Rosamund paid no heed to Meliora’s commiseration, continuing to sob into a sodden pillow. Meliora sat down heavily beside her, reaching out a hand to stroke the tousled fair hair. She had tried to keep the news of the archbishop’s murder from Rosamund, but the story was spreading faster than wildfire, on everyone’s lips, the topic of all conversation in the streets of Falaise. She did not doubt that this heinous crime would rock Christendom to its very foundations.
“Men are saying he did this, that he gave the command . . .” Rosamund sobbed again, then hiccuped. Her beautiful blue eyes were swollen to slits, puffy and sore. She knew Meliora was right, that she was making herself sick. But she could not control her tears, her grief, or her fear. “He would never have done that, Meliora, never!”
“I know, lamb, I know,” Meliora said soothingly, while hoping that Rosamund’s faith in her royal lover would not be shaken, or worse, betrayed.
“If only he would send for me, Meliora . . .” Rosamund shifted so that her head was in the other woman’s lap, taking faint comfort in these maternal attentions, an unknown luxury in the Clifford family. “If only I could go to him! He is heartsick about the archbishop’s death, I know he is. And I can do nothing to help, nothing . . .”
FROM A LETTER of Louis, King of the French, to Pope Alexander: “Let the sword of St Peter be unsheathed to avenge the martyr of Canterbury . . .”
From a letter of William, Archbishop of Sens, to Pope Alexander: “Avenge, O Lord, the blood of thy servant and martyr, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who has been slain, nay, crucified, for the liberties of the Church . . .”
From a letter of Theobald, Count of Blois, to Pope Alexander: “Those dogs of the court . . . showed themselves true servants of the king, and guiltily shed innocent blood. . . . May then, Holy Father, the Almighty aid and counsel you. . . . May He both instill into you a wish for vengeance and the power of obtaining it, so that the Church, put to confusion by the magnitude of this unheard-of crime, may have reason to rejoice . . .”
From another letter of William, Archbishop of Sens, to Pope Alexander: “And indeed, I believe that the outcry of the world must have filled the ears of Your Holinesss, how that this, not King of the English, but enemy rather of the English and of the whole body of Christ, has lately committed wickedness against the holy one. . . . For this crime is one that by far deserves the first place among all the crimes of the wicked that are read or related; as all the wickedness of Nero, the perfidiousness of Julian, and even the sacrilegious treachery of Judas does it exceed . . .”
THE BISHOP of Worcester was taken at once to the king’s solar, where he was greeted by a trinity of churchmen: Rotrou of Rouen, Arnulf of Lisieux, and Giles of Évreux. His mantle was wet with melting snow and sleet, for Argentan was in the grip of an icy January storm. They hovered around him, fatherly and concerned, offering to find dry, warm garments, to provide food, mulled wine. Roger brushed off their suggestions with terse courtesy; he did not want their solicitude.
“I do not know why I am here,” he said, and Rotrou began to describe the king’s anguish. Arnulf cut him off, understanding what Roger was really saying.
“It is possible,” he said, “to mourn for the archbishop without forsaking your cousin the king.”
“Is it?” Roger asked bleakly and Arnulf shrugged.
“You are here, are you not?”
“Yes,” Roger admitted, “I am . . .” Pulling off his mantle, he flung it across a chair. “Tell me why you think I can help.”
“If you cannot,” Arnulf said bluntly, “I fear for the life of the king.” Roger’s left eyebrow shot up in a skeptical arch that was uncannily like Henry’s. “Is his grief as great as that? Or his guilt?”
Arnulf shrugged again. “I suspect they are horns on the same goat. I can tell you, though, that his sorrow is very real. He has been secluded in his bedchamber for more than three days now, refusing to admit anyone, refusing to eat, to accept any comfort at all.”
“The queen is not here?”
Rotrou shook his head. “Would that she were, but she and the king parted after Christmas, he riding north and she returning to Poitou.”
They were watching him hopefully, expectantly. Roger stalked to the hearth, held his hands out toward its warmth. “Ask him,” he said, “if he’ll see me.”
