smooth and decorative as a coat of gilt. She gazed at him wide-eyed, the blank, bewildered stare of one suddenly addressed in an unknown tongue. “I don’t understand you! What is it I’m to give you?”
“Dear girl, you know only too well. I want the letter your uncle was carrying to Earl Ranulf of Chester, the same he should have delivered at the fair, by prior agreement, to Euan of Shotwick, my noble kinsman’s eyes and ears.” He was willing to go softly with her, since time was now no object, he even found the prospect amusing, and was prepared to admire her playing of the game, provided he got his own way in the end. “Never tell me, sweet, mat you have not even heard of any such letter. I doubt if you make as good a liar as I do.”
“Truly,” she said, shaking her head helplessly, “I understand you not at all.
There is nothing else I could say to you, for I know nothing of a letter. If my uncle carried one, as you claim, he never confided in me. Do you suppose a man of business takes his womenfolk into his confidence over important matters?
You’re mistaken in him if you believe that.”
Corbicre came forward an idle pace or two into the room, and she saw that no trace of his limp remained. The brazier had burned into a steady, scarlet glow, the light from it reflected like the burnish of sunset along the waving gold of his hair. “So I thought,” he agreed, and laughed at the memory. “It took me a long time, too long, to arrive at you, my lady. I would not have trusted a woman, no … But Master Thomas, it seems, had other ideas. And I grant you, he had an unusual young woman to deal with. For what it’s worth, I admire you.
But I shall not let that stand in my way, believe me. What you hold is too precious to leave me any scruples, even if I were given to such weaknesses.”
“But I don’t hold it! I can’t give you what I have not in my possession. How can I convince you?” she demanded, with the first spurt of impatience and indignation, though she knew in advance that she was wasting all pretences. He knew.
He shook his head at her, smiling. “It is not in your baggage. We’ve taken apart even the seams of your saddlebags. Therefore it is here, on your person. There is no other possibility. It was not on your uncle, it was neither in his barge nor in his booth. Who was left but you? You, and Euan of Shotwick, if I had somehow let a messenger slip through my guard. You, I knew, would keep, and come tamed to my hand?but for a sudden qualm I had, that you might have sent it back in Thomas’s coffin for safe-keeping, but that was to overrate you, my dear, clever as you are. And Euan never received it. Who was then left, but you? Not his crew?all of them far too simple, even if he had not had orders to keep strict secrecy, as I know he had. I doubt if he told even you what was in the letter.”
It was true, she had no idea of its contents. She had simply been given it to wear and guard, as the obvious innocent who would never come under suspicion of being anyone’s courier, but its importance had been impressed upon her most powerfully. Lives, her uncle had said, hung upon its safe delivery, or, failing that, its safe return to the sender. Or, in the last resort, its total destruction.
“I am tired of telling you,” she said forcefully, “that you are wrong in supposing that I know anything about it, or believe it ever existed but in your imagination. You brought me here, my lord, on the pretext of providing me the companionship of your sister, and conducting us both to Bristol. Do you intend to do as you promised?”
He threw his head back and laughed aloud, the red glow dancing on his fine cheekbones. “You would not have come with me if there had not been a woman in the story. If you behave sensibly now you may yet meet, some day, the only sister I have. She’s married to one of Ranulf’s knights, and keeps me informed of what goes on in Ranulf’s court. But devil a nun she’d ever have made, even if she were not already a wife. But send you safe home to Bristol?yes, that I’ll do, when you’ve given me what I want from you. And what I will have!” he added with a snap, and his shapely, smiling lips thinned and tightened into a sword-blade.
There was a moment, then, when she almost considered obeying him, and giving up what she had kept so obstinately through so many shocks. Fear was a reality by this time, but so was anger, all the more fierce because she was so resolutely suppressing it. He came a step towards her, his smile as narrow as a cat’s bearing down on a bird, and she moved just as steadily to keep the brazier between them; that also amused him, but he had ample patience.
“I don’t understand,” she said, frowning as if she had begun to feel genuine curiosity, “why you should set such store on a letter. If I had it, do you think I should refuse it to you, when I’m in your power? But why does it matter to you so much? What can there be in a mere letter?”
“Fool girl, there can be life and death in a letter,” he said condescending to her simplicity, “wealth, power, even land to be won or lost. Do you know what that single packet could be worth? To King Stephen, his kingdom entire! To me, maybe an earldom. And to a number of others, their necks! For I think you must know, for all your innocence, that Robert of Gloucester has his plans made to bring the Empress Maud to England, and make a fight of it for her claim to the throne, and has been touting through his agents here to get Earl Ranulf s support for her cause when they do land. My noble kinsman has a hard heart, and has demanded proof of the strength of that cause before he lifts a hand or stirs a foot to commit himself. Names, numbers, every detail, if I know my Ranulf, they’ve been forced to set down in writing for him. All the tale of the king’s enemies, the names of all those who pay him lip service now but are preparing to betray him. There could be as many as fifty names on the list, and it will serve, believe me, for Ranulf s ruin no less, since if his name is not there, he had reached the point of considering adding it. What will not King Stephen give, to have that delivered into his hand? All committed to writing, it may be even the date they plan to sail, and the port where they hope to land. All his enemies cut off before they can forgather, a prison prepared for Maud before ever she gets foot ashore. That, my child, is what I propose to offer to the king, and never doubt but I shall get my price for it.”
She stood staring at him with drawn brows and shocked eyes across the brazier, and felt her blood chill in her veins and all her body grow cold. And he was not even a partisan! He had killed, or procured others to kill for him, three times already, not for a cause, but coldly and methodically for his own gain and advancement. He cared nothing at all for which of them wore the crown, Stephen or Maud. If he could have got his hands rather on information of value to Maud, and felt that she was likely to prevail and reward him well, he would have betrayed Stephen and all his supporters just as blithely.
For the first time she was terrified, the weight of all those imperilled lives lay upon her heart like a great stone. She had no doubt that this estimate of what would be in the letter must be very close to the truth, close enough to destroy a great many men who adhered to the same side her uncle had served with devotion. He had been a passionate partisan, and it had cost him his life. Now, unless she could bring about a miracle, the message he had carried would cost many more lives, bloodshed, bereavement, ruin. And all for the enrichment and advancement of Ivo Corbicre! She had followed and supported Master Thomas as a matter of family loyalty. Now that meant nothing any longer, and all she felt was a desperate desire to avoid more killing, not to betray any man on either side of the quarrel to his enemies on the other. To help every fugitive, to hide every hunted man, to keep the wives unwidowed and the children still fathered, was better by far than to fight and kill either for Stephen or for Maud.
And she would not let him have them! Whatever the cost, he should not tread his way unscathed to his earldom over other men’s faces.
