Priscilla Royal - Chambers of Death

The man blew his nose through his fingers and flipped the outcome at the spot Master Ranulf had just left. “No matter, Brother. He’d have found some reason to yell whether you were here or not.”

“Will he return later to see how well you have obeyed?”

“Nay. He hasn’t the wit to know whether we have or not, but he does love to bawl like some lost bull calf for the cow’s udder.” The man scratched at his armpit. “If God hears this simple man’s prayer, Mistress Constance will lie on her back and teach him a better occupation than troubling us with his nonsense.”

“And Master Stevyn?”

“He knows we need no direction on things we do daily.”

“Then I’ll finish with that stall,” Thomas said, gesturing at Adam the donkey. The beast responded with an arched tail.

The man grinned, his teeth a shocking white against his grime-darkened skin, and tossed the monk a pitchfork before bending to the task of digging out nearby soiled straw himself.

“Tobye will be missed,” the stableman said after a long silence. “He always could handle that one.”

“Master Stevyn said nothing when his son berated you all. Are father and son much alike?”

“Don’t let his manner fool you, Brother.” The stableman coughed and leaned on his pitchfork to catch his breath. “The old master can be hard in his ways and speech, yet he has always been fair, and there is little about the running of this land he doesn’t know. Last harvest, a pestilence struck many here. One villein’s wife died, leaving him with two swaddled babes to tend for a day until his sister came to help. Master Stevyn stripped to a loincloth like the rest of us and replaced the man in the fields. He may not have offered comfort to the man but neither did he punish or reproach him in any way for not giving his labor that once.”

Thomas nodded, the description firming the impression he had gotten of the steward. “Why does he tolerate his son’s foolishness then? Is he so fond of his eldest?”

“Fond? Nay, not so much,” he grunted, “but what choice has he? Master Ranulf is the heir. Methinks we are wiser to get used to the fool’s ways and learn how to work around them. This eldest was born with too little of his father’s nature and too much of his mother’s.” His expression turned sheepish. “Begging your pardon, Brother, but she did spend a good deal of time on her knees in prayer and consequently birthed a monk. We all knew she was a good woman, and I believe she must have grieved not to have given her husband a better firstborn.”

“What of the second son?”

“Master Huet?” He laughed. “Now he was spawned with stronger seed, and we all now say he’s more the man by far. A few scoffed, suggesting he was a cokenay with that fair skin and his sweet singing, but they changed their own song quickly enough when he gave them a one-fisted love tap and they awoke with a blackened eye, staring at the clouds. The Earl of Lincoln took a liking to the lad as well, which is why he paid his way at university.” He gestured westward. “Methinks both Master Stevyn and our lord would rather have the second son as steward than Master Ranulf, but the earl’ll find a place somewhere for Master Huet in his service.”

“Which should happen soon since Master Huet has returned and must be done with schooling.” Thomas knew better but was curious to hear what rumors were already about.

The man bent closer and spoke in low tones. “I’ve heard that he wandered about in France for some months before he came back and finally confessed he had escaped the Latin exercises. But none of us ever thought he’d take to monkish ways. That’s one with hot enough loins to seed babes all over the shire, begging your pardon.”

Thomas laughed as he tossed a load of clean straw into the donkey’s stall. “Any proof of that before he was sent across the Cam?”

The man’s face darkened. “The lass died of birthing. So did the babe. As I heard the tale, he turned black with melancholy and thus agreed to have his head shaved with the tonsure for his sins.” Then he shrugged. “No marriage would have been possible even had he wished it. She was a villein’s daughter.”

“He seems cheerful enough now. Perhaps his heart has healed.”

Again the man shrugged and bent his back once more to the cleaning of the stalls.

“Two brothers who could not be more different,” Thomas said after a long while.

“They share their father’s stubbornness, but Master Ranulf looks like his mother and took on a brittle version of her faith. As for Master Huet, he has his father’s build, but, if I didn’t know his mother to be an honest and most Christian woman, I’d say some spirit exchanged her babe for another in the birthing room.” His brow furrowed. “If a switch did happen, it gave the master a sweet-tempered lad with the voice of angels. That change would never have been made by any evil imp, would it?”

Thomas shook his head. “If the master’s first wife was a good woman, perhaps God wanted to make up for the firstborn,” he suggested. “You have heard him sing?”

The man brightened. “I overheard one of Master Stevyn’s guests once say that our old King Richard would have been jealous of the lad’s skills, but Queen Eleanor, the Lionheart’s mother, would have made Master Huet a rich man for his songs.”

Thomas did not reply and slowed his pace as he finished with the stall and began to curry the donkey. Soon the stableman was done and offered to complete what the monk had started. Thomas refused, claiming he would be through soon enough, and the man left.

The monk continued to work on the donkey’s coat, a task he usually found both pleasurable and soothing, but this time the work did not keep troubling thoughts from pricking at him.

He had taken an almost instant dislike to Ranulf, and he now condemned himself. The elder son might be made with edges sharp enough to cut anyone who offended him, but wasn’t there merit in that? Surely his unbending spirit also gave him firm direction and method, even if it also rendered him incapable of seeing his failures or listening to different ways of managing the land. Others who had experience in the work knew well enough how to do the tasks required. As the stableman said, all a man had to do was learn how Ranulf thought and discover ways of circumventing his instructions when necessary.

Disliking the intermittent grooming, the donkey flicked his ears and snorted with vexation.

In spite of himself, Thomas laughed and scratched between the donkey’s ears. “As you do well to remind me, even an ass knows how foolish it is to burden competent servants with ignorant masters,” he said, “and strategy without wisdom is as destructive as no objective at all.”

Perhaps he had thoughtlessly found merit in Ranulf’s benighted ways because Huet seemed without any direction. The younger son was a difficult man to comprehend and that unsettled Thomas. Huet was truly as nebulous as a shape-changing imp. He might be charming but he had also demonstrated irresponsibility by showing disrespect for an influential lord who had paid for his education. Why had Huet tossed aside a fine future? For a lute-player’s life? The man must be mad. Or was his witty grace but a thin-coating that hid an evil heart?

Thomas shivered. Maybe the second son truly was a changeling after all and not some gift from a sympathetic God. On the other side of that argument, Huet might also be a good youth who lacked only one wise man to guide him on a more adult path.

He wished he could simply dismiss Huet as a charming and perhaps indolent fellow, but he liked him. Too much. Satan must be making sport again, and he had suffered enough. First, the Prince of Darkness had turned the sweetness of Thomas’ love for Giles into a bitter and earthly Hell. Next, the Evil One destroyed his sleep by sending rampant imps to seduce him into sinful acts, and most recently, at Amesbury, the creature had filled him with lust for another man. No sooner did he recover from the wounds of one encounter then the Devil sent another affliction. Did he not have cause to fear Huet?