as Ranulf and Annora lagged farther and farther behind.
They were attracting stares, too, for Ranulf was trailed by his canine bodyguard, and Annora was proudly showing off her new pet. Pausing to allow two small boys to admire the silvery-grey puppy, she gave Loth a bite of her meat pie; she’d become the dyrehund’s biggest fan since learning how he’d come to Ranulf’s rescue on the Newark-Grantham Road. After explaining to the curious children that the pup was Loth’s son, she picked the little dog up, laughing as he licked her cheek. “I’ve thought of a name for him,” she announced. “Since you gave him to me on the Feast of St John the Baptist, I shall call him John.”
Ranulf made a face. “That is no fitting name for a dog!”
“This from the man who burdened one of God’s beasts with a name like Loth?” Annora gave the dyrehund the rest of her pie and slipped her arm through Ranulf’s. “Where did your squire go?”
“He’s over there, watching that bout with the quarter-staff.” Although she’d voiced no objections to Luke’s presence, Ranulf felt compelled to add, “I finally had to promise Maude that I’d not go off on my own again. She knows about us, Annora, or at least suspects. You might say we’ve entered into an unspoken pact. She does not ask what she’d rather not know for certes, and I agree to take Luke with me.” He shrugged apologetically, but Annora surprised him.
“You think I mind? I only wish you had a dozen Lukes to keep you out of trouble. Or better yet, a dozen Loths! If not for him, I shudder to think what might have befallen you and those poor waifs. Were you ever able to find a home for them?”
“I thought I had. A Southampton merchant heard about them whilst in Bristol to buy wine and offered to take them in. He seemed worthy and had a heartrending story about a stillborn baby and a grieving wife. But it was all lies. He was no vintner, Annora. He ran a bawdy-house on the Southampton docks, and he meant to sell Jennet’s maidenhead to the highest bidder, then force her to whore for him whilst he put Simon out on the street to beg. He’d probably have crippled the lad first, since a lame beggar makes more-”
“Jesu, Ranulf, they did not-”
“No, praise God, but only because the man was careless. Thinking the children were asleep in the back of his cart, he talked freely to his servant about what awaited them in Southampton. Jennet heard and she and Simon fled at their first chance. Fortunately they’d not gone far, and they were able to get safely back to Devizes, scared out of their wits, and who can blame them?”
He shook his head grimly. “After that, I was wary of trusting to the kind hearts of strangers. But Robert’s chaplain eventually found a brewer and his wife who had no children, and since he spoke well of them, I agreed.”
“But you do not sound like a man relating good news,” Annora said, and he shook his head again.
“I was in Bristol a few weeks later, and I stopped by to see how they were getting along. They were toiling away in the brewery like galley slaves, free labor for the good brewer. He could not understand why I was so wroth. Surely I had not expected him to treat a villein’s children like his own blood?”
“So you took them back to Devizes.” Annora was frowning in thought. “Surely there must be something we can do. What if you offered a corrody for the lass?” Almost at once, though, she saw the flaw in that. “But then, no nunnery would accept a villein’s daughter, would it?”
“No, not likely. Besides, they ought not to be separated. All they have is each other.”
“And you,” Annora pointed out. “How long ere they start calling you Papa?”
Ranulf called her a brat, but he did not mind her teasing, for it was just that-teasing. Annora was one of the few people who not only understood but approved of his efforts on the orphans’ behalf. To others, the fact of the children’s low birth was all that counted. But to Annora, what mattered was their youth and their need. Ranulf had never known anyone so protective of children as she. She was not indiscriminate; she had met children she’d not liked. But she’d never met a child she would not help. “I wish I could take them,” she said, and sighed regretfully. “I know I could find a place for them on our Shropshire manor. But we cannot risk it. All we’d need would be for my husband to hear them chattering about the heroic Lord Ranulf, who catches arrows in his teeth and walks on water!”
