Initially, Conan had been stubbornly reluctant to share his good fortune with his old friend. But Otto had dragged him into the forest and had loosened his tongue. And then the pedlar had talked too much – screaming, begging, pleading. Otto didn’t think much of men who squealed like pigs. He had learned that the pedlar was not the only old acquaintance attending this tourney. Ned Fletcher had arrived with the concubine’s daughter, whom he had married. Conan had revealed that the girl had in her possession a pink stone statue of the Virgin Mary – a statue Otto knew existed, for he had held it in his own hands. Conan swore the statue had a heart that was worth a king’s ransom.
Otto had long brooded on the incident when Gwenn had helped Alan make him a laughing-stock. At the time, he had accepted that the Dowager Countess had been mistaken concerning the existence of a gemstone. Like Count François, Otto had dismissed the tale as nothing more than the embroidered ramblings of a toothless crone. But now, having heard the pedlar’s garbled testimony, Otto was a wiser man. Johanna had spent several months with the St Clair brat, time enough to stumble across the truth. If the pedlar’s grubby sister swore the gemstone existed, the gemstone existed. Otto’s fingers itched to claim it for his own. This time, he vowed, it would not be he who was crowned with asses’ ears.
His blood tingled with excitement. Otto wanted to be free from the tyrant work. He wanted to be free from worrying about money. He wanted to be free of Count François. In short, he wanted to be his own man. It was not that he minded fighting, he loved it; but he longed to pick his fights when he wanted, and not at another’s bidding. Digging in his spurs so sharply that they drew blood, he urged his horse to a gallop.
If he hurried, he would make the city gates by nightfall.
***
The Duchess of Brittany was most generous with Alan when he came to take his leave of her.
‘So you are Alan le Bret,’ the Duchess said, looking at him thoughtfully. ‘A Breton Captain for the Duke of Brittany. I must say, though you are dark you don’t have the Breton look. You’re too tall.’
‘I was born in England, Your Grace, near Richmond, and I took my name from the man who brought me up, not knowing my real father. My...my stepfather was the Breton, my mother is of the old Saxon blood.’
‘Le Bret,’ the Duchess murmured frowning. She gave him a keen look. ‘You say you hail from Richmond?’
‘Aye.’
‘Your stepfather could not by chance be Ivon le Bret, the armourer?’
‘The same.’
‘I remember Ivon. A good craftsman.’ The Duchess gave him a pale smile. ‘My husband spoke well of you, Alan le Bret.’
‘You are kind, Your Grace.’
‘No. I merely speak the truth. I am sorry you feel you must resign now he is gone. Is it that you do not relish having a woman as your commander?’
‘Your Grace–’
‘I would never turn off a good man, Captain le Bret.’
‘Your Grace, I know that. But I have sworn to visit my father. He is old now, and–’
‘I understand. He’s still at Richmond?’
‘Aye.’
‘I wish you God Speed. You have your arrears of pay?’
‘Thank you, Your Grace, I have. And I have returned my horse to your stablemaster.’
The Duchess Constance arched a slim, charcoal-darkened brow. ‘Which of my husband’s horses did you ride?’
‘Firebrand, Your Grace.’
‘And did you find him to your liking?’
‘Very much so.’
An elegant white hand waved. ‘Keep him, Alan le Bret.’
Alan blinked. ‘K...keep Firebrand, Your Grace?’
Another airy gesture dismissed his protestations. ‘It will save you hiring one for your ride home, though you’ll have to pay to ship him to England.’
Alan was overwhelmed. The gift of the courser was largesse he had not looked for. ‘You are very generous, Your Grace.’
Duchess Constance bent her head to examine the stamped terracotta tiles at her feet. ‘No. My husband would have wished it, I am sure,’ she said softly. When she lifted her eyes, Alan saw they were moist. She cleared her throat, ‘You may go now.’
‘Duchess.’ Alan bent his knee, and walked for the door.
‘Captain?’
‘Your Grace?’
