By Arrangement (39 page)

“So you were never in danger in England? And you can return?”
Assuming that he could get out of Caen alive.

“Aye.”

“Still, having convinced Edward on Normandy, you might have betrayed him. When did you decide what to do?”

He still looked to the flow of the army. “Early this morning. Knight or merchant, you said. I took you at your word.”

“And if I had spoken differently? If I had said that I wanted to be the wife of a comte?”

“I would have given it to you, and learned to live with my conscience.” He looked down and smiled. “I suspect that I could have rationalized it. The power and luxury of Senlis can probably obscure any guilt. Such a life has its appeal. I will not pretend that I was not tempted.”

She embraced him tightly. “You have sacrificed much for your city and your King, David. Edward owes you much.”

“He owes me nothing, Christiana. He gave you to me. The debt is all mine.”

His gaze had returned to the distant field. The Comte was barely visible now. She saw that peculiar expression on his face again, and a flicker of yearning pass through those eyes.

He had executed a brilliant victory, a daring strategy, a magnificent game, but no triumph showed in him. She doubted his subdued reaction had anything to do with the danger he now faced. She snuggled closer under his arm and tried to comfort him.

“In time he will understand, David. He knows about honor and the hard choices it gives a man. He may not forgive you, but he will understand.”

He tensed at this mention of the Comte and the blood ties which he had betrayed.

She tried again. “David, I know there is pain here. He is your uncle …”

His fingers came to rest on her lips, silencing her. “I should have told you last night,” he said. “I feared your reaction to the truth, and also did not know if he would try to learn what you knew. I have spent the last hour wondering if I would ever tell you.”

She frowned in confusion. She searched his face for some explanation.

“Theobald is not my uncle, Christiana.”

His words stunned her. It took a few moments for the full implication to penetrate her dazed mind.

“Are you that clever, David?” That audacious? You found a man whom you resembled in some way and plotted this elaborate scheme? You fed me this story so that I could convincingly support you if I was questioned?”

That peculiar, yearning expression passed over him again.

He shook his head. “It is much worse than that, my girl.” He glanced to the speck of a man being swallowed by sunlight and haze. “Theobald is not my uncle. He is my father.”

Christiana did not know how long they stood there with his words hanging in the air, but when he spoke again the straggling ends of the army were passing out of the city.

“He did not even remember her name.”

They still stood near the roof wall. He rested his arms against it and he looked south, but at nothing in particular now.

“He seduced her, took her love, left her with child, and destroyed her life. I use her name, but it meant nothing to him. Both he and Honoré had been to London several times as young men, and he assumed that I was the product of one of his brother's sins. It was the final mockery of Joanna's timeless trust.”

She spoke to comfort him more than defend Theobald. “It was thirty years ago. When you are fiftyfive, do you think that you will remember the name of every woman you bedded?”

“Aye. Every one.”

“Perhaps only because he did not.”

He appeared not to hear. “There had been two rings, one gray and one pink. He assumed that I had Honoré's, the gray one, and never asked to see it. At Hampstead, he looked at me and saw only his brother.”

“He knew his brother's face better than his own. How often do we see clear reflections of ourselves in glass and metal?”

“She meant nothing to him. She was merely a beautiful girl with whom he amused himself for a short while. A merchant's daughter who counted for nothing in the life of a son of Senlis.”

She didn't know what else to say. He had watched Joanna's misery and patience. He had lived in the shadow of her disillusionment. He had watched the master whom he admired love her in vain. She doubted that his anger at Theobald could be assuaged by words.

“Why didn't you tell him the truth? Why let him think you are his nephew?”

“At Hampstead, when I realized his mistake, it stunned me. Otherwise, my plan had unfolded perfectly. I told myself at the time that correcting him might complicate things. For all I knew, he might resent the sudden appearance of a bastard son, or even suspect that I sought revenge against him. But in truth, it was my own resolve that I questioned. Meeting him was much harder than I thought it would be. I had fully intended to despise him. And then, there he was, and suddenly a hundred unspoken questions that I had carried in my soul all of my life were answered. The answers were mainly unpleasant, but at least I had them.” He smiled ruefully. “The connection, the familiarity, was immediate. Unexpected and astounding. If he had known me for his own, and appealed to me father to son, I do not know what I would have done. So, I let him think otherwise.”

He did not have to tell her this. She would have never known or suspected.

“So, Christiana. You are married to a man who lured his own father into disrepute and betrayed him. It is a serious crime in any family, especially noble ones.”

He searched her eyes for disapproval or disappointment. She knew that he found only understanding and love.

She thought about the yearning she had seen in him, and her heart swelled with sympathy. “Do you regret it? As you watch him ride off, would you change things?”

“Only for you would I have done it differently and changed course. Never for him. I wish that I could say that I regret having started this, but I do not. I am what I am, my girl, and a part of me, the Senlis part, is glad that I have revenged Joanna a little.”

“Do you hate your father, David?”

He smiled and shook his head. “It would be like hating myself. But I hold no love for him either. Theobald may have given me life, but the only father I ever knew and loved was David Constantyn.”

He took her hand and eased away from the wall.

“What now, David?”

He glanced around the roof, as if inspecting it. “Now I see to your safety.” He grinned down at her. “The danger that I face from the Comte de Senlis and the Constable d'Eu is nothing compared to what Morvan Fitzwaryn will do if I let anything happen to you. I think that you should ask the lovely Heloise to show me her house. All of it. Tell her that I am curious to see how Caen's wealthiest burghers live.”

David and Christiana had their tour. David peered around without subtlety and effused compliments, and Heloise
beamed with pride at the appreciation of this handsome London merchant. Christiana thought that he overdid it somewhat, but his praise dragged the afternoon out and gave him the opportunity to examine every chamber and storage room, every window and stable. He seemed especially fascinated with an attic at the top of the main building. Loaded with cloth and mercery, it could only be reached by a narrow flight of steps angling along the inner wall.

