Shadows and Strongholds (3 page)

'I trust you.'

'And you don't trust yourself?'

FitzWarin glowered. 'I was sent away for training because I was a younger son, but it was the making of me… and provident too, since my older brother died and left me to inherit. Brunin is like me. He will have more opportunity to flourish in a different household, and I would like it to be yours.'

Joscelin frowned. 'Have you discussed the matter with your wife?'

'Eve will do as I say, and I will deal with my mother,' FitzWarin said brusquely.

Joscelin thought of his own comfortable domestic situation and knew that, despite Eve FitzWarin's astonishing beauty, he would not change places with his friend for one minute of one day.

'I'm buying Brunin a new pony,' FitzWarin added on a lighter note. 'Mark's taking him around the fair just now, but we're meeting at the horse market at the sext bell. If you want to see the boy, you are welcome to join us.'

'So that I can look in his mouth too as if he were a colt for sale?'

Joscelin's sarcasm was lost on FitzWarin. 'Well, yes, if you put it like that… After all, you wouldn't buy a horse without looking it over.'

Joscelin was spared from making an answer as a worried-looking young man came hastening towards them from the thicket of cookstall booths. He was wearing the quilted tunic of a man-at-arms and his left hand rested on the hilt of a long hunting knife.

'Mark?' FitzWarin's expression sharpened. 'Where's Brunin?'

The young man bowed his head in deference and chagrin. 'I do not know, my lord.'

FitzWarin's glare could have cut steel. 'You do not know?'

The serjeant licked his lips. 'We became separated by the crowds, my lord. I was on my way to the horse market to see if he was there. He knew it was our meeting place and I thought…'

'How in God's sweet name did you become separated?' FitzWarin's raised voice boded ill for his Serjeant.

'I… One minute he was there, the next he was gone.'

'He was where?' Joscelin asked. 'Where precisely did you lose him? At which booth?'

The serjeant blenched. 'At one of the cookstalls, my lord.'

FitzWarin's eyes flashed. 'I suppose you were drinking and filling your belly when you should have been watching the boy.'

'I only looked away for a moment, I swear it.'

'A moment is all it takes.' FitzWarin made a terse gesture with his clenched fist. 'I have no time for this now; I'll deal with you later. For the nonce, we had better find my son.'

Joscelin cleared his throat. 'Doubtless your serjeant is right and the lad will make for the horse market. I suppose he has the sense?'

FitzWarin glowered at Mark. 'Yes,' he muttered. 'He has the sense if he chooses to use it… more than this muttonwit here.'

The men began making their way among the booths. FitzWarin sent Mark to fetch the other household knights and Serjeants and set them to searching. 'But don't alert the women,' he commanded. 'The last thing I need is panic in the hen house.'

FitzWarin and Joscelin went straight to the horse fair, but although there were plenty of boys standing at bridles and helping the grooms, there was no sign of the one they sought. Small hand clasped in the protection of a toil-reddened fist, a son walked past the men with his father. The pair paused side by side to inspect a well-fed dappled pony. FitzWarin looked at the child's earnest, upturned face, then at the father's indulgent smile, and knew that God was punishing him. 'If anything has happened to Brunin, I will have my Serjeant's guts for hose bindings,' he muttered through clenched teeth.

Joscelin's initial instinct was to murmur the platitude that the boy would turn up unharmed, but he bit his tongue. Doubtless, if one of his daughters were lost in this vast tide of humanity, he would feel less sanguine. Prudently he said nothing and applied himself to the hunt.

Mark and the other soldiers searched along the banks of the Severn where the traders' barges bobbed at their moorings, but there was no sign of Brunin and no one had seen him. The river, although it looked innocent, was treacherous and deep and would quickly swallow a child if he fell in. Millrace, brook and pond were investigated too, but without result. FitzWarin had walked the circuit of the fair with Joscelin to no avail and his agitation had increased from simmer to boil when a young monk approached them.

'My lords, I hear you are searching for a lost child?'

FitzWarin's eyes lit up. 'Praise God, you have found him?'

'Yes, my lord. Brother Anselm has him at the porter's lodge.' The monk pointed behind him, indicating a low stone building near the Foregate.

FitzWarin set off at a rapid walk, clapping his hand to his scabbard to keep it still. Joscelin strode beside him. 'If he went to the monks for help, that too shows sense,' he said.

FitzWarin grunted. 'Sense would have been staying with my serjeant,' he said. 'I'll have both their hides in recompense.'

Seated on a bench outside the porter's lodge a thickset monk of middle years was comforting a woebegone child. Tear tracks snailed the boy's smooth olive skin and his dark eyes were glazed and heavy. Marks resembling bloody fingerprints painted one cheek and a yellow salve had been smeared over a cut on his neck. There was a telltale stain at the crotch of his hose.

FitzWarin slewed to a halt and his eyes widened. 'God's sweet bones, Brunin?'

The monk removed his arm from around the boy's shoulders and rose to his feet. If he was disturbed by the use of blasphemy in God's own precincts, he kepi it to himself. 'The boy is yours, my lord?'