THE CHAMBER was dark, shutters latched, candles and lamps quenched. It was cold, too, for the hearth fire had gone out, only a few feeble embers still aglow. Roger was blind, unable to see anything but blackness. “Harry?” There was no reply and he waited until his eyes adjusted to the lack of light, until he could discern a motionless figure in a window seat. He hesitated and then carefully crossed the room and sat down beside Henry.
“Jesú!” Cold air was seeping through the shutters, the window seat under siege by icy drafts. “Are you not half-frozen by now?”
“No.”
Roger was encouraged that he’d gotten an answer, any answer. Sure that he could outwait his cousin, he said nothing, let the silence settle around them. He could hear Henry’s breathing, shallow and uneven, could hear the other man shifting position on the seat. When Henry finally spoke, his voice was as constricted as his breath.
“As God is my witness,” he said, “those men did not murder him at my bidding.”
“I know,” Roger said, thankful that he need not lie about that.
There was another prolonged silence. “Do you think that Thomas knew that?”
“Yes, he did,” Roger said, with such certainty that Henry came abruptly to his feet.
“If I wanted to be fed pap, there are more than enough men eager to serve it up to me. That question was not easy to ask. I agreed to see you because I thought you’d be the one man who’d give me an honest answer!”
Roger rose, too, unable to endure the window seat chill any longer. “You want more from me than honesty, Harry. You want absolution.”
Henry started to make an angry denial, stopped himself. “What if I do?”
“I cannot give it to you,” Roger said and again it was quiet.
“I know,” Henry said at last, so softly that Roger barely heard him.
“But I can give you this much. I can tell you for certes that Thomas knew his killers were not there at your behest. He said so, you see. When they first confronted him in his bedchamber, he told them that he did not believe they came from the king.” Thrusting into the pouch at his belt, he drew out a letter. “This was written by William Fitz Stephen within hours of the murder. Read it for yourself if you doubt me.”
Henry reached out, but his fingers just brushed the parchment. Roger turned away, dropping the letter onto a nearby table, and strode toward the hearth. Picking up fire tongs, he began to prod the embers back to life. “I am going to light a candle now,” he said and when Henry did not protest, he did so, cupping the flame once it had kindled and holding it aloft.
Henry flinched away from the light at first, but then he raised his head and met Roger’s gaze full on. “Do I look like a man with blood on my hands?”
“You look,” Roger said, “like a man who has not slept or eaten for days.” Setting the candle down, he started toward the door. “If I order milk of almonds, will you drink it?” Taking Henry’s silence as assent, he opened the door just wide enough to issue instructions. Neither man spoke until a timid knock announced a servant’s arrival. Thwarting the curiosity of those hovering out in the stairwell, Roger did not admit the man, taking the tray himself and closing the door upon the waiting world.
Henry accepted the cup with indifference, but with Roger’s eyes upon him, he took a swallow, then another. His gaze shifted several times from his cousin’s face to Fitz Stephen’s letter. He was not ready to read it, though, and began to pace, retreating back into the shadows beyond the candle’s solitary glimmer.
“It does not matter that I never wanted this. I will be blamed for it.” It was not posed as a question, but Roger heard the echoes of one nonetheless. “Yes,” he said, “y
ou will.”
Henry halted his pacing. “Do you blame me?”
“Yes,” Roger said implacably and Henry drew a sharp breath.
“You said you believed me! You said you knew I did not order his death!”
“I do believe that. But if you are not guilty, neither are you innocent. Your hot, heedless words set the killing in motion.”
“I did not want him murdered!”
“But he was murdered, and by men who killed in your name.” Henry shook his head vehemently. “It was not my doing, Roger! I spoke out in anger, no more than that. You know my temper, quick to kindle and quick to cool. I admit that my words were ill chosen, but this was not the first time that I’d flared up over one of Becket’s affronts. I cursed him out soundly and publicly at Chinon after learning that he’d excommunicated my justiciar, and I daresay my language was intemperate, even threatening. But no one acted upon my words!”
