Talus’ argument was cut off when the door to the keep opened and the grating of mail could be heard. Tevin made an appearance in the solar entry as Elizabetha and Tristen ran to him, both of them trying to talk to him at the same time. Tevin threw up his hands.
“I cannot understand more than one conversation at a time,” he said, bending over to kiss Elizabetha on the forehead and putting a fatherly hand on Tristen’s shoulder. “What is all the fuss about?”
“What is it ever about?” Cantia sighed. She went to her husband, kissing him. “Talus has informed me that he will be accompanying you as a warrior and not a squire to the Welsh Marches. Is there truth in this?”
Tevin looked at his tall son, wriggling his eyebrows at the lad. “I told him he could bring his weapon,” he admitted as he looked at his wife. “Lord Marmion swore to me that Talus is already a very good warrior, and I must concur. I have seen Talus in practice and the lad has no equal.”
Cantia lifted an impatient brow. “I realize he was the shining hero of Tamworth Castle when he fostered, but I also know that he is only sixteen years of age. I am not entirely sure he should be fighting Henry’s wars. He is not even a full-fledged knight yet.”
Tevin’s gaze was a mixture of warmth and disappointment. “Do you not trust my judgment any more than that?”
Cantia sighed again and set Kinnon down, who was beginning to squirm. “Of course I do,” she said, more gently. “But you are also a proud father and… Eleanor, why don’t you take the children into the hall? The nooning meal should be ready.”
Eleanor took Kinnon and Elizabetha, but the older boys seemed inclined to hang around until Tevin gave them a threatening glare and pointed to the door. Only then did Tristen and Tarran move, however slowly, with the other children. Talus, however, didn’t seem to think the request pertained to him until Tevin literally grabbed the boy by the shoulder and pushed him towards the door. Unhappy, Talus followed the rest.
When they were finally alone in the solar, Tevin looked at his wife. Outside in the ward, he could hear the shouts of sentries, alerting the castle to an incoming rider, but he ignored the cries as he focused on his wife.
“I know you are unhappy about my going to the Marches,” he said softly yet sternly. “You have made that clear, and I have made it equally clear that I must go. I am too important to the king’s arsenal and he is determined to unite England and Wales, so I must do this. It is important.”
Cantia didn’t have a logical reply for him because she knew he was right, so she frowned verily and he put his arms around her, pulling her close.
“You are too old to be fighting,” she protested weakly. “You must leave it to the younger men. You have already put in your time, Tevin. You fought for Stephen for years and now Henry. I do not want you on the front lines any longer. I want my husband home.”
“And I am home,” he chided gently. “You wanted Talus home, so I brought him home. Then you wanted Tristen and Tarran home because you were afraid for them, so I brought them home as well. Eleanor came home from Kenilworth when she was twelve because you could not bear to be away from her, and Elizabetha and Kinnon have yet to even foster and I am not entirely sure they ever will. We are all home with you, Cantia, and if it were up to you, we would be all bottled up safely in the bosom of Thunderbey for the rest of our lives.”
Cantia was deeply frowning by now. “There is nothing wrong with wanting to have my children and husband safe and home. We have seen enough fighting and battles, you and I.”
He kissed her forehead. “I know, sweetheart,” he murmured. “But England is only safe so long as the next generation is prepared to defend and preserve her. Talus is ready to do that, as are Tarran and Tristen. You must let them grow up, and I must show them how. Will you please let me do that?”
Cantia tried not to let depression overwhelm her. So she simply hugged him, knowing she couldn’t adequately voice her protests to the point where he would understand her. Not this time. He was right and they both knew it.
“Life seemed much simpler during the days of Rochester,” she complained. “When did it become so complicated?”
Tevin laughed softly. “You mean the days of Charles and Gillywiss?”
Cantia smiled in spite of herself as she remembered the outlaw, from so long ago, who had changed the course of her life.
“I miss him,” she admitted. “I miss his eccentric ways. Do you remember when he came to our wedding dressed as a woman? I would not have known it was him except he was wearing one of my old surcoats.”
