The Poisoned Serpent

3

When he was two miles away from Somerford, Hugh sent Cristen a message.

I’m almost home. Meet me in the herb garden.

He had done it once before, cleared his mind of all else and sent her the same message. Neither of them could be sure if she had heard him, but she had most certainly felt an impulse to go down to the herb garden.

A wet snow began to fall as Hugh and his escort approached the high wooden walls that surrounded Somerford Castle.

“Good thing we’re almost home,” Thomas said, glancing up at the heavy sky.

“Aye,” Hugh replied. Aye and nay were the only two words he had uttered during the entire ride.

The gate to the castle swung open as the men on guard recognized their party. Hugh and his men clattered over the wooden bridge that spanned the moat, and rode between the gate towers into the outer bailey.

Grooms came running to take their horses. Hugh relinquished Rufus, his white stallion, to his customary groom, and without a word to anyone strode across the courtyard toward the fence that marked off the herb garden.

The escort knights he left behind exchanged a look. They had recognized the expression that Hugh had worn ever since his interview with Lord Guy, and they had been as cautious around him as men forced to walk beneath a tottering bucket of boiling oil.

“If anyone can calm Hugh down, it is Lady Cristen,” Thomas said as the three knights watched him disappear through the herb garden gate.

“Judas, but he can be a touchy bastard,” Lionel said fervently. Lionel had made the mistake of trying to engage Hugh in conversation on the ride home. Hugh had not answered him, but the look he had given the knight had scorched poor Lionel to his soul.

“Something happened between him and Lord Guy,” Thomas remarked.

“A brilliant deduction,” Reginald returned sarcastically. He scowled. “I wonder if Lord Guy has changed his mind about recognizing Hugh as his heir.”

“That would be a most grave injustice!” exclaimed Thomas, who was one of Hugh’s most ardent partisans.

“Justice is not often a concern of the great,” Lionel commented with resigned realism.

“I wonder what’s for supper,” said the practical Reginald.

The three knights began to walk toward the bridge that would take them from the outer to the inner bailey, and thus to the castle and their meal.

The door to the herb shed was closed, but Hugh could see smoke from the brazier escaping out the smoke hole in the roof.

She was there.

He covered the last steps at a half run, pushed open the door, and stepped inside. Cristen was just putting down a half-filled jar of some kind of medicinal jelly, and she turned to where he stood in the doorway.

“Did you get my message?” he said shakily.

Her eyes were very large in her small face. “You wanted me to come here,” she said. “I felt it.” She went to him. “I also felt that things had not gone well.”

He reached for her.

“Oh God,” he said. “Cristen.”

His arms closed around her.

After a moment, she said in an eminently practical voice, “Your hauberk is extremely hard.”

His grip loosened instantly. “I’m sorry.”

She leaned back in his embrace and looked up into his face. “I gather that he said nay.”

“He said nay,” Hugh agreed. In the light of the brazier she could see that his eyes were glittering.

“I thought he would,” Cristen said.

“I have even worse news,” Hugh told her bitterly. “He has made arrangements for me to marry Elizabeth de Beauté, the daughter of the new Earl of Lincoln.”

Cristen’s slender body went rigid.

A faint smile of satisfaction touched Hugh’s mouth.

“Well, you’re not going to marry her,” she informed him fiercely.

Hugh’s smile deepened. “Now you know how I felt about that Fairfax fellow.”

After a few beats, her face relaxed and she smiled back. “I always understood how you felt about Henry Fairfax.”

Without further speech, the two of them sat down side by side on the bench along the wall next to the shed door. Hugh pulled off his glove, reached out and took Cristen’s hand into his bare fingers.

She rested her head against his arm. “What are we going to do?”

“We have two choices,” he replied briskly. “I can go to the Earl of Gloucester and offer to join with the empress’s party if he will sanction our marriage. Gloucester needs Wiltshire as much as Stephen does. Actually, he needs it more. If he proclaims me the rightful earl, he can march on Wiltshire and hope that those men who still remember my father will rise for me.”

I will see the whole world go up in flames before I will lose you.

Those words of Hugh’s came into Cristen’s mind as she leaned against him in the aromatic closeness of the herb shed.

“And the other choice?” she said quietly.

“We can go to Keal, the manor in Lincolnshire I inherited from my foster father, and be married there by the parish priest. Keal is a nice property, Cristen. We can live there very decently.”

Cristen shut her eyes. “I would live with you in a forest hut. You know that. But I do not want you to give up your heritage.”

“Then I must go to Gloucester,” Hugh said.

She didn’t want him to do that, either.

“If you joined with Gloucester, what would happen if he decided to attack Somerford?” she asked.