‘When you decide you are ready to work again, remember that I need good men at my castle in Richmond, but because of the edict banning mercenaries, it would have to be on a different basis.’
‘Your Grace, I am very grateful.’
‘Get you gone, Alan le Bret. And send my love to Yorkshire, will you? Wild as it is, I love that place, and count it my true home.’
***
Gwenn was uncommunicative as they rode to the Norman coast.
They had sold the gelding Sir Gregor loaned to Ned, but kept the mule. Alan drove their horses as hard as he could, for it kept his mind off worrying about her. They were on the road to Dieppe where he could book passage on a trader. Riding hard would also serve to keep his mind off the other, less altruistic thoughts which leaped into his head every time he looked at her.
The countryside rolled past him unobserved. The shape of Gwenn’s lips made his own feel dry. The shining tendrils of hair which escaped from her veil and played about her cheeks made him long to reach across and twine them round his fingers. Irritated with himself, he would drag his eyes from her and attempt to rivet them to the horizon ahead. But not long would pass before he would realise his gaze was lingering on the curve of her hip and thigh. Angrily, hating himself, he would lift his eyes to that distant horizon. Another moment would pass, and before he knew it he would be admiring the way she rode, head high, veil billowing behind her. He had not felt so intensely while Ned had been alive. It was as though Ned had been a living shield, and the strength of his cousin’s love had not only kept Alan at a distance, it had protected him, keeping him unaware of the depths of his feelings for Gwenn. The journey to the Norman port was a thousand times more painful than when he had escorted them from Vannes to Ploumanach.
Alan kept up such a hard pace that by sunrise on the fourth day after the Duke’s interment, they clattered onto the quayside at Dieppe. They hoped to sail with the next tide. It had been a beautiful dawning, with the sun rising in unclouded splendour and the sea reflecting the blue calm of the skies. Alan slid from Firebrand, and stretched his legs. His thighs were aching – they had ridden roughly thirty miles a day with hardly a pause.
‘Gwenn, will you hold the horses?’ he asked, flinging her his reins and trying not to look at her. She was still mounted, and he wondered whether her legs were aching as much as his were. His conscience stirred. Perhaps, given her condition, he should have set a more sedate pace. Perhaps he should link his hands and squire her down from Dancer. But he couldn’t trust himself to touch her. Nodding brusquely at her, he made for the gangplank of the nearest vessel, where a couple of loud-mouthed sailors were soliciting custom by proclaiming they had space on the deck of their ship.
Gwenn watched Alan march off with dull eyes, vaguely aware through her misery that something was upsetting him. He had been off-hand ever since they had left Paris. Wincing, she tumbled from the saddle.
A flock of black-backed gulls was bobbing up and down on the swell in the harbour, waiting for scraps of gutted fish to be thrown back to the sea; while above them a handful more wheeled and circled, buttercup-coloured legs trailing, bills ajar. Their cries hung thin and plaintive on the warming air. Gwenn’s legs were so fatigued they were shaking, and she had pins and needles in her feet.
She was missing Ned. She felt the lack of him as a dull, persistent ache which sat in her belly alongside his child. Dear, kind, sweet Ned, who always had time for quick smile and a loving glance. She bitterly regretted not telling him she loved him more often. She wished she had told him how much she appreciated his steady affection and his constancy. Poor Ned. She had known that he adored her, and she had mean
ly withheld the full measure of her love from him, holding out for... For what? Something better? There was nothing better than what Ned had to offer, and now that it was too late, now that Ned was gone, she could see that. She had been his world. He had put her first, and would always have done so, and that made his love the purest, cleanest love there was. She was no soothsayer, but she knew that whatever God planned for her future, no man would ever love her as Ned had done, wholeheartedly and unreservedly. He had made her feel safe, and she, ungrateful wretch that she was, had begun to chafe at his love, to feel bound by it. Well, God had snatched Ned from her. She was on her own.
Gwenn turned her face into the Dancer’s warm shoulder and stifled a groan. Why was it that she had had to lose Ned before she had learned to appreciate him?
Dancer whickered softly at her.
