No Dark Place

22

Hugh and his escort were yet some ten miles from Worcester when they saw the first signs that the rumors of imminent attack had been true.

Livestock were loose upon the road. Sheep wandered aimlessly along the forest path, and within the trees they saw domestic pigs rooting for food. At one point, a loose horse galloped past them, nostrils flaring, eyes showing white with fear.

Then they saw the refugees. Men, women, and children carrying their belongings on their backs streamed along the road in search of refuge in some manor, castle, abbey, or town where they could remain until they judged it was safe to return to their despoiled city.

The news Hugh gathered from the fleeing residents was not encouraging. The attack against Worcester’s walls had come early in the morning, with Gloucester’s troops finally breaking into the city on its north side. The soldiers had driven off all the town’s livestock, murdered and maimed its inhabitants, and set fire to the town.

“They kidnapped many of our women, too,” one of the refugees told Hugh indignantly. “They even took some of the nuns from the convent!”

Hugh felt his blood grow cold.

Isabel would tell them who she was, he thought, desperately trying to reassure himself. They wouldn’t dare harm a sister of Simon of Evesham!

But the refugees said that the soldiers were drunk. Who knew what could happen during the rape and pillage of a city by drunken troops?

Hugh urged Rufus into a gallop, impelled by a sense of urgency that would not be denied.

He had to get to Worcester and find his mother.

They encountered no soldiers as they drew near to the city.

The raiders must have finished their work and gone, Hugh thought grimly.

He smelled the burning even before Worcester’s walls came into view.

Hugh and his escort entered the city through the battered-down north gate. Everywhere they looked there was devastation. Fires raged on every street. Groups of citizens had organized to put them out, and Hugh and his small company passed by lines of firefighters throwing water on the roaring flames. The women and children who had remained in the city helped to pass the buckets along. The wet smoldering ashes of a number of houses testified to the fact that the firefighters had already been successful in some places.

Hugh asked one of the women passing buckets if she could tell him the location of the Benedictine convent. She directed him to the south of the city.

Hugh tried not to think as he and Nigel’s three knights rode through the streets of the devastated city. The fear that he was too late, that his mother might be…

I won’t think of it, he told himself sternly. In just a few more minutes I will know for sure.

As soon as they rode past the unoccupied convent gatehouse and into the small Benedictine enclave, it became brutally clear that even the sanctity of this holy place had been violated. Fires raged at all the wooden outbuildings and the nuns, dressed in smoke-stained habits, scurried about trying to put them out. They were assisted by a number of men of the town.

In a voice that he tried to keep steady, Hugh asked one of the nuns if she knew aught of Isabel de Leon.

“I haven’t seen her,” the nun said distractedly. “You had better speak to the prioress.” And she directed him to the church.

“You go, Hugh,” Thomas said. “We’ll stay here and help with the fires.”

Hugh nodded and turned Rufus in the direction of the convent church.

The day was growing dark and the interior of the church was dim as Hugh came in. He stopped for a moment inside the doorway to let his eyes grow accustomed to the lack of light. After a moment he saw a nun, standing still as a statue in the center of the nave.

Hugh looked slowly around the church.

The altar was empty. No gold candlesticks. No gold tabernacle. No gold chalices. The rug that had covered the altar steps was gone, exposing the lighter-colored wood that it had once hidden. Even the stations of the cross, which had once hung upon the stone walls, were gone.

Perhaps the nuns hid everything, Hugh thought. But from the desolate look of the still and silent figure in the middle of the nave, he did not think so.

Hugh removed his helmet and walked slowly toward the solitary prioress. She watched him come without comment. He stopped in front of her and instinctively bowed his head. She looked at him, waiting. Her face, framed by her wimple, was smooth and pale, the color of her eyes indecipherable in the dim light of the church. Her age could have been anywhere from fifty to seventy.

Hugh said quietly, “Reverend Mother, I have come in search of Isabel de Leon. Can you tell me where I might find her?”

“She’s not here,” the prioress said.

Hugh stopped breathing.

“Her brother came and fetched her away the day before the attack,” the prioress went on.

Hugh felt momentarily dizzy, so intense was his relief.