Tevin snorted. “I remember that Simon flirted with him and then nearly killed him when he found out he was a man.”
That brought soft laughter from Cantia. “And Arabel,” she added. “She was oddly attached to him after that.”
“She knew he had brought her mother to her. It endeared him to her.”
“It endeared him to us all.”
“She told me that he had visited her at the abbey a few times. Did she mention that to you?”
Tevin nodded as he thought on his frail, intelligent daughter who had, at age eighteen, decided to pledge herself to holy servitude. It had seemed to be the right decision for her, but he missed her tremendously. What was it he had told Cantia? You must let them grow up. It was easier said than done.
Tevin sighed, his cheek against the top of Cantia’s head. “Times did seem simpler back then but I know they were not. Time has a way of easing memories until all you can recall is the good.”
Cantia was forced to agree but she was prevented from replying when Talus suddenly burst back into the room, holding something aloft in his hand.
“Father,” he sounded eager. “A messenger just came from Lohrham Forest!”
Tevin looked startled for a moment, glancing at his wife. “Myles,” he muttered, moving to his excited son and collecting the missive the young man held. He stared at it a moment before breaking the seal. “It must be about….”
Cantia was beside him, literally twitching with excitement and apprehension. “Oh, it must be,” she said anxiously. “Hurry and read it. What does it say?”
Tevin had the missive unrolled. By this time, the other children had wandered back into the solar because they, too, had seen the messenger from their position in the great hall. Knowing they had all been awaiting news from Lohrham Forest, the small castle where Myles and Val had lived for many years, they were anxious as their parents were to hear the contents of the missive. Tevin could see his brood in his periphery but his gaze was fixed on the carefully scripted letters.
“I have prayed daily for them,” he muttered, trying to bring the message into focus. His eyes weren’t what they used to be. “Two stillborn children in the past sixteen years and now….”
Cantia was beside herself. “Now what?”
Tevin read slowly. He didn’t want to get ahead of himself. Then, as Cantia watched his face, a smile gradually spread across his lips. She swore she saw the glint of tears in his eyes as he began to read aloud.
“My sister gave birth to a healthy boy four weeks ago,” he announced. “They christened the child Christopher and he is doing very well. Myles says he has never seen a child eat so eagerly.”
Cantia closed her eyes. “Thank God,” she breathed, hugging her husband tightly. “Oh, thank God. They have waited for this child for so very long. Finally, a healthy son.”
Tevin was beyond words at the moment. He was so thankful on behalf of his sister and of Myles that he was nearly weak with it. All he could do was wrap his arms around Cantia and thank God for his own blessings. He had been given so many that it was difficult to count them all. He knew, without a doubt, that he was the most fortunate man alive.
Tevin, Talus, Tarran and Tristen went to the Welsh Marches after all to assist Henry I of England in his quest to unite England and Wales. Although the battles, for the most part, were not successful, all four survived and the three young men, sons of the great Earl of East Anglia, went on to f
ight for Henry for many years while their father retired to Thunderbey Castle to live out the remainder of his life with his wife by his side.
Three years after the birth of Christopher, David de Lohr was born to Myles and Val. Christopher and David grew up to serve Richard the Lion Heart in The Levant, and eventually became two of the more powerful noblemen in the High Middle Ages. Christopher was granted the title Earl of Hereford and Worcester by King Richard, while David was eventually granted the title Earl of Canterbury when he married the heiress. Both men were strong supporters of the crown and major players in the annals of history.
Beautiful Eleanor Britton du Reims married the Earl of Newark, Geoffrey Hage, at seventeen years of age and gave birth to the first of four sons, Kieran, the very next year. Kieran Hage went on to become one of the more powerful knights in the arsenal of King Richard, serving in The Levant with his cousins Christopher and David de Lohr. He also ended up marrying a rather strange Irish heiress and returned to her homeland with her, forsaking the family honor and relinquishing the title of Earl of Newark to his younger brother, Sean. At least, that was how the Hage family recorded the event, but some scholars disputed that finding.
