Joan Wolf - No Dark Place

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.”