Thank you, God, he thought.

He inhaled deeply, willing the world to steady itself around him.

“I am glad to hear that,” he said.

“Lord Simon offered to escort all of the sisters to safety, but I refused.” The prioress’s voice was bitter with self-recrimination. “I felt that we could not desert the city at such a time, that it was our duty to remain. If we gathered together in the church, I was certain we would be safe. The soldiers might steal from us, I thought, but surely they would respect the habit of a nun.”

“They did not?” Hugh asked in the same quiet voice he had used before.

“They were drunk and wild,” the prioress said. “They took all of our sacred objects and-as if that were not bad enough! — they took some of our novices, those that were young and well-favored.” For the first time her voice quivered. “They laughed at me when I protested.”

Hugh did not know what to say.

“It was well that Isabel left when she did,” the prioress said. “She is no longer young, but she would not have been ignored by those crazed men.”

“I am so sorry, Reverend Mother,” Hugh said. “You have been through a terrible ordeal. Is there aught I can do to help you?”

For the first time the prioress seemed to register Hugh’s face. She stared at him and her eyes widened.

“You look like Isabel,” she said in wonder.

“Aye,” Hugh replied. He inhaled deeply, then, slowly and carefully, he let the breath out. “I am her son.”

“Her son?” the prioress echoed. “The one who was lost when her husband was killed?”

“Aye,” said Hugh again.

The prioress looked at him thoughtfully. She did not reply.

“Is there anything I can do for you, Reverend Mother?” Hugh repeated.

She roused herself from her contemplation of his face. “No,” she said. “I think your need is to see your mother.”

Hugh drew another long, steadying breath. “Aye,” he said starkly. “I think you are right.”

It was almost evening and Hugh decided it would be wise to wait until the following day before setting out for Evesham. He had no desire to run into a band of drunk and rowdy soldiers in the dark.

He and his men worked far into the night helping to put out the fires in the convent outbuildings. After a few hours’ rest on the floor of the guest hall, which had been stripped bare even of its bedding, they rose to a dark and overcast sky.

The stench and desolation of Worcester the day after the attack was depressing in the extreme. Anger against Gloucester was running at fever pitch in the town, but Hugh was not naive enough to think that Gloucester’s men were the only ones capable of such savagery. He had seen Malmesbury when Stephen had finished with it. He knew what the countryside around Trowbridge must look like with the king laying siege to the castle.

It was the face of war.

Hugh had been trained in the arts of war since he was a young child. He was a knight. War should be his natural milieu.

But Hugh had also been brought up by Ralf Corbaille, who had taught him that the first duty of a knight was to protect the powerless.

The citizens of Worcester had been powerless yesterday. The garrison had defended the castle, but there had been no one to protect the people in the streets or the nuns in the convent.

They were burying the dead as Hugh and his escort rode out of the ruined city and headed northwest toward Evesham.

It is time for me to see her.

This was the thought that ran through Hugh’s mind during the whole of the cold, damp ride to Evesham.

If something had happened to her at Worcester, I might have lost my chance ever to see her again.

As they rode along, Thomas and the other two knights talked together about what they had seen in Worcester.

Hugh rode in silence.

Seven miles before Evesham, a sharp shaft of pain stabbed through the left side of his head.

Please, he thought despairingly. Not now.

But the pain continued. As before, it seemed to emanate from a single throbbing muscle in his neck, shooting up behind his eye and into his forehead.

He made the knights stop so that he could drink the barley water Cristen had given him and take her betony potion.

The day had continued dark and overcast, but still it seemed too bright to Hugh. He closed his left eye.

“What is it, Hugh?” he heard Thomas ask him anxiously.

There was no way he could disguise his distress. He was going to have to lie down the moment they reached Evesham.

Pray God that he didn’t throw up.

“I have a headache,” he said, his voice short and staccato-sounding.

He felt Thomas looking at him.

“Can you go on?” the young knight asked. “Do you want to stop for a while?”

Hugh thought briefly of stopping until the headache had passed. But it could last for eight hours and the air smelled of rain. Concealing his disability from those at Evesham did not seem worth hours of making the knights and the horses camp out in the cold and the rain.

