No Dark Place (3 page)

Hugh pushed his still damp hair off of his forehead. “Because I would know it if I were. Do you think I would forget being the heir to such greatness?”

Bernard persevered. “You might have. Something happened to make you forget your past. That you cannot deny.”

“I forgot my past because it was best for me to forget it. Terrible things happened to me…”

Abruptly the boy broke off. His eyes, huge and shocked, met those of Bernard.

“What terrible things, Hugh?” Bernard asked gently.

Hugh shook his head mutely and turned his back on the knight.

“I don’t remember,” he said.

And he didn’t want to remember, Bernard realized at last.

It was time, Bernard thought, to speak a few home truths.

“You are wasted here, lad,” he said bluntly. “If you had not been so young, it is highly likely that you would have been appointed sheriff after Ralf. You have the knack of leadership. Men look to you. From the time you were sixteen and Ralf first brought you to the castle with him, you have been a presence. There is more for you to do with your life than to collect rents and see that your lands are farmed.”

Hugh shook his head but didn’t reply.

“You are bored to death here,” Bernard said. “Admit it.”

Hugh said, “The present Earl of Wiltshire is one of the most powerful men in the land. It is mad to think that I could take his place.”

Still speaking to Hugh’s back, Bernard said, “You would make a good earl. It may even be in your blood.”

As Hugh swung around to face him, Bernard said deliberately, “I never would have thought that Ralf could rear a coward.”

Hugh’s chin came up. His gray eyes glittered. He said levelly, “Don’t try me too hard, Bernard.”

Prudently, Bernard gave ground. “Just think about it, lad. That is all I ask of you. This is not an opportunity to throw away.”

Hugh’s body was rigid with resistance.

“Why are you so anxious to see me make a fool of myself?” he asked bitterly.

“I think this Nigel Haslin is honest,” Bernard
said. “I think his story is worth pursuing, at least for a little bit.”

And to himself he added,
Anything is worth getting you away from here
.

“Will you think about it, at least?” he said.

There was a line like a sword between Hugh’s straight black brows. “I will think about it,” he said.

Trestle tables were set up in the hall for supper, and Nigel sat at the high table with Hugh and Bernard.

The only women in the hall were a few servants who sat at one of the lower tables. At the high table they were served by two young boys. As it was Lent, the main course consisted of a sauced mullet, which tasted deliciously fresh, to Nigel’s surprise and delight. The three men discussed the latest news from court, the chief tidbit being that Stephen had succeeded in getting his brother, Henry, Bishop of Winchester, appointed papal legate, thus making him superior in rank to the Archbishop of Canterbury.

No further word was mentioned of the Earl of Wiltshire.

After supper was over and the trestle tables were being scrubbed with sand and removed, Hugh and the two older knights moved back to the fire.

In one of the corners, a man had taken out a lute and was strumming it.

Bernard said to Hugh, “Why don’t you offer Nigel a game of chess?”

Hugh shot him an ironic look. “Why don’t you play him, Bernard? I will be glad to look on.”

Bernard turned to the visiting knight. “Are you a good player?” he asked.

“I am accounted so,” Nigel replied comfortably.

“Play him,” Bernard said to Hugh. “And give him a knight.”

At that, Nigel sat a little forward in his chair. “That would not be fair.”

“I play rather well,” Hugh said.

Nigel’s aristocratic nose quivered slightly with insult. “So do I,” he informed the twenty-year-old sitting opposite him on the other side of the fire.

Hugh shrugged and called for the chess set. One of the boys who had served them at supper set the board up between the two men. Silence fell as the game began.

Twenty minutes later, Nigel, who was actually an excellent player, found himself in checkmate.

“I should have accepted that extra knight,” he said slowly, staring at the arrangement of pieces on the board.

“Aye,” Hugh said gravely. He stood up. “You can share my parents’ bedroom off the solar with Bernard. He will show you the way. I will be going to bed myself once I make my evening rounds.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll see to Nigel’s comfort, lad,” Bernard said easily. “His men can sleep here in the hall with mine and yours.”