'He's my son,' FitzWarin snapped. 'What has happened to him?' Striding to the bench he stooped to Brunin and turned his jaw to the light. 'Who did this?'

The boy's expression was blank. FitzWarin knew the look of old. Whatever pain Brunin had suffered had been drawn within where he would feed upon it in silence, and it would feed on him.

'Some older youths were making sport with him and it was becoming ugly,' the monk said. 'I intervened and brought him to the lodge. When I heard from one of my brethren that there was a search going on, I sent Brother Simon to direct it here.' He gestured. 'He's badly shaken but no lasting harm seems to have been done.'

FitzWarin turned to Brunin. 'Would you know the youths again?' he demanded and clamped his jaw as he saw terror fill his son's eyes. 'Would you?' He heard his voice rising, but could do nothing to prevent it.

'Yes, sir.' Brunin's throat rippled.

FitzWarin jerked him to his feet. 'Then let us go and find them, and let us see what they have to say when they taste my sword.'

'My lord, violence only begets more violence,' the monk intervened. 'Surely we have all seen enough in this lifetime not to seek out more.'

'Save your homilies for church,' FitzWarin snarled. 'I've swallowed enough of them in the past to last me a lifetime too!' Rudely turning his back on the monk, he scowled down at his son who was quivering in his clutch. 'What did they look like?'

Brunin stammered out a description, his complexion paling until he was ashen.

'It might be best to leave him behind,' Joscelin said neutrally. 'Look at him. He is in no state to be walking around the fair.'

'I can see the state he is in,' FitzWarin snapped. 'And when I find those who did this, they will pay. Come on, boy, you've the blood of kings in your veins. Show your worth.'

Brunin had been clenching his teeth and swallowing convulsively while the men were in discussion, but his body reached a point where his will could no longer control it and, bending his head, he retched violently, the spasms heaving through his narrow body until his knees buckled.

'For the love of God, send him back to your lodging,' Joscelin said, his expression filled with appalled pity. 'He is beyond his endurance. He could be descended from King Arthur himself and it would make no difference just now.'

Grimly, FitzWarin swept Brunin into his arms, his strength making nothing of the boy's weight. He felt beneath his fingers the dampness where Brunin had pissed himself and was filled with a deep and tender rage, not least because he was ashamed that his son had been frightened enough to lose control of his bladder. Did such a trait show a predisposition to cowardice? The thought was like a small pebble in his shoe. What if Brunin lacked the qualities he needed to guide his family's interests when the time came? It would not have mattered if he were one of the younger boys, but he was the heir. And because he was ashamed, FitzWarin was angry with himself too. He should be thanking God that Brunin was safe, not agitating over the child's lack of backbone. Torn both ways, he hugged his son before handing him abruptly into the custody of two of his knights.

'Guy, Johan, take him straight to my lodging and give him to the women. Tell them as little as you can get away with. I'll deal with it myself when I return.'

'Yes, my lord.' Guy hoisted Brunin across his shoulder like a deer.

Frowning heavily, FitzWarin watched them leave. Then, shrugging his shoulders as if to level and settle a heavy burden, he sent another man to call the searchers away from the river and turned back towards the fair.

'You will be hunting for a needle in a haystack,' Joscelin warned, striding beside his friend. 'And if you start a brawl, you'll have the sheriff down on you like a stone from a trebuchet.'

FitzWarin bared his teeth. 'You need not come with me.'

'I know.'

They walked in silence, eyes darting and assessing the crowds through which they shouldered. Joscelin was the taller, standing a finger's length above two yards; with his thick, garnet-red hair and leonine prowl, he caused heads to turn. The men were followed by their retinues who were out of earshot of the conversation, but close enough to be summoned at need.

'I will understand if you decline to take my son,' FitzWarin said as they skirted a tumbler performing handstands on two sword points.

A kitten-pretty girl in a gown that exposed an indecency of ankle twirled up to the men and shook a painted bucket under their noses. FitzWarin glared at her. Joscelin thumbed a quarter penny into the bucket and folded his arms, indicating it was all she was going to get. He had been balancing on sword points of one kind or another for most of his life.

'You said that he was like you,' he murmured with a sidelong glance. 'Do you still hold to that?'

FitzWarin pushed his hair off his brow and clutched a fistful of the heavy brown strands. 'God's bones, I don't know.' He sucked a breath through his teeth. 'Yes, I suppose, although at his age I had more—' He broke off and grimaced. 'I was going to say courage but that is not the right word. Spirit, perhaps. I'm certain he has it within him, but he keeps so much to himself that it is difficult to know where to begin looking.'

'And that is why you said he needs to spread his wings?'

'I stand too close and I will only hamper him.'

Joscelin nodded. 'I make no promises, but I will think on it,' he said. 'First I need to speak with my wife.'

FitzWarin eyed him with surprise verging on disapproval. 'If I take a squire into my own household, I do not seek permission from Eve. It is my business and she would not dream of meddling.'