but told that, possessing enough courage to deliver it, you might…” His son trailed off, loath to speak of the courage of a king.
“I might reveal my reason for seeking it,” William supplied.
“Oui, Sire. Is it a holy relic?”
It looked as if William would laugh, but he lowered his gaze and stretched the cloth between his hands as if to verify what had been lost to him was present in its entirety.
Appearing content with his findings, he started to open the purse on his belt, paused, then stood and crossed to the brazier. “A holy relic, indeed,” he said and tossed the cloth atop coals that were more glow than fire on a summer day cooled by rain. “But one best in the Lord’s keeping than that of men.”
When he returned to the prince, the acrid scent of smoldering cloth followed. “Tell how that came into your possession,” he said lightly as if some of the burdens weighting him were lifted.
To Richard’s credit, he did not stall as if to gather more courage. “When Sir Daryl arrived with tale the leader of the Rebels of the Pale was thought to be in Thetford’s wood, I determined I would be the one to deliver him into your hands. Using my tracking skills, which even Earl De Warenne tells are considerable, I…” He paused as if to think through his next words. “They are considerable, I vow, but mostly good fortune placed me near Vitalis’s camp. And misfortune dropped me in a pit of his making. When I could not climb out, I called, and he came. I did not think he would know who I was, but he did, and though he could have slain me or used me to bargain, he did neither.”
Richard glanced around at Vitalis. “I did not know there were such Saxons. Rather than wreak vengeance or wield me against you, he challenged me to show courage by returning the cloth and revealing how I gained it.” He cleared his throat as if the smoke irritated him the same as it did Nicola who muffled throat clearings and sniffling.
“Should you severely rebuke me, Sire, I will not regret speaking in truth, even if you do not do the same for me. No matter the price, it will be worth having grown nearer the man you do not believe ready to grasp how a great lord takes in hand dangerous, yet honorable enemies.”
Vitalis’s chest had gone tight as it had done when a difficult youth made great strides in proving the months and years of shaping him into a defender of England was worth the effort. Likely, he would never be a father, but it seemed this was how one ought to feel when a son showed great promise of becoming a better man than the one who begot him.
“Sire?” Hope cracked the word down its center.
If Richard thought to appeal to a side of the usurper unknown to Saxons, it sounded he failed when William said, “I need hear no more. Your leave is granted.”
“But—”
“Granted!”
Richard swung around, and when his eyes fell on Vitalis, the Saxon he believed a rare specimen inclined his head in a show of approval given those who needed no more than that to continue to excel.
The youth could have made much of it to slight William who denied him the same, but he nodded in return and quietly closed the door behind him.
“He is very proud of himself,” William said. “Years after he should have shown he has steel in his spine, he thinks to be praised and granted favors.” He exhaled heavily. “I left him and his older brother too long at their mother’s skirts. Much England has cost me.”
Those words could have been flame to the tinder of the bound captive standing before him, but Vitalis thought much on each breath he drew.
“Blessedly, if neglect of my eldest sons cannot be corrected,” William said, “I have other arrows in my quiver.”
He referred to his third son named for him and the fourth born in England and christened Henry.
Though Vitalis was tempted to assure him what was deficient in Richard could be corrected even were it too late for his eldest, he was not being consulted.
“What think you, Vitalis who so impresses the prince he seeks to please the enemy more than his own sire?”
Then he was being consulted—in a manner. Were this not jealousy-fueled derision, Vitalis might not have held his tongue.
William coughed, stepped to the brazier, and stirred the