“Well,” Roger said, “this time they did,” and that, Henry could not deny.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
January 1171
Trefriw, North Wales
PERYF AP CEDIFOR looked haggard and tense, like a man in d ire need of sleep, one who’d forgotten how to laugh. Arriving at mealtime, he’d politely accepted the invitation to dine with them, but he’d yet to swallow a mouthful. His brothers Caradog and Brochfael, had eaten very little, too, and since Cedifor’s sons were as known for their prodigious appetites as for their powerful, wrestlers’ physiques, their indifferent eating did not pass unnoticed. Enid fretted and apologized for the “poor fare,” Rhodri kept urging them to try various dishes, and Ranulf’s own appetite dwindled each time he glanced at Peryf’s transparently troubled face.
Once the meal had finally ended and the servants had cleared the table, Ranulf chose to confront his demons head-on, waiting only until Morgan and Mallt were shepherded out of the hall. “I know you sent word to Hywel of his father’s death. But can you be sure your messenger reached him?”
“No,” Peryf admitted, “I cannot. Tathan is a good man, one I’d trust with my soul’s last breath. But soon after he sailed, the weather turned foul. For all I know, his ship was one of the hundreds that have foundered in that accursed Irish Sea. Even if he landed safely, he could still have come to grief ere he found Hywel. I was told that there was a man so eager to catch the ship that he was rowed out to board whilst it was making ready to leave the harbor. I could not help wondering if that unforeseen passenger had an urgent reason of his own—an ungodly one—for wanting to take Tathan’s ship.”
Rhodri looked perplexed, but Ranulf understood at once. He was taken aback, though, for Peryf’s fears were much darker than his. “You truly think they would try to murder your messenger?”
“What better way to keep Hywel from learning of his father’s death? To keep him in Ireland until it’s too late?”
Rhodri always kept his crutch within easy reach. As he pushed his chair back now, it clattered to the floor and he never even noticed. “What are you saying, Peryf? Who are they?”
“Cristyn and her brood. Who else?”
Peryf’s candor hushed the hall. Ranulf leaned across the table, clamping his hand upon the other man’s arm. “Have you any proof of these suspicions?”
“I do not need proof. I know in the marrow of my bones that Cristyn would scruple at nothing to gain power for her sons.”
Ranulf had often heard Hywel joke about his foster brother’s “doom and gloom disposition,” but he could not dismiss Peryf’s fears as easily as Hywel would have done. The natural optimism of his youth had been tempered by life’s ongoing lessons, his equivocal status as one who was both a king’s son and a bastard, and the sobering realization that the race was not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong.
“What would you have me do, Peryf?”
Peryf’s smile was rueful. “Am I as easily read as that? I have indeed come to ask for your help, Ranulf.” Holding up his hand before Ranulf could respond. “Wait! Do not be so quick to agree, for it is no small favor I seek. Would you be willing to sail for Ireland and find Hywel?”
Ranulf’s acceptance would once have come as quickly and unthinkingly as his next breath. But it was not enough to understand that his wife deserved a say in their family’s future, not unless he also acted upon it. A winter voyage to Ireland was often a widow-maker. He looked over at Rhiannon, and with the intuition honed by two decades of marital intimacy, she sensed his eyes upon her, heard his unspoken question.
“Yes,” she said unhesitatingly, and Ranulf thanked the Almighty for giving him this remarkable woman.
“I owe Hywel more than I could ever begin to calculate and he is as dear to me as my brothers in blood. I will right gladly go to Ireland to fetch him home.”
RANULF’S FIRST THOUGHT had been to take ship at Chester, for it was far larger than any of the Welsh ports and attracted numerous ships engaged in the Irish trade. But Peryf was as methodical and farsighted as he was pessimistic, and he’d sent scouts to keep watch over Môn’s harbors and cove-notched coastline. He was able to tell Ranulf, therefore, that there was a cog at Aber Menai, doing rigging repairs. And so Ranulf and the sons of Cedifor took the Llan-faes ferry across the Menai Straits and then headed west.
Aber Menai was the island’s most ancient port, a natural crossing for Welsh princes on their way to the royal manor of Aberffraw, and according to Peryf, both Davydd and Rhodri were reported to have been at Aberffraw for the past fortnight. Ranulf was rapidly developing respect for Peryf’s surveillance system, and it occurred to him that Hywel could do far worse than to make Peryf his seneschal. For himself, he sought no such honors. His soul would always be riven in twain, torn between his love for Wales and his loyalty to the English Crown.