The joke went awry, though, the word husband dragging it down like an anchor. Ranulf said nothing, but his silence spoke volumes. Annora at once realized her mistake and set about remedying it. Once she’d coaxed him into a better humor, he told her the rest. Back at Devizes, the children were safe and earning their keep, Jennet in the laundry and Simon in the stables. He had hopes, though, that better lay ahead. One of the grooms seemed smitten with Jennet, and since she was nigh on fifteen now…
Annora smiled, seeing where he was heading. He would provide a marriage portion for Jennet, she’d wed the stable groom, Simon would go to live with them, and all would be well. It was just like Ranulf, she thought; with him, a happy ending was always a foregone conclusion. But such was the power of his faith that when she was with him, she found herself believing in happy endings, too.
At her urging, Ranulf bought them both cups of apple cider, and they wandered over to watch a man entertaining the fairgoers with a trained monkey. Annora was more interested in Ranulf’s gossip, though, than the monkey’s antics. “Of course I remember John Marshal,” she said, “that madman who trapped poor Gilbert in the burning church belfry. Why? What has he been up to now?”
“For the past year he has been feuding with a neighbor, Patrick Fitz Walter, the sheriff of Wiltshire. It was a mismatch, for Patrick was much more powerful, especially after gaining the earldom of Salisbury. So John decided it would be prudent to make peace, and to prove his good faith, he offered to wed Patrick’s sister.”
“I thought Marshal had a wife?”
“Not for long. He is getting his marriage annulled, having discovered that he and his wife are related within the prohibited degree and have thus been living in sin for the past fifteen years.”
“You mean he is casting his wife aside like a worn-out pair of boots?” Annora exclaimed, and was indignant when Ranulf laughed.
“I was laughing,” he defended himself, “because those were Maude’s very words. She’d taken a liking to John’s wife and-Annora? Did you hear someone call out my name?”
Even as she shook her head, the cry came again, urgently. “Lord Ranulf!” One of Maud’s ladies-in-waiting was gesturing frantically. “The countess has been taken ill!”
Shouldering his way roughly through the crowd, Ranulf found his niece clinging for support to a draper’s booth, surrounded by alarmed attendants, flustered monks, and curious onlookers. Her face was waxwhite, her skin damp with sweat, and her eyes glazed with fear. “Take me home,” she gasped, and when he lifted her up in his arms, he saw the blood staining her skirt.
Ranulf knew as soon as Annora came slowly down the stairs from Maud’s bedchamber. “She lost the baby,” he said, and she nodded, reaching out to him for comfort. He held her close for a time, until her trembling stopped. “I did not even know,” he confessed, “that Maud was with child.”
“I do not think even her husband knew yet. She’d missed only two of her fluxes.”
“Can I see her?”
“The midwife is still up there.” When Annora raised her face to his, it was wet with tears. He was touched that she should be grieving so for Maud’s loss, but then she said, almost inaudibly, “You cannot imagine what it is like, Ranulf, no man can. Her baby was dying inside her womb, where he should have been safe. She could feel him slipping away, and she knew when it happened, for she suddenly felt so empty. And afterward…afterward she will blame herself. No matter how hard she tried to hold on to him, she ought to have tried harder…”
Ranulf was too shaken for speech. This was no past pain she was describing; it was so recent that it was still raw. “Annora…did you miscarry again?”
“Yes,” she whispered. “A fortnight before Christmas.”
“Jesus God…and you never told me?”
“What good would it have done, Ranulf? Could you have come to comfort me? Could we have mourned together?” She met his eyes levelly, almost accusingly. “As for the question you cannot bring yourself to ask, I do not know if it was yours. And do not look at me like that! I did not betray you by sleeping with my husband. You may lay claim to my dreams, but I live in the real world-with him.”
She’d often had cause to regret her intemperate tongue, but never more so than now. She could not deny what she’d said, though, for she’d spoken nothing less than the truth. “I ought to go back up to Maud,” she mumbled remorsefully, and was turning toward the stairs when he caught her arm.
“Annora, wait. You do not believe we’ll ever be able to wed…do you?”
