Hawisa shook her head again. “We do not know where he is, my lady. He was as distraught as I’ve ever seen him. He rushed from the hall as if he were being pursued by all the hounds of Hell and no one has seen him for hours. He is not in the castle, that much we know.”
“He went off alone?” Berengaria closed her eyes for a moment. Oh, Richard . . . “But someone must know where he’d have gone. Did he take a horse? Have men been sent out to search for him? Surely the queen would do that?”
“The queen does not know yet. She took to her bed and we thought it best not to tell her. He’ll soon be found, after all. Rouen is a large city, yes, but he could not pass unnoticed. . . .”
At the moment, Berengaria was more concerned with Richard’s safety than with her mother-in-law’s grieving. She told herself that if any man could look after himself, it was Richard. But she knew there were French spies in Rouen. If he were recognized . . . Would he have gone to a tavern? She’d never seen him drunk, but there was much of his life that remained hidden to her. “So you are saying that the king has been gone for hours and no one is out looking for him?”
“No, I am not saying that,” Hawisa protested, not liking Berengaria’s accusing tone. “His cousin André de Chauvigny went in search of him. He said he thought he knew where the king would have gone. And no, he did not say more than that, rushed off without another word.”
Berengaria was relieved to hear that. When Hawisa had shared her horrible news, she’d felt remorseful that she’d not been there. But she was deluding herself again. Her presence would not have mattered, for Richard would not have turned to her for comfort.
“Please let me know if you hear anything,” she told Hawisa and then moved like a sleepwalker to her own bedchamber, where she silenced her ladies with unwonted sharpness and told them to withdraw. She curled up on the bed then and wept for Henri, for his grieving widow and fatherless daughters, for the besieged Kingdom of Jerusalem. And she wept, too, for herself, for her missing husband, and for the mysterious ways of the Almighty, which were beyond the ken of mortal man.
IT WAS AFTER DARK when André’s boat tied up at the dock on the ?le d’Andely. His hunch was verified at once when he was told that the king had indeed arrived several hours earlier. He’d demanded a horse, refused an escort, and ridden across the bridge to Petit Andely. André now did the same. He did not bother searching for Richard in the town, instead turned his mount toward the southeast slope, the only approach to Castle Gaillard.
The workers were already in their quarters, but guards quickly materialized from the shadows and gestured toward a tethered stallion when André questioned them. They were obviously curious, but he gave them no answers, handing his reins to the closest of the guards and taking the man’s lantern.
Even with that light, it was dangerous going. There should have been a full moon, but it was shrouded in clouds. The middle bailey was deep in shadow, eerily silent, like a ghost castle, he thought uneasily. Holding the lantern at an angle so he could watch his footing, he continued on into the inner bailey, and there he found his cousin.
Richard was seated on the ground, leaning back against the keep wall. He showed no surprise at the sight of André, as if it were perfectly natural for them both to be prowling about the castle grounds hours after the sun had set. Putting his lantern on a nearby wheelbarrow, André sat down beside Richard. “It was quite mad to come up here without a light,” he said after a time, and he thought Richard shrugged.
“It was not dark when I got here.”
“I did not think to bring one, either,” André admitted. “But I did remember this.” Unhooking the wineskin from his belt, he handed it to Richard, who drank and then returned it. They passed it back and forth until it was empty and André then flung it into the blackness beyond the faint glow of his lantern.
Just then the moon broke through the clouds, giving him a glimpse of Richard’s profile. His eyes were reddened and bloodshot, but the corner of his mouth was curving in what was almost a smile. “I should have known you’d be the one to find me.”
“In my next life, I’ll likely come back as a lymer hound.” André wished he’d thought to bring a second wineskin. If ever there was a night to get blind, roaring drunk, this was it. “Tell me you are not blaming yourself.”
“No.” But after another long silence, Richard admitted, “I’ll never know, though, if it would have been different had I been able to return as I’d promised him. I hope to Christ he understood why I could not.”
“Of course he did. We may have a few fools in our family tree, but Henri was not one of them.”