‘No doubt you are as relieved as I that we’ve stopped, Dancer,’ Gwenn murmured, patting the proud arch of the mare’s neck. ‘Alan has been a slave driver, hasn’t he? Do you think he grieves for Duke Geoffrey as well as Ned? Do you think that’s what ails him?’
One of the sailors had taken Alan onto the deck of the merchantman. He had his back to her and was talking to someone, no doubt the ship’s captain. Wearily, Gwenn shook her numbed feet in turn, and while she waited for the blood to flow, she rested against the satiny coat of her mother’s mare and thought about Alan. In his cold, efficient way, he was her rock in this latest tragedy. She didn’t know why she had gone through that pretence of hiring him, for it had been a pretence, and they had both known it. Had Alan been Ned, she would have been able to ask him outright for help. But Alan was not Ned, and blurred with grief as her thoughts had been, she had been desperately afraid that Alan might refuse her request. She could not have withstood his rejection. Her feelings for Alan had never been the least like her feelings for Ned. The first shock of her grief was fading, and she realised that her relationship with Ned would always have remained platonic if it had not been for the extreme circumstances into which they had been flung. But Alan was different. Alan had always been different.
On the ship, Alan turned, and seeing her watching, half-lifted his hand in acknowledgement.
‘Handsome devil, isn’t he?’ Gwenn murmured. ‘I have always been attracted to him. At first I didn’t even like him, but I have always been attracted to him. Why, oh why, could I not have been attracted to Ned in the same way? Alan can be vile. And at the moment, he’s...’ She broke off, for Alan had concluded his business with the captain and was striding towards her, an odd, tight smile on his lips.
‘Unless the winds change we’ll be in England this evening,’ he announced, with a touch of triumph in his voice. ‘The captain wasn’t carrying a full cargo, and he is glad to have us aboard.’
England was Alan’s home, not Brittany, Gwenn remembered. He would be pleased to see it. ‘Good,’ she said. ‘And the horses?’
‘I’ve reserved a bay on the uncovered section of the deck. Shall we go and inspect it?’
‘Lead on.’
***
The first night in England, they secured places in a Benedictine guesthouse. Their cells were in different parts of the monastery, for these monks did not permit married men and women to sleep under the same roof, let alone unmarried ones. That night Gwenn chanced to be the only female guest, and there was nothing for it but that she must spend the night on her own.
‘You’ll be alright here?’ Alan asked, depositing her saddlebag onto the pallet.
‘I’m sure I will.’
They were standing close in the doorway, almost touching. The cell was barely large enough to contain the mattress, and there was nowhere else to be. It could hardly be plainer, with its peeling limewashed walls and stone floor. A wooden cross hung crookedly under the single window slit. Under her summer tan, Gwenn was drawn and her mouth turned down. Alan felt uneasy about leaving her. ‘I don’t know what you’ve got in your bag, Gwenn, but it’s heavy.’ His innocuous comment brought a rich blush rushing into her cheeks.
Her eyes slid away and fastened on the window slit. ‘Th...there’s n...nothing much in it. Only some of Ned’s belongings which I imagine his mother might like.’
Alan grunted, and kicked the pallet with his boot. It rustled, being no more than two sacks stuffed with straw and sewn together. ‘I hope you sleep well, Gwenn. The mattress looks lumpy.’
Gwenn almost groaned aloud. She had said much the same thing to Ned in the Bois de Soupirs on their wedding night. The rush of misery which accompanied this thought had her wrapping her arms about her middle. The coldness in her belly that was associated with the loss of Ned seemed to have grown larger and more solid with the passage of time. Would she have to carry this burden around with her forever?
She forced her lips to move, ‘My thanks, Alan. I’m sure it will be fine.’
‘Good night,’ Alan said, but he did not go, and Gwenn felt his eyes on her as she turned and began to fumble with the catches on her pack.
Head bowed, she answered without turning round, ‘Good night, Alan.’ Quietly, Alan closed the cell door.
