< previous page page_332 next page >

Page 332
More as if she had come to know and understand what he desired. She speaks often of his long vision as if of a stranger she had learned to admire."
"Alinor, tell me something." Simon had looked away again, and his voice was tight and strained. "Does the Queen speak of ruling?"
"Of the theory of governance?" Alinor was puzzled. "She would not speak to me of such things, but from her letters I know" Simon shook his head sharply, and Alinor understood what he had really meant. "Oh no, Simon. No, truly, I see what you fear but it is not so. Indeed, she is not of those who cannot conceive of her own death. She speaks of it often and of how that was the one place Henry's vision failed. She blames the King's faults, especially in that he lacks love and understanding of the English, on King Henry. Simon, is it healthy to speak of what we are speaking here and now?"
"No, perhaps not, but a disease has been growing in me"
"You are sick, Simon?" Alinor looked at him anxiously, as if she would eat him with her eyes. He appeared thinner, a trifle tired, a little bluer under the eyes and less ruddy than usual, but not ill.
"Not that kind of diseasean uneasiness of the mind."
"But you are tired and pale."
Simon snorted. "That is from drinking myself blind every night and whoring around Oh, God! Now I have overset the fat into the fire. Alinor"
To her own astonishment, Alinor burst out laughing. For one thing, Simon's dismay at his slip was really comical. For another, what Simon referred to was no love affair with a lady but the use of a female for the relief of a need exactly as a man would use a vessel to relieve his bladder or his bowels. One could not be jealous of such women, not unless a husband preferred their beds to yours when your body was avail-

 
< previous page page_332 next page >