had once asked Fulk why he'd not offered Lowick the chance to marry Jehanne. The old man had never been one to explain himself, but he'd said he wanted someone with better connections for his heiress.
Raymond's father had been a friend of Fulk's, both of them coming over with the Conqueror, but he'd not prospered. Fulk had taken Raymond into his household as a kindness, but kindness stopped at making him a son. No advantage in it, he'd said.
Had it all been a facade? Had Jehanne really loved Lowick all the time?
Chapter 6
Galeran realized that the steward was standing by patiently. This wasn't what he'd wanted to talk to Matthew about anyway.
It was hard to even speak the words, though. "And what of my son, Matthew? What do you know of how he died?"
The man cleared his throat and looked away. "As to that, my lord, it was a great mystery. A fine lad making his first steps . . ." The steward coughed, perhaps to hide a genuine lump in his throat. "There wasn't even any screaming, if you know what I mean. Lady Jehanne walked into the hall with the child in her arms and just said, 'He won't wake.' Quite a few of us were in the hall, and we didn't know what to make of it at first, her being so calm. Then she looked down at the little one again and said, 'I think he's dead,' in that same ordinary voice. But then she said it louder. And then she started shaking. . . ."
The man cleared his throat again. "Her women gathered and took the babe, but he was already cold. There was nothing to be done."
Galeran had his eyes closed and a pain in his chest that was likely to choke him. That simple telling revealed to him the depth of Jehanne's anguish.
And he had been so far away.
He had not even known.
If there was sense in the universe, he should have known.
He sent his mind hunting back. Gallot had died while Galeran had been on the way home, perhaps while he had been allowing the bath attendants of Constantinople to pamper his weary body. He remembered being restless then. He'd arranged to return home in the party of the Duke of Normandy, but the duke traveled slowly, so slowly.
He remembered still having nightmares about Jerusalem, but try as he might, he could not remember any other shadow. He'd had no flash of awareness that thousands of miles away he had suffered a terrible loss.
His voice was husky when he said, "Did anyone decide what caused the death?"
"No one could, my lord." Hesitantly, Matthew added, "Of course, there were whispers of evil spells and such. You know the way folks are. And after that one outburst she ... Lady Jehanne . . . became so calm. Just carried on as if nothing had happened."
"It was always her way, you know that, Matthew."
"Aye, my lord, but when a woman's lost her only child, it looks funny. And when there's been news that she's lost her husband too, it looks even worse.
. . ."
Galeran looked out over his land, fading to invisibility as darkness settled, but scattered with the fires of his father's army. Desperately, he wished he'd known his son, that he'd been here when all this had happened.
But if he'd been here, it might never have happened.
Could a woman's love - obsession - with a man cause her to connive at the murder of her child?
He turned his mind from torment to puzzles. "So, Gregory died and Lowick came here. That would be - what? - about two months after I left."
"Aye, lord."
"About the time Lady Jehanne found herself with child . . ."
He caught his breath.
Whose child?
All those years of trying and no babe, then miraculously, a babe. And later, another babe without great difficulty. Had Jehanne gone to Lowick as soon as she'd left Galeran in London? Or had she, even, been with child when she urged him to take the Cross?
No, he gathered his flailing mind. Gallot had been born almost an exact nine-month after that last night.
Hadn't he?
"Gallot's birthday was St. Stephen's Day, yes?" That was what Jehanne had told mm in her letter.
""Yes, my lord, and a day we all remember. A right happy one."
Thank God for that. He could check later to see if Jehanne had come straight back to Heywood. She'd been with Lord William, her uncle Hubert, and ten men-at-arms, however, and accompanied