Davydd signaled for another round of drinks. “We heard that your brother Guy made a brilliant marriage last summer with an Italian heiress. Gossip…or gospel?”
“Guy wed Margherita, daughter of Ildebrandino d’Aldobrandini, Count of Sovana, in Viterbo on August tenth,” Bran said and smiled. “I daresay you know that Guy is Vicar-General of all of Tuscany. But you may not know that in September, he was also named as Vicar of Florence. A comely wife, a father-in-law who holds Tuscany in the palm of his hand, rich lands of his own in the kingdom of Naples, and a King’s favor—all in all, I’d say it was a good year for Guy.”
It was nothing obvious; Bran’s smile was steady, his gaze even. But Davydd had a sophisticated, exhaustive knowledge of brotherly jealousy in all its guises. Recognizing a kindred spirit when he saw one, he gave Bran a look of amused understanding, faintly flavored with sympathy. It was never easy, trailing after a brother whilst he blazed across the heavens like a flaming comet; who should know that better than he? A pity he and Bran could not commiserate with each other over their shared affliction, but he’d wager Bran would deny with his dying breath that he begrudged Guy’s bedazzling success. Christendom was full to overflowing with those stricken by envy, but he alone seemed willing to admit it, that he was so jealous of his brother he was like to sicken on it. He laughed softly to himself, and at their questioning glances, said, “ ’Tis nothing, a private jest.”
Llewelyn was asking about Bran’s lady mother, offering his condolences for the loss of his younger brother Richard, who’d died unexpectedly that past spring. Bran’s face shadowed; draining the last of his mead, he beckoned for more. “The doctors said it was a rupture. He was just twenty-one…”
Davydd did not care for the morbid turn the conversation had taken; he saw no reason to mourn a man he’d never met, and after a moment of tactful silence, he posed some innocuous questions about Amaury de Montfort, who might not interest him overmuch, but at least was still alive. Amaury, he now learned, was thriving, studying medicine and religion at the University of Padua. But he soon grew bored with Brother Amaury, too, and giving Llewelyn a sideways smile of sudden mischief, he asked, “And how is your fair sister, the Lady Ellen? By chance, might there be a husband on the horizon?”
Davydd was not motivated by malice, just an irresistible urge to bedevil Llewelyn a bit, for his brother still felt a sense of responsibility for Ellen de Montfort. She’d been not yet thirteen when her world fell apart, and although the Prince knew he’d had no choice but to disavow the plight troth, the man could not help feeling that he’d failed an innocent in her time of need. Davydd knew this well, for he knew his brother was at heart a secret romantic, however pragmatic the Prince might appear. What he had not anticipated was the response of Ellen’s brother.
Bran was looking at Llewelyn as if the question had been his. “No,” he said slowly, never taking his eyes from the Welsh Prince’s face. “She is not yet wed. She’s of an age—eighteen last October—and beautiful. I daresay there’d be men willing to take her for herself alone, so fair is she to look upon. She’ll not lack for a marriage portion, though, even if I have to beggar myself on her behalf. She’ll want for nothing; we’ll see to that. But she was cheated of her rightful destiny, for she was to have been a Prince’s consort. You should have married her, Llewelyn. You broke her heart and for what? Christ, man, you could not have done better for a bride, in this world or the next!”
Llewelyn had stiffened with Bran’s first words, listening with disbelief that soon flared into fury. But as he studied Bran, he saw what had escaped him until now, that his English guest was drunk. Not a loud or belligerent drunk, just an honest one. And his anger ebbed away in a surge of pity for Simon de Montfort’s son.
Bran downed two more cups of mead before his speech began to slur, his eyes to glaze. Hugh had been hovering close at hand, and as Bran mumbled his excuses, the boy waved away Llewelyn’s servants, insisting that he be the one to help his lord to bed. Llewelyn and Davydd watched in silence as Bran stumbled from the hall.
“Five years is a long time to grieve,” Llewelyn said at last, and Davydd shook his head.
