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TO HIS EVERLASTING mortification, he climbed the stairs alone.
William was waiting for him in Stephen’s chamber, pacing like an expectant father. Except in this instance, the child was taller than the father and playing a chancy game. Without preamble, William bellowed, “What have you found out?”
Drake used the meager advantage of his height to assert a meager amount of superiority. “No halloo, how are you, what happened to your face?”
“Very well. Halloo, how are you, what happened to your face, and what have you found out?” The reason Drake had never believed in the wrath of God was because William’s was more than enough.
Subsiding onto the bed as if his father’s fist had pushed him there, Drake tried to convince William that he, Stephen, had been working diligently at clearing the name of his brother, Drake, who was supposed to be in Chinon Castle at this very moment, hopefully a welcome guest in the royal apartments as opposed to a confined prisoner in the Tour de Moulin. In the telling of his doings over the course of the day, he became confused as to which brother he was charged to defend. He also found himself employing the sheriff’s manner of easing pain from his temples and wondering why he habitually protected his younger brother against his father, even now when he was supposed to be said younger brother.
When the recounting was done, William resumed pacing. Drake saw a way to make him stop. “Why didn’t you tell us about the tribute money?”
It worked. William sat on a stool. “Go on,” he said, subdued in a way Drake did not see often, if ever.
“Aren’t you exempt from the scutage? Because Drake and I took the cross?”
“God’s eyes, but you’re naïve! It matters not that my sons have pledged their lives for Christendom and king. I must also pledge my wealth. First it was the Saladin Tithe. Now that’s been spent, on God knows what for it wasn’t on the king’s damnable crusade, they come with their hands out once more.”
“By using Graham de Lacy and the others?”
“Turning sons against fathers to quiet the discontent? What else is new in this land and this age?” William let out a prolonged sigh that didn’t ease his temper much. “In any case, Stephen, welcome to the real world.”
Even though the reproach stung, Drake had to agree. He was naïve, but that was about to change. “I pose a question.”
“Which is?”
“Who in Winchester has enough coin of the realm to dole out to men of need? Other than the moneylenders, that is?”
“Usury? Aye, you mean usury.” William stilled to ponder. He didn’t have to ponder for long. “You don’t mean to suggest ...?” He stopped himself from saying more. To go on was to flirt with high treason.
A lender of local and substantial resources, ben Yosel had said. Drake was aware of only one local and substantial resource, as unfathomable as it seemed.
William finished his thought. “You’re saying the Royal Winchester Treasury is not a pot but a siphon? Coins pour in one way and spill out the other ... for profit?” Shaking his head, the lord of Itchendel stood and resumed pacing. “Gervase des Roches hasn’t the sense of a rat swimming in a whirlpool for something like that.”
“Gervase ...?”
“... des Roches. The treasury’s over-conceited, underpaid dolt of a clerk. As sheriff of Hampshire and an ex officio member of the Exchequer, Bishop of Ilchester would never have stood for it. And neither will Godfrey de Lucé when he’s formally elected bishop and named sheriff.”
“Randall of Clarendon would.”
William looked at his son in a new light.
“And then there’s Graham de Lacy.”
“What of that son of a whore?”
“He was collecting the tribute, wasn’t he?”
William was slow to answer. “He was.”
“Along with Rufus fitzHugh, Seward Twyford, and Maynard of Clarendon?” William didn’t respond. “Three dead or close to death and a fourth running scared. It can’t be chance.”
“What does all of this have to do with Drake? You, I would understand, but not Drake.”
Drake stared up at his father. “Why do you treat me differently than you do my brother? Surely the span of three breaths shouldn’t make such a difference ...”
“Stephen!”
“... that you would regard Drake a prince and myself a cutthroat.”
“Don’t be an ass!” William’s eyes paled to near invisibility and silently accused. Not Drake, but the lad he believed him to be.
