The most persuasive testimony to Godric’s genial nature was the reaction of the other grooms. They might well have been jealous to see him thrust into royal favor. Instead, they were lavish now with their praise, telling Ranulf and Hugh enthusiastically how the foal had been stillborn, “limp as an empty sack,” until Godric had somehow brought it back to life, “kneading the little fellow like he was a lump of bread dough and then blowing air into his nostrils till he began to breathe on his own.” It was, they all agreed, a sight to behold.
Ranulf and Hugh thought so, too, and heaped more plaudits upon Godric, until he was squirming with pleased embarrassment. He continued to insist that he’d done nothing out of the ordinary, but he became even more flustered when Ranulf seemed about to go.
“My lord…wait! I…I need to talk to you,” he stammered. “You know that my wife is with child?”
Ranulf nodded encouragingly, then waited patiently for Godric to find his tongue. “My lord…it is like this. Jennet and me, we talked it over and…and if the babe be a son, we want to name him after you. But…but if you think we’d be getting above ourselves, you just say so…”
Hugh was snickering. Ignoring him, Ranulf smiled at the groom. “If you and Jennet are sure,” he said, “I would be pleased to share my name with your son.”
Godric beamed, and Ranulf warned Hugh off with a sideways shake of his head. Hugh shrugged and followed him from the stables. Both men flinched as they stepped out into the sun-scorched bailey. It was only midmorning, but the temperature was already soaring. The air was as heavy as it was hot, and breathing it was like inhaling steam. “Jesú,” Hugh gasped, “we might as well climb into the kitchen’s oven and get it over with! A man could drown out here in his own sweat. So…will you be offering yourself up as godfather to the groom’s whelp?”
He’d meant it as a joke, and was taken aback when Ranulf snarled, “Just let it lie!” Ranulf was not usually so thin-skinned. It was this accursed heat, Hugh decided and magnanimously forbore to take offense. Ranulf’s continuing involvement in the lives of these lowborn Saxons was a puzzle for certes, but one he was not likely to solve.
One puzzle led to another, putting him in mind of an odd rumor circulating that summer. “You were recently at Bristol, Ranulf. Is all the talk true about Earl Robert’s double-dealing son? Has he taken the cross to atone for his sins?”
Ranulf nodded. “Philip was stricken with a mysterious malady at Easter and nearly died. He vowed to make a pilgrimage if God would spare him, and sailed for Normandy as soon as he got his strength back. The French king’s army started for the Holy Land after Whitsuntide, and I suppose Philip hopes to catch up with them. It is well and good to honor the Almighty, but I think it a pity he did not see fit to make peace with his father ere he left.”
“I daresay Philip was too shamed to face the earl, and if he was not, by God, he ought to be! So…the French king is on his way to Jerusalem? And he truly did take his queen with him? Talk about inviting the snake into Eden! I suppose, though, that if she were mine, I’d not want to leave her behind, either. You think she’s why so many men are clamoring to take the cross? The last I heard, Waleran Beaumont, William de Warenne, and William Peverel, amongst others, had all vowed to join the Crusade. What about you, Ranulf? Are you not tempted to go soldiering for Christ, too?”
The temptation was greater than Ranulf was willing to admit—to leave England and this bloody, unending civil war and his own troubles behind in the dust and join a bright, shining quest for God, offering adventure and salvation and a chance to see the holy city of Jerusalem. He was spared the need to answer by a sudden shout up on the battlements. Riders were being admitted.
Hugh’s curiosity had shriveled in the heat, and he continued on toward the hall, only to stop once he realized Ranulf wasn’t following. “Ranulf? You know these men?”
“One of them,” Ranulf said warily. Why would Ancel be seeking him out? By now, Ancel had seen him, too. Halting his men, he dismounted swiftly. Ranulf started toward him, and they met in the middle of the bailey. “Ancel? Why are you here? Annora is not ailing, is she?”
“No. She is quite well.”
Ranulf could think of only one other reason for Ancel to be at Devizes: to make peace between them. There was nothing conciliatory about his demeanor, but apologies had always gone down hard with Ancel. Ranulf was willing, though, to take that first significant step. “I am glad you’ve come, Ancel. Let’s get out of the sun and find a quiet place to talk.”