“Grief heals,” he said. “Guilt does not.” He saw Llewelyn’s brows shoot upward and the corner of his mouth curved. “Jesú, what an easy face yours is to read, Brother! You wonder what I should know of guilt, do you not? I’ll grant you it is not an emotion I’ve ever taken to heart. But a man need not be born in a country in order to speak the language.”
“No,” Llewelyn agreed, “mayhap not.” After another silence, he said softly, “We ought not to be so surprised. For who would cast a longer shadow than Simon de Montfort?”
2
Montargis, France
February 1271
Montargis was ensconced within a bend of the River Loing. It was also crisscrossed with canals, Bran told Hugh, putting him in mind of Venice. And even as Hugh nodded, it came to him that he would soon be seeing Venice for himself, a thought so preposterous that he burst out laughing.
It had all happened too fast. In four fleeting weeks, his world had expanded beyond all borders of belief. He, who’d never even set foot in a rowboat, suddenly found himself in a swift little esneque under sail for Rouen. He hadn’t liked the sea voyage; his stomach was soon heaving in harmony with the pitching waves. But then their ship reached the mouth of the Seine. Three days later, they docked at the Grand Pont, and before Hugh’s bedazzled eyes lay the city of Paris.
Nothing had prepared him for this. The largest town he’d ever seen was Shrewsbury; country-born and bred, he’d been very impressed by its size, for it had more than two thousand people. But now there was Paris—with perhaps a hundred thousand inhabitants, with paved streets and formidable stone walls, with so many churches that the city seemed a forest of steeples, with a river island that held both a palace and a cathedral, with sights to take away Hugh’s breath and noise enough to rouse Heaven itself—Paris, pride of France, glory of Christendom.
In just one day, Hugh saw more beggars, dogs, prostitutes, and friars than he could count. He saw his first water clock, watched in morbid fascination as a man accused of blasphemy was held down and burned upon the tongue, nearly went deaf from the constant chiming of so many church bells, ate the best sausage of his life at the market by St Germain l’Auxerois, and met a Queen.
The Queen was Marguerite, widow of the saintly Louis, who’d died on crusade five months past. Marguerite had valid reasons to dislike the de Montforts; her sister Eleanor was wife to King Henry. But affection and reason were not always compatible, and Marguerite had become Nell de Montfort’s staunchest friend, doing all she could to soften the rigors of Nell’s exile. Bran bore one of her letters in his saddlebags as they rode toward Montargis, for if he was an outlaw in England, in France he was still the scion of a noble House and welcome at the French court.
When he had impulsively offered to share Bran’s flight, Hugh had expected danger and adventure, both of which he found in full measure. But he had not expected to have his life transformed as if by magic; he had not expected Paris. He could feel his joy rising again, and he twisted around in the saddle to look upon his young lord, laughter about to spill out.
What he saw froze the smile upon his face. It was not yet noon and Bran was already reaching for the wineskin dangling from his saddle pommel. Hugh hastily glanced away, and they rode on in silence.
Hugh had often heard lurid tales of the young de Montforts’ hell-raising. The three elder sons, Harry, Bran, and Guy, had been notorious for their whoring and carousing and ale-house brawling, in decided and dramatic contrast to their austere father, for Simon, a crusader who’d twice taken the cross and adhered to a rigid code of honor, a moralist who’d worn a hair shirt into that last doomed battle of his life, had been utterly devoted to his wife.
Like most youngsters, Hugh was intrigued by scandal, by these colorful accounts of Bran’s turbulent past. It puzzled him, therefore, that the Bran of legend was
so unlike the Bran he now knew. For a man reputed to have such a blazing temper, Bran seemed surprisingly equable. Not once in these four weeks had Hugh seen him angry; even the inevitable vexations of the road were shrugged off with admirable aplomb. At first, Hugh had much marveled at Bran’s unfailing forbearance. Only slowly did he begin to suspect the truth, that Bran’s patience was actually indifference.