Finally, Huntington Penden became a powerful warlord in his own right as Steward of Rochester Castle and his own son, Brac, assumed the title upon the passing of his father. Arabel du Reims eventually became Mother Superior at Yaxley Nene Abbey in Leicestershire, devoting her life to the contemplation of heaven versus Walhalla and trying to find her answers within the word of God. She was relentless in her search for the truth and developed a reputation within the ecclesiastical community as a whip-smart scholar, a fair superior, and a strict task master.
When she finally discovered the verity to the great question that had driven her most of her life, her mother, indeed, was waiting for her.
She had her answer.
* THE END *
AUTHOR NOTE
While Angels Slept is a novel that was six years in the making. It was also a novel that took on a mind of its own and essentially wrote itself. What a wild adventure!
Tevin and Cantia are the ancestors of several other Le Veque characters, as noted at the end of the epilogue. Their daughter, Eleanor, is the mother of the great Kieran Hage, hero of The Crusader and Kingdom Come. Tevin’s sister, Val, is the mother of two of Le Veque’s greatest and most prolific characters, Christopher and David de Lohr, central characters in Spectre of the Sword, Archangel, Dark Steel, and The Lion Heart to name a few. They pretty much pop up everywhere. The tough part is knowing that Christopher and David’s parents die when the boys are young, but Le Veque chooses not to write about that part. It is left to the reader’s imagination. And in case you are wondering about Arabel’s affliction, she was born with Spina Bifida, and Louisa died from tuberculosis.
Before everyone goes crazy with the fact that Valhalla, or Walhalla, is from Norse mythology and not German mythology, think again. Read about the intermingling of Norse, Germanic and European mythology and learn some interesting facts. It would seem that folks like to borrow each other’s gods and heavens, and just change the name a little. It makes for interesting reading.
LORD OF WAR: BLACK ANGEL
A Medieval Romance Novel
By Kathryn Le Veque
De Russe Family Tree
(Generations between 1313 A.D. and 1457 A.D.)
Succession of the male de Russe line:
• Brandt b. 1313 (Known as the Black Angel, born in Exeter, only son of Aramis de Russe)
• Aramis b. 1357 (Mother was a de Nerra, bringing the bloodlines of the great mercenary Braxton de Nerra into the de Russe bloodlines)
• Trenton b. 1390
• Brandt b. 1428 (Second son of Trenton, younger brother is Martin de Russe, father of Patrick and Nicolas – eldest brother, not mentioned in The Dark One: Dark Knight, is the heir to the dukedom of Exeter)
• Gaston* b. 1457 (Son of Brandt, known as The Dark One)
• Trenton b. 1487
* Maternal great-great-great grandfather was Braxton de Nerra, mercenary commander
ENGLAND
In dreams we grasp at finite bits of reality, premonitions of what may come to pass. In dreams we are all witches, straining to see what the future holds.
~ Anonymous Poet, circa. 13th century
CHAPTER ONE
January, 1356 A.D.
London, England
She’d had the dream before. She was standing on the edge of a meadow, looking at a massive castle in the distance, partially obscured by sheets of driving rain. In spite of the weather, smoke rose in ribbons over the damaged battlements.
Overhead, the sky was the color of pewter with fat, angry clouds, but upon earth, the field was flooded from the unforgiving rain that had been falling for days, perhaps weeks, mayhap even months. It was difficult to know. It seemed as if it had been raining forever.
A great battle had concluded upon the field and there was a sea of bodies strewn about, like pieces of driftwood upon an endless muddy sea. Her heart was in her throat as she observed the scene, her breathing coming in panicked little gasps. Something was here for her, something she loved so desperately that she couldn’t think of anything else. The feelings were so strong that they overwhelmed her, blinding her to her own safety as she plunged into the sea of death, searching, looking for something she wasn’t quite sure of yet could feel it more strongly in her heart than anything.
… her heart….
She awoke in a cold sweat.
*
London, 1356 A.D.
Reign of Edward III
It smelled like death.
