When Christ and His Saints Slept (90 page)

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.”

“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

“R
ANULF
…” 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.”

As she’d hoped, that got his attention. “That is not so,” he said hotly. “I do not blame Luke!”

“I know,” she said. “You blame yourself.” She closed the space between them, reaching for his arm. “Ranulf, listen to me. It was not your fault. How could you know that Gilbert would follow you to Shrewsbury? What befell him was tragic, but it was an accident. It could as easily have happened on the Bristol Road—”

“But it did not.” The words were wrenched from Ranulf, against his will. He at once repudiated them, saying huskily, “Maude, just let it be.”

She studied his face, and then reluctantly loosed her hold upon his arm. “I want you to go to Bristol,” she said. “I want you to find out how Robert’s plans are progressing for our new offensive against Stephen.”

He frowned. “Why me? Why not send Hugh or Alexander?”

“Because,” she insisted, “I want to send you.” At the door, she paused, glancing back over her shoulder. “If you cannot talk to me,” she said, “mayhap you can talk to Robert.”

MAUDE
was wrong. Robert was the last one Ranulf could have confided in. What could he say, that because of his adulterous affair with another man’s wife, his best friend was dead? Even if he no longer deserved it, he could not lose Robert’s respect. He despised himself, though, for his moral cowardice. He’d not been able to bring himself to face Gilbert’s widow, Ella, and now he could not bear for Robert to know the truth about him. What was that if not the worst sort of cowardice?