Bran was not taciturn, and he and Hugh had often whiled away the boredom of the road in banter, filling their hours with easy conversation. Hugh had confided his entire life’s story long before they’d reached Wales. And Bran, in turn, had shared with the boy memories of his own youth, of the two brothers they would soon join in Italy, of the mother and sister awaiting him at Montargis. But not once did he speak of Evesham, or of the father and brother who had died for his mistake. And Hugh came gradually to realize how deceptive was Bran de Montfort’s affability, how effective a shield. Bran remained a man in shadow; he might lower the drawbridge into his outer bailey, but there would be no admittance into the castle keep. Even after a month in Bran’s constant company, all Hugh could say with certainty was that Simon’s son was generous, utterly fearless, and that he drank too much.
When Hugh first comprehended the extent of Bran’s drinking, he had been dismayed and alarmed. All he knew of drunkards came from overheard shreds of gossip: an ale-house stabbing, garbled accounts of cupshotten villagers taking out their tempers upon wives and children. He had observed Bran’s drinking, therefore, with some trepidation. But his qualms were soon assuaged, for Bran did not act like the quarrelsome drinkers who’d so enlivened Evesham folklore. He did not become bellicose, did not bluster or swagger or seek out fights. Drunk or sober, he treated Hugh with the same casual kindness. But drink he did, quietly, steadily, beginning his day with ale, ending it with hippocras, taking frequent swigs from his wine flask with the distant, distracted air of a man quaffing a doctor’s brew. Hugh could only watch, bewildered; if drink brought Bran so little pleasure, why did he seek it so diligently?
A small castle overlooked Montargis, but it was not there that Nell de Montfort and her daughter had found a haven. The woman born to palaces now lived in a rented house upon the grounds of a Dominican convent.
Hugh was eagerly anticipating their arrival; his curiosity about the Countess of Leicester was intense. Like her husband, she was a figure of controversy, both loved and hated, for she had never been one tamely to await her fate, as women were expected to do. This youngest daughter of King John and Isabelle d’Angoulême had been a royal rebel. It was said she got her beauty from her mother, her willfulness and her temper from John. She had been wed as a child to the Earl of Pembroke, widowed at fifteen, and in the first throes of grief, she had sworn a holy oath of chastity, thus condemning herself to a lifelong widowhood. But then she’d met the young Frenchman, Simon de Montfort. Simon was not the first man to look upon Nell with forbidden desire. He was the first, however, who dared to defy King and Church for her.
Their marriage had scandalized Christendom, but they never looked back, forging a passionate partnership that was to survive court intrigues and wars and her brother’s obsessive jealousy of Simon. Nell’s loyalty to her husband never wavered, even when it meant forsaking the brothers she loved. She bore Simon seven children, saw him raised up to undreamed-of heights of power, for fifteen months as England’s uncrowned King. And when he fell at Evesham, she lost all—lands, titles, even England—but not her faith in him. She sailed into exile as proudly as any queen, and if she had regrets, none but she knew of them.
To Simon’s enemies, she was a dangerous, maddeningly presumptuous woman, who deserved all the grief that had befallen her. To those who had believed in Simon, she was a fitting mate for one who’d soared so high, and they embellished her story until it took on epic proportions, until no one—perhaps not even Nell—could distinguish the woman from the myth.
The sun was high overhead as they rode into the convent garth. The nunnery was small and secluded, an incongruous setting for a woman who’d lived most of her life on center stage. Their arrival stirred up immediate excitement, and by the time they reached the stables, Bran’s squire was awaiting them. Hugh knew all about him; the sixteen-year-old son of a Norman knight, Noel de Pacy had been in Bran’s service for two years, had been sworn to secrecy about his lord’s hazardous mission in England. As their eyes met, Hugh smiled, but the other boy did not. Without saying a word, he was conveying an unmistakable message, one of jealousy and suspicion, and Hugh realized that his entrance into Bran’s household would not be as smooth as he’d hoped.
Noel acknowledged the introductions with a formality that just barely passed for politeness, and at once began to assail his lord with questions. Bran fended him off good-naturedly, quickening his step, for his mother stood framed in the doorway of the hall.
