The knight’s breath hissed through his teeth. “I thought so.”
He swung around and took the torch to one of the tables, lit the candle that was on it, then brought the torch back out to the landing, where he thrust it into an empty iron holder. Then he came back into the guardroom.
His eyes searched Hugh’s face. Even in the dimness, Hugh could see a muscle twitch in his cheek.
“Where have you been for all these years?”
Hugh answered him honestly, giving a brief summary of what had happened to him since he was taken from Chippenham.
Still speaking with dogged steadiness, he told Alan about his memory loss.
“I have never heard of such a thing,” the knight said.
The single candle lit only the part of the room in which they were standing. Everything else was in deep shadow.
Hugh was white about the mouth. “Nevertheless, it is true.”
The knight took a step closer. “Why in the name of God have you come here? Surely you must see how dangerous it is! Your very existence is a direct threat to Guy’s position.”
Hugh held the man’s eyes with his own. “I have come because I can no longer live with only half a life,” he said. “I need to find out who I really am. I came here to try to find someone who might help me do this.” His whole being was intent upon the lean man standing in front of him, backlit by candlelight. “Lady Cecily told me your name was Alan fitzRobert. You were one of my father’s knights, were you not?”
For a long moment, Alan did not reply. Then he admitted, “Aye, I was.”
“And you switched your allegiance to Guy after my father was killed?”
Hugh had tried to keep his voice dispassionate, but something of what he was feeling must have seeped through, because the knight’s lips tightened. He said, “Guy offered me a place and I knew nothing against him, so I took it.”
The smoke from the torch on the landing drifted in the door and assailed Hugh’s nostrils. His heartbeat accelerated as he said the words he had come to Chippenham to say.
“I have come here for one other reason, Alan. I have come to find out who murdered my father.”
The older knight suddenly looked very weary. “I was afraid of that,” he said.
“Why should you be afraid?” Hugh demanded. “Because you are Guy’s man?”
Alan’s voice sounded as weary as he looked. “Guy did not murder your father, Hugh. He was killed by one of his own knights.”
“I don’t believe that,” Hugh said fiercely. “No simple knight would have reason to kill an earl-unless he was paid to do it by someone else!”
“Oh, Walter Crespin had reason, Hugh,” Alan said. “It was no mystery to any of us knights why Walter would want to kill Earl Roger.”
Hugh had learned long ago how to guard his face, but the shock of this reply showed in his eyes.
“Tell me,” he said at last. “I need to know.”
The knight shook his head in denial. “Why not leave well enough alone, boy? You have made a good life for yourself…”
“No.” All the force of Hugh’s formidable will was trained on the man facing him. “Tell me.”
Once more Alan’s eyes traced Hugh’s face. “You look so much like your mother,” he said, seemingly at random.
Hugh felt as if a hand was closing around his chest, cutting off his breathing. “Does my father’s death have something to do with my mother?”
Alan took a step backwards.
Hugh followed him. For the third time he said, “Tell me.”
“Why don’t you ask these questions of the Lady Isabel?”
The knight had backed up to the point where his legs were pressing against the bench belonging to one of the tables.
Hugh said, “I haven’t seen my…I haven’t seen Isabel. I can’t see her until I know.”
Some of the anguish Hugh was trying to conceal finally got through to the knight. Silence fell as they looked at each other.
Then, “All right,” Alan said with resignation. “Perhaps it will be best for you to know. Once you learn the truth, perhaps you will be satisfied that Guy had nothing to do with your father’s murder and will leave here while you are still alive.”
Hugh was quivering all over, like a bow that has been strung too tightly. He nodded.
The knight gestured toward the table behind him. “Come and sit down, Hugh. This is not a pleasant tale I have to tell.”
18
They sat facing each other across the table, a candle between them. On the table lay a bridle that someone had taken apart to clean.
“I saw you win the horsemanship contest at the tournament,” Alan said. “Even when you were a child you had a way with horses.”
Hugh’s face never changed.
“Do you have a scar on right knee?”
Suddenly Hugh felt dizzy. His stomach heaved and bile rose in the back of his throat. He swallowed it down and focused his eyes even more intently on the other man’s face. “Aye,” he managed to get out. “I do.”
“You got that when you were four years old. You climbed onto your father’s stallion when no one was looking, and he threw you. We were afraid you might have smashed your kneecap, but it was just a cut.”
Hugh had a sudden, desperate wish that Cristen were here beside him. He said, “I don’t remember.”
Alan looked at the stark young face in front of him and said gently, “Are you certain you want to hear this, Hugh?”
“I have to,” Hugh said. He took a deep, steadying breath. “I have to.”
The knight sighed. “All right. If it is the only thing that will get you away from this place…”
He folded his big, scarred hands on the table in front of him and began to talk.
“Your father was forty-two years of age when he returned from the Holy Land. His fame as a crusader was great. Did you know that?”
Hugh nodded tensely.
“His elder brother had died, leaving no sons, and so Roger inherited the earldom. Of course, one of the first things he had to do when he returned was to marry and get sons to come after him. He chose to marry Isabel Matard.”
Hugh dropped his eyes to the bridle pieces on the table. He picked up the brow band and rubbed it between his fingers. “Go on,” he said, his voice low.
“Remember this, Hugh,” Alan said. “Your mother was fifteen years old when first she came to Chippenham as Roger’s wife. She was sixteen when she bore you.”
Cristen is seventeen, Hugh thought. My mother was younger than she when I was born.
Alan said pensively, “Your mother…” He stared at his loosely clasped hands. “How can I make you see how beautiful your mother was?”
The light from the candle between them flickered on his down-looking face.
“All of us knights were in love with her, of course. How could we not be?”
He fell silent, as if he were conjuring up for himself the image of Isabel as she once had been.
Finally he lifted his eyes to look at Hugh. “Roger wasn’t in love with her, though. I think he had spent all of his passion on the Crusade. There was nothing left in him to give to a woman. He was a cold man, Hugh. A very cold man.”
Hugh’s fingers tightened convulsively on the brow band.
“Once you were born, and he had done his duty to the succession, it was as if your mother didn’t exist for him.” Alan hesitated. “I think he felt that she made him impure.”
“Impure?” Hugh said, clearly startled.
Alan went back to staring at his clasped hands, avoiding Hugh’s gaze. He nodded. “Your father had been planning to join the Templars before he was called home from the east. It is a pity he was unable to do so; he would have been a good fighting priest. Unfortunately, he was not a good husband.”
Hugh forced his fingers to loosen their death grip on the bridle piece. “I see,” he said.
Alan reached out and slightly moved the position of the candle so that it did not cast so much light on his face. He said, “At that time, Ivo Crespin was one of the knights of Roger’s household.”