The Pilgram of Hate (14 page)

“You
are asking me,” said Hugh gently, “to go back on my sworn fealty to King
Stephen.”

“Yes,”
agreed Olivier honestly, “I am. For weighty reasons, and in no treasonous mind.
You need not love, only forbear from hating. Think of it rather as keeping your
fealty to the people of this county of yours, and this land.”

“That
I can do as well or better on the side where I began,” said Hugh, smiling. “It
is what I am doing now, as best I can. It is what I will continue to do while I
have breath. I am King Stephen’s man, and I will not desert him.”

“Ah,
well!” said Olivier, smiling and sighing in the same breath. “To tell you
truth, now I’ve met you, I expected nothing less. I would not go from my oath,
either. My lord is the empress’s man, and I am my lord’s man, and if our positions
were changed round, my answer would be the same as yours. Yet there is truth in
what I have pleaded. How much can a people bear? Your labourer in the fields,
your little townsman with a bare living to be looted from him, these would be
glad to settle for Stephen or for Maud, only to be rid of the other. And I do
what I am sent out to do, as well as I can.”

“I
have no fault to find with the matter or the manner,” said Hugh. “Where next do
you go? Though I hope you will not go for a day or two, I would know you
better, and we have a great deal to talk over, you and I.”

“From
here north-east to Stafford, Derby, Nottingham, and back by the eastern parts.
Some will come to terms, as some lords have done already. Some will hold to
their own king, like you. And some will do as they have done before, go back
and forth like a weather-cock with the wind, and put up their price at every
change. No matter, we have done with that now.”

He
leaned forward over the table, setting his wine-cup aside. “I had—I have—another
errand of my own, and I should be glad to stay with you a few days, until I
have found what I’m seeking, or made certain it is not here to be found. Your
mention of this flood of pilgrims for the feast gives me a morsel of hope. A
man who wills to be lost could find cover among so many, all strangers to one
another. I am looking for a young man called Luc Meverel. He has not, to your
knowledge, made his way here?”

“Not
by that name,” said Hugh, interested and curious. “But a man who willed to be
lost might choose to doff his own name. What’s your need of him?”

“Not
mine. It’s a lady who wants him back. You may not have got word, this far
north,” said Oliver, “of everything that happened in Winchester during the
council. There was a death there that came all too near to me. Did you hear of
it? King Stephen’s queen sent her clerk there with a bold challenge to the
legate’s authority, and the man was attacked for his audacity in the street by
night, and got off with his life only at the cost of another life.”

“We
have indeed heard of it,” said Hugh with kindling interest. “Abbot Radulfus was
there at the council, and brought back a full report. A knight by the name of
Rainald Bossard, who came to the clerk’s aid when he was set upon. One of those
in the service of Laurence d’Angers, so we heard.”

“Who
is my lord, also.”

“By
your good service to his kin at Bromfield that was plain enough. I thought of
you when the abbot spoke of d’Angers, though I had no name for you then. Then
this man Bossard was well known to you?”

“Through
a year of service in Palestine, and the voyage home together. A good man he
was, and a good friend to me, and struck down in defending his honest opponent.
I was not with him that night, I wish I had been, he might yet be alive. But he
had only one or two of his own people, not in arms. There were five or six set
on the clerk, it was a wretched business, confused and in the dark. The
murderer got clean away, and has never been traced. Rainald’s wife… Juliana… I
did not know her until we came with our lord to Winchester, Rainald’s chief
manor is nearby. I have learned,” said Olivier very gravely, “to hold her in
the highest regard. She was her lord’s true match, and no one could say more or
better of any lady.”

“There
is an heir?” asked Hugh. “A man grown, or still a child?”

“No,
they never had children. Rainald was nearly fifty, she cannot be many years
younger. And very beautiful,” said Olivier with solemn consideration, as one
attempting not to praise, but to explain. “Now she’s widowed she’ll have a hard
fight on her hands to evade being married off again—for she’ll want no other
after Rainald. She has manors of her own to bestow. They had thought of the
inheritance, the two of them together, that’s why they took into their
household this young man Luc Meverel, only a year ago. He is a distant cousin
of Dame Juliana, twenty-four or twenty-five years old, I suppose, and landless.
They meant to make him their heir.”

He
fell silent for some minutes, frowning past the guttering candles, his chin in
his palm. Hugh studied him, and waited. It was a face worth studying,
clean-boned, olive-skinned, fiercely beautiful, even with the golden, falcon’s
eyes thus hooded. The blue-black hair that clustered thickly about his head,
clasping like folded wings, shot sullen bluish lights back from the candle’s
waverings. Daoud, born in Antioch, son of an English crusading soldier in
Robert of Normandy’s following, somehow blown across the world in the service
of an Angevin baron, to fetch up here almost more Norman than the Normans… The
world, thought Hugh, is not so great, after all, but a man born to venture may
bestride it.

“I
have been three times in that household,” said Olivier, “but I never knowingly
set eyes on this Luc Meverel. All I know of him is what others have said, but
among the others I take my choice which voice to believe. There is no one, man
or woman, in that manor but agrees he was utterly devoted to Dame Juliana. But
as to the manner of his devotion… There are many who say he loved her far too
well, by no means after the fashion of a son. Again, some say he was equally
loyal to Rainald, but their voices are growing fainter now. Luc was one of
those with his lord when Rainald was stabbed to death in the street. And two
days later he vanished from his place, and has not been seen since.”

“Now
I begin to see,” said Hugh, drawing in cautious breath. “Have they gone so far
as to say this man slew his lord in order to gain his lady?”

“It
is being said now, since his flight. Who began the whisper there’s no telling,
but by this time it’s grown into a bellow.”

“Then
why should he run from the prize for which he had played? It makes poor sense.
If he had stayed there need have been no such whispers.”

