Did he love Langlinais?
“Yes,” he said simply.
He smiled, picked up another brick, and placed it on the pile beside him.
“You should not tax your arm in that fashion,” Richard said.
“I hope you’re as solicitous of your other patient,” Stephen said.
Richard made a noise that was a cross between a laugh and a grunt.
“She is not as well pleased with my skill, I’m afraid. She orders me about and has the oddest notions of medicine. She would have me believe she has more knowledge than I. I spent half the morning defending some of my practices.”
There was a note in his voice that intrigued Stephen enough to comment upon it. “Why do I think you enjoyed every moment, Richard?”
“It would be impossible not to enjoy it,” he confessed with a twinkle.
“When will she be well enough to travel?”
Richard eyed him. “You wish her gone before you leave? How long would that be?”
Stephen had been absent for nearly two weeks. The Royalists needed his regiment, their expertise with armament, even the fanatical enthusiasm that greeted their arrival on a battlefield.
“A few days, perhaps.”
“It had better be longer than that, Stephen. I doubt you could sit your horse an hour right now.”
Stephen smiled, genuinely amused. Richard had no idea what conditions they’d endured during the last eighteen months. “I would take that bet, my friend,” he said.
“Then I’d better go and care for my other patient,” Richard said, and left the ruins.
Stephen bade him farewell with a smile.
“General, sir.” Thomas Penroth turned his head to watch as his aide cantered up to him. “General, the outriders have brought a prisoner.”
He said nothing as one of his lieutenants, David Newbury, approached him. The man was as excited as if he brought him a prize, much like a cat would present a bird as a dubious gift.
Five hours later it was evident that the prisoner was either a great prevaricator or he was devoid of sense. And directions and knowledge, and the an swers to the simple questions of his origin and destination. He pointed. First to the east, then at subsequent times to the west, north, and south.
“I ran,” he said again when asked how he had come to be on the road. Once again he was threatened with being flogged.
He smiled instead of looking frightened.
For good measure, Penroth had had the man stripped to the waist and a few lashes applied to his back. He’d screamed, run into the corner, and had huddled there, weeping.
When he’d been thrown back in the chair it was with the same degree of force that might befall any other prisoner, but Thomas had felt the bite of shame. An absurd notion to feel in war.
They discovered, in the next three hours, that the man’s name was Douglas. They’d no indication of surname or purpose in being in England. He was a Scot, but beyond that the man could furnish little information.
“Let him go,” Penroth said, when it was obvious that they would get no more.
His aide turned to him, the surprise all too evident on his face. “General?”
“Let him go,” he repeated. He looked over at the man with the child’s mind. He sat upon a camp stool, his arms draped between his knees. He no longer looked up with an air of expectancy when someone entered the tent. Instead, he shivered. As if pain or fear had finally made him aware of his danger. It hadn’t mattered. He’d told them nothing.
Penroth’s men were regimented, strictly disciplined. There were fines and flogging for drunk enness, for taking the name of God in vain. For a hundred other infractions of a rigid set of rules. This was war and he had never swerved from his cause, thinking that it had been blessed. He could not, however, help but think that he had erred in this matter.
“Let him go,” he said for the third time and left the tent.
He summoned Newbury to him, waited impatiently for the man to attend him. When the leader of the patrol entered his tent, Penroth did not greet him nor did he bother to upbraid the man on the condition of his uniform. Instead, he made him repeat every word that had transpired between him and the man claiming to be the Earl of Langlinais.
“Are you certain?” Penroth asked, even though he’d heard the tale more than a few times.
“Yes, sir.”
“Go back to where you were,” he said. “Look around. There must be a town nearby. See what you can discover and report back to me as soon as you can.”
The man nodded and left.
He sat on the edge of his cot, an unwieldy affair made of a wooden frame and rope support. It made up in comfort what it cost his servants in time to break it down and set it up again.
