My True Love

by Karen Ranney

  Unlike the old abbeys and monasteries that dotted the countryside, the stones and bricks of Langlinais were not taken to use as building materials for new construction. The villagers of Lange on Terne acceded to his wishes. Even if they had not, the castle was rumored to be haunted. A notion that made Stephen smile.

  “At least your father didn’t have a chance to destroy it,” Richard said, looking around him.

  “He would have, if he’d known it mattered to me,” Stephen said.

  He had long since tired of trying to understand his father’s antipathy. It had existed for itself, in its own right, separate and apart from anything Stephen might say or do. Perhaps it was based on something tangible, or perhaps his father had simply been one of those people who are miserable and wish the world to share their misery. Or perhaps he’d wished for more sons to follow him and been discontented with the one he’d had. A thought that had often led Stephen to wonder why his father had not remarried.

  Stephen had chosen to ignore Randall Harrington with the same alacrity with which his father had ignored him. It was not difficult after all; ten months of the year his father lived in London.

  His father would, on his rare visits, discharge one of the servants because of some personal idiosyncrasy that annoyed him. He’d once dismissed a footman because he hadn’t liked the man’s eyebrows. He’d decree that certain rooms were to be redecorated or closed off and others used instead. He would terrorize the servants with his shouts, demand full meals for his many guests at any hour of day or night, and be generally abusive to anyone who questioned his many dictates.

  Yet, for all his petty tyrannies, Randall Harrington had built a church for the town of Lange on Terne and sponsored several boys as apprentices in trade. He’d given dowries to more than twenty girls whose families could not afford them, and endowed at least that many boys with funds to begin their own careers in the army. It was a lesson in life that Stephen never forgot. Even a man filled with vices has some virtues.

  On the day he was informed of his father’s death, Stephen was fourteen years old. He’d brought his father home to be buried in Lange on Terne. His spirit had rebelled at placing him beside his mother, but he’d done so for her sake. She had, after all, loved the man.

  He had become, when he was fourteen, the heir to a notable fortune, immense property, enormous responsibility, and a heritage that stretched behind him for six hundred years. He’d rehired those people his father had discharged in the past year, fired his steward, paid off his mistress, and proceeded to behave in a manner not given to fourteen-year-old boys.

  His childhood had left him on that day, and in its place a more somber man had been born. But there were times when a hint of his childish voice could still be heard from some place deep inside where memories dwelled.

  “I wonder what he would think, Stephen, to know that you’ve prospered despite him,” Richard said.

  “He would, no doubt, claim it his influence, Richard.”

  The two men shared a look of unrepentant humor.

  “I did not like the man, Stephen, but then, you knew that well.”

  “Everyone in the county knew you disliked him, Richard. I think he believed you and my mother were childhood sweethearts and that she’d never been reconciled to their marriage.”

  “What romantic tripe,” Richard said, smiling. “Mary Lynn and I were friends, nothing more. She adored your father, was delighted to be a countess. If anything changed her mind about their marriage, it was him, Stephen, not me.”

  Stephen grinned, his mood lightened by Richard’s blunt honesty. There was little hypocrisy to Richard. The more unpalatable truths he often delivered cloaked in humor. With his friends, however, he simply dispensed with the humor and said what he thought.

  Richard moved from his position against the wall, idly brushing dust from his sleeve. “You love this place, don’t you?”

  Stephen looked around him as if viewing Langlinais for the first time.

  His father had wanted to tear the castle down brick by brick, sell the stone. Had he never noticed the carved embrasures or the fact that the bridge resembled a Roman aqueduct?

  Langlinais seemed more than brick and stone and crumbling mortar to him. There was something magical about this place, something that gripped his imagination and always had.

  Over the years he’d examined the ruins of the chapel, studied the foundation, unearthed the stones and brick until he had begun to understand how Langlinais had been constructed six hundred years earlier. One day, he wanted to put the whole of it back together, to experiment with different types of clay and ash in order to duplicate the type of mortar originally used. A secret dream, precious now that there was little time to do so.

  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?

  Chapter 10

  Stephen 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.