“Ah,
but I think there would have been, whether he went or stayed. There were those
who grudged him his fortune, and would have welcomed any means of damaging him.
They are finding two good reasons, now, why he should break and run. The first,
pure guilt and remorse, too late to save any one of the three of them. The
second, fear—fear that someone had got wind of his act, and meant to fetch out
the truth at all costs. Either way, a man might break and take to his heels.
What you kill for may seem even less attainable,” said Olivier with rueful
shrewdness, “once you have killed.”

“But
you have not yet told me,” said Hugh, “what the lady says of him. Hers is
surely a voice that should be heeded.”

“She
says that such a vile suspicion is impossible. She did, she does, value her
young cousin, but not in the way of love, nor will she have it that he has ever
entertained such thoughts of her. She says he would have died for his lord, and
that it is his lord’s death which has driven him away, sick with grief, a
little mad—who knows how deluded and haunted? For he was there that night, he
saw Rainald die. She is sure of him. She wants him found and brought back to
her. She looks upon him as a son, and now more than ever she needs him.”

“And
it’s for her sake you’re seeking him. But why look for him here, northwards? He
may have gone south, west, across the sea by the Kentish ports. Why to the
north?”

“Because
we have just one word of him since he was lost from his place, and that was
going north on the road to Newbury. I came by that same way, by Abingdon and
Oxford, and I have enquired for him everywhere, a young man travelling alone.
But I can only seek him by his own name, for I know no other for him. As you
say, who knows what he may be calling himself now!”

“And
you don’t even know what he looks like—nothing but merely his age? You’re
hunting for a spectre!”

“What
is lost can always be found, it needs only enough patience.” Olivier’s hawk’s
face, beaked and passionate, did not suggest patience, but the set of his lips
was stubborn and pure in absolute resolution.

“Well,
at least,” said Hugh, considering, “we may go down to see Saint Winifred
brought home to her altar, tomorrow, and Brother Denis can run through the
roster of his pilgrims for us, and point out any who are of the right age and
kind, solitary or not. As for strangers here in the town, I fancy Provost
Corviser should be able to put his finger on most of them. Every man knows
every man in Shrewsbury. But the abbey is the more likely refuge, if he’s here
at all.” He pondered, gnawing a thoughtful lip. “I must send the ring down to
the abbot at first light, and let him know what’s happened to his truant
guests, but before I may go down to the feast myself I must send out a dozen
men and have them beat the near reaches of the woods to westward for our game
birds. If they’re over the border, so much the worse for Wales, and I can do no
more, but I doubt if they intend to live wild any longer than they need. They
may not go far. How if I should leave you with the provost, to pick his brains
for your quarry here within the town, while I go hunting for mine? Then we’ll
go down together to see the brothers bring their saint home, and talk to
Brother Denis concerning the list of his guests.”

“That
would suit me well,” said Olivier gladly. “I should like to pay my respects to
the lord abbot, I do recall seeing him in Winchester, though he would not
notice me. And there was a brother of that house, if you recall,” he said, his
golden eyes veiled within long black lashes that swept his fine cheekbones,
“who was with you at Bromfield and up on Clee, that time… You must know him
well. He is still here at the abbey?”

“He
is. He’ll be back in his bed now after Lauds. And you and I had better be
thinking of seeking ours, if we’re to be busy tomorrow.”

“He
was good to my lord’s young kinsfolk,” said Olivier. “I should like to see him
again.”

No
need to ask for a name, thought Hugh, eyeing him with a musing smile. And
indeed, should he know the name? He had not mentioned any, when he spoke of one
who was no blood-kin, but who had used him like a son, one for whose sake he
kept a kindness for the Benedictine habit.

“You
shall!” said Hugh, and rose in high content to marshal his guest to the
bedchamber prepared for him.

Chapter Eight

ABBOT
RADULFUS WAS UP LONG BEFORE PRIME on the festal morning, and so were his
obedientiaries, all of whom had their important tasks in preparation for the
procession. When Hugh’s messenger presented himself at the abbot’s lodging the
dawn was still fresh, dewy and cool, the light lying brightly across the roofs
while the great court lay in lilac-tinted shadow. In the gardens every tree and
bush cast a long band of shade, striping the flower beds like giant
brush-strokes in some gilded illumination.

The
abbot received the ring with astonished pleasure, relieved of one flaw that
might have marred the splendour of the day. “And you say these malefactors were
guests in our halls, all four? We are well rid of them, but if they are armed,
as you say, and have taken to the woods close by, we shall need to warn our
travellers, when they leave us.”

“My
lord Beringar has a company out beating the edges of the forest for them this
moment,” said the messenger. “There was nothing to gain by following them in
the dark, once they were in cover. But by daylight we’ll hope to trace them.
One we have safe in hold, he may tell us more about them, where they’re from,
and what they have to answer for elsewhere. But at least now they can’t hinder
your festivities.”

“And
for that I’m devoutly thankful. As this man Ciaran will certainly be for the
recovery of his ring.” He added, with a glance aside at the breviary that lay
on his desk, and a small frown for the load of ceremonial that lay before him
for the next few hours: “Shall we not see the lord sheriff here for Mass this
morning?”

“Yes,
Father, he does intend it, and he brings a guest also. He had first to set this
hunt in motion, but before Mass they will be here.”

“He
has a guest?”

“An
envoy from the empress’s court came last night, Father. A man of Laurence
d’Angers’ household, Olivier de Bretagne.”

The
name that had meant nothing to Hugh meant as little to Radulfus, though he
nodded recollection and understanding at mention of the young man’s overlord.
“Then will you say to Hugh Beringar that I beg he and his guest will remain
after Mass, and dine with me here. I should be glad to make the acquaintance of
Messire de Bretagne, and hear his news.”