Sweat stood out on Guy’s forehead; his chest heaved as if he’d been running. He drew a deep, constricted breath, then said, more calmly but no less contemptuously, “You can come with me or not as you choose. But is it not enough that you failed Papa at Evesham? Are you truly going to fail him at Viterbo, too?”
Bran’s throat had closed up, cutting off speech. But he had nothing to say. No denials to make. No excuses to offer. Every embittered accusation that Guy had flung at him was one already embedded in his soul, five years festering. He could not defend himself. Nor could he save himself. All he could do was what he did now—reach for the sword that Guy was holding out to him.
The church of San Silvestro was only half-filled with parishioners, it not being a Sunday or a holy day. As the bell rang for the Consecration, they knelt upon their prayer cushions, began to chant in unison with their priest, “Jesú, Lord, welcome Thou be, in form of bread as I Thee see.” They got no further; the door, barred to keep latecomers from interrupting the Mass, was struck a shuddering blow, splintered under the steel of thrusting blades.
Bran was still blinded by the sun from the piazza; at first all he saw was blackness. Voices were rising from all corners of the church, bewildered, angry, alarmed. He could barely make out a shadowy figure standing by the altar. “Who are you that dare to intrude upon God’s service?” A priest’s voice, fearful but indignant, too.
“You need not fear, Padre. We are not here for you.” This voice Guy’s, a voice like a knife. It cut through the murmuring protests just as surely as his sword had pierced the door, frightening to them all, familiar to one. He was on his feet now, his face a white blur, dark hollow eyes in a death mask, doomed and knowing it, for he’d recognized Guy. Their prey, their enemy; their cousin Hal.
“What…what do you want?” he cried, beginning to back away, and again it was Guy who answered for them.
“Retribution,” he said, bringing up his sword. People would later ask why Hal had made no attempt to defend himself, why his attendants did not come to his aid. They were questions without answers. All that the eyewitnesses could report was what they saw, that Hal never drew his own sword. He fled, instead, to the altar, as if seeking sanctuary, and when Guy loomed over him, he was heard to gasp his cousin’s name, to beg for God’s mercy. Guy’s reply burned itself into so many memories that parishioners would later be able to recall it word for word. He had said, they all agreed, “You shall have the mercy you showed my father and brother,” and splattered San Silvestro’s altar with the blood of his kinsman.
Guy’s second thrust split open Hal’s skull, but still he clung to the altar, clung to life. The priest sought to intercede, and paid dearly for his courage. When they saw their priest struck down, the people panicked, tried to flee. A mêlée broke out; other swords flashed.
Bran saw it all, every gory detail imprinting itself upon his brain, to be relived again and again: the blood pooling in the chancel, caking on his boots, darkening the priest’s cassock, even saturating the Host itself, for the holy wafers had spilled out when the pyx overturned. Guy finally broke Hal’s death-grip on the altar, severing three fingers in the process, and grabbed the dying man by the hair, began to drag him up the aisle, into the clear. Bran saw it all, the fingers still clutching the altar cloth, the candlesticks scattered underfoot, and always the blood, so much of it, more than he’d ever seen on the battlefield, or even when pigs were butchered for Martinmas. How could one man’s body hold so much? But he was forgetting the priest. And a parish clerk had been injured, too, was crumpled, moaning, by the sacristy door.
Bran saw it all. But he felt none of it. For the rest of his life, he would be able to recall the murder scene in San Silvestro’s church merely by closing his eyes. But he could never remember how he’d felt or what he’d thought as it was happening.
The sunlight in the piazza was dazzling, hurt his eyes. He shielded them with his hand, looked down upon the body sprawled at Guy’s feet. Fair hair trailed in the mud; it, too, was turning red. Bran’s sword-arm hung at his side; when he started to sheathe the weapon, he saw blood on the blade. Passing strange, but he could not remember how it got there. Why could he not remember?
Guy, too, was staring at their cousin’s body. He was panting, drenched in blood, and soaked in sweat. “I have had my vengeance,” he said, and spat with difficulty into the dirt.