Hugh nodded and turned away from them, heading toward the door that led outside. He took his cloak from where it was hanging on a nail by the door, flung it around himself, and went out into the rain.

“Well?” Nigel said, turning to look at Bernard.

“Come upstairs,” the other man said, “and we can speak in private.”

W
hen Hugh came back into the house, Nigel and Bernard were gone and the men who were to sleep in the hall were bedding down on the straw pallets that the servants had dragged out from their storage place behind the stairs. Hugh took the candle that had been placed next to the door for him and in silence crossed the mattress-strewn floor and mounted the stairs to the third level.

He felt a great rush of relief when he saw that there was no one in the solar. Bernard and Nigel Haslin had retired to bed; he would not have to face either of them again tonight.

He stood for a moment in the middle of the solar, looking around him by the flickering light of the wax candle he held in his hand.

How empty it was. How desolate. It had felt that way to him ever since Adela died. Even Ralf had not been able to completely fill the emptiness for him.

It still did not seem possible that they were gone, that he would never again feel Adela’s fingers on his cheek, never again hear Ralf’s deep, gruff voice…

Hugh shut his eyes, blotting out the sight of the room that had once been his home.

This had not been the place to which Ralf had brought him on that first night, of course. That had been the townhouse in Lincoln.

Hugh stood alone in the cold, empty solar, and it seemed that he could once again feel the touch of Ralf’s hand, heavy on his shoulder, as the sheriff had dragged his eight-year-old self out of the hiding place he had found against the bitter cold of a winter night. Hugh had struggled mightily, but even though he had learned many dirty tricks during his time on the road, Ralf had known most of those tricks himself. And Hugh had been but eight years of age and weak with hunger, no match for the big, strong Sheriff of Lincoln.

He had cursed Ralf, first in English and then in his native Norman French.

Later he had discovered that it was the French that had stopped Ralf from taking him to the castle, which had been his original intention. Instead, impulsively, the sheriff had taken Hugh home to his wife for the night, to get the boy off the frigid winter streets of Lincoln and to find out who he was.

Adela had taken one look at the filthy bundle of rags that was Hugh and immediately called for a hot bath. Stunned and speechless, Hugh had found himself being scoured and scrubbed and then dressed in the clean clothes that Adela had borrowed from one of the household boys. Then she
had sat him in front of the fire and fed him the first hot meal that he had seen in over a month.

He had eaten ravenously.

When Ralf would have questioned him, Adela had told her husband fiercely to hold his tongue. Couldn’t he see that the boy was exhausted?

Then she had taken Hugh upstairs and tucked him into a warm, fur-covered bed in a room that he had all to himself. Before she left, she had bent and kissed him on the forehead.

“Never fret, my lamb,” she had said. “I won’t let any more harm befall you.”

And she never had.

Hugh would have died for Adela, but she had thwarted him by dying first. It was the worst memory of his life: he and Ralf, each of them sitting on either side of her bed, watching as the fever ate her away. She had slipped away in the night without a word to either of them.

He had been seventeen when she died.

Three years later, he had lost Ralf.

The seven months since Ralf’s death had been a torment to Hugh. Losing his foster parents had opened a great chasm of emptiness inside him that he was terrified to contemplate. Even during the years that he had lived with them, he had known deep down that he was balancing precariously on the edge of a precipice. But Adela had kept the terror away. At least, for most of the time she had.

Why can’t I remember?

It was not a question he often asked himself. He had always known that it was safer not to remember. For thirteen years he had been content to live as half a person with half a life. It had been enough that he was the son of Adela and Ralf.

But they were gone now. They had died and left him alone.

Who was he, really? Who had he been before Ralf had found him starving in the streets of Lincoln?

He remembered some of what had befallen him before he reached Lincoln. He remembered the traveling mummers who had wanted to use him in their show. He remembered what one of the men had tried to do to him and how he had escaped from their clutches.

But of the time before that—nothing.

Could what this Nigel had said possibly be true? Could I be this missing Hugh de Leon?

All of his inner self rose up to deny it.

Why am I so sure it isn’t true?

Why am I so afraid?

Is it because I saw my father being murdered? Is that why I lost my memory?