“I’m your son, too. I want your love as much as Drake. More.” The jolt of his father’s visit reached back into a ruptured past, jutted forward into an uncertain future, and owned up to nothing but happenstance and complex patterns of affection. The uncertainty of who he was, who his father was, who his brother was, or where he fit into the scheme of his own life took Drake by the shoulders and shook him to the core of who he was, there by the fate of coming down the birth canal first. A fortnight ago he was cocksure of everything. With the stroke of a sword not his own, the world and everything in it had collapsed.
“You have my love.”
Drake got up and approached the window. A sow on the street, her curlicue tail whipping in vigorous anticipation, scrounged for scraps and slops to make up a satisfying meal. William paced the bedchamber with the same energy as the sow. The two men went on avoiding each other, while an invisible third stood between, all possessing matched seawater eyes.
“Did you ever suppose,” Drake said, spinning around to face his father, “that it wasn’t the second son who caused the hemorrhaging, but the first?” His mother died the night she gave birth to her sons. Legend had it that she had laid eyes on the first but not the second, and her husband took it as a sign, which he carried to this day.
His accusation hung in the air, a gruesome thing with disquieting allusions. William was knocked back by a physical blow. For Drake, it was a moment suspended for eternity, something he reasoned out long ago but never possessed courage enough to blurt out, either for damnation or exoneration.
William found his voice. “Is that what you think? That I blame you for your mother’s death?”
His son’s silence was not the answer he wanted.
“I treated you and your brother exactly alike. I loved you both alike.” William became speechless, realization intervening, along with a lifetime of memories, some subtle and some not so subtle, and the effect they had on shaping character, personality, and the insubstantial commodity called love. “You’re different from your brother. You have your head in the clouds. This talk of monasteries ....” He ran a hand through his hair, as thick as memory served but increasingly laced with threads of silver. He sighed, and looked at the man he believed to be Stephen, truly looked at him as he had never before beheld either brother ... with softened eyes of love. “If I treat you more harshly, it’s only to temper you into a man.”
Drake stepped away from the window. “I am a man.”
His eyes darkened. “God’s body! If not for your brother, where would you be, eh? Running away from your God-given duties. Shirking your heritage and your king. Or swiving in the brothel houses and spawning God knows how many bastards on God knows how many wenches.”
A flush of heat crawled along Drake’s spine, followed by a wave of cold. “And how many bastards have the revered William fitzAlan spawned on God knows how many wenches? Enyd, of course, which all of Winchester knows about.”
William’s sunburnt face turned ruddy. The silence that followed was like the slice of a sword, dividing flesh from flesh.
“You never formally introduced me to my dear sweet sister. Perhaps I should court her. Perhaps Enyd and I can spawn roe-eyed fish with gills and forked tongues―”
Drake should have seen it coming: the fist that connected like a mace. The force toppled him to the floor. He reached a hand to his smarting eye and shuddered. “And then there’s Aveline Darcy and her green-eyed Pippa.”
William’s fury was properly smothered. He bunched his fists at his sides. “You would know the answer to that better than I.”
Drake knew he had made a fatal error.
His father stared down at him in shocked silence. “Unless―”
“You’re right,” Drake said. “Maybe my head is in the clouds.
“Come. I didn’t hurt you.” William helped him to his feet, afterwards making a study of his face. He took in the bruises, the stitches he hadn’t seen before, and the recent swellings. His eyes focused on the mole on the left side of his mouth and lingered. His bewildered expression uncovered layers of love, puzzlement, and lastly revelation. A distrustful eyebrow lifting, he engagingly said, “Halloo.”
Warily Drake responded, “Halloo.”
“How are you?”
“Still standing on my own two feet, no thanks to you.”
“What happened to your face? You rather look like your brother.”
“’Twould seem everyone in Winchester believes your eldest son a most foul murderer and his twin brother not much better.” He blinked. “If we cannot exonerate Drake, do I stand to inherit Itchendel?”
“God’s eyes!”
And with that, William fitzAlan stormed out of the chamber.