He rested their entwined hands on his leg and regarded them somberly. “Your father would have to choose between Guy and me.”

Cristen opened her eyes and stared straight ahead. “He has already chosen you over Guy. He did that when he brought you to Somerford and told you who you were. What you would be asking him to do would be to choose you over his sworn oath of loyalty to the king.”

Hugh ran his thumb up and down the length of her small, tense hand. “Cristen, the easiest way out of this is for us to go to Keal and be married there.”

“We would have to run away.”

He pointed out practically, “We will have to escape from Somerford no matter where we decide to go.”

She removed her head from its resting place against his arm. Her eyes were fixed on the jar she had been filling with medicinal jelly. “I feel as if I am robbing you,” she said in a low, troubled voice.

At that, he swung around to face her. “Don’t you understand? Nothing means anything to me if I cannot have you! You are…you are what ties me to life. If I lose you, I lose my very soul. It would be better for me to be dead than for that to happen.”

She gazed up into his passionate face. Her lips trembled. “I know,” she whispered. “Oh, Hugh, I know.”

He pulled her against him and buried his mouth in her hair.

Hugh’s wool cloak was rough and the mail hauberk he wore under it was unforgiving, but this time she made no complaint. Instead, she drew in a long, unsteady breath and said, “All right. We’ll go to Keal.”

Cristen and Hugh were forced to delay any elopement plans, however, as two days after Hugh’s return to Somerford, Nigel came down with a fever. He fussed with his midday dinner, and when Cristen taxed him with his lack of appetite, he confessed to not feeling well. When she put her hand upon his forehead, it was burning hot.

Cristen put her father to bed and made a potion of borage and blackthorn bark to try to reduce his temperature.

For three days and nights, the fever held Nigel in thrall, ebbing and flowing as the herbs did their work and then wore off. As there had not been a resident priest at Somerford since their old chaplain had died six months before, Cristen sent to the abbey at Malmesbury for a priest so that Nigel could confess and be given the Last Rites.

During the days that her father lay ill, Cristen barely ate or slept. She spent all of her time sitting beside her father’s bed, her beloved dogs, Cedric and Ralf, keeping vigil with her.

When he was not filling in for Nigel about the castle, Hugh sat with her as well. At times the fever subsided, and Nigel recognized the two of them, but when the fever raged he thought that Cristen was her mother.

Some hours after midnight on a frigid winter morning, the fever finally broke. Hugh, wrapped in his mantle, was dozing in a chair in Nigel’s bedroom when he heard Cristen cry, “It’s broken. Oh, Hugh, the fever’s broken!”

Hugh came instantly awake and went to join her by the bed.

Sweat was pouring off of Nigel, drenching the sheets under him and the blankets over him.

Cristen turned to Hugh and gave him a blinding smile. “Thank God,” she said. “I have been so afraid…”

He put his arm around her and she leaned against him. It took less than half an hour for the sweating to lessen, and Hugh lifted Nigel so that Cristen could put dry sheets under him. Then they wrapped him warmly in a wool blanket and covered him with a fur rug. They had moved a charcoal brazier into the bedroom, but the January night was very cold and they did not want him to take a chill.

Then Cristen said, “Go to your own bed, Hugh. Father is going to be all right.”

Hugh refrained from pressing Cristen about their elopement, realizing that she would never leave until her father was once more hale and hearty and back on his feet.

A week went by, and Nigel was finally out of bed and sitting in front of the fire in the great hall.

Ten days after his fever had broken, the lord of Somerford was well enough to get into the saddle and ride to church in Malmesbury.

Hugh had just about decided that the time had come for him to talk seriously to Cristen about eloping, when a messenger arrived at Somerford with news that upset his plans even more thoroughly than Nigel’s illness had done.

It was Sunday afternoon and the Somerford household had finished dinner and were disposed comfortably around the great hall, listening to Reginald’s mellow baritone. The hall door opened and one of the knights on gate duty came striding across the floor to where Nigel, bundled in a warm, fur-lined mantle, was ensconced in a chair by the fire.

“There is a man here from Lincoln, Sir Nigel,” the knight announced. “He says he is bearing news for Lord Hugh from one Bernard Radvers.”

Hugh was sitting on a footstool with his back propped against Cristen’s chair. He straightened up, and his black brows snapped together in a formidable frown.

“Send him in,” Nigel said.

Hugh recognized the stocky, middle-aged messenger immediately. He was John Melan, a knight who had long served as one of the guards at Lincoln Castle.

John’s sword clanked as he strode across the rush-strewn floor. He carried his helmet under his arm, and had pushed back his mail coif to reveal fine brown hair that had begun to recede from his high forehead.