“I am not staying, Ranulf. I came only to give you this.” Holding out a sealed parchment. “It is a farewell letter from Annora.”
Ranulf made no move to take the letter. “I do not believe you.”
“As I recall, you did not want to believe me, either, when I told you she’d wed Fitz Clement. But you need not take my word. Read it for yourself.”
This time, when he thrust the letter forward, Ranulf reached for it. The seal was Annora’s and unbroken. “What did you do, Ancel? Did you threaten to go to her husband?”
“It is not my doing. I would that it were. But she turned a deaf ear to me, did not come to her senses until she got with child.”
Ranulf was stunned. “Annora is pregnant?”
“Yes, and she has promised God that she’ll sin no more. She may have been willing to risk her immortal soul for you, but not this babe.” Ancel paused, glanced at Ranulf’s stricken face, and then away. When he spoke again, his voice no longer held such a hard, hostile edge. “Annora insisted that she was as much to blame as you, and I daresay it is true. Fools, the both of you, but I’d not see her hurt. Or you, either,” he added grudgingly. “Fortunately, Annora’s husband and our family know nothing of her infidelity, and God Willing, they never will. Be thankful for that much, that this dangerous passion of yours wrecked no lives.”
Ranulf said nothing. The bailey was shimmering in heat, the sky a bleached bone-white, the color of his face. Ancel started to turn away, then stopped. “If you love her, Ranulf,” he warned, “you let her be.”
ANNORA’S letter was not as brutally blunt as Ancel had been, but the gist of her message was the same. She told Ranulf that she was with child, the babe due in November, at Martinmas, reminding him—needlessly—that they’d not lain together since Ancel caught them last summer at Chester. She’d not let herself hope at first, she wrote, so afraid she’d miscarry again. But she was into her fifth month now, she could feel the baby moving within her womb, and she did not think God would take this child, too, not if she repented. She’d promised the Almighty and Ancel that she’d not see him again, and she meant to keep that vow. She wanted Ranulf to know that she’d truly loved him, but it was not meant to be. She’d long known that, suspected that he had, too. He must try to understand. She wished him well, and asked him to burn this letter once he’d read it.
Ranulf did not burn her letter, not at first. Instead, he tormented himself by reading it over and over, until her words were embedded so deeply into his memory that he’d never be able to get them out. How could Annora give up like this? If she loved him, how could she just walk away? What of the baby, though? How could he expect her to abandon her child? And if she could somehow keep the babe, would he be willing to accept Gervase Fitz Clement’s child as his own? But what if she miscarried again? An ugly thought, one that shamed him when it kept coming back.
He remembered a conversation he’d once had with a soldier wounded at the Battle of Lincoln. The man’s arm had been so badly mangled that the doctors had been forced to amputate it, and he’d told Ranulf that his arm had continued to ache even after it was gone. And after another sleepless night of phantom pain, Ranulf knew what he must do. He had to see Annora. They had to talk. What that would accomplish, he could not say, even to himself. He knew only that it could not end like this.
IT was very early, a few stars still glimmering in the dawn sky. Ranulf had saddled his horse himself, for the grooms were not yet up and about. The bailey was
deserted, save for the guards up on the battlements. He had hoped to be long gone by the time the castle was stirring for the day. But as he swung up into the saddle, he heard his name being called.
Luke was running across the bailey. “My lord, wait!” Coming to a halt in front of Ranulf’s stallion, blocking the way. “You cannot go off on your own like this,” he insisted. “I know what you mean to do. You are seeking out your lady. I saw him the other day—her brother. I was in the town when he rode by, after leaving the castle. And since then, you’ve been like a man with a wound that’ll not stop bleeding. I am not prying, in truth I am not. It is your safety I care about. You know you can trust me. Take me with you. I’ll need but a few moments to saddle up—”
“No,” Ranulf said. “This I must do alone.”
