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Page 554
ready, even eager, to fight again. But what was this senseless excitement? "Geoffrey, be quiet," she said. "What has put you in this fever?"
"Keeping my joy to myself. I came to whisper it to you, but you cast me out, and I did not have the chance"
"Geoffrey," Joanna protested softly, "I did not love John either, butbut he was your uncle. It is not decent to crow like a cock on a dung heap just because he is dead."
He saw at last that she did not understand, and he took her and kissed her and drew her to sit in the window seat beside him. "I have frightened you. I am sorry. As to John himself, as a man, I did not care whether he lived or died. He was not a good man. He was cruel and lecherous and treacherous. Let that go. He is dead now. As a king, the matter stands differently. As long as John lived, there could be no end to warnever. If Louis were beaten, new rebels would rise and draw in more pretenders to the throne."
"But whySurely"
"Because of what John himself was. He could not stop alienating men, even when he wanted to. There was something that ate him and drove him. Perhaps he was possessed. I never told you why my father left him because I was not sure myself. But.he may have discovered that John asked me along on that ravaging of the east to do away with me. Your brother has a keen eye for an assassin's knife and for an attack from behindand I had grown pretty sharp to see such also. Papa said to me that, when they were together just before Louis came, John had attempted Ela."
Joanna had made no comment when Geoffrey confessed that John had tried again to kill him. While there was still danger of it, neither Adam nor Geoffrey would have told her such a thing. Now she need no longer worry. Decent or not decent, she began to taste the joy that Geoffrey had expressed. All she said, however, was, "Ela? But he could never endure her."
"Who knows," Geoffrey sighed. "There was something sick inside the king. Perhaps it was true. Papa went back to him when things looked so very black, and I do not think he would have if" Suddenly, he smiled again. "It does not

 
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