He wished, for the hundredth time since he had left Somerford, that Cristen had let him travel alone.

“No,” he said. “I will be all right.”

“Can you see? Do you want me to take your reins?” Thomas asked next.

Hugh, who knew he could trust Rufus, said once again that he would be all right.

The headache raged for the remainder of the ride, but even though Hugh’s stomach was queasy, he did not feel as if he were going to throw up.

Cristen’s medications must be having some effect.

It began to rain and the knights pulled their hoods over their heads and rode on.

At last the walls of Evesham came into view. Hugh removed his helmet and was once more recognized by the men at the gate and allowed to enter.

In the outer bailey he met Philip Demain, who was leading a large black stallion in the direction of the stable. The horse’s coat was wet from the rain.

Philip stopped dead when he saw Hugh.

The pain was like the edge of a sword repeatedly stabbing through the left side of Hugh’s head.

“What are you doing here?” Philip demanded.

Hugh half closed his left eye. Standing there, Philip looked tall and blond and splendid, rather like the archangel Michael guarding the gates of paradise from sinners, Hugh thought a little hysterically. He managed to say, “I have come to see my mother.”

The two men regarded each other through the falling rain.

Philip frowned. “You look peculiar.”

“He’s ill,” Thomas said.

Hugh felt his stomach heave.

No, he thought. He closed his eyes and forced the nausea down.

Sweat broke out on his forehead.

“You had better come with me,” he heard Philip saying in a clipped tone.

Stableboys appeared out of nowhere to take their horses, and Philip turned to lead the way to the castle.

Hugh dismounted and once more his stomach heaved.

Thomas said worriedly, “Do you want to take my arm, Hugh?”

“No,” Hugh said.

Putting one foot after the other, he crossed the bailey, fighting nausea the whole way.

He lost his battle in the inner courtyard. Abruptly he turned away from the others, bent over, and began to retch.

“I’m sorry,” he said when it was over. He was trembling with pain and exhaustion and humiliation.

He felt an arm come around his shoulders. “Don’t worry about it,” Thomas’s voice said in his ear. “Let’s just get you to bed.”

They went up the castle ramp and into the Great Hall.

Philip sent a page to fetch Lady Alyce.

Hugh held himself very straight. The taste of bile was in his mouth and he was horribly afraid that the nausea was coming back.

He could feel Philip looking at him, but he kept his eyes trained on the fireplace.

At last Lady Alyce came sedately down the stairs. Hugh watched her cross the floor in his direction.

“Back again?” she asked him sweetly.

Philip spoke before Hugh could reply. “He’s ill, my lady. Perhaps you could show him to a bedroom.”

“Ill?” Alyce looked at her husband’s nephew suspiciously.

“Aye, my lady,” Thomas said respectfully.

“What’s wrong with you?” Alyce asked Hugh.

“I have a headache and it makes me sick to my stomach,” Hugh said.

“He vomited in the courtyard,” Philip informed the lady of the castle.

“Oh dear.” Alyce’s motherly instincts awoke. “You had better come with me, Hugh. I’ll get a squire to disarm you.”

The last thing Hugh wanted was some strange boy hovering over him.

Thomas said, “I’ll take care of him, my lady. There’s no need to call one of your squires.”

Hugh felt a flash of gratitude.

“Very well,” the lady Alyce said. “Come with me.”

They crossed the floor to the stairs and followed her up to the next level. The door to the ladies’ solar was partially open and the sound of feminine voices drifted out into the passageway as they went by.

Hugh wondered if his mother was inside.

Then they were in front of the room Hugh had occupied on his earlier visits to Evesham. Alyce pushed the door open and went inside.

Hugh and Thomas followed.

Alyce went over to the bed to check that it had sheets on it.

Satisfied that it was properly made up, she turned around. “I’ll send a page with water.”

“Thank you, my lady,” Hugh said.

“I hope you feel well soon,” she said pleasantly, and left.

“This will just take a minute,” Thomas said, and quickly and efficiently, he got Hugh out of his wet cloak, his sword belt, his mail, his spurs, and his boots.

Another wave of nausea swept through Hugh.