“Have you forgotten what they did to your father’s body? How they hacked him to pieces, then threw him to the dogs?”
The speaker was an English knight, one of the few survivors of Evesham. Bran knew him well, but now he found himself unable to recall the man’s name. Guy whirled, and for a moment it looked as if he might turn upon his tormentor. But then he jerked his sword free of its scabbard again, slashed open his cousin’s belly. Intestines spilled out in a gush of clotted black blood; a dreadful stench pervaded the piazza. As Guy swung a second time and then a third, a man fell to his knees, began to vomit. Bells suddenly echoed across the square; one of the parishioners was ringing the sanctus bell, sounding the alarm. Count Ildebrandino stepped toward his son-in-law, grabbed Guy’s arm.
“We are done here,” he said. “You have avenged your father. Now it is time to go—and to go quickly, whilst we still can.”
The Count’s warning broke the spell. The men scattered, running for their mounts. Sheathing his sword again, Guy swung up into the saddle, raked his spurs into his stallion’s flanks. The horse leapt forward, began to lengthen stride. But then Guy jerked on the reins, for as he looked back, he saw his brother still standing by the body. “Bran, you fool, what are you waiting for, the hangman? Get to your horse!”
Bran turned at sound of his name. As their eyes met, Guy felt a queer chill, for Bran looked at him without apparent recognition. “Come on,” he shouted. “Hurry!”
Bran didn’t move, continued to gaze down at Hal’s body. Footsteps sounded suddenly on the muddy cobblestones; he looked up to see Hugh standing beside him. The boy’s face was streaked with tears, and not once did his eyes meet Bran’s. But he was holding out the reins of Bran’s stallion, and after a moment, Bran took them, mounted, and rode after his brother.
People now emerged from hiding places, approached the body. Someone produced a blanket, draped it mercifully over the mangled remains. A woman in widow’s black dropped a rosary into a maimed hand. It was all done in an eerie silence, as if the murder had shocked them beyond speech. But then a wailing began in the church, and an elderly merchant sent a servant to the Franciscans, where the Kings of Sicily and France were attending Mass.
Hugh and Noel stood frozen, heedless of the activity beginning to swirl about them. Noel had started to shiver; even after a sympathetic spectator wrapped a mantle about his shoulders, he could not stop trembling. As if rousing himself from a trance, Hugh knelt on the cobblestones, made the sign of the cross over Hal’s body. Straightening up, he moved toward the hitching post, untied their mounts. But Noel recoiled, looking at him in fresh horror.
“Have you gone mad? We cannot go with them! They’ve doomed themselves this day, will be hunted down like outlaws, with every man’s hand against them!”
Hugh did not dispute him. “I know,” he whispered, and shuddered. And then he mounted his gelding, sent it galloping across the piazza at a pace to outrun pursuit, but not memories of the murder.
4
Montargis, France
April 1271
The placid predictability of daily life in Montargis was shattered by the unexpected arrival of the French Queen. The villagers abandoned their chores, deserting ploughs, churns, and looms in their eagerness to glimpse their sovereign’s mother. Even the nuns could not resist the turmoil, peeping surreptitiously from the windows of frater, infirmary, and almonry as Marguerite and her entourage rode into the priory precincts. The Prioress hastened out to greet their royal guest, having already sent a servant to alert the de Montfort household, for all knew it was Nell whom Marguerite had come to see.
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By the time Marguerite reached the de Montfort lodgings, Nell was awaiting her in the doorway. If her curtsy displayed the deference due a Queen, her smile welcomed a friend. “Madame, what a joyful surprise! I’m sorry my daughter is not here to greet you, too, but Ellen has been away for the past fortnight, visiting her de Montfort cousins at La Ferté-Alais. I expect her back today or tomorrow, though, and…” Nell paused for breath, and only then did she become aware of the other woman’s silence. “Marguerite? Is something wrong?”
Marguerite nodded, her eyes filling with tears.