“My lord, forgive me for saying so, but that is madness! The risk is too great. Let me come—”
Ranulf turned his horse, circled around Luke, then spurred it forward. Luke could only watch, defeated, as the stallion cantered across the bailey. “At least take Loth with you!” he shouted, but he could not be sure if Ranulf even heard him, for he did not look back.
LUKE’S fears proved unfounded, for Ranulf reached Shrewsbury without incident. The town was crowded with fairgoers, but he was able to persuade the hospitaller at St Peter’s to find him a place in the abbey guest hall, just as he’d done during his last visit to Shrewsbury Fair, seven years ago.
The next morning, he rose early and headed for the fairground. The August sun was hot upon his face, the Abbey Foregate thronged with cheerful, laughing people eager for the pleasures of the fair. Ranulf soon inhaled the aromas of hot meat pies and freshly baked bread; he could not even remember the last time he’d eaten. All sorts of activity swirled around him. A knot of children were shrieking at the antics of a trained monkey; the sheriff’s men were dragging off a pickpocket caught in the act; merchants were calling out their wares. But for Ranulf, it was a scene haunted by memories, blighted hopes, and regrets.
As he moved between the booths, he kept catching glimpses of Annora, not the woman he hoped to find today, but a carefree, reckless girl clad in scarlet, a ghost from a bygone fair, living on in memories he’d take to his grave. As soon as he’d remembered that St Peter’s Fair was imminent, he’d had to come, knowing he’d have no better chance to encounter Annora. It had worked once; why not again? But he’d not anticipated how painful it would be—revisiting his past.
He saw the dog first. Annora’s pup had grown into a handsome, grey-black animal, not as large as Loth, who was uncommonly big for a dyrehund, but very like his sire in all other particulars, the reason why Ranulf had dared not bring Loth with him. A dog that looked so much like the Fitz Clement dyrehund would have been dangerously conspicuous.
Annora was accompanied by a giggling young girl, about thirteen or so. When Annora called her “Lucette,” Ranulf realized this was her stepdaughter. Seeing her with Annora gave Ranulf a jolt; for the first time, she was real to him. His eyes were drawn irresistibly now to Annora’s skirts. She was already starting to show, and basking in the benevolent, approving smiles people reserved for expectant mothers. She was wearing an apple-green gown, a shade he’d never seen on her before. It suited her, for she looked at ease, quite content—until she glanced over, saw Ranulf standing by the silversmith’s booth.
Ten feet or so separated them, but Ranulf could still see how fast the blood drained from Annora’s face. Lucette also noticed, and plucked at Annora’s sleeve. “Mama?” That, too, came as a shock to Ranulf. But then he realized that Annora—nigh on eleven years wed—was probably the only mother Lucette remembered. “Mama, are you ailing? You’re so pale! Papa! Mama is sick!”
A man at one of the nearby stalls turned, made haste to rejoin them. Ranulf had never seen Annora’s husband before. He was not at all the horned demon of Ranulf’s jealous imaginings, just a compact, ruddyfaced man in his forties, with enough laugh lines to attest to an agreeable nature, hair shorter than was fashionable, a neatly trimmed beard showing signs of grey. “Nan? You do look ill of a sudden. Is it the babe?”
Annora swallowed. “I…I am well. Truly, Gervase, I am. It is just so hot…” She managed a feeble smile, all the while keeping her gaze riveted upon Ranulf. Gervase and Lucette were fussing over her, insisting she move into the shade, signaling for a vendor to bring her a cider drink. As Ranulf watched her, it seemed to him as if the distance were widening between them, although neither one had moved. Color was slowly coming back into Annora’s face; she no longer looked so terrified, but her eyes were wide and dark, filled with mute entreaty. Ranulf took a backward step, then turned and walked away.
RANULF left Shrewsbury that same day. He had no set destination in mind, wanting only to put as many miles as he could between himself and Gervase’s “Nan,” Lucette’s “Mama.” He was not ready to go home, though, and rode in the opposite direction, taking the road that led north.
