“Yes,” she agreed, “so do I.” Leaning over, she kissed him on the cheek, as gently as she’d kissed her son. “Wales has been good for you, Uncle. The next time you come, bring those Welsh cousins with you. I should like to meet them. Now…where are the letters you have for me?”
“They are over here, on the table. They are done, but not sealed yet.” Reaching for the first on the pile, he held it up. “This goes to the priory in Bristol, where they are keeping Robert’s bequest for me. I’ve instructed them to reimburse you for the money you’ve lent to me. The next two letters go to the stewards of my manors in Wiltshire. This one is for Hugh de Plucknet, and these two go to Cornwall…to Rainald and Luke. I’ve written, too, to Brien, and will be grateful if you’ll see that he gets it.”
He gazed down at Brien’s letter, still marveling at his friend’s decision to become a monk. How little, he thought, do we know of the hearts of others. He wondered if Brien’s wife had truly wanted to be a nun, or if she’d sought to find in God what she’d lost in Brien. He wondered, too, what Maude’s reaction had been. Above all, he wished Brien well, hoped fervently that Brien might find what he sought in the austere discipline and cloistered world of the Benedictines: inner peace and salvation.
Picking up another letter, he said, “This is for your mother in Bristol. Lastly, these are to be dispatched to Normandy, to Maude and young Harry. I also wrote down the names of the Jewish peddlers who came to my aid on the Chester Road. I hoped you might let your brother in Bristol know about them, that I owe them a great favor, indeed.”
“I’ll tell him, but I cannot see Will’s bestirring himself on behalf of Jews, even ones who saved your life.”
Ranulf did not disagree; he knew his nephew. Passing strange, that the best of Robert’s manhood lived on in his daughter. Folding the letters, one by one, he reached then for the sealing wax. “Remind me to repay you for the cost of all this-you’ll be sending out couriers to the four winds!”
She dismissed the expense with a wave of her hand. “You know I like nothing better than spending Randolph’s money. But is that all? No other letters?”
Ranulf pressed his seal into the soft wax on the last of his letters. “What did you expect…that there would be one for Annora?”
“The thought did cross my mind.”
He slowly shook his head, watching as she poured wine for them both. Holding out a cup, she said, “I heard from her…from Annora. She wrote to me this past spring. She had her baby, a girl, born last November. They named her Matilda, after the queen.”
Ranulf drank in silence for several moments. “I am glad for her,” he said resolutely. “She…she did seem happy, Maud?”
“Yes…for now.” She wondered if she ought to warn him. Annora was still caught up in the newfound joy of motherhood, but in a year or two, the novelty of it might well begin to wane, and she might crave excitement again, once more yearn for risk and romance and Ranulf. It was not a good sign that she’d asked, so very casually, if Ranulf had returned to Normandy with the empress. Maud said nothing, though, for each man must find his own way. If Ranulf’s way led back to Annora, she would be sorely grieved. But the choice was his.
“‘For now,’” he echoed, sounding surprised. “You do not think her happiness will last?” She shrugged, and he leaned back in his chair, studying her pensively. “I thought you liked Annora?”
She shrugged again. “You loved the woman to distraction. What was I supposed to say-that I thought you could do better?”
He started to protest, then let it go. She saw the sadness shadowing his face, and she knew Annora was still in the room with them, the ghostly, unseen presence of a lost love, much in need of exorcism.
“Aunt Maude will want you to join her in Normandy,” she said abruptly. “Uncle Rainald is sure to urge you to come to Cornwall. Your Welsh kindred want you to return to Gwynedd. But there is a voice missing from this debate-yours. What of you, Ranulf? What do you want to do?”
He was quiet for a few moments, and then gave her a crooked, rueful smile. “That is the trouble, Maud. I would to God that I knew!”
Ranulf and Padarn had a blessedly uneventful journey and reached Trefriw safely in mid-October. Ranulf had spent lavishly in Chester, and their saddlebags were crammed full of gifts: a slender-bladed dagger for Rhodri, a polished metal mirror for Enid, an ivory comb for Eleri, a vial of Maud’s favorite perfume for Rhiannon, bolts of fine linen and wool. They were all delighted with their presents and made much ado over his generosity and extravagance. But he had the comforting certainty that he would have been welcomed just as warmly as if he’d come back emptyhanded.
