Knight's Honor (57 page)

He looked up again and catching Roger’s expression, turned away. “How long do you think she will remain unwed?” He asked bitterly. “If she will have me, I must be ready to snatch her up the moment the decree comes to her hand. Or even before she has it in hand. Most important of all is that she see me and decide on
me.”

“Í say again that the King of England will be more attractive than plain Sir Henry of Anjou.”

Henry sighed.
“
Doubtless the lady will not marry beneath her, but she has been married too long to a monk. My father believes that Iwho am plainly not in the least monkish, indeed some say I am wholly given over to the lusts of the flesh—can tempt her to take the final step by my person, not by my titles or expectations." Henry's face hardened, the brutal lower jaw thrusting forward. "I can be King of England any time, Roger, for my claim to the throne is just and must be recognized in the end. Do not mistake me, I mean to have it all—all. But to be Eleanor of Aquitaine's husband”

He drew a sharp breath. “Roger, if she takes me I will be master of all of western France when my father dies, all western France, a good part of the south of France, and England too, for England will fall into my hand like a ripe plum when that power is behind me." Henry's voice trembled with eagerness, his eyes were incandescent with the lust for power.

Hereford looked down at his naked body, at the long sickle-shaped scar he had taken at Faringdon, the ugly red line of knotted flesh on his thigh He had taken that wound in Henry's cause in Normandy. He fingered the still suppurating wound de Caldoet had given him and noted with eyes which were beautiful, limpid, empty blanks the myriad cuts and bruises he had received in the last battles.

"Do not go. Do not go now."

Those words were instinctive, born of shock and disbelief. Hereford had not planned to say them, had not even thought them. What he wished to do was to offer a lucid plan for taking Faringdon quickly, although he knew that no matter how soon Eustace fell into their hands the negotiations would drag on for months.

As soon as the words were out, however, he lost all desire to speak further. He recognized those words, just as he recognized the choked, strangled voice that uttered them as his own, just as he had recognized the burnt-out fields around Devizes as the place of his dream the day before. Night after weary night for eight long months he had heard those words, that voice, and he had been frozen in the same agonizing sense of futility and loss thinking that the words were addressed to him.

Hereford had in truth found his dream, and it was false. His nightmare fear was that he had deserted the cause. Still he was wrong, too, because the dream had been an honest warning and was true. Hereford closed his eyes, which suddenly felt dry and scratchy because he had not blinked for so long. The only desertion in all that time which had not haunted him—had not, indeed, crossed his mind—that which he had made no attempt to guard against, naturally enough, and could not guard against, had destroyed in a moment the work of …

"Three years. Three bitter years have I cast away, God help me."

"Nay, Roger. You are dearer to my heart than almost any living man. If I gain great good, what you ask thereof, you shall have. God knows, I am not overgenerous, but what
you
ask of me you shall have, if it is in my power to give without harm to myself. Never say you have lost your labor. I shall not forget it, nor you."

"I labored that England might have a king who would save her from being daily rent asunder, and all I have done is tear that bleeding body further."

Hereford's voice was quiet, defeated. He had no intention of reproaching Henry nor, for that matter, was he blaming himself. He was merely stating the facts as he saw them, yielding without further struggle to what he recognized was ordained from the beginning.

"England will have such a king,” Henry assured him, his voice hard. “You need not fear me. Let me but achieve this woman and I will be able to sweep all before me in one quick, clean stroke. You will lead that army also, Roger. Not one drop will be taken from your cup. Besides, there need be no waste of effort. Take Eustace and hold him for warranty of Stephen's good behavior. You can—"

"No.” Hereford’s voice was equally hard. “I will not hold that young man in chains for who knows how many years. A fool he may be, but he is brave and courteous and, I believe, well meaning."

"Was it well meaning to put this land to fire and the sword?"

Hereford raised his eyes, and even empty as they were they held Henry's again. "Who drove him to it? In my memory Stephen has always been the mildest and most merciful of men, and his son follows his way. Mayhap we have driven him to madness."

This time the Angevin's eyes dropped. He had tasted Stephen's mercy himself, and Roger knew it.

