not going to back down.
Rapidly reassessing, Robert decided to gamble upon a show of unity. “You’ve read the letter, Geoffrey,” he pointed out, “so you have no reason to hold on to it. Why not give it to Maude?”
Geoffrey was no longer smiling. “Because,” he said, “I choose not to.”
Maude alone was not surprised by his refusal. Ranulf pulled free of Robert’s grip, not yet sure what he was going to do, but determined to get Maude’s letter, one way or another.
Amabel had jumped to her feet, hissing at Maude, “Stop this whilst you still can!” And as if coming to her senses, Maude did stretch out her arm, seeking to catch Ranulf’s sleeve. But the one who stopped it was the one they’d all forgotten, Maude and Geoffrey’s six-year-old son.
Henry had been playing with the puppies, oblivious at first to the angry adult voices; his was a household in which raised voices were the norm. But his mother’s choked cry of “Damn you, Geoffrey!” jerked his head up, set his heart to pounding. He did not understand what was wrong, but the fury in the room was frightening. He’d often heard his parents quarrel, and hated their quarrels, sometimes even hated them, too, for the way their quarreling made him feel-as if he was lost, surrounded by strangers, with no familiar landmarks to guide him home.
This time their fighting was worse than usual, for his uncle Ranulf and his uncle Robert were caught up in it, too, all of them against his father. It was not fair, and he wanted to go to his father, to let Papa know he was not alone. But he could not, for then he’d be hurting Mama. When he could endure the conflicting urges no longer, he snatched up the fire tongs and began to jab furiously at the logs burning in the hearth. The flames shot upward, and embers and sparks were soon flying about, beginning to smolder in the floor rushes. The heat was hot on his face and his eyes were stinging, but he kept on thrusting into the fire, again and again, not even hearing his name, not at first.
“Henry! Henry, stop it!” His mother’s voice sounded scared to him, muffled and scratchy. But he shook his head, continued to prod the flames, sending up another shower of cinders. His eyes were blurring and he blinked hard. When he looked up again, they were clustered around the hearth, Mama and Papa and Uncle Ranulf and Uncle Robert and Aunt Amabel, and they were all talking at once, urging him away from the fire. Instead, he moved even closer, glaring at them, biting down on his lower lip as it started to quiver. Jabbing with the fire tongs, he dislodged a burning brand, and his mother cried out as it whizzed by his cheek, thudding into the floor rushes in a sizzle of sparks.
They were demanding that he get away from the hearth, but they made no move to grab him, and he knew why. They were afraid he’d struggle and get burned. He was already closer than he wanted to be, for his skin felt scorched, and he could smell something burning…the floor rushes! But Aunt Amabel had seen it, too, was pouring wine into the smoking reeds. That was clever. His father was telling him to put down the fire tongs, and he wanted to, he truly did. But all he could do was shake his head again, mutely, gulping back tears. And then Uncle Ranulf was kneeling so their eyes were level, telling him about the puppies.
“Lad, you’re scaring them. They fear fire. Look at them, see for yourself.”
Henry glanced over at the puppies, cowering down by their mother, whimpering, and then let the fire tongs clatter to the floor. A moment later, he was caught up in his mother’s arms. He wasn’t sure if she was going to hit him or hug him, and she may not have been sure, either, but then she embraced him tightly, until he had to squirm to breathe. He knew he was going to be severely punished, for he’d done something dangerous and then defied them, not sins adults were likely to forgive.
But once he’d nerved himself to look up into their faces, Henry realized, with a jolt of bewildered relief, that there would be no punishment, after all. His father was mussing his hair, saying he was well roasted by now, ready for carving. He smiled at that, for Papa liked him to laugh at his jokes. But it did not seem funny to him, none of it, not even when Aunt Amabel doused the fire with wine. A silence had fallen, and he shifted uneasily, fearful that they might start fighting again. He saw, then, that they were watching his father, for he’d turned away to retrieve a letter, dropped into the floor rushes.
No one moved. All eyes followed Geoffrey on his way back to the hearth, where he held out the letter to his son. “Here, lad,” he said, “give this to your mother.”
