The Riddle of St Leonard's by Candace Robb Read Free Book Online Page B

must believe that God does not wish to destroy all our joy or I shall go mad.’
    At dawn, Owen woke to find Lucie sitting up staring at the opposite wall. He wondered whether she thought about her first-born, Martin. But for the pestilence, he would be nine years old now, older than Jasper had been when they’d taken him in.
    Lucie glanced over, saw that Owen was awake. ‘Hugh is so like you.’
    ‘But for the fiery hair. That’s from my brother, Dafydd.’ Owen gathered her in his arms, kissed her forehead. ‘Pray that he has your heart and wit.’
    Lucie pushed him away. ‘I cannot sleep for all my doubts.’ Her voice trembled.
    Owen smoothed her hair from her forehead, kissed it. ‘Naught is certain, my love. But we did what we thought best.’
    Not we, Lucie thought, but I. That haunted her. That and a dream that kept returning. She had had it first on the night before the children had departed. It was of her first husband, Nicholas, and once awake she had not been able to return to sleep. She had peered down into Hugh’s basket. His fine hair was a fiery halo in the moonlight. What she had most wished to do was lift him from his crib and hold him close, whisper how she prayed to see him grow to manhood. But that would have wakened him, and he needed his sleep before the ordeal of travel. How she wished now that she had allowed herself that moment with him.
    The dream was of Nicholas’s terrible silence after their son had died of the pestilence. Night after night after Martin’s death, Nicholas had sat in the garden, beneath the linden tree, with his pale eyes staring at nothing. At such times Nicholas would neither speak to Lucie nor look at her. During the day he was merely civil. And then suddenly, one morning, he had put down his cup of ale and looked Lucie in the eye. ‘I will never forgive you for sleeping the night after Martin died. What made you such an unnatural mother?’
    Lucie had been stunned. Had he forgotten how for three nights while Martin had suffered she had managed little sleep, continually sponging the child’s painful pustules with mallow, trying to draw out the poison, cooling him with cold compresses on his forehead and neck when he’d burned with fever? She had been so weary that she had collapsed when Martin had gone and she had been able to do no more.
    Had Nicholas forgotten that?
    Later he had apologised. Over and over. He had not meant it. It was his grief speaking such hateful things. They were so untrue. She had been the best mother she’d known how to be.
    But what sort of mother would send her children away while she remained in the city to see to her business? Gwenllian and Hugh would be frightened. They needed her. How could she have done this? Was she an unnatural mother?
    Owen broke into her thoughts. ‘They are my children, too, Lucie. If I had been certain that keeping them here was the best thing to do, I would have fought for it.’
    Lucie took a deep breath. In a steadier voice she asked, ‘Have you heard aught from Archbishop Thoresby?’
    ‘Not a word. I imagine him spending the whole day praying in the Queen’s chambers. And praying in his own chamber at night. He has no time to write to his steward.’ Owen was the steward of Bishopthorpe, the archbishop’s manor south of York.
    ‘He will take the Queen’s passing very hard, should it come to that,’ Lucie said.
    ‘There was a time when I would have found a sinful pleasure in that. But now I pity him.’
    ‘… Until you are the butt of his foul humour.’
    ‘Oh aye.’
    ‘You heard about the fire yesterday?’
    ‘Magda smelled it. I feared for you.’
    Lucie touched the back of Owen’s neck. ‘I worried about you on the river.’

Five
An Uneasy Conscience
     
    C omrades on the road, because they are thrown in such intimate company, are away from their regular business, and have time to while away, will oft talk of things they might not otherwise. As Richard de Ravenser dined with his uncle,