The Earl of Langlinais and his Blessed Regiment. Indeed. If he never heard his name again it would be a blessing. The last time he’d faced the man it had been a rout. They should have won the battle. They’d outnumbered the Royalist troops nearly three to one. There was no doubt as to the outcome, but when he had been advised of the tide of the battle, Thomas had nearly had the messenger flogged for lying.
They had not encountered any other troops for over fifty miles. His orders were to proceed north and meet up with additional Parliamentarian forces.
Had it been coincidence that his men had met the earl? Or had they stumbled onto his home? If so, why was the Earl of Langlinais not with the king’s troops? Or, even more important, were the king’s troops waiting to ambush the Parliamentarian forces the further north Penroth traveled?
Questions General Penroth could not answer.
The inclusion of a Scot into the mix was troubling. Were the rumors true, then? They said the king was seeking a secret alliance with James Graham, the Earl of Montrose.
Parliament would hear of this, he vowed.
But Parliament rarely acted with any immediacy, preferring to govern by committee. If it could be lost, confused or misunderstood, Parliament would do so. Would he not be wiser to act against the earl himself?
General Penroth vowed that he would gather what information he could and then make a decision. To leave the Earl of Langlinais in peace? Or trap him when he least expected it?
S
tephen sat against a backdrop of yellowing brick. His black hair was almost to his shoulders, blown back from a tanned face by a gentle, teasing wind. His gaze, midnight-blue eyes narrowed, was focused on a vista she could not see. The sunlight created a nimbus of light around him, created highlights in his black hair.
Anne looked about her, wondering why such a place had the power to both move her to tears and make her smile. It was only brick and mortar after all. Her own home was almost as old. But Dunniwerth teemed with life, while Langlinais seemed only to echo with it. Long-ago voices that sang in the wind.
When Stephen turned and glanced at her, she felt her breath still. He was not handsome. Instead, his was a virile face, one of strength and power. A silly woman would fear him. But she had whispered in his ear and felt his breath on her cheek. And kissed him until her heart had caught on fire.
“I wondered if you’d come,” he said when she drew closer.
“Ned told me you would be here.”
He smiled. “He is more taciturn than I would have wished. Did he say nothing else?”
“Only that I was to come if I wanted,” she said, smiling. “You offered me a four-hundred-year-old story,” she said. “How could I not?”
“Do you mind sitting here? The day is fair and bright.”
“And it is much too lovely to be indoors,” she finished.
They smiled at each other in perfect accord. Another bridge, another link.
He sat on the half wall and held out his hand for her. She placed her own on his. His palm felt strong and wide, a long strip of callus running from the tip of his index finger to the base of his thumb. She wondered if it was caused by days of holding the reins of a horse or wielding a sword for hours.
Even something so simple as touching his hand could make her breath feel tight in her chest.
She sat beside him, arranged her skirt. Her hands were folded in her lap. She looked at the stones beneath her feet, but her attention was directed toward Stephen.
He opened the codex and began to translate.
“‘Sebastian finally told me that he had been captured by the Saracen. It was Jerard, his squire and steward, who spoke to me of Sebastian’s act of generosity in sparing him. It was for this reason that my lord could not pay his own ransom. The Templars, therefore, lent him the money to be released. But not until Sebastian had spent more than a year in a dark and dank cell.’”
“Who are the Templars?”
“The Poor Knights of the Temple of Solomon. They were a very powerful group of warrior knights formed about five hundred years ago. Their original mission was to escort pilgrims to the Holy Land, but they were disbanded there. There were those who considered them more powerful than the Pope.”
“And Sebastian owed them money?”
He frowned and nodded. Then continued to read.
“‘The loan due the Templars weighed heavily on my husband in addition to the two secrets he held. It is my belief that they stripped him of any peace he might have felt at returning to Langlinais.’”
“Two secrets?”
He nodded, his attention seemingly as caught as hers by Juliana’s words.
