'Well.' The priest smiled and patted his temple. 'This old head may not work as swiftly as once it did, but I do not forget.' He made a calculation, tapping his chin with his fingertips. 'Two days from tomorrow, I believe. Yes, something like that.'
'In three days!' exclaimed the baron.
'I think that's what he said, yes,' agreed the priest affably. 'Is it far, this Eye-as place?'
'Far enough,' sighed the baron. He could reach Caer Rhodl in time for the funeral, but he would have to leave at once, with at least one night on the road. Having just spent six days travelling, the last thing he wanted was to sit another three days in the saddle.
A brief search led the baron to the one place he might have guessed his wife would be found. She was sitting in the warmest room of Castle Hereford-a small, square chamber above the great hall. It had no feature other than a wide, south-facing window which, during the long summer, admitted the sunlight the whole day through. Lady Agnes, dressed in a gauzy fluff of pale yellow linen, had set up her tapestry frame beside the wide-open window and was plying her needle with a fierce, almost vengeful concentration. She glanced up as he came in, needle poised to attack, saw who it was, and as if stabbing an enemy, plunged the long needle into the cloth before her. 'You have returned, my lord,' she observed, pulling the thread tight. 'Pleasant journey?'
'Pleasant enough,' said Neufmarche. 'You have fared well in my absence, I trust.'
'I make no complaint.'
Her tone suggested that his absence was the cause of no end of tribulations, too tiresome to mention now that he was back. Why did she always do that? he wondered, and decided to ignore the comment and move straight to the meat of the matter at hand. 'Cadwgan has died at last,' he said. 'I must go to the funeral.'
'Of course,' she agreed. 'How long will you be away this time?'
'Six days at least,' he answered. 'Eight, more like. I'd hoped I'd seen the last of the saddle for a while.'
'Then take a carriage,' suggested Agnes, striking with the needle once more.
'A carriage.' He stared at her as if he'd never heard the word before. 'I will not be seen riding in a carriage like an invalid,' he sniffed.
'You are a baron of the March,' his wife pointed out. 'You can do what you like. There is no shame in travelling in comfort with an entourage as befits a man of your rank and nobility. You could also travel at night, if need be.'
The baron spied a table in the corner of the room and, on it, a silver platter with a jar and three goblets. He strode to the table and took up the jar to find that it contained sweet wine. He poured himself a cup, then poured one for his lady wife. 'If I got a carriage, you could come to the funeral with me,' he said, extending the goblet to her.
'Me?'What little colour she had drained from the baroness's thin face; the needle halted in midflight. 'Go to Wales? Perish the thought. C'est impossible! No.'
'It is not impossible,' answered her husband, urging the cup on her. 'I go there all the time, as you know.'
She shook her head, pursing her thin lips into a frown. 'I will not consort with barbarians.'
'They are not barbarians,' the baron told her, still holding out the cup of wine. 'They are crude and uneducated, true, and given to strange customs, God knows. But they are intelligent in their own way, and capable of many of the higher virtues.'
Lady Agnes folded her spindly arms across her narrow bosom. 'That is as may be,' she allowed coolly. 'But they are a contentious and bloody race who love nothing more than carving Norman heads from Norman shoulders.' She shivered violently and reached for the shawl that was perpetually close to hand. 'You have said as much yourself.'
'In the main, that may be true,' the baron granted, warming to the idea of his wife's company as he contemplated the more subtle nuances of the situation. To arrive at the funeral on horseback leading a company of mounted knights and men-at-arms would certainly reinforce his position as lord and master of the cantref-but arriving with the baroness beside him in a carriage, accompanied by a domestic entourage, would firmly place his visit on a more social and personal footing. This, he was increasingly certain, was just the right note to strike with Cadwgan's family, kinsmen, countrymen, and heir. In short, he was convinced it was an opportunity not to be missed.
Placing the goblet firmly in her hand, he drank from his cup and declared, 'Ordinarily, I would agree with you. However, my Welsh fiefdom is an exception. We have been on productive and peaceful terms for many years, and your appearance at this time will commence a new entente between our two noble houses.'
Lady Agnes frowned and glared into her cup as if it contained poison. She did not like the way this conversation was going, but saw no way to disarm the baron in his full-gallop charge. 'May it please you, my lord,' she said, shoving back her chair and rising to her feet, 'I will send with you a letter of condolence for the women of the house and my sincere regret at not being able to offer such comforts in person.'
She stepped around the tapestry frame to where the baron was standing, rose up on her toes, and kissed his forehead, then bade him good afternoon. Bernard watched his wife-head high, back stiff-as she walked to the door. Oh, she could be stubborn as a barnyard ass. In that, she was her father's daughter to the last drop of her Angevin blood.
She might balk, but she would do as she was told. He hurried to his chambers below and called for his seneschal. 'Remey,' he said when his chief servant appeared carrying a tray laden with cold meat, cheese, bread, and ale. 'I need a carriage. Lady Agnes and I will attend the funeral of my Welsh client, Cadwgan. My lady's maidservants will attend her, and tell my sergeant to choose no fewer than eight knights and as many men-at- arms. Tell them to make ready to march before nightfall.'
'It will be done, Sire,' replied the seneschal, touching the rolled brim of his soft cap.
'Thank you,' said Neufmarche with a gesture of dismissal. As the ageing servant reached the door, the baron called out, 'And Remey! See to it that the carriage is good and stout. The roads are rock-lined ruts beyond the March. I want something that will get us there and back without breaking wheels and axles at every bump.'
'To be sure, my lord,' replied Remey. 'Will you require anything else?'
'Spare no effort. I want it ready at once,' the baron said. 'We must leave before the day is out if we are to reach Caer Rhodl in time.'
The seneschal withdrew, and the baron sat down to his meal in solitude, his thoughts already firmly enmeshed in grand schemes for his Welsh commot and his long-cherished desire for expansion in the territory. Prince Garran would take his father's place on the throne of Eiwas, and under the baron's tutelage would become the perfect tool in the baron's hand. Together they would carve a wide swathe through the fertile lowlands and grass-covered slopes of the Welsh hill country. The Britons possessed a special knack with cattle, it had to be admitted; when matched with the insatiable Norman appetite for beef, the fortune to be made might well exceed even the baron's more grandiose fancies.
The carriage Remey chose for the journey was surprisingly comfortable, muffling the judders and jolts of the deeply rutted roads and rocky trackways, making the journey almost agreeable. Accompanied by a force of sixteen knights and men-at-arms on horseback, and a train of seven pack mules with servants to attend them, they could not have been more secure. The baron noted that even Lady Agnes, once resigned to the fact that there was no escaping her fate, had perked up. After the second day, a little colour showed in her pale cheeks, and by the time the wooden fortress that was Caer Rhodl came into view, she had remarked no fewer than three times how good it was to get out of the perpetual chill of the castle. 'Merveilleux!' she exclaimed as a view of the distant mountains hove into view. 'Simply glorious.'
'I am so glad you approve, my dear,' remarked the baron dryly.
'I had no idea it could be like this,' she confessed. 'So wild so beautiful. And yet…'
'Yes?'
'And yet so, so very, very empty. It makes me sad somehow-the melancolie, no? Do not tell me you do not feel it, my love.'
'Oh, but I do,' answered the baron, taking unexpected delight in his headstrong wife's rare reversal of opinion. 'I do feel it. No matter how often I visit the lands beyond the March, I always sense a sorrow I cannot explain-as if the hills and valleys hold secrets it would break the heart to hear.'
'Yes, perhaps,' granted Agnes. 'Quaint, yes, and perhaps a little mysterious. But not frightening. I thought it would be more frightening somehow.'