“Hugh!” he said when he saw the object of his search. Then his face, already red from the cold, flushed even redder. “That is…my lord.”

“I think I had better wait to hear what you have to tell me, John, before I say that I am glad to see you,” Hugh replied austerely.

The knight grimaced. Then he glanced around the hall at the listening household.

“I wonder if we might speak somewhere in private,” he said to Hugh.

“Go into the solar, lad,” Nigel recommended in a voice that had almost fully regained its strength. “You will be undisturbed there.”

Hugh hesitated, then rose slowly to his feet. He did not look happy.

“Very well, sir,” he said to Nigel. Then to John Melan, “Come with me.”

There was utter silence in the hall as the two men began to cross the floor in the direction of the solar. Finally Cristen said gently, “Will you continue with your song, Reginald?”

“Aye, my lady.” Reginald cleared his throat and picked up his place in the French love song he had been singing. After a moment, Thomas once more acompanied him on the lute.

In the solar, Hugh looked with narrowed eyes at the knight from Lincoln and, dispensing with pleasantries, said, “So, John, what is it that you have to tell me?”

The stocky knight planted his feet, looked steadily back at Hugh, and said, “I thought you should know that Gilbert de Beauté has been murdered and Bernard Radvers stands accused of doing the deed.”

He had the satisfaction of seeing Hugh’s eyes widen with shock. “Gilbert de Beauté has been murdered?”

“Aye, my lord. He was found in the Minster, stabbed to death. Unfortunately, Bernard was found there with him, a knife in his hand.”

“Bernard would never stab a man to death in a church,” Hugh said immediately.

At that response, John’s facial muscles relaxed. Obviously he had not been prepared for the seeming hostility with which Hugh had greeted him.

“Of course he wouldn’t,” the knight agreed. “But there is no denying the fact that he was found in a very suspicious situation. As there are no other suspects, the sheriff was obliged to arrest Bernard.”

Hugh looked puzzled. “What motive could Bernard possibly have for wanting to kill Gilbert de Beauté?”

John said, “He was supposed to have done it in order to help you.”

The line between Hugh’s slim brows sharpened. “That is ridiculous. How could the death of the Earl of Lincoln possibly help me?”

John replied stoically, “You see, my lord, it is known in Lincoln that you are betrothed to Lord Gilbert’s daughter. The thinking is that Bernard killed Lord Gilbert so that, when you marry the Lady Elizabeth, you will automatically become the new earl.”

There was absolute silence in the room. The afternoon light coming in the partially shuttered window glinted off Hugh’s black hair. The brazier in the solar was unlit and the room was cold.

John shifted from one foot to the other, waiting for Hugh to reply.

At last Hugh said in a constricted voice, “That is ridiculous.”

“Aye, my lord. It is ridiculous to anyone who knows Bernard. But you see, there are…other…circumstances.”

Hugh looked grim. He gestured the knight toward Nigel’s chair. “Sit down, John.”

John Melan gratefully subsided into the large, high-backed chair with the lion’s paw armrests that belonged to the lord of the castle. Hugh slowly took the smaller chair directly opposite that was Cristen’s usual seat. “You had better tell me all,” he said.

John was happy to comply. “As you know, my lord, de Beauté was only recently appointed earl, and he had come to Lincoln Castle to meet with the sheriff. However, instead of approving the sheriff’s very competent defense dispositions for the shire-which all expected him to do-the earl ordered changes.” His eyes flashed with anger. “If I may say so, my lord, the changes were very ill-advised. We all knew it. De Beauté may be good at bringing lawsuits, but he knows nothing about military matters.”

Hugh nodded, his face expressionless.

“It made us all angry-all of us in the castle guard, that is. Most of us had served under your foster father before we served Gervase Canville, and we know military matters. The new earl’s ideas were foolish in the extreme.”

Hugh was silent, waiting for the story to continue.

The knight’s lips tightened. “The night before Lord Gilbert was murdered, a group of us who were off duty got together at the Nettle.” The Nettle was the local inn most favored by the castle knights.

John gave Hugh a somewhat defiant look. “We had a little too much to drink.”

Hugh’s face didn’t change.

John met his eyes. “One or two of the other patrons heard Bernard say that Lord Gilbert would do us a favor by dying so that his prospective son-in-law-you-could become the earl.”

Hugh’s prolonged silence made John shift uncomfortably on his chair.

“It was just the drink talking, my lord!” he said. “Anyone who knows Bernard knows that!”

Hugh finally spoke. “But the very next night, Bernard was found, knife in hand, next to the murdered body of Gilbert de Beauté.” His voice was calm and even.

“Aye, my lord,” John said miserably.

“What does Bernard say happened?”