After a cold, clear night strewn with stars, the day was born with an ice-edged caul. Snow from a midweek storm still clung in spots, and Ranulf’s breath was frosted in cloudlets of wispy white. The island climate was usually milder than the more mountainous heights of Gwynedd and this spell of frigid weather had surprised the sailors, slowing their repairs. But the ship’s master had assured Ranulf that they’d be ready to sail by the morrow and Ranulf could only take the man at his word.
Picking up shells, Ranulf sought to skip them across the water’s roiling surface, without much success. The cog was anchored out in the harbor, its single mast and furled sails silhouetted against the horizon like a tree stripped of leaves. Several children were playing at the water’s edge, chasing a spotted dog. The small cluster of houses looked out of place, as if dropped there by accident, naked and vulnerable to wind and the treacherous tides of Yr Afon Fenai. The church was tolling a mournful “passing bell” to seek prayers for the soul of one hovering near death. All in all, it was as bleak a scene as Ranulf could envision, an accurate mirror of his own mood.
He suspected that his edginess was due to the looming sea voyage. Despite the many times that he’d braved Channel crossings, he had never ventured out into the ocean itself, and he’d have been quite content to go to his grave with that particular challenge unmet. Now that he was committed to the endeavor, though, he was impatient to start, finding this time ashore to be as unpleasant in its own way as the time aboard was certain to be.
“Ranulf!” Turning at the sound of his name, he saw Caradog ap Cedifor ambling toward him. Caradog was the youngest of Cedifor’s many sons, with more than twenty years stretching between him and Peryf, and in consequence, he was the least-known to Ranulf of Hywel’s foster brothers. Like Peryf, he was of medium height, stocky and well muscled, with wind-blown hair the color of wet sand and eyes bright with the intrepid spirit of the young. He would be accompanying Ranulf to that distant isle known to the Welsh as Iwerddon, and he actually seemed delighted at the chance to risk drowning in the frigid waters of the Irish Sea.
“Peryf intends to row out to the ship and see if he can coax or coerce the master into sailing tonight. You want to come along?”
&nb
sp; “Why not?” Ranulf followed Caradog up the beach, shivering as they headed into the wind. Knowing that Caradog’s father had Irish kindred, he asked the younger man if he’d ever been to Ireland, getting a toss of Caradog’s sandy head in reply.
“Nay, I have not. But Peryf crossed the Irish Sea when he went along with Hywel to visit Hywel’s lady mother.” Caradog’s smile soon became an impish grin. “Hywel says if ever there was a man born to spend all his days a hundred miles inland, it is Peryf. He fed the fish from Môn to Dublin and back again, and for a good year afterward, he’d get greensick at the mere mention of ships or the sea. That is why he dared not offer to come with you to find Hywel. Even rowing out into the harbor will likely cost him dear.”
“I’d wondered about that,” Ranulf confided. “I’ve been wondering, too, why Peryf turned to me. Since you’d already offered to go to Ireland on your own, why the need for me?”
Caradog’s laugh was carried off by the wind. “You ought to be able to guess the reason for that! Hywel says you were the old king’s youngest son.”
“Yes, I was . . .” Ranulf was puzzled and then amused. “Peryf still sees you as his little brother, does he?”
“Of course, and he secretly fears that I’d either drink myself into oblivion or become so besotted with the Dublin whores that I’d forget altogether about Hywel!”
Caradog laughed again, with such infectious humor that Ranulf laughed, too, glad that at least he’d have good company on this perilous journey. It was then that they heard the shout, saw Peryf running up the beach toward them.
PERYF WAS PANTING and his first gasped-out words were not all that intelligible to Ranulf. “One of your men just arrived with news of a ship seeking entry into the harbor at Cemlyn. That I understand, Peryf. But why do you think it is Hywel?”
“Because . . . because Cemlyn is not a port for trading. If a ship were bringing over goods from Ireland, it would most likely head for Llan-faes or Pwllheli. Why would it put in at Cemlyn? There’s no town there, and the nearest royal manor is at Cemais. Hywel must have paid them to let him ashore. Nothing else makes sense.”
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