“‘Sebastian told me of Magdalene, his father’s concubine and a woman who had been almost like a mother to my lord. At the death of Sebastian’s father, she went to live in France, becoming a Cathar. It was at their fortress, Montvichet, that she died. Magdalene left with my lord the treasure of the Cathars, one of two secrets Sebastian kept hidden from me. Magdalene had summoned him to Montvichet, but he arrived too late to save her. I asked him once if he had gone on Crusade to find his faith, and he only smiled. I believe now that it was a great test he’d offered God. God does not like to be tested and granted Sebastian an answer. That answer was the second of his secrets.’”
As his lips framed the Latin words, the structure of them almost poetry, Anne recalled an image of him as a youth in almost the same posture. The setting had been different, but the intensity of his concentration had been the same. The love of language for the sake of it, the fascination with learning. He had sat, when she’d seen him then, with his hands upon his knees and his back sword-straight. His tutor had stood over him, a tall, full-bodied man with a look of geniality on his features. But his eyes had been narrowed, and occasionally he’d poked the air with his finger as if to emphasize a point or accentuate a passage. The voice of the young Stephen was neither timorous nor shy, but in it there was a hint of reticence.
The years had stripped that from him. Matured and hardened him. Perhaps it was court that had done so or perhaps war. How odd that she had never seen a vision of him in battle. And how blessed, too. She would not have been able to bear it.
“‘Sebastian sent word to the Templars, asking for an extension of time in which to pay the remaining sum. The letter he received in return was written by his brother, Gregory. He had left Langlinais to find his fortune and discovered the lure of the Templars, instead.’”
She wanted, suddenly, to understand the words he spoke so fluently as he translated Juliana’s codex.
“Is it easier for you to do that?” she asked him. “To speak the Latin first and then the English?”
He glanced over at her. “It reminds me of my lessons,” he said, smiling. “Perhaps that’s why I do so. I had not noticed.”
She would like to learn Latin, to have that connection with him. Many threads stretched between them, but he knew nothing of their origins. Her visions, her love of drawing, her absorption with Langlinais. She wanted some shared interest between them, something he might recognize, an association based on scholarship.
“How do you say secret in Latin?” she asked.
He glanced over at her.
“Or mystery?”
“The words are not dissimilar,” he said, closing the codex. “
Secretum
, a secret, mystery. Or
aenigma
for mystery, riddle.”
“Will you teach me Latin?”
His gaze was solemn, a natural expression for him. But she’d seen him laugh too often to believe him devoid of humor.
“There may not be time.”
There, the first hint that he was to leave.
She stood and slowly walked to the other side of the great hall. Her footsteps echoed in the ruin. A whisper might have been heard like a shout.
There had been a fireplace in that wall, now fallen to the ground. The ceiling had soared upward nearly twenty feet. A set of stairs at the end of the hall had led to the sleeping quarters and odd rooms tucked into other rooms, such as the oriel converted to a bathing chamber and a room with louvered windows that had held Juliana’s desk. Knowledge she’d gleaned through her visions.
If she whispered her secret, would he hear her? A perfect moment to say the words, to hear them ring in the resonant silence of this place. It was easy to command herself to say them. More difficult to do so. They would reverberate against the stones of Langlinais and fall loudly at his feet. Then he would be forced to examine them and her. Declare her mad or witch. Refute them, repudiate her.
It was so much easier to pretend that the shadow was the substance. She was a traveler. They had been accosted. He was a stranger. She was a visitor.
Did he believe that?
There were only twenty feet that separated them, but it might as well have been measured in years and miles.
He remained in the same position, a half smile on his face. She’d drawn him that way once. The child had been fascinated with him, the young woman had wanted to emulate him. The woman? Had tasted passion in his kiss, was captivated by him.
His eyes darkened as she watched him. She looked away, finally. Too long for propriety’s sake. Too long to dissipate the awkward silence.
She fisted her hands in her skirt and did not look at him. Instead, she looked down at the bricks of Langlinais. Over the years the corners had rounded from so many footsteps. But the same force that had eroded them also kept them banded tight together. A lesson, perhaps. One whose exact meaning escaped her.