The church was very still, sun filtering through diamond-shaped panes of emerald- and ruby-tinted glass; the faint fragrance of incense hung in the air. Breathing in the perfumed scent, enveloping herself in the silence, it seemed to Nell that this shadowy chapel was her last refuge in a world gone mad. She did not approach the altar, though. In her despair, she turned not to God, but to Simon, and knelt by her husband’s memorial stone. “Beloved,” she whispered, “how unquiet is your grave…”
Another woman might have fumbled for a rosary; Nell reached for a ring. A sapphire set in the shape of a cross, it had once been Simon’s, worn since Evesham on a chain around her neck. Fishing it from her bodice, she balanced it in her palm, then watched as her fingers curled around it, clenched into a fist.
“Was ever a man so ill-served by the sons who loved him? If Harry had not allowed Edward to escape, if Bran had only understood the urgency of your need at Evesham, if only…” Her voice wavered, then steadied. “How I hate those words! If only. What if. And the worst one of all, Simon—why.”
After a while, she tried to pray, first for the soul of her murdered nephew, and then for her doomed sons. The prayers didn’t help, for she had lost more at Evesham than her husband, her eldest son, and her country. She had lost, too, her faith in God’s justice. From King’s daughter to rebel’s widow—it was a free-falling plunge into depths not yet plumbed. She had in time made her peace with the Almighty, but after Evesham, she no longer truly trusted Him, and she no longer believed that heavenly prayers could ease earthly pain.
“And now this,” she said softly. “And now Viterbo. Simon…Simon, I do not understand!”
It was an involuntary cry, one that seemed to echo on the hushed chapel air, lingering until dispelled by a slamming door, by a familiar voice. “Mama? Mama, we’re back!”
Ellen and Juliana were hastening up the nave. “There you are, Mama!” Even in such dimmed light, Ellen looked radiant. “We had a wonderful time. We went to Paris for a few days, heard Easter Mass at Notre Dame, and Cousin Alice took us to the apothecary who makes that jasmine perfume you fancy. Then, once we were back at La Ferté-Alais, they gave an elaborate feast, with dancing and jugglers and even a trained bear!” Ellen paused long enough to shoot a mischievous look in Juliana’s direction. “Oh, yes, and Juliana made another conquest. One of the knights was so smitten with her that he followed her about like her own shadow, even—”
Juliana jogged Ellen’s elbow. “She makes much ado over nothing, Madame. Can you tell us if it is true about the French Queen? She is here in Montargis?”
“Yes.” Nell had risen at sound of her daughter’s voice. For a moment, her fingers tightened around her husband’s ring, and then she said, “Come here, Ellen. You, too, Juliana, for this concerns Bran.”
The two girls exchanged startled, guilty glances, and Juliana flushed darkly, wondering how she and Ellen could have deluded themselves so easily, how they could ever have believed that the Countess knew naught of her liaison with Bran.
They moved forward, losing all joy and laughter in the few brief steps it took to enter the chapel, looking tense, anxious, and young enough to break Nell’s heart. “Marguerite came to tell me, Ellen,” she said abruptly, “that your cousin Hal is dead.”
Ellen’s lashes flickered, no more than that, and Nell felt a sense of weary wonderment that she and Simon could have bred this beautiful, impassive child, so unlike her volatile, impassioned parents. But Ellen had not always been so guarded. Growing up, she, too, had followed the de Montfort credo of no emotion denied, no thought left unspoken, for Simon and Nell had both prided themselves upon their candor, their willingness to speak out before the most exalted of audiences. After one of Henry’s many battlefield blunders, Simon had even dared to tell the English King that he belonged by rights in an asylum for the deranged of mind, an audacity Henry never forgave and other men never forgot. Now, as Nell looked at Ellen’s profile, so perfect and yet so inscrutable, she felt an old ache stirring, for Ellen’s reticence was not hers by birthright. It was a painful, learned response to a lesson no thirteen-year-old should ever have to master. Evesham had scarred her daughter no less than her sons.
“Mama…” Ellen took her time, choosing her words with care. “I understand why you grieve for Uncle Richard. Indeed, I am sorry, too, for his pain. He is a decent man, and I know he truly tried to help us after Evesham. But please do not ask me to grieve for Hal. I cannot mourn him, Mama, for I cannot forgive him. If he had kept faith, Papa and Harry might still be alive. No, I can find no pity in my heart for Hal. I regret only that God gave him a crusader’s death, for that is an honor he did not deserve.”
