“Aye, my son,” a soft voice said from the other side of the screen. “You have come to make your confession?”
The priest sounded surprised. Philip thought that he was probably the first male he had seen in his confessional in a while.
“No, Father Anselm,” he said. “I have come in search of you. I have a commission for you from the Lady Isabel de Leon.”
Silence.
Philip waited.
At last, “Lady Isabel?” the disembodied voice said waveringly.
“Aye, Father. It is important. Can we go somewhere and talk?”
“I must remain here for another half an hour,” the priest said. His voice still sounded breathless. “After that I can meet you at the front door of the cathedral.”
“Very well,” said Philip. “My name is Philip Demain and I will be there.”
As Philip left the confessional, he got a very self-satisfied, I told you so kind of look from the old lady who was waiting to go in behind him. Obviously she thought that he was leaving so quickly because the priest had refused to hear his confession due to the fact that he was desecrating the church by wearing armor.
Philip gave her a pleasant smile.
She looked affronted.
He decided he would go and get something to eat before returning to the cathedral to meet the priest.
Half an hour later Philip stood in front of the great carved wooden doors of Winchester Cathedral. With a cup of ale and an eel pie in his stomach, he was feeling a bit more in charity with the world.
The cathedral doors were open to the September sun and a tall priest wearing a long brown robe and sandals came through them. It did not take him long to pick out Philip.
“Philip Demain?” he asked as he came up beside the young knight.
“Aye,” Philip said.
“I am Father Anselm,” came the simple reply.
The priest was as tall as Philip, which was not something that often happened. Unlike Philip, however, he was very thin, almost emaciated, and his dark eyes had a haunted expression that was not entirely comfortable to look upon. He appeared to be somewhere in his early forties, younger than Philip had expected.
“We can go into the cathedral garden, if you like,” Father Anselm said in a voice that was a little stronger than the one Philip had heard in the confessional.
Philip nodded and followed the priest around the side of the great gray stone church and into the grounds of a small, neat herb and flower garden that lay against the cathedral walls. There was an empty stone bench placed along one of the paths, and the priest led him to it. The three other benches in the garden were filled with people, all of whom were speaking in low voices.
From the garden one had a good view of the two hills that looked down on Winchester, St. Giles Hill, which lay on the east bank of the Itchen, and St. Catherine’s Hill, which lay to the city’s south.
“So,” Father Anselm said, “you have come from the Lady Isabel?”
“Aye, Father, she has sent me with a commission for you.”
The priest nodded. His haunted brown eyes were fixed unwaveringly on Philip’s face. “How…how is she?” he asked.
Philip was surprised, not so much by the question as by the urgent manner in which it was asked.
“She is well, Father,” he replied after a minute. “She is resident in the Benedictine convent in Worcester and has been there for the last fourteen years.”
The priest wet his lips with his tongue. “Aye,” he said. “I know.” He seemed to make an effort to pull himself together. “So,” he said resolutely, “what commission does Lady Isabel have for me?”
Philip told him. Then he quickly reached out his hand to steady the man, who had gone so pale that Philip was afraid he might faint.
“Hugh?” the priest said. His voice was a mere thread of sound. “Nigel Haslin thinks that he has found Hugh?”
“Aye, Father. He has asked Lady Isabel to send someone to Somerford to verify the man’s identity.”
Older men might refer to Hugh as a boy, but Philip, who was his exact age, never would.
“Can it be possible?” Father Anselm said with palpable wonder. “Could God be that good?” The priest’s great dark haunted eyes lifted toward the sky. “After all these years, can He have actually given Hugh back to us?”
The scent of flowers and herbs was rich in the mild September air. The sun was warm upon Philip’s uncovered head. He felt his face freeze at the priest’s words.
“You must prepare yourself to be disappointed, Father,” he said as gently as he could. “There is little likelihood that Hugh could have survived for all these years.”
The priest did not even hear him. Instead he clasped his hands together in an attitude of prayer. “Can it be possible?” he repeated in the same wondering voice as before. “At last am I to be given the chance to make up for all the wrong that I did to that boy?”
7
The weeks before Nigel and his following left for the tournament at Chippenham were hectic. Every day the men were out on the practice field, wrestling, tilting at the quintain, practicing their archery and their horsemanship. When they were not using their arms, they were polishing them, or repairing them, or having the smith make them new ones.
The men of Somerford were determined not to be disgraced by their performance at Chippenham. All of Guy’s other vassals and their retinues would be there, and the men of Somerford desired to shine the brightest.
One thing became very apparent, however, as the days went by. It was going to be very difficult to hide Hugh among the large company of Nigel’s men-at least if he was going to take part in any of the exercises.
He was too good. He stood out from the rest of them like a steel sword in the midst of a line of wooden pikes.
Nigel was astonished. He had not expected such prowess from one who was so young and so lightly built.
But Jesu, the boy was strong. And even more impressively, he had the speed and balance of a cat.
He beat all of Nigel’s men at wrestling and archery.
He beat all of them at swordplay.
To see him manage his horse, without reins, with seat and legs only, was a thing to bring tears to a man’s eyes.
“How can I possibly hide him?” Nigel said to his daughter one day as she stood next to him at the edge of the practice field, watching Hugh ride at the quintain.
He hit it perfectly, dead on, ducked so that his body was hanging off the side of his horse, and galloped on.
“You can’t,” Cristen said with amusement.
“I was not planning to bring him to Earl Guy’s notice quite so emphatically,” Nigel said.
“Do you know, Father, I rather think that once we reach Chippenham, what happens to Hugh is going to be out of your hands.”
He gave her a grim look. “You think it is Guy who will be calling the tune?”
“No,” Cristen said, with the same amusement she had shown before. “I think it will be Hugh.”
One of Cristen’s jobs was to procure the provisions and the fodder they would need for moving a large group of men and horses to Chippenham. It was less than a day’s ride to Guy’s castle, but Nigel liked to bring his own hay for his horses. One year he had been given moldy hay by the earl and he had never forgotten it.
At last, all was in order. All the mail was polished until it shone-helmets, shields, hauberks, swords. All the spears were sharpened. The hay was loaded on the wagons. The men’s clothing was clean and mended (another job that had fallen to Cristen and her ladies). There was no reason at all for Nigel’s men not to make a good show at his overlord’s tournament.
The night before they were to leave, Cristen and Hugh went for a walk down to her garden. She wanted to pack her medicine bag full of remedies, as some of the men always got hurt.
“I cannot believe that there is actually a mêlée at this tournament,” Hugh said as he sat on the bench in the evening twilight watching her work. “At such a time, and in a land threatened by war…” He shook his head. “It is irresponsible.”