"I will fight no more, my lord,” Hereford said, “except to guard what is mine."

"Will you turn to Stephen now, desert me, Roger, and dishonor your oath?"

"Nay, my lord, you desert me.” The flat tone did not even hold bitterness. “Nor will I dishonor my oath—I am still your man, for good or ill. If you return and you call me to arms, I will come and fight for you, but I will lead no more armies and strive beyond the letter of my word no more. I will lead no more lost causes."

"Roger, I pray you, do not speak as if all is ended." Henry's genuinely affectionate heart was wrung by this dearest of vassal's pain. He embraced the resistless shoulders. "Come back to France with me. I will spare a week longer so that we can fetch your wife from Hereford in safety. Come, I pray you. Lady Elizabeth will love the court at Paris and you will have great sport watching me go secretly a-wooing."

Dumbly Hereford shook his head.

"I cannot help it, Roger," Henry cried at last. "Do not blame me for what I cannot help. You must see that so great a prize cannot be endangered."

"Do not distress yourself, Harry." Henry tightened his embrace at Hereford's use of the affectionate diminutive of his name. "I do not blame you, nor myself, for all things are done by God's will and are in God's hands. I do not understand, but doubtless there is Divine reason for this. I cannot go to France. I am tired—tired beyond believing—and my lands cry out for me. I will go home."

There was more talk, Henry urging Hereford to come to him later, at any time, promising earnestly and in good faith to give or send anything in his power to help his friend, but nothing more of note passed between them. They parted a day later, sadly and reluctantly, but fondly. Gloucester's vassals were dismissed to their master's service once more and Hereford spent a week more at Devizes making sure that their gains would not be lost again, sending instructions to abandon the siege at Faringdon and finally terminating his own vassals' service. He noted wryly that it was a year, exactly a year to the day when, in the pale sunlight of November, he turned his horse's head toward Hereford and began the lonely ride home.

Thus Roger arrived, unheralded and unexpected, followed only by his small household guard, at the gates of Hereford Castle in the afternoon of the first day of the third week of November. He was two days earlier in time in arriving home than he had been a year before, but ages older in feeling. The town, the sloping, winding road up to the gates, the people running out to greet him, all unchanged, brought back vividly the memory of his emotion at that time. The violent conflict between his concealed fear of incapability and his wild desire and enthusiasm for the task, the shadow of the coming defeat, already forming in his mind, the soaring hopes of brilliant success, great power, and, best of all, a peaceful land, all these stirred in his memory.

But quietly, everything was quiet now and far away. Even the shouts of the serfs and townsfolk that startled his horse into shying sounded small and distant. Hereford smiled gently, opened his purse, and tossed coins. A great peace pervaded him, a great, cold, quiet peace, like death.

Elizabeth, informed of her husband's imminent arrival by a lookout from the gate tower, seized a cloak and ran hurriedly to the courtyard to greet him. The last she had heard had been a jubilant message by word of mouth recounting the victory over de Tracy and the taking of Bridport, but there had not been the slightest indication that Hereford intended to return home. The retainers who had crowded around their lord made way for Elizabeth, and Hereford, perceiving her, dismounted to kiss her hand and then her lips. He was smiling pleasantly and she could plainly see he was well and unhurt; nonetheless, the touch of those lips cold with a greeting that contained nothing more than courtesy turned pleasure to fear.

"What is wrong, Roger? What has happened?"

"A very great deal, my dear, but let me come in and shed my mail. There is no need for haste. I am home for good, Elizabeth."

"For good!" Elizabeth was chilled through and not by the cold breeze that whipped her cloak about. She saw now that Roger's eyes, although turned in her direction and apparently seeing her, were not truly focused upon her. So she had been wrong and his spirit had been broken—but by what? Why? He offered his hand in the court gesture with which a gentleman invited a lady of his acquaintance, but not close acquaintance, to walk.

"Yes, for good," he replied mildly, and then, smiling, "unless of course I am forced to defend my own property against attack. I can still do that. Otherwise, I am a gentleman of leisure. It is too cold for you here, Elizabeth, you are trembling."

She was, in truth, but not with cold. "Have you left Henry, Roger?"