“Is there a basin?” he asked Thomas desperately.

Thomas grabbed the empty washbowl and handed it to Hugh, who was sick once more.

Once it was over, he crawled into the bed and curled up on his side under the fur cover.

The pain stabbed on.

He shut his eyes. “I’ll be all right,” he said to Thomas. “You’re wet and hungry. Go downstairs and join the others.”

“There’s nothing else I can do for you?”

“No.”

“All right, then,” Thomas said hesitantly. “Try to get some sleep.”

“Aye,” Hugh said, although he knew that sleep would be impossible until the pain subsided.

Finally he was alone.

Lying in the big bed under the rich fur cover, Hugh settled in to endure.

It was late afternoon when the sharp stabbing agony finally muted to a dull ache. Gradually that too subsided, until only a faint tenderness remained in the muscle on the left side of his neck.

Slowly Hugh sat up in bed, linked his arms around his legs, and rested his pain-free forehead on his knees.

God, what an entrance, he thought bitterly.

The bedroom door opened and a page looked in. Hugh had heard the door open and close periodically while he was lying in bed, but he had kept his back to the door and lay still. Now the page saw that he was awake, however, and advanced into the room.

“Are you feeling better, my lord?” he asked courteously.

“Aye,” said Hugh.

“The household is at supper. If you wish to join them I will help you make ready.”

Hugh moistened his dry lips with his tongue. “Is…is the lady Isabel at supper in the hall?”

“No, my lord. Lady Isabel takes her meals in the ladies’ solar.”

Hugh felt wrung out and exhausted. A headache always left him in this condition. But he could put this off no longer. It had to be done now.

He said steadily, “Will you go and ask the lady Isabel if she will see me?”

“Aye, my lord,” the page said. He hesitated, as if he would add something, then changed his mind and left the room.

Hugh got out of bed and looked down at his clothes. His shirt was a mass of wrinkles, and his hose were stained with the mud the horses had kicked up from the wet road.

Adela would be furious with me if I presented myself to my mother in such a state, he thought.

The automatic reflex of never doing anything Adela would not like sent Hugh first to the washbasin and then to the wooden chest along the wall. Someone had folded his spare clothes into it, and he lifted out a clean linen shirt and began to change.

The page returned with word that Isabel would see her son. The boy helped Hugh finish dressing and then knelt to tie the leather cross-garters around his hose.

Finally there were no more excuses to delay. Hollow-eyed and pale, Hugh left his bedroom and went down the passage to the ladies solar.

He was admitted by a serving woman, who slipped out the door as soon as he entered, leaving him alone with the woman who waited for him inside.

The solar was large and well-furnished, with pieces of sewing and embroidery spread out on a large table along one of the walls. The room was well-lit by candles. A charcoal brazier gave off a glowing heat and the floor was covered by a rug. Isabel was sitting in a heavily carved chair in front of the window, whose shutters were closed against the cold November rain.

Hugh advanced toward her slowly. His heart was hammering so loudly that he thought for certain she must hear it. He stopped when he was yet four feet away from her.

“My lady,” he said. “I am glad to find you safe.”

She didn’t answer, just looked at him as if she could not believe that he was really there.

Her eyes were dark, dark blue. That was what Hugh saw. Not the beautiful bone structure that was so like his own, but the eyes.

He remembered them.

His lips parted, but no words came out.

Isabel said, “Hugh.” Her voice was faintly husky. Wonder and joy shone in the deep blueness of her eyes. “Hugh, it is really you!”

He swallowed. “So it seems.”

“I have prayed,” she said. “For so long I have prayed that you were still alive.” She laughed shakily. “But to actually see you again…”

The blue eyes filled with tears.

“Don’t cry,” Hugh said hoarsely. “Please don’t cry.”

He, who never felt physically awkward, did not know what to do with himself.

Isabel gestured to the footstool that was in front of her chair. “Will you sit here, so we may talk?”

Hugh crossed the remaining space that separated them and cautiously lowered himself to the stool. It put him at a lower level than her chair, so he had to lift his eyes to look at her.

He felt like a child again.

He said, “I am sorry that I did not stay to see you the last time you were here.”