“He says that he received a message from the sheriff to meet him in the Minster, my lord. The message was delivered by one of the castle grooms.”

“Does the groom corroborate this?”

“The groom can corroborate nothing, my lord. When the sheriff looked for him to verify Bernard’s story, he was found stabbed to death.”

An intimidating silence fell.

The knight shifted again on his seat and continued, “The sheriff had no option but to arrest Bernard, my lord. And I’m very much afraid that, unless the true culprit is found, he will hang.”

Hugh asked in a neutral tone, “And what is it that you wish me to do?”

John pulled his stocky body into an erect position, lifted his chin, and announced, “I want you to come back to Lincoln with me, my lord, and save Bernard.”

Hugh smiled, but it was a smile totally without humor. “That is a rather large commission.”

“Your father would want you to try,” John said. “Ralf had a great value for Bernard.”

“Aye,” Hugh returned. “I know he did.”

“You should know that I have come here on my own,” the knight said. “Bernard is not asking help of you; I am.”

After a long moment, Hugh gave a long sigh of resignation and leaned back in his chair.

“I am flattered by your trust, John,” he said mildly. “I cannot promise results, but I will go to Lincoln with you and try my best to discover who really killed Gilbert de Beauté.”

John Melan grinned. “I knew Bernard could count on you, Hugh!” he said. “I knew it.”

Hugh and Nigel and Cristen sat together in the solar after supper. Cristen’s faithful dogs had curled up comfortably on the floor by her feet, and she absently stroked their heads.

Hugh had said nothing about John Melan’s request. Now that the three of them were alone, he told them about the arrest of Bernard.

Nigel, who knew Bernard Radvers, was outraged. “Of course it is a mistake,” he said. “Bernard could have no possible reason to kill the Earl of Lincoln!”

So then Hugh had to tell Cristen’s father about the marriage that Guy had arranged between him and Lady Elizabeth de Beauté.

“It is a brilliant match,” Nigel said slowly when Hugh had finished speaking. “It will give the de Leons complete control of two shires and partial control of several more. In one stroke, Guy will have accomplished what Ranulf of Chester and William of Roumare have been trying to do for years.”

He peered at Hugh intently, trying to read what his intentions might be in regard to this magnificent marriage. Deliberately, he did not look at his daughter.

“Unfortunately,” Hugh said, “the match has apparently given Bernard a reason to wish de Beauté dead. It is well known in Lincoln that Bernard was a close friend of my foster father’s. In fact, before we marched north to the Battle of the Standard, Ralf made Bernard promise that he would look after me if aught should happen to him.”

Hugh’s face was bleak as he said these words. As Nigel and Cristen knew, Ralf Corbaille had been killed at the Battle of the Standard. It was in the aftermath of that very battle that Nigel had first laid eyes upon Hugh and marked his resemblance to the lost heir of the de Leons.

Cristen said thoughtfully, “It looks as if someone murdered Lord Gilbert and arranged to throw the blame on Bernard.”

“That is certainly what it looks like,” Hugh agreed.

“You had better go to Lincoln and look into the matter,” she said briskly. “This knight would not have traveled so long a way to fetch you if things did not look bad for Bernard.”

Hugh met her eyes, his face very somber.

She looked back, her brown eyes clear and calm. “You have to go, Hugh,” she said. “You know that.”

Nigel looked from his daughter to Hugh, then back again to his daughter. They were looking at each other as if he were not there.

“Perhaps you can take the opportunity to pay a visit to Keal,” Cristen suggested. “It wouldn’t be a bad idea to check on your chief manor while you are in Lincolnshire. You can make certain that everything is as it should be.”

At her words, a faint smile touched Hugh’s mouth. “It wouldn’t be a bad idea,” he agreed.

As too often happened, Nigel had the uneasy feeling that the two young people were communicating in a way that he couldn’t comprehend.

He scowled and said crossly, “It’s time for bed.”

Two pairs of eyes, gray and brown, regarded him with tolerant affection.

“Aye, Father,” Cristen said. “It is important for you to get your rest. You have still not regained all of your strength.”

Nigel folded his arms and did not move. “I will go to bed when the two of you do.”

Hugh got promptly to his feet. “I am going, sir. I need my rest also if I am going to ride for Lincolnshire in the morning.”

Cristen came and slipped a hand under her father’s elbow. “Come along, Father. I will find William and send him to help you undress.”

Nigel didn’t know why he felt so grumpy. “Oh, all right,” he said, and stumped off to his bedroom.

Cristen and Hugh looked at each other.

Later, they told each other silently.

The dogs, who had got up when Cristen did, came to press against her skirts. She turned to bring them into the great hall, so that Brian could take them for their last outing before sleep.