Their short visit was over. The chapel was now needed for the next service of the day and they themselves had to adjourn to the shire hall to continue their work. Canon Hubert knelt ostentatiously in prayer and Ralph felt obliged to bend his own knee. While they were thus preoccupied, the prioress took the chalice across to the altar and reached up to place it beside the crucifix. The folds of her sleeve fell back for a moment and Ralph opened his eyes to catch a fleeting glimpse of a thick gold bangle halfway up her arm. The prioress tugged the sleeve quickly back into position so that the arm vanished. Ralph Delchard was astonished at himself. When he had first met the two nuns on the road, he had been moved by abstract desire to speculate on what exactly lay beneath the habit of Sister Tecla. Yet now, incredibly, he was far more curious about what the prioress would look like without her cloak and her wimple. He remembered what Canon Hubert had told him about Chapter Thirty-three of the Rule of St. Benedict. Personal possessions were strictly forbidden inside a religious house. The piece of jewelry he had seen was elaborate and costly. It certainly had no place in a convent where simplicity of attire was enforced. Prioress Mindred insisted that she took the veil without a single regret, but the adornment clearly belonged to her earlier life. The stately figure assumed a new interest for Ralph. He wondered what else she was hiding beneath her apparel.
Miles Champeney took his horse from the groom and mounted it in one fluent movement. He was trotting away from the stables when his father came out from the house to intercept him.
“Hold there!” said Gilbert. “Where are you going?” “I will be away for most of the day.”
“Why?”
“I have business to attend to, Father.” “Of what nature?”
“Private matters.”
“There should be no privacy between father and son,” said Gilbert in hurt tones. “We used to be so close at one time yet now you have become detached and secretive. This is not good, Miles. It is not fair.”
“I am sorry.”
“Do you still blame me?”
Miles bit back the reply he was going to make and tried to stay calm. “You are entitled to your point of view, Father.”
“I have never stopped you doing anything before.”
“That is true,” conceded his son, “but I wish you were not determined to get in my way now. It’s disheartening. There are enough obstacles to overcome without having another one on my own doorstep.”
“I am not an obstacle!” rebuked his father sharply.
“Then why are you obstructing me?” “I’m your father, Miles! I have a right.”
“To advise me, yes. But not to coerce me.” “To do whatever I choose!”
“I, too, have rights, Father.”
“Not in this instance,” said Gilbert with rising anger. “You’ve thrown them away. If you will not listen to sense, I have to impose my wishes in another way. God save us! I’m helping you! One day, you will thank me for it.”
“I doubt it.”
“Forget her, Miles! Find someone else.” “There can be nobody else for me.”
Gilbert was scornful. “Then you must resign yourself to bachelor-hood for you will never marry her,” he said. “Even if I died tomorrow- even if one obstacle were removed-they would still not let you anywhere near Matilda.”
“We will see.” He glanced away. “I have to go, Father.”
“Give her up now! Stop torturing yourself!”
Miles Champeney saw the futility of further argument. They had been over the same ground a hundred times and it always produced the same barren harvest. He tugged on the reins to pull the horse’s head around, then set off across the yard. Gilbert took a few steps after him.
“Will you be at table with us this evening?” he called.
“No, Father.”
“But we have guests. They expect entertainment.”
His son did not even answer. The duty of playing host to the visitors from Winchester was irksome to him when his mind was elsewhere. Gilbert watched him ride away for a few minutes, then went discon-solately back into the house. The rift with Miles was like an open wound that festered. What troubled him most was that he could see no means of healing it. He was in an impossible dilemma. Gilbert Champeney was a doting father who would do anything to help his son except the one thing that was being requested of him. An affable and gregarious man was being asked to ally himself with the only family in Maldon whom he loathed.
Miles rode on. His father had many endearing virtues but they counted for nothing now. The son had priorities that had turned the man he most loved and respected into a stubborn opponent. Miles had reasoned with his father and even pleaded with him, but all to no avail. At a time when he most needed moral support and practical help, he was totally isolated. His mother echoed her husband in all things and was far too weak and vague to make up her own mind. She hated to see the dissent between the two men but there was nothing she could do to alleviate it, let alone to bring about any kind of reconciliation. Miles was on his own and that put him into the exact position that Matilda herself occupied. It was a further bond between them. Both were imprisoned within the hostile attitudes of their respective families. Matilda’s predicament seemed to be the worse of the two, because her father had never loved her enough to take a serious interest in her, but the mild and doting Gilbert Champeney could be just as uncompromising as Hamo FitzCorbucion.
After riding towards the town, he kept his horse at a steady canter and swung off towards a wooded embankment. He twisted in the saddle to make sure that nobody was following, then scanned the landscape on both sides. Distant figures were scything yellow corn. Children were engaged in scaring birds with yells and missiles. Animals grazed. When Miles was convinced that he was unobserved,
he went into the trees and brought his horse to a halt. Dismounting at once, he tethered the animal to a hawthorn bush and walked on foot to the top of the embankment. Foliage was thicker here and concealment total. He leaned against an ash and waited.
Miles was patient but, when the first hour had passed by, he began to get restive. He went back to check his horse, which was still happily chomping the grass in the shade of the trees. He climbed up the gradient again to resume his vigil beside the ash, but another half hour brought him no relief and anxiety set in, deepened, as more time passed, by a profound sense of helplessness. There was simply nothing that he could do. It was infuriating. Another half hour drifted away. He was about to abandon his long wait when he heard the thud of approaching hooves. Miles took out his sword and prepared to defend himself. Hoping for a friend, he could just as easily get an enemy from the same source. Only when he saw the man’s face did he relax. It was the servant who had been used as an emissary before and he was riding the same roan. Furtive and scared, the man brought the horse towards him at walking pace.
Miles rushed eagerly up to him and held out a hand. The servant pulled a letter from inside his tunic and passed it to him. Breaking the seal, Miles opened the missive and read it with a mixture of excitement and fear. Matilda’s love for him was unchanged but a more immediate shadow now hung over their romance. A marriage had been arranged by her father. Having buried a dead son in Maldon that morning, Hamo was now planning to bury a daughter alive in Coutances. Her letter ended with a plea to her beloved and his reply needed no consideration. He looked up at the man and nodded firmly. The servant pulled the roan in a half circle and picked a way swiftly through the trees. He had no wish to linger and run the risk of being seen with Miles Champeney. Loyal to his mistress, he was all too aware of what might happen to him if his role as an intermediary were discovered. All he was now carrying back to Blackwater Hall was an oral message and that put him in less danger.