“Geoffrey! At last! We were beginning to think you would never come!”
As the woman approached him, bringing with her the goblet of warm wine that was usually offered to travellers as a symbol of welcome, Geoffrey wondered whether his misgivings about returning might have been unduly pessimistic. She was smiling and, in the dark, her friendly words of greeting seemed genuine enough.
She waited while he passed the reins of his destrier back to Julian, and then thrust the cup into his hand before he was really ready. It was full to the brim, and so hot that he almost dropped it. He bit back an oath that would have been bad manners to utter at such a point, and smiled at her, wondering whether she was his sister Joan or one of his brothers” wives. However, all the Mappestones, except Stephen, had brown hair, but this woman’s luxurious mane was paler, almost beige. He decided that she must be his eldest brother’s wife, Bertrada, performing her duty as the lady of the manor.
Others followed her out into the bailey, and within a few moments he was surrounded, all talking at once and asking him questions that they gave him no opportunity to answer. Bewildered, Geoffrey tried to fit the barely remembered faces of twenty years ago to the rabble of people who clustered around him.
Geoffrey’s eldest brother, Walter, had been married to a wealthy local merchant’s daughter called Bertrada, and the guard had already told him that Joan was wed to the cowardly Sir Olivier. After Walter and Joan came Stephen, whom Geoffrey recalled as taciturn and crafty. But none of the people who shouted questions at him in the bailey seemed in the slightest bit quiet, so perhaps Stephen had changed. After Stephen was Henry, two years older than Geoffrey, and whose overriding passions had been fighting his younger brother and killing the rats he trapped in the stables. Geoffrey wondered whether it was Stephen’s or Henry’s wife who had died the previous year. Perhaps she had been murdered too-like Enide.
He shook himself irritably. Such speculations would do him no good at all. He was tired and cold, and he needed time to work out who was who in his family, and how much they had changed. There was no point beginning to ask questions about Enide’s death, or about who was poisoning his father, until he had allowed himself some time to become at least superficially reacquainted with his relatives. After all, he was a stranger to them, and there was no reason why they should trust him either: if there were anything untoward about Enide’s death, interrogating them about it would serve only to put them on their guard.
A burly, balding man had picked up Geoffrey’s saddlebags, and was testing their weight with an acquisitiveness he made no effort to hide. Geoffrey shivered again, noticing that a frost was settling, turning the churned mud of the inner ward to a rock hard consistency. The woman who had brought him the welcoming cup-Bertrada, Geoffrey had assumed-took his hand solicitously.
“You are frozen. And wet, too. We should be ashamed of ourselves! You return to us after so long, and we keep you in the cold.” She led him up the steps to the keep. “How was your journey?”
“Relatively uneventful,” Geoffrey replied.
He felt unaccountably nervous at being the centre of attention among so many people he did not know, and was not inclined to mention Caerdig’s ambush or the death of Aumary until he was certain that one of his family was not responsible.
Bertrada laughed. “Oh, come now, Geoffrey! You travel from Jerusalem to England, and you describe the journey as ‘relatively uneventful”? You must have more to say than that. You have not spoken to us for twenty years.”
“Would that he had not for another twenty,” muttered one man, eyeing Geoffrey with rank dislike.
Henry, thought Geoffrey immediately, regarding his third brother with interest. Henry had changed little, although he now wore his brown hair long and tied at the back in the Saxon fashion. He had not grown much-Geoffrey still topped him by a head at least. He studied Henry closer and saw a curious mixture of health and debauchery. Henry was sturdy, and looked fit and strong, but the red veins in the whites of his eyes and the purple veins in his cheeks suggested that the wine fumes that Geoffrey detected on his breath were nothing unusual.
A beautiful woman with tresses of pale gold and a delicate, almost frail figure pinched Henry’s arm in a gesture of warning, and turned to Geoffrey with a warm smile.
“We are pleased to welcome you back after so long. How long do you plan to stay?”
“That miserable cur has just bitten me!”
Geoffrey did not need to look around to know which was the miserable cur in question. With alarm, he saw it had slipped its tether, and was on the loose. Fortunately, it appeared as bemused by the gaggle of people as was Geoffrey, and had not strayed too far from its master’s protection. Geoffrey leaned down and took a secure hold of the thick fur at the scruff of its neck, feeling a soft buzzing under his fingers as it growled at the back of its throat. Luckily, his relatives were making sufficient noise with their questions for the dog’s feelings about them to be drowned out.
At the top of the stairs, Geoffrey was ushered into the large hall, which had a hearth at the far end. He paused, noting that new tapestries had been hung, although the rushes on the floor did not appear to have been changed since he had left. A sleepy kitchenmaid was stoking up the fire, and it was beginning to blaze merrily. Those servants who usually slept in the hall had been roused from their repose and sent to the kitchens, while others scurried about setting up a table and throwing together a meal. Geoffrey was offered a large chair near the fire, and provided with another cup of scalding wine. Again, it had been overfilled, and the hot liquid spilled over his fingers and onto the dog, which leapt to its feet with a howl of outrage.
“Unfriendly animal, that,” remarked the man who had been bitten, twisting round to inspect his ankle. “Where did you get it? Is it from the Holy Land?”
“From Italy,” said Geoffrey, thinking back to when he had found the dog as an abandoned puppy some years before. There were times when he was grateful for its somewhat irascible company, although most of the time it was more menace than pleasure.
“Ah,” said the bitten man, as though Italian origins explained perfectly well why a dog might bite. “If you like dogs, I have a new litter of hunting hounds. You are welcome to take one.”
Geoffrey wondered how long a puppy would survive the jealous jaws of his black-and-white dog, but nodded politely, thinking he could find some excuse to decline later. The last thing he wanted was another dog.
“I would like to see our father,” he said, looking round at the assembled faces, and trying to assess which one was Walter. “I hear he is unwell.”
“I bet you have!” Henry sneered. “So, that is why you are here. You heard about his will and came running.”
There was an uncomfortable silence, during which Geoffrey regarded Henry with dislike. He turned to Bertrada.
“Perhaps I could see him now? And then I will be on my way.”
“You cannot leave us so soon!” cried the balding man. “You have only just arrived and you have told us nothing of your travels. Stay with us a while. Ignore Henry.” He gave the surly Henry a brief look of disapproval, which Henry treated with a contemptuous stare of his own.
“You cannot see Sir Godric tonight, Geoffrey,” said Bertrada. “He is already asleep, and he needs his rest these days. You can see him tomorrow, when you will both be fresh.”
“That is a fine destrier you have,” said Sir Olivier, his display of faint-heartedness at his first encounter with Geoffrey clearly forgotten-by Olivier at least. He flicked his elegant cloak behind him, and perched on the edge of the table, swinging a well-turned leg. “Was he very expensive?”