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Page 315
linked ahead and behind to two sweating men-at-arms, because there was not room for her slim leg between the horse's side and the rock that bordered the path. The Queen had made nothing of it. It was possible to walk, she had said, laughing at her ladies' laments. When she passed over the Paphlagonian mountains, there were times when they had needed to be drawn up by ropes.
Not all the Queen's haste to leave Navarre was owing to the weather. Part was owing to the news that had caught up with them. It was now clear that there would be open rebellion in England if Longchamp was not curbed. Whether Richard simply did not believe this or whether he was too absorbed in the problems that had arisen in Sicily, he was making no effort to control his Chancellor. Someone he trusted would have to be given the power to overrule Longchamp, and the Queen believed, quite rightly, that only her personal arguments would convince her son of these facts. Moreover, it seemed to the Queen that Richard's immediate marriage was necessary on another score. Although Simon's hints were very veiled, it was clear to anyone who knew the King's tastes that the nearer one came to the influence of believers in Mahomet the more available were pretty boys openly plying a trade as old as whoredom.
The remainder of the news from Sicily was no less unsettling. King William, an ardent supporter of the Crusade and brother-in-law to Richard, had died the previous year. His will had named his aunt as his heir, because his wife Joanna had been unable to give him a child, and his aunt's husband, Henry of Hohenstaufen, had expected to rule Sicily in her name. However, William's bastard nephew, Tancred, had seized the throne, and the people of the island had concurred heartily in the act. They desired no strange ruler from Germany who did not know their customs and would spend little of his time with them. Tancred was by no

 
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