Chargers bearing great and bloody knights clip-clopped wearily along the street leading from the great wharf along the Thames followed by equally weary men-at-arms who had seen perhaps one too many battles. They were exhausted, beaten, bloodied and doomed by the depression that often infects those who have witnessed much strife.
They collectively expelled a stench that smelled like death. The Lady Ellowyn de Nerra ignored the stench for the most part as she watched the great army of the Duke of Exeter disembark their sea-scarred cogs. They filtered up from the wharfs along the Thames, a great rolling tide of humanity that brought about the reality and carnage the Black Prince’s war in France had delivered to England.
Ellowyn wasn’t observing the downtrodden army because she was curious. She was looking for someone, the great duke who had taken command of eight hundred of her father’s retainers. Although she’d never actually seen the man whose warrior skills were legendary, she’d heard much about him from her father as well as others. He was a warrior whose name struck fear into the hearts of both English and French alike, a name so awesome that to even whisper it was like mentioning the Devil himself. Men did not take the name of Brandt de Russe lightly. The French even had a name for him; L’Ange noir, they whispered fearfully. The Black Angel. The most powerful knight in the arsenal of the Black Prince, the Black Angel brought the Apocalypse with him wherever he went.
The duke’s army was kicking up clouds of dust in the already dirty city of London. They were heading for the training grounds about a mile west of the Tower of London, the mammoth structure that loomed over to the east from where Ellowyn was standing. She could just see the black spires of the White Tower reaching to the sky. However, her attention was on the army as it rumbled past, turning to the escort of soldiers she had brought with her from her father’s seat of Erith Castle. These men had remained behind while others went on to fight with the Black Prince, but they knew de Russe on sight.
“Do you see him yet?” Ellowyn asked the soldier standing to her right.
The man, seasoned and blind in one eye, shook his head as his one good eye skimmed the returning troops. “Not yet, my lady,” he replied, “but make no mistake. You will know de Russe when you see him.”
Ellowyn looked at him queerly. “How is that possible when I have never met the man?”
The soldier w
riggled his bushy eyebrows. “Because he is the biggest man alive and he wears armor with great spikes blooming from the shoulders. Some say he drinks the blood of his victims and hangs their innards over his shoulders. That is why they call him the Lord of War. In battle, the man has no equal.”
Ellowyn thought on that a moment before returning her attention to the men shuffling past her. There were so many of them and she was beginning to get impatient.
“Well,” she sighed. “I wish the man would hurry along. We must return home soon or father will drag himself from his sick bed like Lazarus rising from the dead and hunt us down.”
The old blind sergeant fought off a smile. “Your father is a determined man, my lady,” he said, thinking that Deston de Nerra’s headstrong daughter was far more determined than her father ever was. “But I doubt he… by Jesus and Mary, there he is. Do you see him, my lady?”
The sergeant’s excited tone had Ellowyn’s head bobbing to catch a glimpse, although she was not entirely sure who, exactly, she was straining to catch a glimpse of.
“Who?” she demanded. “Is it de Russe?”
The sergeant grasped her shoulder, gently turning her towards the wharf where the gentle waters flowed and the boats bobbed about like corks. He was pointing down to the water’s edge in the distance.
“There,” he said, some satisfaction in his voice. “He is standing at the edge of the ship with the big black charger behind him. See him now?”
Ellowyn did. Even at a distance, she could see an enormous man in heavy layers of protection, plate armor intermingled with mail. The man was standing at the mouth of the gangway as the last of the soldiers disembarked the cog, and she began to walk in his direction.
The contingent of escort soldiers moved to follow but it was made difficult by the fact that Ellowyn was a small woman and able to dodge around people much more easily than a gang of well-armed men. The sergeant struggled to keep sight of the petite young woman with the deliciously curvy figure, a marvel of womanhood that brought suitors from all corners of the kingdom seeking a glimpse of her glory. With her buttock-length golden-red hair and almond-shaped green eyes, she was an unearthly beauty. But she was also stubborn, opinionated, intelligent and determined, a combination that tended to shake even the most staunch of admirers.
Masters of Medieval Romance: Series Starters Volume 1 Page 75