The hours passed quickly in cheery conversation and, when Geoffroi went out to see that the horses were comfortable, he was surprised to see that the short winter daylight was drawing to a close and darkness was falling.
Back inside the hall, he said to Ediva, ‘My lady, I regret that we must be on our way. It is almost dark, and we have to find lodgings.’
‘Nonsense,’ she replied briskly. ‘You are our guests. You have come all this way — yes, where is Acquin, exactly? — and you must stay with us. Yes, children?’
Ida and Hugh said, ‘Yes!’ Ida, Geoffroi couldn’t help but notice, flashed him a brilliant smile.
He realised, with a strange leap of the heart, that the very last thing he actually wanted to do just now was to ride away.
Geoffroi and the Lombard stayed in Lewes for a week. They would have extended the visit longer, and were certainly pressed to do so, but Geoffroi was very aware of his own family back at Acquin. The Christmas season was fast approaching, and he must be home for the feast. It would be the first one that his family would spend without Sir Robert, and Geoffroi knew he must be there to help them all through it. Indeed, to have them help him.
It was amazing, though, how much better he felt now. He felt guilty, as if he should not be feeling so happy when his father had been dead for less than two months. He prayed for forgiveness and confessed himself humbly to the local priest who said, with what sounded like a smile, that God had sent love and happiness as precious gifts and that no man should question them when their flowering stemmed from all that was honest and honourable.
All the way back to the manor house, Geoffroi puzzled over what precisely the priest could have meant.
Later he heard that Ida had visited the priest shortly before he had done.
And he began — very tentatively and wonderingly — to think he might have stumbled on the answer.
By the time Geoffroi and the Lombard left for the journey back to Acquin, Geoffroi knew he had fallen in love with Ida.
She was bright, brave, funny, capable and, given that she was still only sixteen, mature and quite sensible. Sensible, anyway, when she wasn’t poking fun at people — Geoffroi in particular — and hooting with laughter.
He was sure — almost sure — that she felt something for him, too.
But he dared not ask. Dared not approach either Ida herself or her mother. For one thing, he had come here on a very different mission from courting Herbert’s daughter, and his sense of what was fitting did not allow him to turn the one purpose into the other. For another thing, he was quite terrified that Ida, informed that this large foreigner who had crusaded with her father had fallen in love with her and wished to ask for her hand, would fall over herself laughing.
So Geoffroi kept his peace.
He found a private moment just before his departure to present Ediva with the small parcel of Herbert’s belongings. He was about to leave her on her own to open it, but she shot out her hand and caught his sleeve.
‘No, Geoffroi, please stay,’ she said. ‘You have carried this packet so long and so far, and I would prefer you to be with me when I uncover its contents. If you will?’
‘Aye, lady,’ he said softly. ‘Gladly.’
He watched as she unfolded the cloth wrappings and took out her last mementoes of her husband.
They were not many.
A heavy gold signet ring. A fine undershirt, the fabric so soft and worn that it folded up into a small bundle. A knife. A belt.
Geoffroi had realised, when first given the package, that it could not possibly hold all that Herbert had worn and owned; clearly, his body must have been robbed while he lay dead on the battlefield. Some opportunist hand had helped itself to Herbert’s sword. To his helmet, breastplate and armour. And the clothing he had been wearing when he died, heavily bloodstained as it must have been, had presumably been buried with him.
A sudden stifled gasp brought him back to the present. Glancing quickly at Ediva, he saw that she held in her hands a carefully folded square of linen, which she unwrapped to reveal three locks of hair.
The brown peppered with strands of grey had to be her own. The short, dark auburn curl — just like Herbert’s, Geoffroi remembered — would belong to Hugh.
And the long tress with a wave running through it, its bright chestnut colour catching the light and shining like the sunset, could only have been cut from one head.
Staring at it, Geoffroi felt something — some strange new emotion — take up its place in his heart. And Ediva, as if she perceived and understood, held out Ida’s lock of hair.
‘Take it, Geoffroi,’ she said. ‘Guard it safe, as dear Herbert did. Let it serve to keep her in your heart until you come back to us.’
11
Geoffroi returned to Lewes in the spring.
The Lombard insisted on accompanying him; a man who stood fair to lose his heart (if indeed he had not already lost it), he maintained, ought to have a companion when he went a-courting, in case he lost his head as well and did something foolish that would land him in trouble.
Geoffroi, happy to have his friend’s company, gave way to the insistence with a smile.
He was much easier in his mind over leaving Acquin this time than he had been last December. The family had grown used to Sir Robert’s absence and it seemed to Geoffroi that, in some ways, life was now simpler and less painful for his mother, at least, now that she no longer had to live with the anxiety of caring for a sick and fast-sinking husband. His brother, Robert, seemed to be coping well with his new responsibilities. Geoffroi felt that Robert would not miss him if he were to go away on even a prolonged visit, since he clearly preferred to set about things quietly and alone, introspective as ever, and without going to the trouble of asking his younger sibling what he thought.
The night before he was due to leave, Geoffroi woke from a strange and intense dream. He was standing in a small, round room, a fire burning in a brazier and a woman all in white by his side. She wore a veil of some fine cloth which, while obscuring the detail of her features, yet revealed that her expression was one of grave concern.
In a narrow bed lay a sick person. When the dreaming Geoffroi tried to bend down to see who it might be, the woman shook her head and drew him away. Then she pointed at Geoffroi’s chest and said, Where is it? Do you carry it in the accustomed place?
And in his dream he felt — just as he had felt it as he carried it for those endless miles — the Eye of Jerusalem, pressed close against his breast.
He drew it out and held it out towards the woman in white. But instead of taking it from him, she stepped back, bowed her head and made way for him now to approach the figure on the bed.
Inside his head someone said, with absolute clarity, the Eye is yours to command. You know what you must do.
He was in the very act of holding the Eye over the burning forehead of the sick person — he thought it was a woman, or perhaps a youth — when a jolt ran through him, throwing him into a panic and waking him up.
Sweating, heart pounding, he shot up in bed.
It was a dream, he told himself, willing courage back into his veins. Just a dream.
But he found it impossible to lie down again with any hope of getting back to sleep. No matter how he tried to distract his thoughts, he kept seeing the Eye of Jerusalem; it was as if, having brought itself so dramatically to his attention, it was not going to let go.
Eventually, and with a weird and rather unpleasant feeling that he obeyed another’s whim, Geoffroi got out of bed and, tiptoeing so as not to disturb his brothers and the Lombard, crept out of the chamber and outside into the courtyard.
Even in the dark, he went unerringly to the place where he had hidden his treasure. He moved the concealing stone aside — not without difficulty, for it was some time since he had been out to look at the Eye — and put his hand inside the secret aperture. His fingers found the leather bag, and he drew it out.