There was no easy way to do it. “No, Ellen, you do not understand—not yet. Hal did not die in the Holy Land. He died in Italy.”
Juliana’s expression did not change; she continued to look puzzled and somewhat apprehensive. But Ellen’s eyes widened; the mask cracked. “Italy,” she echoed, and then, “Oh, Mama, no!”
Nell nodded grimly. “For reasons known but to God, he directed Hal to Viterbo. There what you fear came to pass. As soon as your brothers learned of his presence, they…they seem to have gone stark mad. They burst into the church where Hal was hearing Mass, murdered him as he clung to the altar, and then Guy… Guy mutilated his body ere they escaped. Marguerite says they are believed to have taken refuge at Sovana, Count Ildebrandino’s castle in—”
Juliana gave a smothered sob; Ellen caught her arm as she swayed. “No, Juliana, it is not true! Guy…yes, for he’s like one crazed when it comes to Papa’s enemies. But not Bran, not a killing like that. Juliana, will you stop weeping and pay heed to what I say? It is a mistake, it has to be. You know what happened at Evesham, you know that Bran got to the battle too late, that he… God help him, but he saw our father’s head on a pike. I cannot even begin to imagine what the ride back to Kenilworth must have been like for him. But the day’s horror was not yet done. When the castle garrison heard, they went mad. My uncle Richard was being held at Kenilworth as a hostage, and they attacked him, would have killed him right there in the bailey if not for Bran. He stood over my uncle’s body, sword drawn, and faced them down, just hours after seeing what Richard’s allies had done to our father. Now you tell me, is that a man who’d murder during a Mass?”
But Juliana continued to sob softly. It was Nell who reached out to her daughter, laid her hand gently on Ellen’s arm. Ellen’s mouth trembled. “Tell her, Mama. Please tell her it’s not true…” Pulling away when Nell slowly shook her head. “My God, Mama, how can you believe that of Bran?”
Nell did not flinch. “Because I know Bran’s pain,” she said quietly. “Because I know that he has spent the last five years looking for a way to punish himself. And I very much fear that he found it at Viterbo.”
Ellen could not speak. “What will happen to them?” she asked, once she was sure her voice would not betray her.
“They have been outlawed, their lands forfeit, and they’ll be excommunicated as soon as there is a new pope to do it, to damn them. Then no man will dare to help them…” Nell leaned back against the altar. “Child, there is more. Marguerite says suspicions have fallen upon Amaury, too.”
“But why? Amaury was not at Viterbo…was he, Mama? Even if so, I’ll never believe he took part in a church killing, never!”
“No, he was not in Viterbo. He was hundreds of miles away at Padua, had naug
ht to do with the murder. But his blood alone convicts him in the eyes of some, and Marguerite says there has been talk of charging him with collusion.” With an obvious effort, Nell pushed herself away from the altar, straightened her shoulders. “I must return to our bedchamber now, for I have a letter to write. I do not know where I shall find the words, though. How do I tell my brother that I am sorry my sons murdered his?”
Ellen’s breath broke on a shudder. “Mama, I am so sorry! You do not deserve this!”
Nell’s mouth twisted. “If we got what we deserved in this life, Simon would be in Westminster and Henry in Hell. Look after Juliana, and Ellen…do not despair. We’ll get through this somehow. You are Plantagenet and de Montfort, and a sword made from that steel is too finely tempered to break.”
Juliana sank to her knees, and Ellen knelt beside her, holding the other girl as she wept. Her own eyes were dry. She’d once cried easily: for a sorrowful song, a beggar’s hunger, a homeless dog. Now she knew that tears availed for naught.
“Where will he go, Ellen? What will he do?
“I do not know.”
Juliana shivered, crossed herself. “What greater sacrilege can there be than a killing in God’s own House? Do you think God could ever forgive him?”
Ellen bit her lip. “It is not God’s vengeance that they must fear now. It is my cousin’s. Ned will follow them to Hades if need be.”