He didn’t try to explain why he had run away.

She shook her head. “You have nothing to be sorry about, Hugh.” Slowly she reached out her fingers and lovingly touched his cheek. He remained perfectly still under her gentle caress.

“They tell me that you have lost all memory of your childhood,” she said.

“Some of it is coming back,” he said. His nostrils quivered slightly. “I remember your eyes.”

Her face lit as if he had just given her the most precious gift in the world. “Do you?”

He nodded.

She took her hand away from his face and said anxiously, “You were ill when you arrived this morning? Are you well now? You still look very pale.”

“I had a headache, that is all,” he said. “I’m all right now.”

Her delicately arched brows drew together. “What kind of a headache?”

He shrugged. “Just a headache. It makes me sick to my stomach, however, so I need to keep to my room until it goes away.”

Her frown did not lift. “When did you start getting headaches? You did not have them when you were a child.”

He made a dismissive gesture with his hand. “They started just recently. They’re a nuisance, that is all.”

Isabel regarded him somberly. “I get headaches like that,” she said.

His eyes widened in surprise.

“A fine heritage I have bequeathed to you,” she said. In her voice was a mixture of sorrow and bitterness.

Hugh did not know what to answer.

She folded her hands in her lap. “Will you tell me something of your life since…since you left Chippenham? I hear you were fostered by the Sheriff of Lincoln.”

Hugh could talk about Ralf and Adela. He told her how Ralf had found him and brought him home. He told her about Adela and how she had insisted on keeping him. He told her about his life with them.

“You loved your foster mother very much,” Isabel said quietly when Hugh had finished.

“Aye,” said Hugh.

“I’m glad, Hugh.” Her voice ached with love and with sadness. “I’m so glad that you had someone like Adela to take care of you. And this Ralf sounds as if he was a good man.”

“He was a very good man,” Hugh said quietly.

Her smile was full of pain. “You were more fortunate in your foster parents than you were in your natural ones.”

Hugh dropped his eyes.

For a long moment, the only sound in the room was the drumming of the rain against the shutters.

Then Hugh said resolutely, “My lady, there is something I need to ask you.” He met her eyes directly and brought it out. “Do you know who killed your husband?”

The lovely rose-colored flush that had been blooming in her cheeks drained away. “Hugh,” she said. “Leave that alone.”

“I cannot,” he said. “I think I was there when it happened.”

She went ashen. “Why do you say that?”

“I remember seeing his body. I remember blood…”

He shook his head as if to clear it.

“It was Walter Crespin who killed your father,” his mother said. “I thought everyone knew that.”

“Why would a mere household knight want to kill his lord?” Hugh said steadily. “What would he have to gain by such a dreadful deed?”

Isabel looked away. She shook her head. “I do not know,” she said in a constricted voice.

Hugh made the discovery that he was incapable of taxing his mother with the story he had heard at Chippenham.

He said instead, “Two days ago I was on my way to Winchester to see Father Anselm. I only turned back because I heard rumors that Gloucester was on the verge of attacking Worcester.”

A spark of hope awoke in her deep blue eyes. “Were you perhaps worried about me?”

“Aye,” he said.

“Oh, Hugh. Oh, my darling son.” She leaned forward, reached her arms around him, and drew him close so that his head was pressed against her breast.

Hugh let himself be held.

She was crying. He could feel her tears wet his hair.

She doesn’t want me to know, he thought. Why?

At last her grasp on him loosened and she sat back in her chair. The tears, which he knew had been genuine, had not reddened her eyes or her nose. Her face was as beautiful as ever.

He said soberly, “I am still going to see Father Anselm.”

She wrung her hands. “Why can’t you be satisfied with what you already know? You can’t change anything, Hugh! Your father has been dead for fourteen years.”

He said to her what he had only ever said to Cristen. “I feel as if I am but half a person without my memory. I feel as if I am a cripple. I have to know what happened to me if I am ever going to be whole again.”

She looked into his eyes, long and deep. Then she shuddered. “All right. But I cannot tell you, Hugh.” Her face had a haunted look. “You will have to talk to Father Anselm.”

“Then that is what I will do,” said Hugh.