Gwenn sank onto the palliasse and put her head in her hands. She had decided on impulse to come to England. Had she done the right thing? She felt so lonely, so alone. She wanted to talk to Alan, but he was making a point of keeping his distance, and she was afraid of confiding in him.
What would Ned’s mother be like? She must be a kind woman to have borne a son like Ned, but would she welcome a foreign daughter-in-law? Perhaps it would have been better if Gwenn had returned to Ploumanach. She was not concerned about her siblings’ physical welfare, for she did not doubt that Alis would lavish every care on her orphaned brother and sister, but Katarin might be missing her. She resolved to beg some parchment from the monks in the morning. She must write to her aunt, and explain what had happened. She would confess that she had sold Ned’s gelding, and she would promise to visit them as soon as she could. She must give Sir Gregor the money his horse had brought.
With this decision made, Gwenn trusted that the cold, hard, miserable core within her would melt away. It did not. When her mother had died, her father had fallen to pieces. Gwenn was beginning to understand how he must have felt. People had tried to comfort her father by assuring him that time would ease his pain, but her father had been killed before that time had come. How long would it be for her? How long must she endure this?
Pulling the parcel that was the Stone Rose out of her saddlebag, she removed the wrappings and stared at it. ‘Why? Why did Ned have to die?’ Staring at the statue brought her no comfort. Indeed, it seemed to unleash a rush of memories, none of them happy. The Stone Rose had belonged to Izabel, and she had died violently. Her mother had had a shelf put up for it at Kermaria, and she was dead. Her father was dead, and Raymond. And now Ned, who had carried the statue all the way from Vannes to Ploumanach and thence into France. It was beginning to look as though the Virgin, or what it contained, was cursed. It was certainly no blessing. With a start, Gwenn realised that she was in sole possession of it. Would the curse affect her too?
Misliking the morbid trend of her thoughts, Gwenn bundled the Stone Rose into its shroud and thrust it to the bottom of her pack. Let it lie there.
Sitting lonely as a nun in her cell, she thought about the moment when she had sat with Alan in his tent and it had suddenly seemed so very important that she accompany him. Overwhelmed with the brutal and sudden nature of Ned’s death, she had looked across at Alan, and known she could not be parted from him.
She wondered whether he was glad to be back in his own country. England was unlike Brittany. The people were taller, more prosperous-looking. To Gwenn’s eyes they seemed sharper, more...worldly. Their voices were alien. French did not sing on an English tongue; and as for their common language, she wished now that she had troubled to learn more than the few phrases she had picked up from Ned. He had always taken pains to speak slowly and clearly so she understood his English, but these folk gabbled
nineteen to the dozen, and she could hardly catch one word in twenty.
Pushing her bag onto the floor, Gwenn unpinned her veil, removed her outer garments, and stretched full-length on the pallet. Alan was right, it was lumpy. Sighing, she pummelled the worst of the lumps to oblivion, pulled the homespun blanket the monks had provided over herself, and closed her eyes. Alan had said it would take a few days to reach Yorkshire, he could teach her some English on the way. That way the journey would pass more swiftly.
***
Having missed the morning tide, Otto Malait was approximately twelve hours behind his quarry. He slept wrapped in his cloak on the rocking deck of his ship, and hoped the soldier-guide whom Gwenn Fletcher had apparently hired was not an early riser. When Otto had set out after her, he had not bargained on the trail leading him to England. It had cost him to buy passage across the Narrow Sea, and he was determined to snare Mistress Fletcher before it cost him much more. As Otto shifted angrily on his hard board bed and waited for sleep, he ground his stained teeth and hoped the dammed gemstone would be worth it.
***
After another day riding the horses into the ground, Alan pulled up at dusk outside an inn whose creaking board depicted a lanky bird, proclaiming it to be The Crane.
‘I’m sorry, Gwenn,’ Alan said, ‘there’s a Gilbertine nunnery a few miles ahead, and I hoped we would reach it by nightfall. We could have stayed there, but I misjudged the distance, and we must stop here or sleep by the road.’ He dismounted, went to Dancer’s head, and stroked the mare’s nose.
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