It was horrible, she thought, as she asked. Horrible that her voice should be so steady and unconcerned, horrible that she should place her hand upon Roger's and allow him to lead her formally up the stairs and into the hall of the manor house, horrible that he should smile, then laugh gaily as he replied.

"No, indeed. He left me. Really, there is no need to discuss the matter, for it is quite final. Ah, Mother, and my darling Catherine."

He released Elizabeth to embrace his mother and sister, and she remained where he left her, listening, stunned and unbelieving, to his proper questions about the well-being of his mother and his sister since he had seen them last. He must have broken and run, Elizabeth thought, and Henry had sent him away because he was useless, and now he was mad. He looked a little mad, as if there were a wall between him and the rest of the world and he was trying to look through it and speak through it, even though what he said and did were perfectly sane.

He turned from his mother and sister only to fondle his daughters briefly, say how pretty they had grown, ask about what they had learned since he left them, and laugh at their innocent answers and pleasure at his inquiries. Then he retreated to the bedroom to wash, lay aside his armor and weapons, and dress in the luxurious, fur-trimmed robes of a gentleman who had no expectation of any hurried call to any duty.

Emerging shortly, with no indication in face or manner that he wished to avoid company, Hereford devoted the intervening hours before suppertime to a discussion of Catherine's affairs. He told of the arrangements made with John FitzGilbert for Catherine's marriage to his son Patric and explained his reasons for that choice. He was perfectly good-humored, jesting lightly in his usual way as he calmed his sister's transports and seriously set himself to reason away his mother's objections.

At no time did he ignore or slight Elizabeth. He included her in every phase of the discussion, even pointedly asking her opinion and her backing for some of his remarks. He was unfailingly courteous, painfully polite—as polite as he would have been to a stranger.

At one point in the evening Elizabeth decided she could bear no more. Unwilling to come to grips with Roger and expose his shame to the rest of his family, she claimed weariness and suggested retiring to bed. Lady Hereford and Catherine were instantly solicitous, Roger plainly surprised both by their concern and by Elizabeth's confession of fatigue. His surprise, however, was nothing to what was mirrored in the expressions of his sister and mother when he let her go.

"Do you not go with your wife, Roger?"

"Go with her? Why? Oh." Hereford laughed, misconstruing completely his mother's thought. "It is true that I have been several weeks away from her bed, but, after all, if she is eager, waiting will make her more eager, and if she is weary, it is kindness in me to let her rest before I tire her further."

"Roger!" Lady Hereford protested. Perhaps she did not like her daughter-by-marriage even now, but what was right was right. "A woman more than five months gone with her first child deserves more consideration than you are showing her."

"Five—what?" Hereford blinked and shook his head as if he had been hit. The room receded infinitely and then, all at once, became his hall, his own familiar hall, not some immense cold place of tiny spots of brilliant color filled with little people he didn't really know and little sounds all very far away.

"Did she not tell you?"

"No," Hereford got out. "No, she—good God, she must have thought—"

Hereford cut that off. His mother, of course, did not know he had taken Elizabeth as a vassal, and, to his mind, it was none of her business, but he felt then that his wife had concealed her pregnancy because she considered that a "woman's reason" for not performing the duties he had ordered.

"But Roger, could you not see? She is swollen with it already. Surely you are not such a fool that your eyes did not tell you she was with child."

"Fool! I am ten times a fool about everything. No, I did not see anything. I have been so taken up with—with other matters."

"What matters? Roger, what have you been doing?"

"Not now. Besides, it is not a woman's affair." He stood up almost reluctantly, thinking how angry Elizabeth would be and that he had no more strength left to use in calming her. "I had better go to her."

Elizabeth was not yet in bed. Her maids were brushing her long black hair, but Hereford dismissed them with a gesture and took the brush into his own hand. She did not turn to face him. If she saw those eyes fixed on some infinitely distant point again, she knew she would not be able to control herself enough to help him. For a while he brushed in silence, long, strong strokes that made the hair crackle and rise to follow the brush. The scent of her hair came to him and suddenly he dropped the brush and lifted an armful of the shining black mass to bury his face in it.