When Geoffrey was approaching the sixth anniversary of his birth, Isouda and d’Avranches brought him to court.
Edmond and I laid on a great welcome for him, but it so intimidated Geoffrey he refused to leave d’Avranches’ side for the first day (even then he was too much the man to hide behind Isouda’s skirts). He gave me a sullen bow, and Edmond an even sketchier one.
He refused to talk with us, only answering in the barest of monosyllables when d’Avranches exhorted him to speak.
He looked like Raife.
That is what I found hardest to bear. He looked so much like Raife (and thus also like Stephen), and yet I think he hated me. Even then, even at six. It became more obvious as he grew.
I knew I had failed him, but what else could I have done? When he was an infant I could not have taken him back to London when the plague was in the land and the issue of the Devil’s diadem yet to be resolved. In the year afterward it was deemed too dangerous, and my position too uncertain. After that, well, I moved about with Edmond a great deal, and I did not want to risk a small child on the move from Pengraic to eastern England.
Of course, I carried Hugh about with me everywhere during this time. I would have been aghast at the idea of leaving him behind.
Geoffrey continued as a stranger to me all his life. He treated me with a cold tolerance, I think, only because I was so closely tied to Edmond, and Edmond was untouchable … the king was needed as a contented ally.
But Geoffrey had heard the rumours surrounding his father’s death, and he always blamed me for it. We talked of it just once, when he was nineteen and taking the full responsibilities (and lands and powers) of the earldom on his shoulders.
‘Talk’ doesn’t quite describe it. I had broached the subject, somewhat tentatively, and in reply Geoffrey actually spat at my feet and then walked away.
It devastated me then and still does. How could I have allowed that child to slip away?
But I did, and I did it because of Hugh.
Everyone assumed that Hugh was Edmond’s son, even Edmond, I think. Hugh certainly always thought that Edmond was his father and addressed him as a son did a father. Hugh is treated by all as a prince in everything but name. Edmond was not the bad parent I was, and never favoured him over his older sons Richard and John, nor even over Geoffrey, but even so Hugh somehow stood out from all of them.
In any grouping of Hugh, Richard, John and Geoffrey, it is always to Hugh that people turn first, always at Hugh that people smile first. He is so favoured, in beauty and talent and courage and sheer, blinding magnetism, that he is a natural leader.
Unsurprisingly, Richard, John and Geoffrey resent him for this. Richard and John also fear Hugh. Because of his wealth and popularity, and supposed parentage by Edmond, Hugh represents a shadowy, but very real, threat to the throne of England.
All three also resent that Edmond endowed Hugh with much land and wealth so that by the time Hugh was twenty he was almost his older brothers’ equal in lordships and lands. Combined with what I will leave him on my death … Hugh can never be anything but a powerful nobleman.
Hugh has inherited my propensity to acquire enemies just as he has inherited my looks.
There is another, quite extraordinary thing about Hugh.
He is almost entirely of the blood of the Old People.
He is a Falloway Man.
Chapter Three
Uda told me when I was heavily pregnant with Hugh that he was of the blood of the Old People. Edmond had brought her to Elesberie for Christmastide court. I avoided her whenever possible, because I had not trusted Raife when she’d pleaded with me to do so and I thought she would remonstrate with me. But Uda never mentioned Raife to me, or the issue of trust. All she was interested in was the child I carried.
‘He will be a Falloway Man,’ she said.
‘Mark my words.’
I didn’t mark them. I pushed them to the back of my mind. At that time of my life, in the year after I’d lost Raife, all I wanted was to huddle behind Edmond and simply forget everything that had happened the night Raife died, and the events which led up to it.
By the time Hugh was a toddling boy I had completely forgot Uda’s words. Uda had died shortly after Hugh’s birth and she’d never seen the boy. And all I wanted to do was to enjoy my son and cherish him.
But when Hugh was six, I lost him.
Hugh’s sixth year was the last in which I would have him to coddle. After his seventh birthday he would venture ever more into the world of men, learning the art and craft of weaponry, battle, the courtly skills of the knight and the subtleties of the nobleman. But I had this last year to hold him close.
That summer I was pregnant with Ellice, the second of the daughters I bore Edmond. Edmond was in the north of England, and I had decided that I would take Hugh and Heloise into the meadows beyond Thorney Island to play for the afternoon. We had an escort, and Gytha (to whom I was becoming ever closer) and the children’s nurse, Blanche, came — as well as several servants — all in a company which rode either in cart or on horse out to the meadows to chase butterflies and picnic.
I played a while with the children, and then we ate. It was a warm day and by then I was tired — I was only two months away from giving birth. I asked Gytha and Blanche (and the servants and men-at-arms, too) to watch the children, and I sat in the shade of one of the carts to doze.
I fell heavily asleep.
When I woke, it was as if I had been caught in a dream. I was aware of Gytha and Blanche playing with Heloise, and of the servants and men-at-arms standing about, but I could barely hear their chatter. Everything was hazy in the heat.
I could not see Hugh and became anxious about him. I rose, a little unsteadily, and looked about.
He was nowhere.
I tried to call to Gytha and Blanche, but my voice was muted, and they did not hear me.
I walked around the cart, looking everywhere. The land here was flat and almost treeless — he could not be hiding, and if he was not hiding, then he was lost, for Hugh was nowhere to be seen.
I walked further from our little picnic spot, calling Hugh’s name. I still could not see well, either the heavy sleep or the heat haze made sight difficult.
Now I was becoming frantic. I called Hugh’s name over and over, stumbling through the meadow. He had been stolen, I knew it. Another Madog had appeared and was even now pinning a terrified Hugh to the ground, razoring the blade across his throat. Some of my unknown enemies at court had taken him, factions allied with Richard and John, perhaps, keen to see the illegitimate prince removed.
I turned, and suddenly there he was, standing fifty or so paces away, his back to me. I had looked there a moment ago, and he had not been there, but I did not care what mysteries lay behind his sudden appearance. It was enough that he was here.
‘Hugh!’ I cried, walking toward him as fast as I could.
Then I stopped, staring. A moment ago there had been but Hugh standing there. Now a knight on a horse was beside him, and a woman with long, shining golden braids bending down to Hugh her hand on his shoulder.
They would snatch him! The woman was about to lift him to the knight, who would run away with him!
I opened my mouth to scream but then Hugh turned to look at me and the woman also.
Hugh smiled, as did the woman, and somehow the panic in my breast calmed.
I was much closer to them now and the woman’s face seemed familiar. Then I realised that the knight, so bright in the sun, was sitting a white courser whose diamond-entangled mane dragged along the ground.
It was the strange knight.
Stephen?
Now I was terrified that any sudden move or word on my part might scare him away. I moved slowly toward the three, smiling and holding out my hand for Hugh. When I came close he took it.
‘This is the sun-drenched knight,’ Hugh said, and turned back to the knight.
I looked up and the knight lifted away his helmet, and, yes, it was Stephen, smiling at me with such gentle love that tears filmed my eyes.