They finally left Heloise at the hall and strolled into the garden.

“There does not appear to be any way out except the front gate, short of getting a ladder to the wall,” David said.

“Is that what you looked for? I could have told you that. There is one way, but you will need rope.” She began angling him in the direction of the tree. She smiled at this simple solution. David would escape, she would join him, and then … what? A run to safety, to Edward and his army. How long was the Comte's reach if he sought revenge? Perhaps they would leave both England and France behind and go to Genoa.

As they neared the garden's corner, her heart fell. Where the tall strong oak had stood, they found only its stump.

“I went out this way a week before you came,” she explained. “Theobald caught me. He must have ordered it cut after that.”

“It doesn't matter. I doubt that we would have made it through the bridge gate.”

She sought the comfort of his arms.

“How long?” she asked, bravely broaching the subject that she had avoided. “When does Edward land?”

“I calculate five days, maybe six.”

“You must get away. You cannot be here when they
find out. Tonight, I will distract the guards at the front gate and you—”

“I do not leave without you.”

“Then we must find a way,” she cried desperately.

“If there is one, I will find it. But I think that it is out of our hands. Who knows? When the English army begins ravaging Normandy, the constable and chamberlain may be so busy organizing the defense that they will forget about me.”

He said it so lightly that she had to smile. But she didn't believe that would happen, and she knew that he didn't either.

When she awoke to an empty bed the Wednesday morning after the army departed, she threw on a robe and went in search of him. She found him on the roof, gazing toward the west. Dawn's light had just broken, and the city still appeared as gray forms below them. Despite the stillness, the air seemed laden with a strange fullness, as if a storm brewed somewhere beyond the clear horizon.

She drifted up beside him. His blue eyes glanced at her, then returned to their examination of the field beyond the river.

“Look there,” he said. “Approaching the bridge.”

She strained to see. The light was growing and a large shadow on the field moved down the far bank of the river. She watched and the shadow broke into pieces and then the pieces became people. Hundreds of them.

They moved quickly, carrying sacks and leading animals. The sun began to rise and she saw that the crowd included women and children. They poured through the buildings across the river, past the abbeys built by William the Conqueror and his wife Matilda, and then began
massing at the far end of the bridge, shouting for entry to the city.

“Who are they?”

“Peasants. Burghers. Priests. They are refugees, fleeing Edward's army.”

Additional guards ran to reinforce the watch at the bridge gate. The mob of refugees coalesced and their shouts rose. On the near side of the river, two men mounted horses and began riding through the deserted streets toward the mayor's house.

“Is the army nearby?” she asked.

“I would guess only hours away.”

“It comes here? To Caen? You might have told me, David. I would not have worried so much.”

“I could not be sure. In April, by accident, I found a port on the Cotentin peninsula just to the west. Sieg and I waited there for the English ships to pass before I met with Theobald here in Caen. During the storm, a merchant ship was pushed inland toward the coastal town where we waited. It came within one hundred yards of the coast and did not run aground. The sea must have shifted the coast over the years and the port gotten deeper. Perfect for the army's debarking. Still, the winds may have taken Edward further east to one of the other ports I had found earlier.”

“You did not want to give me false hopes,” she said.

“I did not want to give you more worry, darling.”

“Worry? This is good news! Edward will obtain your release. The flower of English chivalry comes to save you,” she said, smiling.

“If the city surrenders, it may happen that way.”

“Of course the city will surrender. There is no choice.”

“London would not surrender.”

“
London has walls
. ”

“I hope that you are right.”

“What is it, David? What worries you?”

But before he could reply, the answer appeared on the roof in the persons of two knights from the constable's retinue.

CHAPTER 22

D
AVID PACED AROUND
the small storage chamber. The space reeked of herring from the barrels stacked against one wall. A small candle lit the windowless cell, and he tried to judge the time passing by its slowly diminishing length.

He was fortunate to still be alive. Upon confronting him in the hall about his betrayal, the constable had barely resisted cutting him down with his sword. The panic and confusion brought on by the English army's approach had saved his life. The hall had been in an uproar as the constable and chamberlain tried to organize a defense of the city while their squires strapped on their armor. Word had been sent east and south, calling back Theobald's army and rousing the general population to gather and fight this invasion. David had been imprisoned in this chamber to await hanging after the more pressing threat had been defeated.

Before being led away, he had tried to reason with the constable and chamberlain and convince them not to
resist Edward. He had told them that the English army numbered at least twenty thousand, while the constable had at best three hundred men still in Caen. He had reminded them that surrender would spare the people of the city and only mean the loss of property. Only the mayor had listened, but the decision had not been his. The French king had told the Constable d'Eu to stop Edward, and the constable intended to fight for the honor of France despite the odds. Caen would not surrender or ask for terms.

He strained to hear the sounds leaking through the thick cellar wall. The house had quieted and the more distant activity only came to him as a dull rumble. The real battle would be fought at the gate bridge. If the city could retain control of that single access, the river would prove more formidable than any wall.

For Christiana's sake, he hoped that the gate bridge held. If the city fell, she would not be safe from those English soldiers as they pillaged this rich town. He doubted that they would listen to her claims of being English, just as they would not listen to him when they broke into this storage room to loot the goods that it contained. He grimaced at the irony. He would undoubtedly die today, but if he lived long enough to hang, if Edward failed to take this city, at least Christiana would be safe.

He pounded his fist into the wall in furious frustration that he could not help her. She had been sent to Heloise and the other women immediately upon his arrest. She had fought the knights who pulled her away. Those knights had not returned, and he prayed that they guarded the chamber in which the women waited. It would be some protection, at least.