The only question was when. The physicians said it might be a week yet; but William and Henry, watching each other across the sick bed, thought, what if he dies without sharing out, what if he sinks into a coma and slips away and nothing settled? Twice they’d tried to get round to the subject, but they couldn’t press too hard because the lion still lived and had a growl on him they recognized. He’d repented of his errors on Sunday, repented like a stout sulky boy, with all his monks and his priests nodding their tonsured heads and whispering yes, yes, in unctuous sibilant approval; he’d agreed to the release of all those high-up people who had grown sallow in grim castles for more than twenty years. But it had been grudging, a reluctant giving in to Christian impulses that came to him from outside. In many ways he was a pious God-fearing man but he’d never taken kindly to suggestions from other people. This morning for a while he was nearly his old self, sitting up for a few minutes, snapping at his chief prelates and barons, ordering up the barber to trim his moustache, sucking at a bowl of soup and watching the zealous attentions of his followers out of those small stern bloodshot eyes which for sixty years had done him well.
