Free The Reckoning - 3 by Sharon Kay Penman Page B

passed him in the courtyard, headed for the hall!"
Hugh spun around, started to run, with Noel and Niccolo right on his heels.
They heard the shouting even before they reached the hall. Guy was gripping
Walter de Baskerville by both arms, shaking the other man in his urgency to get answers. "Are you sure, truly sure it was Hal?"
"Guy, I saw him, crossing the piazza bold as can be! It was him, I swear by my very soul!"
Guy seemed stunned. "That God would deliver him into my hands ..." He swung away from de Baskerville, looking about for his squire. "Ancel, fetch my sword! Bran! Where in Christ did he go?" His eyes were sweeping the hall, singling out English exiles. "Walter, Geoffrey, Alan, you fought with me at
Evesham. Are you with me now? Bran! Damn him!" Snatching up his scabbard, he buckled it with shaking hands. "Ancel, get to the stables, saddle my horse!
What of the rest of you? Who rides with me?"
It was like watching a fire blazing out of control. Some caught the contagion, too, began to shout for their own swords and horses. Others were backing away, as if the very air around Guy had become hot enough to singe. But when he turned to his father-in-law, the Count did not hesitate. "Of course I go with you/' he said, quite matter-of-factly. "A man must avenge his own." And it was then that Bran emerged from a corner privy chamber.
He paused, blinking in the surge of sunlight, looking puzzled and a little wary to find the hall in such turmoil. Grabbing Bran's scabbard from the back of a chair, Guy strode forward, thrust it at his brother. "We've no time to lose, Bran. Hal is here, right here in Viterbo! I still cannot believe it, cannot believe God could be so good to us. But Christ, why could it not have been Ned?"
Bran had always believed the folklore that a sudden shock could sober a man.
He discovered now that it wasn't so. No matter how he Wed to focus his thoughts, to banish the wine-fumes from his brain, he could not cut through the confusion. Drink did not numb as easily as it once had, so why now? Why now when he had such need for clear thinking? He looked at his brother, seeing not Guy but Harry, his con-
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stant, unseen companion, for who was more faithful than a ghost? Who understood better than the dead that there was no forgiveness, in this life or the next? What did Guy know of remorse, relentless and everpresent, goading a man toward madness? What did Guy know of that? And he must not ever learn!
"Guy, listen to me!" Why did his voice sound so slurred, echo so strangely in his own ears? Why could he not find the right words? "But *& is Hal, not Ned.
Hal. And he ... he was not even at Evesham!"
He saw at once that he'd not gotten through to Guy; the look on his brother's face was one of disbelief, not comprehension. "Why are you so set upon destroying yourself? What will it change? You cannot even say that Papa would want this, Guy, for you know he would not!"
It was a cry of desperation, honest as only a plea utterly without hope can be. But Guy reacted as if he'd been struck a physical blow. His head came up, breath hissing through clenched teeth, eyes narrowing into slits of incredulous rage.
"You dare to talk of what Papa would have wanted, you who killed him! He and
Harry died because of you, because of your criminal carelessness, your
God-cursed folly! Where were you when we most needed you? Camped by the lake at Kenilworth Castle, out in the open so your men could bathe, by God, so Ned could come down upon you like a hawk on a pigeon! And Papa never knowing, keeping faith in you till the last! Even when we realized that Ned had used your banners as bait, we assumed you'd fought and lost, not that you'd let yourself be ambushed like some green, witless stripling, never that! Does it comfort you any, that our father went to his death still believing in you, never knowing how you'd betrayed him? I watched him die, damn you, and Harry and all the others. Not you, Branme! And mayhap this is why I did