A drop of hot wax trickled down onto Hugh’s hand, bringing him back to his surroundings.

Slowly he walked into his bedroom and began to undress. He had told his bodyservant he wanted no help this night.

He pulled his jerkin off over his head, and bent to
unbuckle his boots. As he stood next to the bed in his hose and beautifully embroidered shirt, he shuddered, and it was not with cold.

The bedroom next door was occupied this night, but not with the people he loved.

He stripped off the rest of his clothes and got into his solitary bed.

I don’t know how much more of this loneliness I can stand
, he thought desperately as he burrowed his face into the embroidered pillow that Adela had made for him so lovingly.

Perhaps it won’t hurt to speak a little further with this Nigel Haslin on the morrow
.

There was no chapel at Keal and consequently the household met for the first time in the hall. The first meal of the day was always a simple one of bread washed down with ale, and then everyone dispersed to their morning chores before they reassembled again at noon for dinner.

“I must be back in Lincoln by evening, lad,” Bernard said to Hugh as the three men sat over their ale cups at the high table.

Hugh had begun to pick up his cup, but now he set it back down again on the table. “Of course,” he said with careful courtesy. “It was good of you to come to see me, Bernard.”

The knight scowled. “I don’t want to leave you here alone again,” he said frankly. “It isn’t good for you.”

Bernard could almost see the shutters come down behind the boy’s light gray eyes.

“This is my home,” Hugh said.

“You may have another home,” Bernard said deliberately. “That is, if you can find the courage to fight for it.”

The boy’s finely cut nostrils quivered with an emotion that could have been either anger or amusement.

“You must be desperate to get me away if you have to resort to insulting me,” Hugh said.

It was amusement, Bernard realized.

“Listen to me, lad,” he said, gripping his ale cup in tense, hard fingers. “The evidence presented here by Nigel is too persuasive for you to turn your back upon. You may very well be who he thinks you to be. You owe it to yourself to pursue the matter further.”

Hugh looked away from Bernard and for a brief moment fixed his eyes on the scoured oak of the table at which the three of them were sitting. His profile gave away nothing. Then, slowly, he turned his head the other way and looked at Nigel Haslin.

“Why have you sought me out?” he asked. “What ill will do you harbor against Guy de Leon that makes you so urgent to see him replaced by an unknown like me?”

Leave it to Hugh to thrust his sword right into one’s most vulnerable spot
, Bernard thought with a mixture of humor and resignation.

Nigel, however, did not look dismayed by Hugh’s
challenge. He folded his hands on the table in front of him and replied with an air of frankness, “I will be honest and tell you that my chief motive in wishing to see Guy displaced is political. As you well know, the ill wind of civil war is blowing toward us in this land. While it is true that Matilda is the only legitimate child of our previous king, and while it is also true that Henry forced his barons to swear allegiance to her while he was still alive, yet there are many who do not wish to see a woman wear the English crown. Consequently, when the old king died and his nephew, Stephen, seized the crown for himself, most of the barons welcomed him.”

Nigel’s brown eyes flicked across Hugh’s still face.

Hugh looked back and waited.

After a moment, when he realized that Hugh was not going to speak, Nigel forged on. “Matilda knows nothing of us here in England. When she was but a child, her father married her to the German emperor; then, after the elderly emperor died, she was married to Geoffrey, Count of Anjou.”

At the word “Anjou,” Nigel’s voice hardened “Matilda’s husband has no interest in England; he wants to be Duke of Normandy. It was not until Matilda’s bastard brother, Robert, Earl of Gloucester, decided to champion her cause that she even contemplated making a play for the English crown.”

Hugh drummed his fingers impatiently on the table. “All this may be true,” he said, “but what has it to do with me?”

Nigel said flatly, “Stephen needs Wiltshire.”

There was silence as Hugh digested this information. At last he inquired in a mild voice, “Is Guy going to declare for the empress?”

Nigel told him what he had told Bernard the day before. “Guy will declare for no one. He is like the vultures who hover over the dead on a battlefield, hungry to take the pickings for themselves.”

Hugh leaned back in his chair and took a thoughtful sip of ale. “So you are Stephen’s man?”

