the time we get that answer, he thought, eyeing Yves’ lowering brows and set jaw tolerantly, revenges may well have gone by the board, no longer of any significance.
“I have no choice now but to keep the peace,” said Yves, resentfully but resignedly. None the less, he was still brooding when a novice of the priory came looking for him, to bid him to the empress’s presence. In all innocence the young brother called her the Countess of Anjou. She would not have liked that. After the death of her first elderly husband she had retained and insisted on her title of empress still; the descent to mere countess by her second husband’s rank had displeased her mightily.
Yves departed in obedience to the summons torn between pleasure and trepidation, half expecting to be taken to task for the unbecoming scene in the great court. She had never yet turned her sharp displeasure on him, but once at least he had witnessed its blistering effect on others. And yet she could charm the bird from the tree when she chose, and he had been thrown the occasional blissful moment during his brief sojourn in her household.
This time one of her ladies was waiting for him on the threshold of the empress’s apartments in the prior’s own guesthouse, a young girl Yves did not know, dark-haired and bright-eyed, a very pretty girl who had picked up traces of her mistress’s self-confidence and boldness. She looked Yves up and down with a rapid, comprehensive glance, and took her time about smiling, as though he had to pass a test before being accepted. But the smile, when it did come, indicated that she found him something a little better than merely acceptable. It was a pity he hardly noticed.
“She is waiting for you. The earl of Norfolk commended you, it seems. Come within.” And crossing the threshold into the presence she lowered her eyes discreetly, and made her deep reverence with practised grace. “Madame, Messire Hugonin!”
The empress was seated in a stall-like chair piled with cushions, her dark hair loosed from its coif and hanging over her shoulder in a heavy, lustrous braid. She wore a loose gown of deep blue velvet, against which her ivory white skin glowed with a live sheen. The light of candles was kind to her, and her carriage was always that of a queen, if an uncrowned queen. Yves bent the knee to her with unaffected fervour, and stood to wait her pleasure.
“Leave us!” said Maud, without so much as a glance at the lingering girl, or the older lady who stood at her shoulder. And when they were gone from the room: “Come closer! Here are all too many stretched ears at too many doors. Closer still! Let me look at you.”
He stood, a little nervously, to be studied long and thoughtfully, and the huge, Byzantine eyes passed over him at leisure, like the first stroking caress of the flaying knife.
“Norfolk says you did your errand well,” she said then. “Like a natural diplomat. It’s true I was in some doubt of him, but he is here. I marked little of the diplomat about you this afternoon in the great court.”
Yves felt himself flushing to the hair, but she hushed any protest or excuse he might have been about to utter with a raised hand and a cool smile. “No, say nothing! I admired your loyalty and your spirit, if I could not quite compliment you on your discretion.”
“I was foolish,” he said. “I am sensible of it.”
“Then that is quickly disposed of,” said the empress, “for at this moment I am, officially, reproving you for the folly, and repeating the bishop’s orders to you, as the aggressor, to curb your resentment hereafter. For the sake of appearances, as no doubt Stephen is chastising the other fool. Well, now you have understood me, and you know you may not offer any open affront or injury to any man within these walls. With that in agreement between us, you may leave me.”
He made his obeisance, somewhat confused in mind, and turned again to the closed door. Behind him the incisive voice, softened and still, said clearly: “All the same, I must confess I should not be greatly grieved to see Brien de Soulis dead at my feet.”
Yves went out in a daze, the soft, feline voice pursuing him until he had closed the door between. And there, standing patiently a few yards away, waiting with folded hands to be summoned back to her mistress, the elder lady turned her thin oval face and dark, incurious eyes upon him, asking nothing, confiding nothing. No doubt she had seen many young men emerge from that imperial presence, in many states of mortification, elation, devotion and despair, and refrained, as she did now, from making them aware how well she could read the signs. He drew his disrupted wits together, and made the best he could of his withdrawal, passing by her with a somewhat stiff reverence. Not until he was out in the darkened court, with the chill of the November twilight about him, did he pause to draw breath, and recall, with frightening clarity, every word that had been said in that brief encounter.
Had the empress’s gentlewoman overheard the valedictory words? Could she have heard them, or any part of them, as the door opened to let him out? And would she, even for an instant, have interpreted them as he had? No, surely impossible! He remembered now who she was, closer than any other to her liege lady: the widow of a knight in the earl of Surrey’s following, and herself born a de Redvers, from a minor branch of the family of Baldwin de Redvers, the empress’s earl of Devon. Impeccably noble, fit to serve an empress. And old enough and wise enough to be a safe repository for an empress’s secrets. Perhaps too wise to hear even what she heard! But if she had caught the last words, how did she read them?
He crossed the court slowly, hearing again the soft, insistent voice. No, it was he who was mangling the sense of her words. Surely she had been doing no more than giving bitter expression to a perfectly natural hatred of a man who had betrayed her. What else could be expected of her? No, she had not been even suggesting a course of action, much less ordering. We say these things in passion, into empty air, not with intent.
And yet she had quite deliberately instructed him: You may not offer any open affront or injury… And then: But all the same, I should not be greatly grieved… And with that you may leave me. Yves Hugonin! You have wit enough to get my meaning.
Impossible! He was doing her great wrong, it was he who had the devious mind, seeing her words twisted and askew. And he must and would put this unworthiness clean out of his mind and his memory.
He said no word to Hugh or to Cadfael, he would have been ashamed to probe the wound openly. He shrugged off Hugh’s teasing: “Well, at any rate she did not eat you!” with an arduous smile, and declined to be drawn. But not even Compline, in solemn state among bishops and magnates in preparation for the next day’s conference, could quite cleanse the disquiet from his mind.
In the chapter-house of Saint Mary’s Priory, after solemn Mass, the sovereignty and nobility of England met in full session. Three bishops presided, Winchester, Ely, and Roger de Clinton of Coventry and Lichfield. All three, inevitably, had partisan inclination towards one or other of the contending parties, but it appeared that they made a genuine effort to put all such interest aside, and concentrate with profound prayer on the attempt to secure agreement. Brother Cadfael, angling for a place outside the open door, where observers might at least glimpse and overhear the exchanges within, took it as a warning against any great optimism that those attending tended to group defensively together with their own kind, the empress and her allies on one side in solid phalanx, King