It had not been a conscious choice, and he was halfway to Chester before he realized where he was heading. He was to be disappointed, for Maud was not at Chester Castle. She and her lord husband were awaiting the birth of her child upon one of his Welsh manors, the earl’s servants reported, and only then did Ranulf remember that his niece was less than a month away from her lying-in.
He could have continued on into Wales. But he was done with acting upon impulse, without thinking first, for where had it ever gotten him? He was not going to burden Maud with his troubles at a time when she ought to be thinking only of her baby. He lingered a few more days at Chester, and then slowly, reluctantly, started back toward Devizes.
The borderlands were lawless in even the best of times. But once again, Ranulf rode unscathed over some of the most perilous roads in Stephen’s realm. It may have been that indifference was the most formidable armor of all, that bandits somehow sensed the danger in attacking a man who felt he had nothing left to lose. It may have been no more than happenchance, sheer good fortune. Whatever the explanation, Ranulf reached Devizes safely in early September, bone-tired and disheveled and heartsick.
NIGHT had long since fallen by the time Ranulf dismounted in the bailey of Devizes Castle. He was handing the reins to a stable groom when Hugh de Plucknet came hastening out of the hall, a swaying lantern held aloft. “Is that you, Ranulf? Good God, man, where have you been? We’d begun to despair of ever seeing you alive again. Do you…do you know?”
“Know what?” Ranulf asked, but without interest. “Whatever your news, Hugh, hold it till the morrow. Tonight I want only to get myself up to bed.” It was not to be that easy, however, for a woman’s figure was framed in the open doorway of the hall, familiar even in shadow. Ranulf heaved a weary sigh, cursed his wretched sense of timing, and moved to meet his sister.
“Maude, I know you are furious with me for going off as I did,” he said abruptly, hoping to delay her lecture. “I promise I’ll hear you out, offer you all the apologies you want, but not now, not tonight.”
Maude looked as exhausted as Ranulf felt, her dark eyes ringed with sleepless shadows, but he could find no traces of anger in their depths. “I am not going to reproach you,” she said. “But I must talk to you, Ranulf, and it cannot wait.”
Whatever she had to tell him, he did not want to hear, not more bad news, not tonight. But Maude would not be denied. Once they were alone in her dimly lit solar, she seemed in no hurry to unburden herself, instead fretting about the flickering candles, insisting upon pouring wine for them both, until he lost all patience and demanded to know what could not wait till the morrow.
Maude turned slowly to face him. “I have grievous news for you,” she said haltingly. “The day after you rode away on your own, your friend Gilbert Fitz John arrived, stopping over on his way to Bristol. When he learned that you’d gone off alone, he was so dismayed that he insisted upon going after you. He sent a message to Robert that he would be delayed, and then he and Luke and their escort set out after you.”
&n
bsp; “I do not understand,” Ranulf said uneasily, “why they did not overtake me, then, for I tarried along the way. But I did not see them at Shrewsbury, nor on the road.”
“They never got there, Ranulf. They’d ridden less than ten miles when a fox chased a rabbit out onto the road, spooking their horses. The others were able to get their mounts back under control, but Gilbert was not so lucky and he…he was thrown.”
Ranulf’s mouth was suddenly dry. “Was he bad hurt?”
“I am so sorry,” she whispered, “so very sorry. He broke his neck in the fall. Ranulf, he is dead.”
36
Devizes, England
October 1147
“RANULF…” Maude hesitated, unsure how to proceed. Her every instinct urged against trespassing across emotional boundaries, for she respected the privacy of pain as few others did. But she’d begun to feel as if she were witnessing a drowning, and her greatest fear now was that her lifeline would fall short.
“Ranulf…you know that a wound can fester if it is not tended, spreading its poison throughout the entire body. Grief can fester like that, too. My chaplain says that you refused to talk to him again.”
“I had nothing to say to him.”
“You have nothing to say to anyone these days. That is what worries me.” She waited, soon saw he was not going to respond. He’d picked up the fire tongs and was prodding the hearth back to life, his face hidden; all she could see was a thatch of fair hair, gilded by firelight. Maude watched him in silence for several moments, and then said purposefully, “Luke thinks that you blame him for Gilbert’s death.”