where Stephen’s queen is staying while she waits for an audience with the empress.”
“Then we’ll go and attend her?” Maislin’s brow was furrowed with concentration, and he had apparently already forgotten about Rose’s faithlessness.
“Yes…we’ll offer to carry a letter to Bristol. But tonight we’re going to go and warn the empress that trouble may be brewing in London,” Brys said as he swung up into the saddle.
“Tonight.” Maislin’s tone was neutral, but his crestfallen face told another story. Having drunk his fill and tupped a wench, Maislin was clearly ready to head for Brys’s nearby London house with its clean beds and excellent meals, not back to Westminster at this late hour.
“But my lord,” he protested, even though he was already reining his horse in the direction of London Bridge, “whether we go on horseback or take a boat, by the time we reach Westminster, the empress will be abed.”
“Then we’ll just have to wake her,” Brys said, imagining just how ill Matilda would take such effrontery. “Hours may count, so the empress needs to know as quickly as possible. We’ll have to be well away before ’tis fully light, too. I don’t dare be caught at Westminster rubbing elbows with Stephen’s rival by Stephen’s queen.”
Maislin sighed. “My lord, why do you do it?”
“Do what, Maislin?” Brys asked. “I thought I just explained why we were going to Westminster now.”
“Nay, not that. I understand your purpose well enough, even if ’tis my opinion it could all wait upon the morrow. I meant serving the Empress Matilda.”
“My father vowed an oath of fealty to Henry himself, saying he would support Henry’s daughter as queen.”
“So did many men, including Stephen. It didn’t bind him. And you are not your father—what bound the father need not bind the son.”
“Do you wish that I would switch my allegiance to Stephen, Maislin?” Brys asked, studying his squire as they clattered across the bridge from Southwark into the city of London. Did his squire regret serving him, and wish to turn his coat?
“Nay, my lord! I but wish to understand what led you to your choice!” Maislin said, and looked so distressed that Brys knew he was sincere.
Brys looked away. “My father said that oaths matter,” he said aloud, regretting that he couldn’t explain to his squire the real reason he served Matilda. He couldn’t tell Maislin something even his sisters did not know—that he was really only their half brother.
His mother had been the old king’s mistress—one of many that the lecherous Henry had enjoyed, but unlike the rest of them, the lady had insisted on keeping their liaison secret. When the inevitable happened and she became pregnant, she asked to be given a noble husband. Henry had chosen the Baron of Balleroy.
Not being claimed—branded—a royal bastard had been both a blessing and a curse, Brys reflected. While he could not boast a high title such as Earl of Gloucester, as the king’s oldest natural son, Robert, could, he had a choice. He could choose to serve Henry’s daughter Matilda, not be forced to because his parentage would have made any other allegiance suspect.
And because Henry’s cast-off mistress had been given in marriage long before the birth of her babe, Brys had been given the gift of legitimacy. As Balleroy’s supposedly true-born son, he had inherited the barony when his “father” died. He was grateful for that—most days, at least.
He would have traded his barony and all the privileges being a nobleman entailed, however, for at least being loved by the baron.
Brys remembered the day he had been bold enough to ask his “father” why he was so harsh and cold toward him. He had been only seven, and about to go off to another Norman nobleman’s castle to be fostered, as was the custom. Evidently the question had convinced the baron that Brys was old enough to know his true parentage, for he had called Brys into the Balleroy Castle chapel and told him that King Henry was the man who had sired him upon his mother, not he, the Baron of Balleroy. Then he made him swear an oath on some saint’s dried-up fingerbone that Brys would never tell his three sisters the truth. For the good of Balleroy, he’d said.
Exposing Brys’s bastardy would make his eldest daughter, Avelaine, an heiress, and the baron didn’t want her to be the target of every land-hungry knave who’d marry her just for the barony. It took a man to hold the land.
The baron would never explain why he wanted Brys to know the secret, if Brys was to be his heir anyway.
He hated the baron after that. Before that day he had felt sure of himself, secure in his place in the world. Once he left the chapel that day, he felt the secret weighing him down like a millstone about his soul. He had been given a barony he wasn’t really entitled to.
His hatred had only multiplied when Ogier had been born.
Brys felt like the cuckoo left in another bird’s nest. He was an impostor, yet he would inherit the responsibility for the welfare of his three half sisters and half brother. It would be up to him to see that the girls made good marriages to men who would cherish them as they deserved. He must provide for Ogier, yet his younger brother was the true heir. But since he had not been released from his vow, he was expected to marry and provide an heir for Balleroy.
But how could he wed a lady, knowing he was not who he pretended to be?
Thinking of heirs and heiresses led his thoughts back to the Norman heiress he had left with Matilda. Gisele would be long abed by the time he’d finished his business with Matilda, but mayhap he could at least inquire how she was faring among the wolves.
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