
have no notion who killed him. For any evidence I have to the contrary, it might have been Alice who
pulled the trigger. I will send you full particulars as soon as I have them. With much love, Your brother
and servant, Richard."
He put both papers into a prepared envelope and sealed it. He wished he could have called the King on
the teleson, but no one had yet figured out how to get the wires across the Channel.
He looked absently at the sealed envelope, his handsome blond features thoughtful. The House of
Plantagenet had endured for eight centuries, and the blood of Henry of Anjou ran thin in its veins, but the
Norman strain was as strong as ever, having been replenished over the centuries by fresh infusions from
Norwegian and Danish princesses. Richard's mother, Queen Helga, wife of His late Majesty, Charles III,
spoke very few words of Anglo-French, and those with a heavy Norse accent.
Nevertheless, there was nothing Scandinavian in the language, manner, or bearing of Richard, Duke of
Normandy. Not only was he a member of the oldest and most powerful ruling family of Europe, but he
bore a Christian name that was distinguished even in that family. Seven Kings of the Empire had borne
the name, and most of them had been good Kings—if not always "good" men in the nicey-nicey sense of
the word. There was a chance that Duke Richard might be called upon to uphold the honor of that name
as King. By law, Parliament must elect a Plantagenet as King in the event of the death of the present
Sovereign, and while the election of one of the King's two sons, the Prince of Britain and the Duke of
Lancaster, was more likely than the election of Richard, he was certainly not eliminated from the
succession.
Meantime, he would uphold the honor of his name as Duke of Normandy.
Murder had been done; therefore justice must be done. The Count D'Evreux had been known for his
stern but fair justice almost as well as he had been known for his profligacy. And, just as his pleasures
had been without temperance, so his justice had been untempered by mercy. Whoever had killed him
would find both justice and mercy—in so far as Richard had it within his power to give it.
Although he did not formulate it in so many words, even mentally, Richard was of the opinion that some
debauched woman or cuckolded man had fired the fatal shot. Thus he found himself inclining toward
mercy before he knew anything substantial about the case at all.
Richard dropped the letter he was holding into the special mail pouch that would be placed aboard the
evening trans-Channel packet, and then turned in his chair to look at the lean, middle-aged man working
at a desk across the room.
"My lord Marquis," he said thoughtfully.
"Yes, Your Highness?" said the Marquis of Rouen, looking up.
"How true are the stories one has heard about the late Count?"
"True, Your Highness?" the Marquis said thoughtfully. "I would hesitate to make any estimate of
percentages. Once a man gets a reputation like that, the number of his reputed sins quickly surpasses the
number of actual ones. Doubtless many of the stories one hears are of whole cloth; others may have only
a slight basis in fact. On the other hand, it is highly likely that there are many of which we have never
heard. It is absolutely certain, however, that he has acknowledged seven illegitimate sons, and I dare say
he has ignored a few daughters—and these, mind you, with unmarried women. His adulteries would be
rather more difficult to establish, but I think Your Highness can take it for granted that such escapades