“We have warned Red William in good time, and now he can move to disarm the traitors,” Bran explained, releasing Siarles. “I have put our case before the king, and we must hope he succeeds in punishing those who have conspired against him.”
“Well,” said Siarles, rubbing his neck. He was still not completely convinced. “It seems we have no other hope.”
“It has been this way from the start,” Bran said. “We have done all we can. It is in God’s hands.”
See now, Bran was right. Never doubt it. We had no other hope for redress in this world, save William and William alone. But Siarles, bless his thick head, was not wrong to raise the question. Truth to tell, it was something I wondered at first myself—and it was not until Odo told me about the two popes that I began to see my way through that tangled wood. Why would Baron de Braose write a letter like that? Who was it for? Then I remembered who had signed that letter, and although I could not recall all the names, I remembered Duke Robert right enough, and wondered why the king’s brother and one of Red William’s dearest barons should be makin’ up a letter like that.
Oh, it was a right riddle to be sure. But the answer was there starin’ us in the face all along. We just didn’t see it.
Yet sitting there in that rank pit of a gaol, a fella begins to see lots of things in a different way, if you know what I mean. Ol’ Will had time to think and little else.
Even so, when my monkish scribe let out there were two popes, God knows I didn’t believe him. Odo was so convinced, his conviction carried me along in the end. I considered it a mite curious that Baron de Braose should take up with Clement when the whole of England, so far as I knew, answered to a pope named Urban. What could it mean?
Two popes. One throne. What else could it mean but that the men who signed the letter had bartered their support for Pope Clement in order to gain the throne of England for their favourite, Duke Robert? Outright rebellion had been tried and had failed; Robert could not be trusted to enter the fray even in his own interest, as many an upright Englishman discovered to his hurt—my old master Aelred included, God rest him. So this time, they meant to use the church somehow. Although I could not rightly say how they meant to force the abdication, the more I thought about it, the more certain I became that the men who had put their names to that letter had formed a conspiracy with the aim of plucking the crown from William’s round grizzled head and placing it on luckless brother Robert’s. This is why de Braose was so murderously desperate to get that letter back. More valuable by far than the big gold ring or fine leather gloves—mere fancies, after all—that sealed square of parchment exposed the traitors and, if I guessed aright, was well worth a throne.
“God’s hands or no,” Mérian was saying, “I could wish we knew what was happening now. To have come this far only to be shut out sits ill, so it does.”
“Never fear,” Brother Jago replied. “God’s ways may be mystery past finding out, but he hears all who call upon his name. Therefore, be of good cheer! God alone is our rock and our fortress, our friend and very present help in times of trouble.”
“That was a sermon entire, Brother,” observed Iwan. He turned to Bran and asked, “How much longer are we to loiter here?”
Some little time, I reckoned. As the day wore on, though we heard men moving in the corridors and rooms ’round about the palace, no one darkened our doorway. One by one, we settled back to wait. I sat propped against the wall in one corner, and after a time, Bran joined me. “How are the fingers,Will?” he asked, sliding down into his place beside me.
“Not so bad,” I told him. “The pain comes and goes, but not so much as before.” I did not like dwelling on that, so I asked, “What do you think Red William will do?”
Bran was quick to reply. “I expect he’ll give back our lands,” he said, an edge to his voice. “Brother Jago was eloquent on our behalf, and I think