Knights of the Black and White Book One. Jack Whyte

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СКАЧАТЬ Clair. The two had met when Margaret accompanied her father on his visit to Champagne from England to attend Hugh’s Raising, and although Payn had been far more enamored of Margaret than she of him, it became evident, much later, that he had none the less impressed her very favorably. So much so, as Hugh and his friends later discovered, that the Lady Margaret had done everything in her power, from the moment she returned home to England, to persuade her father to return with her to the civilized world of Champagne once again.

      Sir Stephen, whose wife had died many years earlier, was utterly defenseless against both the wiles and the wishes of his only daughter, and had been so since the day of her birth, but he was unable to indulge her in this instance because of his duties and responsibilities to the King of England, William Rufus, son of William I, the Conqueror. But circumstances soon conspired with those same duties and responsibilities to oblige St. Clair, willing or no, to send Margaret back to Champagne without him. She arrived in the Barony of Payens in the early autumn of 1091, accompanied by a respectable retinue and bearing a heavy letter from her father to his old friend Baron Hugo, who was gracious enough to conceal any sense of misgiving he might have felt at the lady’s unexpected reappearance, and to welcome her into his home and family. Then, once his wife and his ecstatic daughter had ushered her ladyship off to show her where she would be living and to distribute the people in her entourage among their own servants, the Baron sat down to read the letter from his friend. It was written on six sheets of heavy sheepskin vellum, carefully cured and scraped and softened with great care, then drafted with great precision, so that Hugo knew it had been dictated to one of Sir Stephen’s scribes.

       York

       This Fifth Day of June, Anno Domini 1091

       To Hugo, Baron of Payens in the County of Champagne:

      Greetings, my friend.

      This missive, when it reaches you, will be accompanied by my greatest and most precious earthly possession, my daughter Margaret, and the mere fact of her presence there with you while I remain here in England will assure you that I am not making this approach to you lightly. Were I not deeply afraid for her safety now, I would never voluntarily part from her, nor would I impose upon you the task with which you are now faced: that of caring for another man’s child. Margaret is no longer a child, however, and that is another contributing factor to this decision of mine.

      Since the death of my wife, as you are aware, Margaret has been the light of my life, and she has been saintly in her tolerance and acceptance of the discomforts and indignities to which my life, and my way of living it, have subjected her. A castle such as mine is no fit place for a young woman, as you are well aware. It is functional, Spartan, and unlovely, its walls made of earth, fronted by sharpened tree trunks, and its buildings primitive, drafty, and mud-filled, containing no amenities for a young, well-born woman. It is a fortress, making no claim to being a home, and I have finally come to see that, in merely keeping my daughter here, I am condemning her, if not to death, then at least to misery and squalor. We—William’s Normans—have now been here in England for two decades and a half, and in this region of York for sixteen years, and the local Saxons are no less rebellious and savage now than they were when first we came. I should have sent my daughter far away from here years ago, but in my own weakness and self-centered folly, I have been afraid to part with her, for she provides my only reminder of beauty in this rain-drenched, sodden, chilly land.

      Now, however, we are at war again, facing yet another invasion from the north, and since I cannot guarantee her safety, I have no other choice but to send her to you, knowing that she could be in no safer hands.

      Malcolm Canmohr, the King of Scotland, has come back to vanquish us—his third attempt in twenty years—and King William has decided yet again that I should be the one to throw the fellow out. I did it before, nine years ago, and we thought to have done with it then, but now the Conqueror is dead, and Canmohr—the name means Great Chief, I am told—seems to believe the new king will be easier to oust than his father was. Foolish man. His wife, revered by her people as some kind of saint, shares my daughter’s name, but she is first cousin to Egbert, the Saxon heir to the former English throne, and thus she is unsaintly enough to provoke her husband into squandering huge numbers of men in trying to win back his kingdom, not merely once, but thrice. And so I must march in three days’ time.

      My army is assembling as I write, and will consist of every available man I can conscript, and one effect of that will be that I must leave my own castle defenses to the care of a tiny skeleton crew who will keep the gates closed until I return. Faced with the inevitability of that, and with the real possibility that I might not return at all from this campaign, I have made arrangements to ship my precious Margaret into your care. She and a small party will leave tomorrow. The man in charge of her party, appointed personally by myself, is called Giscard, and he and his two sons, Michel and Rombaud, are entrusted with sufficient gold, in three sound chests, to dower the girl suitably for any match you might arrange for her in future times.

      I have no knowledge of when, or whether, you might hear from me again, my friend, but neither have I any doubt that my beloved daughter, in your hands and under your supervision, could be better served under any circumstances. Watch over her for me, and I hope to see you both again soon.

       St. Clair

      For the next three years, no word came out of England concerning St. Clair. No one even knew if the Scots invasion had been successful in the north. The Normans in the south of the country were still in power. That was common knowledge, but nothing was known for sure about anything else, because William Rufus willed it so and no one dared provoke his anger. Unknowing then whether his old friend was dead or alive, Baron Hugo had assumed full parental responsibility for the young woman by the end of her first full year of residence with him, and treated her exactly as he treated his own daughters, even going so far as to arrange her marriage to young Payn Montdidier in the autumn of 1092, as an eminently suitable match, advantageous to all parties, and one that he knew her father himself would approve. The bridal couple were nowhere near as visibly in love as Louise de Payens and St. Omer had been, but they enjoyed and admired each other, and everyone agreed that that was the required basis for a lasting and successful marriage.

       FIVE

      For a time after that, life was idyllic for the three young men of the triumvirate. The two who were married lived in utter contentment, their wives the closest of friends, and Hugh, the unwed third, was more than satisfied to be able to work as hard as he wished on his studies of the Order of Rebirth without the distractions his now-preoccupied friends would normally have caused him.

      The idyll came to an end on a day in May 1093, when Godfrey and Payn came to Hugh’s quarters together, looking decidedly ill at ease. Hugh saw at first glance that something was seriously wrong, and he immediately set aside the book he had been studying and stood up.

      “What has happened? What’s wrong?”

      Godfrey and Payn looked at each other—guiltily, was Hugh’s first thought—and neither one appeared to have any wish to answer him.

      Godfrey sank onto a bench against the wall by the window. “They know,” he said.

      “Who knows, and what?”

      Payn СКАЧАТЬ