Hilary of Chichester was a man both clever and learned. But he lacked the fortitude to stand fast in the face of Henry’s anger, fearing the loss of his king’s favor far more than he did the loss of his claim against Battle Abbey. He realized that Becket had succeeded in putting his papal appeal in the worst possible light, implying that he’d been both underhanded and disloyal, and he panicked. “That is not true! I did nothing of the sort!”
Becket blinked, as if surprised. “You deny that you appealed to Pope Adrian? How, then, do you explain this?” Holding up a parchment roll that seemed to have materialized in his hand as if by magic. “I have here the very letter that His Holiness wrote to Abbot Walter, at your behest!”
It had been so adroitly done that Eleanor, watching with a cynical smile, wondered if it had been rehearsed. She had rather enjoyed seeing Chichester so thoroughly discomfited. Even his fellow bishops were recoiling, Theobald because he was truly offended by perjury and Winchester because he deplored ineptitude. She did regret, though, that Thomas Becket had been the instrument of Chichester’s downfall, for she felt he was already too well entrenched in her husband’s favor. Eleanor was astute enough to recognize a potential rival in whatever the guise.
The trial was over. There had been no need to declare a verdict. Theobald had passed judgment with his sorrowful observation that the Bishop of Chichester’s words had been “ill advised and derogatory to the king’s royal dignity.” Faced with the need to appease both his archbishop and his sovereign, Chichester renounced any and all claims to authority over Battle Abbey, and he and Abbot Walter solemnly exchanged a ceremonial Kiss of Peace. Henry was usually a gracious winner, an unexpected virtue in a son of the Empress Maude and Count Geoffrey of Anjou, and all had been concluded with civility, at least on the surface.
Afterward, Henry and Eleanor and Becket stole a few moments of privacy in the abbot’s lodging, temporarily turned into a royal residence for their stay. Eleanor listened without comment as the two men rehashed the events of the morning, sounding inordinately pleased with themselves. She did not begrudge them their satisfaction, for they had shrewdly anticipated their adversary’s weakness, then made the most of it. That was, she knew, a quality of the best battle commanders, and she was glad that Henry had been blessed with such a keen strategic sense. Now that the Bishop of Chichester had been thwarted, her husband had another fight looming on the horizon. From Colchester, he was heading west, for his next foe was Welsh.
Ranulf Fitz Roy stood at the cliff’s edge, staring down into the abyss. The drop was not that great, for Rhaeadr Ewynnol was not one of the highest waterfalls in North Wales. But he felt at that moment as if a vast chasm was yawning at his feet.
He of all men ought not to have been surprised by how fast life could alter forever, in the blink of an eye or the fading of a heartbeat. Born a king’s son on the wrong side of the blanket, he’d come to manhood during those harrowing years when England was convulsed by a savage civil war. Ranulf had been forced to choose between his cousin Stephen and his half-sister Maude. He’d stayed loyal to his sister, but it had cost him the woman he loved.
They’d been plight-trothed, but when Ranulf balked at accepting Stephen’s coup, Annora’s father had disavowed the betrothal, wedding her to one of Stephen’s barons. Eventually the fortunes of war had reunited them, and they’d begun a high-risk adulterous affair. It had ended badly, inadvertently resulting in the death of Ranulf’s best friend, a consequence he’d never foreseen and could not bear. Fleeing his grieving and his guilt, he’d blundered into Wales and there he’d found unexpected refuge with his Welsh kin.
Until then, they had been strangers to him, as unknown as the cloud-kissed rough-hewn Eden they called Cymru and their enemies Wales. Ranulf’s mother, Angharad, had been Welsh, taken by the English king as spoils of war. She’d died in Ranulf’s eighth year, leaving him only a few shadowy memories and a vague curiosity about the land of her birth.
When fate finally brought him together with his mother’s Welsh family, he would not have blamed them had they shunned him, the spawn of an alien, conquering king. But they’d welcomed him as one of their own, nursing his ailing body and wounded soul back to health, giving him the courage to face down his ghosts, to learn to live with his regrets. Without realizing it, he’d fallen under the spell of this small, Celtic country his mother had so loved. In time, he took a Welsh bride, and made his home in the deeply wooded hills above the River Conwy.
Overhead, a kestrel stalked the skies in search of prey. Ranulf watched the hawk soar on the wind, higher and higher until it vanished from view. For seven years he had dwelled in his hard-won Welsh haven. His wife had given him a son, now in his sixth year, and a daughter, not yet two. He had been happy and he had been fool enough to think it would last.
Standing on the grassy bluff above the white waters of Rhaeadr Ewynnol, he gazed down into the rain-surged cauldron below and thought of Scriptures, the prophetic dream of Egypt’s pharaoh. Seven good years, years of plenty and peace, followed by seven lean years, years of sorrow. With the arrival of the king’s letter, Ranulf feared that he was about to pay a high price for those seven years of quiet contentment.
Ranulf did not return to Trefriw until the daylight had begun to fade. He would have delayed even longer if only he could, for he knew what awaited him. They spilled from the hall as he rode in, gathering about him in the twilight dusk: his Welsh family. Rhodri, his uncle, with whom he shared this hillside manor. Rhodri’s much younger second wife, the lovely, complacent Enid. Eleri, his lively sister-by-marriage, and Celyn, her husband. And in the doorway, Rhiannon, his cousin and wife.
As Ranulf dismounted, they assailed him with anxious questions, for they knew about the letter, knew what it portended. For months the winds of war had been blowing toward Wales. They’d long raked the bor derlands, but they were now about to sweep into the Welsh heartland, into the high mountain domains of the man known as Owain Gwynedd.
“Ranulf, where have you been? Papa says the English king has commanded you to fight against the Welsh!”
“No… he has merely summoned me to his encampment at Saltney.”
Eleri looked at him blankly. “Is that not what I just said?”
“No, it is not,” Ranulf insisted, without much conviction, for even to him, that sounded like a distinction without a difference. “I owe knight service to the Crown for my English manors, but Harry has not demanded that of me. He asks only that I come into Cheshire to talk.”
“Talk?” Rhodri echoed incredulously. “What is there to talk about? How much of Wales he means to gobble up?”
Celyn, towering over Eleri like a lofty oak, was as laconic and deliberate as she was impulsive and forthright, usually content to let her do the talking for them both. Now, though, he overcame his innate reticence long enough to offer a practical solution. “If Ranulf were to send word to the English king that he was ailing-”
“Christ’s pity, Celyn!” Rhodri glared at his son-in-law. “Why should Ranulf concoct excuses? He ought to refuse outright, letting the English king know that his loyalties are to Wales now!”
“I cannot do that, Uncle.” Ranulf’s despair was yielding to anger, for he resented being forced to declare himself out here in the bailey, before them all. This was not the way he’d meant to do it. He’d wanted to tell Rhiannon first. She was still standing, motionless, in the doorway, and he started toward her. But he’d taken only a few steps before his uncle exclaimed in horror:
“What are you saying, Ranulf? You cannot mean to obey that summons!”