LITMIR.BIZ

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all to lessen his regret, but he had no other option than to accept that Arlo was not, and could never be, a member of the Order.

      His dilemma resolved itself in a way that he could never have anticipated. He had been convinced that Arlo suspected nothing of what was going on, but there came a day when, for one reason after another, Hugh had had to shut Arlo out not merely once but three times in a single afternoon, and he grew angry at himself for not being able to do so less obviously, for it was clear that Arlo knew something untoward was going on. That night, however, in the period after dinner and before lights out, Arlo himself brought the matter up, in his own blunt, straightforward manner. It was a cool evening and they were outside, sitting alone by a well-established fire close to the stables, sharpening blades, Arlo with Hugh’s sword and Hugh himself with a long, pointed dagger.

      “Had a busy afternoon, today, didn’t you?” Arlo spoke without raising his head from what he was doing. “You were scuttling around like a mouse in a miller’s storehouse, frowning and biting your tongue all day.”

      Hugh stiffened as he wondered what was coming next.

      “Days like that come and go, for all of us.” Arlo straightened his back and laid the hilt of the sword against his knee before turning to look at Hugh.

      “You’re grumpy and you’re upset. I can see that … Everyone can see it. But you’ve been getting worse, that way at least, ever since you attended that big Gathering a few months ago.” He held out the sword and squinted at the blade, looking for rust spots. “D’you know why I didn’t attend that Gathering?” He glanced back just in time to see Hugh blink in astonishment at hearing such a question even asked. “’Course you do. I wasn’t invited, that’s why. And was glad to have it that way … or I would have been glad, if I’d thought about it. It just isn’t my place to attend such things. I wouldn’t feel right, sitting there gawping among all you knights in all your fine clothes. Just the same way as you wouldn’t feel right sitting around the kitchens with the scullions and the rest of us, eating the food we sometimes eat.”

      Hugh was frowning at him. “I am not sure I understand what you’re saying, Arlo.”

      “Why not? It’s plain enough.” Arlo expelled a breath. “You and I are friends, Hugh, but before anything else, we’re also master and servant—you the Baron’s son, and me the Baron’s servant’s son. I never lose sight of that, but sometimes you do, and you shouldn’t. Not ever. So now you’re a man and you have new things to think about, things to which I can’t be privy. I can sometimes see you fretting over it, like today. Well, you shouldn’t, because I don’t fret over it and I don’t want to know whatever it is that keeps you so agitated. It’s not my place to know about such things, and that pleases me.” He looked Hugh straight in the eye. “I’m quite happy doing the things I have to do. I have enough of them to keep me occupied, I know how to do them all, and I can do them in my sleep if I have to. D’you hear what I’m saying to you?”

      “Aye.” Hugh had begun to smile. “You are telling me to mind my own affairs and keep them to myself, and to leave you to yours. I hear you.”

      “Good, because you’re going to cut a finger off there if you don’t start looking to what you’re about.”

      WHEN THE TIME FINALLY CAME for Godfrey to marry Hugh’s sister, Louise—Godfrey was almost twenty-one years old by that time, and tardy in taking up his spousal duties—the event had been so long awaited, its inevitability accepted, that it barely occasioned comment from Hugh and Payn; Louise had always been more of a friend than a sister to Hugh, and her relationship to Payn had been remarkably similar, in that they, too, were like brother and sister, so both men knew well that Godfrey’s marriage to her would make little difference to the closeness they shared with him.

      What no one expected, however, was that Payn, around the same time, would wed the Lady Margaret St. Clair. The two had met when Margaret accompanied her father on his visit to Champagne from England to attend Hugh’s Raising, and although Payn had been far more enamored of Margaret than she of him, it became evident, much later, that he had none the less impressed her very favorably. So much so, as Hugh and his friends later discovered, that the Lady Margaret had done everything in her power, from the moment she returned home to England, to persuade her father to return with her to the civilized world of Champagne once again.

      Sir Stephen, whose wife had died many years earlier, was utterly defenseless against both the wiles and the wishes of his only daughter, and had been so since the day of her birth, but he was unable to indulge her in this instance because of his duties and responsibilities to the King of England, William Rufus, son of William I, the Conqueror. But circumstances soon conspired with those same duties and responsibilities to oblige St. Clair, willing or no, to send Margaret back to Champagne without him. She arrived in the Barony of Payens in the early autumn of 1091, accompanied by a respectable retinue and bearing a heavy letter from her father to his old friend Baron Hugo, who was gracious enough to conceal any sense of misgiving he might have felt at the lady’s unexpected reappearance, and to welcome her into his home and family. Then, once his wife and his ecstatic daughter had ushered her ladyship off to show her where she would be living and to distribute the people in her entourage among their own servants, the Baron sat down to read the letter from his friend. It was written on six sheets of heavy sheepskin vellum, carefully cured and scraped and softened with great care, then drafted with great precision, so that Hugo knew it had been dictated to one of Sir Stephen’s scribes.

       York

       This Fifth Day of June, Anno Domini 1091

       To Hugo, Baron of Payens in the County of Champagne:

      Greetings, my friend.

      This missive, when it reaches you, will be accompanied by my greatest and most precious earthly possession, my daughter Margaret, and the mere fact of her presence there with you while I remain here in England will assure you that I am not making this approach to you lightly. Were I not deeply afraid for her safety now, I would never voluntarily part from her, nor would I impose upon you the task with which you are now faced: that of caring for another man’s child. Margaret is no longer a child, however, and that is another contributing factor to this decision of mine.

      Since the death of my wife, as you are aware, Margaret has been the light of my life, and she has been saintly in her tolerance and acceptance of the discomforts and indignities to which my life, and my way of living it, have subjected her. A castle such as mine is no fit place for a young woman, as you are well aware. It is functional, Spartan, and unlovely, its walls made of earth, fronted by sharpened tree trunks, and its buildings primitive, drafty, and mud-filled, containing no amenities for a young, well-born woman. It is a fortress, making no claim to being a home, and I have finally come to see that, in merely keeping my daughter here, I am condemning her, if not to death, then at least to misery and squalor. We—William’s Normans—have now been here in England for two decades and a half, and in this region of York for sixteen years, and the local Saxons are no less rebellious and savage now than they were when first we came. I should have sent my daughter far away from here years ago, but in my own weakness and self-centered folly, I have been afraid to part with her, for she provides my only reminder of beauty in this rain-drenched, sodden, chilly land.

      Now, however, we are at war again, facing yet another invasion from the north, and since I cannot guarantee her safety, I have no other choice but to send her to you, knowing that she could be in no safer hands.

      Malcolm Canmohr, the King of Scotland, has come back to vanquish us—his third attempt in twenty years—and King William has decided yet again that I should be the one to throw the fellow out. I did it before, nine years ago, and we thought to have done with it then, but now the Conqueror is dead, and Canmohr—the name means Great Chief, I am told—seems to believe the new king will be easier to oust than his father was. Foolish man. His wife, revered

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