She was smaller than Hugh expected. He’d instinctively cast Simon’s lady as an Amazon, larger than life, and he was vaguely disappointed to find only a handsome woman in her mid-fifties, so simply dressed she might have been a nun. The stark black of widowhood suited her, though; she had the coloring for it, fair skin and blonde hair, scattered with silver. If she no longer had the light step and the svelte waist of her youth, the additional weight was still becoming, rounding out her face and sparing her that brittle tautness, that look of gaunt, attenuated elegance too common to aging beauties, those unable to make peace with time. As she and her son embraced warmly, Hugh decided he liked the way Nell de Montfort now looked, although it was difficult to imagine this matronly, sedate widow wed to an eagle or holding Dover Castle against an enemy army. But as the embrace ended, so, too, did the illusion. She stepped back, and suddenly those serene blue eyes were searing, filled with fury.
“Have you gone stark mad? Jesus God, Bran, why did you do it?”
Before Bran could respond, a shame-faced Noel began to babble a garbled apology; they could catch only “had to tell” and “my lady made me…”
Men were wilting before Nell’s wrath, backing off. Hugh was staring, open-mouthed, awed by how swiftly the matriarch had become a valkyrie. Bran alone appeared unfazed by his mother’s rage. Grinning, he cuffed Noel playfully on the back. “You need not fret, lad. It would take a foolhardy soul indeed to face down my lady mother in a temper!”
“I am glad you find this so amusing, Bran,” Nell said scathingly. “Does it amuse you, too, that I lay awake each night till dawn, seeking to convince myself you were still alive?”
Bran’s smile faded. “I know the risks I took,” he admitted quietly. “But I had to do it, Mama.”
After a long pause, Nell nodded. “Yes, I suppose you did,” she conceded, no less quietly, and to their sympathetic spectators, the moment was all the more poignant for what was left unsaid. Nell hugged her son, clung tightly. “I should warn you,” she said, “that if you ever scare me like this again, your homecoming will be hot enough to be held in Hell Everlasting.” And although she laughed, none doubted that she meant every word, least of all, Bran.
As they entered the hall, the rest of the de Montfort servants and retainers surged forward, engulfing Bran in a noisy, chaotic welcome. One young woman in particular seemed so happy to see Bran that at first Hugh thought she must be his sister, Ellen. But a second glance quickly disabused him of that notion, for Ellen de Montfort was said to be very fair, and this girl was as dark as any gypsy. By the exacting standards of their society, she was no beauty, for not only was her coloring unfashionable, she was short and voluptuous, and theirs was a world in which the ideal woman was a tall, slender blonde. But Hugh could not take his eyes from her, perhaps because her allure was so very exotic, so alien. She looked verily like a wanton, like a Saracen concubine, he decided, and then blushed bright-red when Bran introduced her as Dame Juliana, his sister’s lady-in-waiting.
Suddenly face to face with the object of his sinful lust, Hugh found himself hopelessly tongue-tied. At times it seemed to him that his male member had
a life—and a will—of its own; he’d even given it a name, Barnabas, in rueful recognition of its newly independent ways. But never before had it focused upon a woman of his own class, a lady. Unable to meet Dame Juliana’s eyes lest she somehow read his mind, he averted his gaze from her face, only to find himself staring at her very ample bosom; and blushed anew, this time as high as his hairline.
“I suppose I ought to have warned you, Juliana, that the lad is a mute!”
“Bran, hush!” Jabbing Bran with her elbow, Juliana held out her hand, and it took no more than that, a touch and a smile, to vanquish Hugh’s discomfort. He smiled too, shyly, as the bedchamber door burst open.
“Bran!” At sound of his name, Bran swung about, then staggered backward under the onslaught. The girl in his arms was the prettiest creature Hugh had ever seen, with burnished masses of reddish-gold hair, emerald eyes, and flawless, fair skin. She was tall for a woman, as lissome and sleek as a pampered, purebred cat, and when Bran called her “kitten,” Hugh thought it an inspired endearment. If Juliana aroused male lust, this girl stirred gallantry in even the most jaded of men, and as she spun in a circle, heedless of her dishevelment, her flying hair, Hugh fell utterly and helplessly under the spell of Simon de Montfort’s daughter. Watching as Ellen laughed, sought to smother Bran with sisterly kisses, Hugh could think only that Llewelyn ap Gruffydd must be one of God’s greatest fools.