. Anjou was biding his time. So what could he do but stay here?
    The news from England was not of the best. The war with Normandy had proved even more costly than Henry had calculated. There had to be taxes which the English loathed.
    The crime of debasing the coinage had increased. Often a pound was so reduced by clipping that it was worth only half its value in gold. Henry drew up laws of even greater severity to be used against offenders. Mutilation was the greatest deterrent. No one wanted to lose a hand, a foot, a nose, his ears, or most of all his eyes for the sake of money.
    But he was wise enough to know that these measures were unpopular and although the English realized that he had brought a law and order to the land which they had not enjoyed under his brother Rufus, there was a limit to what they would endure.
    Life was turning sour for him and it had all begun with the loss of the White Ship. There he was back at the old theme. Adelicia was barren. He was never going to get a child – let alone a son – from her.
    Sometimes in the quiet of the night a great depression descended upon him. God had forsaken him . . . not in all matters. He gave him victory; He gave him wealth; and these were important to him; but He denied him comfort; He would not give him a son and his sins weighed heavily on him.
    He had started to think of the old days before he had become King, when he was a penniless Prince, the youngest son of the great Conqueror who had had nothing to leave him but five thousand pounds of silver while his brothers Robert and Rufus had Normandy and England. ‘But,’ prophesied his father, ‘have patience and you shall excel your brothers in wealth and power.’
    And that had come to pass. Yet here he was a melancholy man. He had lived fifty-six years and for twenty-four years he had been King of England. His father would not have been displeased with his endeavours. There was a similaritybetween them although Henry’s lechery was quite alien to the Conqueror’s austerity. Henry’s father had been a cold man, a faithful husband, who spent so much time at war that there had been little time for love.
    Perhaps, thought the King, when a man reaches my age, melancholy is often his companion.
    He thought of Adelicia in England. A pleasant, meek creature who had always tried to please him. He remembered how she had interested herself in the animals in his Zoo when she, poor child, was afraid of half of them. She was determined to please him and do all that was required of her which was admirable in a wife. Also, there was one thing she could not do for that was not within her power. And that was all I wanted of her, he thought angrily.
    He was finding it hard to sleep at night. He would go to bed exhausted and find even so that sleep would not come.
    When it did it would be light, uneasy sleep.
    One night he awoke startled because he thought someone stood by his bed. He sat up sweating. He saw a face there . . . a laughing face with eyes that glittered oddly.
    â€˜Ah, Henry, but you remember me. I have sworn that never, never shall you forget me.’
    â€˜Luke,’ he said. ‘Is it you, Luke?’
    He stared out of bed, but there was no one there.
    He went back to bed uneasy. Was Luke de Barré going to haunt him for the rest of his life?

Homage to Matilda
    THERE WAS ANOTHER who was tormented by remorse. This was the Emperor Henry V. Matilda, who was the recipient of his nocturnal monologues, daily expected that he was going mad.
    She often wondered what would happen then. Would they put him away? And what of her? She was without children soshe would not be the mother of the new Emperor; she would be of no importance without her husband. If he went mad then