into an inner yard, where he waited while the gatekeeper announced his presence to a page, who conveyed the request for an audience to the baron. While he awaited the baron’s summons, Bishop Asaph watched the people around him as they went about their daily affairs. He found himself thinking about what a strange race they were, these Ffreinc, made up of many contradictions. Industrious and resourceful, they typically pursued their interests with firmness of purpose and an admirable ardour. Yet from what he had seen of the marchogi in Elfael, they could just as quickly abandon themselves to dejection and despondency when events betrayed them. Devout, stalwart, and reverent in the best of times, they also seemed inordinately subject to weird caprices and silly superstitions. A handsome people, hale and strong bodied, with long, straight limbs and clear eyes set in broad, open faces— they nevertheless seemed to suffer from a rare abundance of infirmities, maladies, and ailments.
All these things and arrogant, too. They were, the bishop concluded, fiercely ambitious. In appetite for acquisition: insatiable. In intensity for mastery: rapacious. In aspiration for achievement: merciless. In desire for domination: inexorable.
However, and he had always to remember this, they could be fair-minded and loyal, and when it suited them, they displayed a laudable sense of justice—at least with their own. The English and Cymry were treated poorly for the most part, it was true; but the capacity for evenhanded tolerance was not entirely lacking. The bishop hoped he would encounter some of this fairness in his dealings with the baron today.
Presently, the page returned to announce that the baron would be pleased to see him at once, and Asaph was brought into a large, stone-flagged anteroom, where he was offered a cup of wine and some bread before making his way into the baron’s audience chamber—an enormous oak-panelled room with a narrow arched window of leaded glass that kept out the wind but allowed the light to come streaming through.
“Bishop Asaph!” boomed the baron as the priest was announced. “Pax vobiscum!” He crossed the chamber in long, quick strides and held out his hand in the peculiar greeting of Ffreinc noblemen. “It is good to see you again.” The bishop grasped the offered hand somewhat awkwardly. “You should have told me you were coming! I would have had a dinner prepared in your honour. But come! Come, sit with me. I will have some refreshment brought, and we will eat together.”
The effusive greeting banished Bishop Asaph’s worst fears. “Thank you, Baron Neufmarché, but your servant was kind enough to offer me bread and wine just now. I would not presume to keep you from your affairs a moment longer than necessary.”
“So earnest,” observed the baron lightly. “It is a most welcome interruption, bishop. You have an advocate in me. I hope you know that.”
“You cannot imagine how it gratifies me to hear those words, Baron Neufmarché. You are very kind.”
Neufmarché brushed aside the compliment. “It is nothing.
However, I can see that you are troubled—and I think it must be something serious indeed to bring you from your beautiful valley.” He gestured his guest to a chair beside his own. “Here, my friend; sit down and tell me what is distressing you.”
“To be blunt, it is about the food supplies you promised to send.”
“Yes? I trust they were put to good use. I assure you, the grain and meat were the finest I could lay hands to at short notice.”
“I am certain they were,” Bishop Asaph conceded. “But we never received them.”
“Nothing? Nothing at all?” wondered the baron. Asaph shook his head slowly. “How is that possible?”
“That is what I have come to discover,” replied the bishop, who then told of his conversation with Count Falkes. “In short,” concluded the bishop, “the count gave me to know in no uncertain terms that the supplies had never been sent—or, if they had, they never arrived. He suggested I take up the matter with you”—the bishop spread his hands—“so here I am.”
“I see.” The baron pursed his lips in a frown of vexation and ran a broad hand through his long, dark hair. “This is most disturbing. I made arrangements for the supplies the same day I returned from Elfael, and was glad to do it. Why, the wagoners reported a successful delivery with no difficulties along the way.”
“I do believe you, baron,” the bishop assured him. “It can only be that de Braose has taken the food and kept it for himself.”