The officer of the guard had come out to view the arrival, and stared up at him in amazement. A squire in the earl of Devon’s following shouted aloud from among the multifarious activities in the ward beyond, and came running in delight to catch at his bridle.
“Yves! You’re free? How did you break out? We heard how you were seized, we never thought to see you back so soon.”
“Or ever?” said Yves, and laughed, able to be light-hearted about that possibility now the danger was past. “No, I’m loosed to plague you yet a while. I’ll tell you all later. Now I need to find Earl Robert quickly.”
“You’ll not find him here,” said the guard. “He’s in Hereford with Earl Roger. No word yet when we can expect him back. What’s so urgent?”
“Not here?” echoed Yves, dismayed.
“If it’s that vital,” said the officer briskly, “you’d better take it to her Grace the empress herself, at the abbey. She doesn’t care to be passed over, even for her brother, as you should know if you’ve been in her service long. She won’t thank you if she has to hear it from another, when you come riding in hot with it.”
That was exactly what Yves was very reluctant to do. Her favour and her disfavour were equally scarifying, and equally to be avoided. No doubt she was still under the misapprehension that he had done her, at her clear suggestion, an appalling service, but also he had been the unfortunate cause of some disruption in her passage home to Gloucester, and put her to some trouble in consequence, for which she certainly would not thank him. And if she looked for her ring on his little finger, and failed to find it, that was hardly likely to count in his favour. Yves admitted to himself that he was afraid to confront her, and shook himself indignantly at the thought.
“She’s at the abbey with her women. In your shoes I’d make for there as fast as may be,” said the guard shrewdly. “She was roused enough when you were taken, go and show your face, and set her mind at rest on one count, at least.”
“I’d advise it,” agreed the squire with a good-humoured grin, and clapped Yves heartily on the back. “Get that over, and come and take your ease. You come as a welcome sight, we’ve been in a taking over you.”
“Is FitzGilbert with her?” demanded Yves. If Robert of Gloucester was not available, at least he would rather deal with the marshall than with the lady alone, and it was the marshall who would have to talk good sense into the lady as to how to deal with this opportunity.
“And Bohun, and her royal uncle of Scotland. Her close council, nobody else.”
Yves waved away the brief, inevitable delay, and turned his horse to return to the Southgate and the Cross, and so to the abbey enclave where the empress kept her court. A pity to have missed Gloucester himself. It meant delay, surely. She would not act on her own, without her brother’s counsel and support, and Olivier had been in durance long enough. But make the best of it. She had the means to act, the town was bursting with troops. She could well afford to allow the raising of a voluntary force to try what could be done by stealth, if she would not move in strength. Yves had no doubts of her courage and valour, but all too many of her competence and generalship.
He rode into the great court of the abbey, and crossed to the guest apartments, through the preoccupied bustle of the court. The carrying of arms and presence of armed men was discreetly limited here, but for all that there were as many fighting men as brothers within the precinct, out of armour and not carrying steel, but unmistakably martial. The presence of a guard on the stairway to the great door of the hall indicated that the whole building had been taken over for Maud’s use, and lesser mortals approached her presence only after proving the validity of their business. Yves submitted to being crisply halted and questioned.
“Yves Hugonin. I serve in the empress’s household. My lord and uncle is Laurence d’Angers, his force is now in Devizes. I must see her Grace. I have a report to make to her. I went first to the castle, but they told me to come to her here.”
“You, is it?” said his questioner, narrowing sharp eyes to view him more attentively. “I remember, you’re the one they cut out from her retinue, on the way from Coventry. And we’d heard never a word of you since. Seemingly it’s turned out better than we feared. Well, she should be glad to see you alive and well, at any rate. Not every man is getting a welcome these days. Come in to the hall, and I’ll send a page in to let her know.”
There were others waiting in the hall to be summoned to the presence, more than one minor magnate among them, besides some of the merchants of the town who had favours to ask or merchandise to offer for sale. While she kept her court here, with a substantial household about her, she was a source of profit and prosperity to Gloucester, and her resident armies a sure protection.
She kept them all waiting for some time. Half an hour had passed before the door to her apartments opened, and a girl came through it to call two names, and usher two minor lords, if not yet into the empress’s presence, at least into her anteroom. Yves recognized the bold, self-assured young woman who had submitted him to such a close scrutiny at Coventry before she decided that he would do. Dark hair, with russet lights in its coils, and bright eyes, greenish hazel, that summed up men in sweeping glances and pigeon-holed them ruthlessly, discarding, it seemed, all who were past thirty. Her own age might have been nineteen, which was also Yves’. While she summoned, surveyed and dismissed the two lordlings she had been sent to bring in, she did not fail to devote one long glance to Yves, not altogether dismissively, but his mind was on other matters, and he did not observe it. She was gone with her charges almost before he had recalled where he had first encountered her. A favourite among the royal gentlewomen, probably; certainly she had adopted some of her mistress’s characteristics.
Another half-hour had passed, and one or two of the townsmen had given up and departed the hall, before she returned for Yves.
“Her Grace is still in council, but come within and be seated, and she will send for you shortly.”
He followed her along a short corridor and into a large, light room where three girls were gathered in one corner with embroideries in their laps, and their chatter subdued to low tones because there was only a curtained door between them and the imperial council. Occasionally they put in a dutiful stitch or two, but very desultorily. Their attendance was required, but it need not be made laborious. They were instantly more interested in Yves, when he entered, all the more because he showed a grave, preoccupied face, and no particular interest in them. Brief silence saluted his coming, and then they resumed their soft and private conversation, with a confidential circumspection that suggested he figured in it. His guide abandoned him there, and went on alone into the inner room.
There was an older woman seated on a cushioned bench against the wall, withdrawn from the gaggle of girls. She had a book in her lap, but the light was dimming towards evening, and she had ceased to read. The empress would need a few literate ladies about her, and this one seemed to be an essential member of her retinue. Her, too, he remembered from Coventry. Aunt and niece, they had told him, the only gentlewomen Maud had brought with her into that stark male assembly. She looked up at him now, and knew him. She smiled, and made a slight gesture of her hand that was clearly an invitation to join her.
“Yves Hugonin? It is you? Oh, how good to see you here, alive and well. And free! I had heard you were lost to us. Most of us knew nothing of that outrage until after we reached Gloucester.”
She was perfectly composed, indeed he could not imagine her calm ever being broken; and yet he was dazzled for an instant by the widening and warming of her eyes when she had recognized him. She had the illusionless eyes of middle age, experienced, lined, proof against most surprises, and yet in that one flash of glad astonishment they had a lustre and depth that shook him to the heart. It had mattered to her deeply, that even after the empress’s protection extended to him at Coventry, he should again be put in peril of his life. It mattered to her now that he came thus unexpectedly back to Gloucester, free and unharmed.