“Aye,” Nigel returned.

Hugh said, in the mild tone as before, “And to whom do you swear your feudal oath?”

A faint flush stained Nigel’s cheeks. “The Earl of Wiltshire is my chief feudal lord, although I have a manor that lies under the lordship of Ferrers. It was my allegiance to Ferrers that brought me north to the Battle of the Standard.”

Hugh lifted a slim black eyebrow and said nothing.

Nigel’s mouth compressed into a hard, straight line. “You think I am betraying my feudal oath by speaking to you the way I have.”

Hugh took another sip of ale, watched him, and didn’t reply.

“I see I must open my whole mind to you on this subject,” Nigel said.

“I think that might be wise,” Hugh said softly.

Nigel took a long draft of ale, returned his cup to the table, and resumed speaking in a cautiously lowered tone.

“When Lord Roger was found lying in his own blood, in his own chapel, no one doubted for long that it was the knight Walter Crespin who was responsible for the knife thrust that killed the earl. It was soon discovered, you see, that Walter had left Chippenham shortly before the earl’s body was found, taking the heir with him.”

Hugh’s half-lowered lashes concealed the expression in his eyes.

Nigel lowered his voice even more. “I have always wondered at the convenience of the attack that killed Walter,” he said.

At that, Bernard leaned around Hugh to stare at Nigel. “Good God, man. Do you think he was killed deliberately?”

“By himself, Walter had no reason to kill Lord Roger,” Nigel said. “He was but a simple household knight. What would he gain by such a dreadful deed?”

“You think he was working for someone else?” Hugh said.

“I do.”

“And whom do you suspect?”

Nigel replied by posing another question. “Who is the one who gained the most by the death of Lord Roger and the disappearance of his only son and heir?”

“Guy,” Bernard said emphatically. He pounded his fist once upon the table. “By God, you suspect that Guy was behind the death of his brother!”

“Nor am I the only one to have harbored such a thought,” Nigel said grimly.

“There was no proof?” Bernard demanded. “No way of connecting this Walter Crespin to Guy?”

Nigel’s smile held no humor. “Walter was conveniently dead, and it is not possible to question a dead man.”

The two men looked at each other around the still figure of Hugh.

Bernard said, “Walter’s body was returned, but not the body of the boy?”

“That is right. Although I am certain that he was meant to be killed as well, evidently he found some means of getting away.”

At this, both knights fixed their eyes upon Hugh.

His beautiful face wore the still, reserved, utterly unapproachable expression that Bernard had always dreaded to see.

“A very interesting thesis,” Hugh said. “It is a pity that you have no proof.”

“You wear my proof upon your face,” Nigel told him grimly. “No one who sees you can doubt who you are.”

A muscle flickered along Hugh’s jawbone.

“What do you propose I do?” he asked in the same cool voice as before. “Make an appointment to see my supposed uncle and ask him to recognize me as his long-lost nephew?”

Nigel’s aristocratic nostrils pinched together with insult. “I am not so foolhardy as that.”

Hugh’s cold eyes looked at him. “What do you want me to do, then?” he repeated.

“Come with me to the king,” Nigel replied. “If Stephen will recognize your claim, then you will have the legitimacy you need to challenge Guy.”

Once more Hugh raised a skeptical eyebrow. “I rather think that King Stephen will require more proof of my identity than the assurance of one of Guy’s discontented vassals that I look like the dead heir.”

Anger flashed across Nigel’s face, but before he could reply, Bernard cut in.

“The lad is right. There must be more voices than yours to represent his claim to the king.”

Nigel set his jaw. “Then he must go to see his mother. If I was able to recognize him so immediately, she will be even quicker to do so.”

The two men were so involved with each other that neither of them noticed the way Hugh had frozen at Nigel’s words.

“His mother is still alive?” Bernard asked incredulously. “Why didn’t you mention this earlier? Where is she?”

“In the Benedictine convent in Worcester,” Nigel replied. “It is where she has resided since the death of her husband and the loss of her son.” Nigel turned to Hugh and said emotionally, “She will be overjoyed to see you, lad.”