He knew they were planning to celebrate his birthday, and so he had to stay at least through November. It seemed heartless, then, to leave so close to Christmas. And by then it would be foolhardy, indeed, to consider departing in the midst of a Welsh winter. And so the weeks passed into months, December into January, on into February, and then March of God’s Year, 1149, the fourteenth of Stephen’s reign, and Ranulf was still in Wales, continually telling himself he ought to go and always finding reasons to stay.
As much as Ranulf had come to value his mother’s homeland, he regretted its isolation. Cut off from England by mountains and miles-for it was well over two hundred miles from Trefriw to London-Wales seemed as remote at times as the island kingdom of Ireland. Stephen and the Archbishop of Canterbury had been coaxed by Stephen’s queen into making their peace in November, but word did not reach Owain Gwynedd’s court until December and it did not filter south to Trefriw for yet another month. It had begun to trouble Ranulf that he knew so little of what was occurring in the rest of Christendom, and he sensed that he would soon be ready to return to the other world, his father’s world…and his own.
The seclusion that Ranulf found so vexing was a source of reassurance to Rhiannon. To her, Trefriw was a refuge, cloistered and sheltered by the cloud-kissed mountain peaks the Welsh called Eryri-“Haunt of Eagles.” It was easy enough to forget there was another world beyond the River Conwy, and easy, too, to believe that because Ranulf seemed content with them, he would always be so. The only times she feared were when the letters came. Ranulf had told them of an ancient Greek legend, of mythical creatures, half woman and half bird, who lured sailors to their doom with their seductively sweet songs. It seemed to Rhiannon that these letters were siren songs, too, trying to beguile Ranulf back across the border, back to his former life.
There had been three of these letters so far, forwarded by the Countess of Chester to the White Monks at Basingwerk. The first had come from Ranulf’s sister in Normandy, the next from his brother the Earl of Cornwall, and the third from the countess herself, just a fortnight ago, sharing with Ranulf her joy over the birth of her second son. Each time one of these letters came, Rhiannon had waited anxiously to find out if the siren songs would prevail. Each time her relief had been overwhelming when they did not. But on this rain-dark day in late March, her peace was threatened once again by the arrival of a Cistercian brother from Basingwerk.
The White Monk was welcomed heartily and offered a bed for the night; to the Welsh, hospitality was the Eleventh of the Lord’s Commandments. They gathered around Ranulf then, as he read his letters. Rhiannon tensed when he announced that they were from his sister and nephew in Normandy, for she knew that the empress was her greatest foe. Ranulf read rapidly, exclaiming occasionally to himself in surprise. When he was done, he glanced up, saying, “My nephew Harry is returning to England, so that he may be knighted by the Scots king.”
It was obvious to them that this was a pretext; if knighthood were all that Henry craved, his father could easily have knighted him in Normandy. “How old is the lad now? Sixteen?” Rhodri asked, and when Ranulf nodded, he said, “It might have been better if he’d waited another year or two. But was there ever a sixteen-year-old who was not eager to play a man’s part?”
“Especially Harry,” Ranulf said and smiled. “He was eager to do that at age nine! What amazes me is not his boldness, nor that Maude has reluctantly consented to this rash venture of his, for I daresay he gave her no choice. No…it is that the Earl of Chester has agreed to meet Harry at Carlisle and there make his peace with his old enemy, the Scots king. That is not only astounding, it is downright miraculous! I can only assume that as much as Chester loathes King David, he now hates Stephen even more.”
Ranulf began then to tell them of Chester’s bitter feud with the Scots king, but Rhiannon was no longer listening. Chester’s feuding meant nothing to her. She waited mutely to hear all that did matter-whether or not Ranulf would be leaving them. She could not bring herself to ask outright, but her father soon did. “And will you be joining young Harry at Carlisle?”
“Yes,” Ranulf said. “I must, Uncle. My sister entreats me to look after Harry as best I can. If I stood aside and evil befell the lad, I’d never forgive myself.”
Rhiannon caught her breath, then deliberately dug her nails into the palm of her hand until she could be sure