The hall was still and shadowed, like an empty stage. Henry had gotten a parental escort up to bed, for Geoffrey had surprised the men and earned himself a bit of credit with Amabel by promising his son a bedtime tale about a ravening pack of killer dyrehunds. Amabel had dismissed her wide-eyed, spellbound ladies, knowing full well they’d soon set the entire castle abuzz with embellished accounts of all they’d witnessed this night. Now she sat with Robert and his brothers around the hearth, finishing up the wine in a morose silence.
“I hope you realize that you only made a bad situation worse, Ranulf.”
Robert was frowning, but it did not have the desired effect; Ranulf remained noticeably unrepentant. “I’m sorry about the part I played in scaring the little lad. But for the rest, no. Why should I be sorry for speaking up for my sister? We ought to have done it sooner, Robert, for as long as we keep silent, he’ll keep on maltreating her.”
“You mean well, Ranulf, but you’ve much still to learn. No man is going to take it well if you seek to meddle in his marriage. What do you gain by angering Geoffrey? He’ll just turn that anger onto Maude, and there is little you can do about it, for you can act as her champion in the great hall, but not in the bedchamber.”
Ranulf nearly spilled his wine. “If he hurts her, I swear to Christ that I-”
“What?” Robert asked impatiently. “What could you do? Kill him?”
“Not so fast,” Rainald protested. “Why does Ranulf get to do it? What about me? At the very least, we ought to dice for the chance!”
“This is no joking matter, Rainald!”
Rainald gave a mock sigh. “There is nothing under God’s sky that cannot be joked about, Robert. How is it that you reached such a respectable age without learning that? Look, we all agree that Geoffrey had the right to read Maude’s letter. But did he also have the right to taunt her with it? I agree with the lad. She deserves better than she gets from him, and I for one am heartily sick of it.”
“What would you have me say, Rainald? I do not deny that Maude is miserable in her marriage. But antagonizing Geoffrey does her no service. Bluntly put, we need him. Until we can find a safe English port, Normandy is the battlefield for our war, and we cannot hope to win it without Geoffrey’s support. So the next time you two get the urge to make Maude a widow, bear in mind that your gallantry might cost her a crown.”
That silenced both Ranulf and Rainald, at least for the moment, and Amabel seized the opportunity to bolster Robert’s argument. “You’ll not like what I have to say; I’d have you hear me out, nonetheless. I am not defending Geoffrey, but Maude is not blameless, either. She puts me in mind of a woman who salts a well and then complains when the water is not fit to drink. A few smiles and some honeyed words might work wonders in that marriage!”
Ranulf was already shaking his head in sharp disagreement. “What I most admire about Maude is her lack of pretense. Her ship never flies under false colors. She is honest even if it hurts her, and that is a rare trait, indeed.”
Amabel was not won over. “A blade that cannot bend will eventually break, my lad. All I am saying is that women have no easy time of it in this world, and a woman who scorns to use the only weapons at her command makes her life more difficult than it needs be.”
Now it was Robert’s turn to shake his head. “I doubt that smiles or flattery could redeem Maude’s marriage, Amabel. Geoffrey does not strike me as a man who could be coaxed against his will, no more than I could-”
Amabel’s grin stopped him in midsentence, and he seemed so genuinely perplexed that Ranulf and Rainald could not help laughing, laughter that was cut off abruptly by Geoffrey and Maude’s return to the hall.
They all tensed, but soon saw the crisis was over; Geoffrey and Maude’s anger had burned itself out. They looked tired and subdued and, to Amabel’s critical eye, somewhat ashamed of themselves. She’d have liked to believe that the lesson would take, but she thought it more likely that they’d just blame each other all the more; she’d never known two people so unwilling or unable to learn from their mistakes. Aloud, she asked about Henry, wanting to know if he slept.
“For now,” Maude said, “but I’ll look in upon him later. Robert”-avoiding Geoffrey’s eye, she held out Brien Fitz Count’s letter-“I’d like you to read this.”
Geoffrey crossed to the table, where he poured the last of the wine into two cups, giving one to Maude. Robert passed on the letter to his brothers, and they read it together. The tension was back in the hall, feeding upon silent echoes, all that must be left unsaid.