“A headache?” Nigel stared down at the part of Hugh’s face that was not sheltered by his arm. “Is that the sickness that stopped you from riding in the mêlée?”
“Aye.”
“Jesu,” said Nigel. His voice softened. “What can I do to help you, lad? Is there something you can take?”
“Just…leave me in peace,” Hugh said. “It will go away in its own time.”
Nigel stood in silence, looking down at Hugh’s shielded face. “Do you want to get out of your clothes?” he asked.
“No.”
Nigel rubbed his own eyes. “All right.” He turned to his squire. “Help me with my own clothes, William, and then you may go to your rest.”
Once he was undressed, Nigel slipped carefully into the big bed he was sharing with Hugh.
Hugh never moved.
“I wish there was something I could do to help you, lad,” Nigel said.
No answer.
Nigel sighed, turned on his side, closed his eyes, and composed himself to sleep.
The headache lifted in the middle of the night. It had both come and gone more quickly than the previous ones.
Hugh lay on his back, his eyes staring sightlessly into the dark. He felt utterly wrung out.
Now that he was able to think again, the story he had heard from Alan ran over and over through his mind.
Castrated, he thought.
All of a healthy young man’s horror filled his soul at such a thought.
I wonder why it took Walter Crespin over a year to avenge his brother?
After half an hour of thinking, Hugh slipped out of bed, careful not to wake Nigel. The room was very cold, as the shutters still had not been drawn across the window. There was enough moonlight for Hugh to see his way across the floor. Nigel scarcely stirred as Hugh opened the bedroom door and stepped out into the hall.
A flambeau was burning in the hall outside, and Hugh reached up and lit the candle he had picked up in the bedroom on his way out. Then he began to make his way down the spiral staircase.
Chippenham was quiet. There was no guard stationed on the landing inside the front door, and Hugh made his way unimpeded into the castle forebuilding, where the chapel was located.
The heavy chapel door creaked as Hugh pushed it open. It was pitch-dark within, and Hugh held his candle in front of him as he walked up the center aisle.
He stood in the place where Geoffrey’s bier had been placed and looked at the altar.
It was freezing in the chapel, but under the tunic and fine white shirt he had worn to supper, Hugh was sweating.
The familiar feelings of terror and guilt began to sweep over him.
I have to do this, he thought.
He shut his eyes and there, ramrod stiff, straining to remember.
Inside his brain he heard the sound of a single high-pitched scream. Was it himself he was hearing?
His breath came hard and painful, hurting his chest. The hand that was not holding the candle was clenched into a fist at his side.
I was here when it happened, he thought. I know that I was here.
Had he been kidnapped because he had seen what had happened? Had Walter taken him because he was a witness to Walter’s murder of Roger?
It’s all my fault. It’s all my fault.
If that was what had happened, then why did he feel so guilty?
“Oh God,” Hugh said out loud. “Why can’t I just remember?”
A few minutes later Hugh left the chapel, closing the heavy door behind him.
An unexpected breeze chilled his fingers. His candle went out. A fraction of a second later, he was on the floor and rolling.
The heavy thud made by a dagger burying itself deep in wood sounded clearly in the small passage.
Someone had thrown a knife at the place where Hugh had just been standing and it had pierced the chapel door.
Hugh crouched in the spot where he had finished his roll, perfectly immobile, trying to not even breathe. Someone had extinguished the flambeaux that illuminated the staircase, and the landing was pitch dark.
He knelt there in the blackness, listening.
The sound of someone breathing came out of the darkness to his right. The would-be assassin was on the chapel side of the landing, about ten feet away from him.
This meant that Hugh was closer to the stairs.
Cursing the fact that he had left his dagger in his bedroom, Hugh balanced his weight on his toes and prepared to make a dash for his life.
A step sounded on the wooden floor, then came the sound of the dagger being ripped out of the wood of the door.
By then, Hugh was at the staircase, racing down and down in the inky darkness, keeping his feet by instinct alone.
He didn’t stop at the Great Hall but continued on down to the floor below. At this hour, the guardroom would be filled with sleeping knights, making it far safer than the empty hall above.
Flambeaux lit the section of the staircase that connected the hall and the guardroom, and Hugh hurled himself downward toward safety.
He tumbled into the guardroom, which was in darkness, pressed himself against the cold stone wall, and waited.
The only sound he heard was the snoring of the knights.
He waited some more.
After about ten minutes, he moved cautiously to the wall, where he had seen a sword hanging earlier in the evening. He reached up, felt the cold steel blade, moved his hand to the hilt, and removed the sword from its hanger.
Once he was armed, he moved back to the door and stepped out onto the landing of the staircase.
No one was there.
He reached up and removed a flambeau from its iron holder. Holding the sword in his left hand and the flambeau in his right, he retraced his way up the stairs until he had reached the level of the Great Hall.
All was silent.
No one bothered him as he crossed the Great Hall and went on up the staircase that would lead him back to the room he was sharing with Nigel.
Once Hugh was safely back in bed, he crossed his arms behind his head and stared, wide-eyed, into the dark.
He had not thought that Guy would be stupid enough to attack him in Guy’s own castle. He remembered Nigel’s words on this subject, however. Guy sometimes acts first and thinks later.
Whether it was Guy or one of his henchmen, someone had clearly intended to remove Hugh from the world this night.
Hugh frowned, thought some more, and decided it would be wisest to say nothing of the incident outside the chapel to Nigel, who would only berate him for being fool enough to venture out on his own.
At last, as the first streaks of dawn were staining the sky, he turned on his side, closed his eyes, and prepared to try to get some sleep.
The following morning before breaking fast, Hugh sought out Alan.
“I have one more question for you,” he said to the knight, who was standing before the fire in the Great Hall waiting for the tables to be set up.
“What is that?” Alan asked warily, lowering his voice so he could not be heard by those around him.
“Who found Roger’s body in the chapel?”
Alan looked surprised. “Why, it was the priest,” he said. “Father Anselm. We reckoned that your father must have been laying there for at least an hour. That was what gave Walter the time to get away.”
“I see,” said Hugh. “Thank you.”
Lady Cecily, full of smiles and chatter, sat beside him at the breaking of fast. After the meal was finished, Hugh got rid of her by the simple expedient of saying that he was going to the garderobe. Instead, he went out into the courtyard.
He walked around to the back of the castle, to where the kitchen garden he had seen from his window was located. Next to the kitchen garden was a small walled-in pleasure garden.