“What of the second son?”
“Master Huet?” He laughed. “Now he was spawned with stronger seed, and we all now say he’s more the man by far. A few scoffed, suggesting he was a cokenay with that fair skin and his sweet singing, but they changed their own song quickly enough when he gave them a one-fisted love tap and they awoke with a blackened eye, staring at the clouds. The Earl of Lincoln took a liking to the lad as well, which is why he paid his way at university.” He gestured westward. “Methinks both Master Stevyn and our lord would rather have the second son as steward than Master Ranulf, but the earl’ll find a place somewhere for Master Huet in his service.”
“Which should happen soon since Master Huet has returned and must be done with schooling.” Thomas knew better but was curious to hear what rumors were already about.
The man bent closer and spoke in low tones. “I’ve heard that he wandered about in France for some months before he came back and finally confessed he had escaped the Latin exercises. But none of us ever thought he’d take to monkish ways. That’s one with hot enough loins to seed babes all over the shire, begging your pardon.”
Thomas laughed as he tossed a load of clean straw into the donkey’s stall. “Any proof of that before he was sent across the Cam?”
The man’s face darkened. “The lass died of birthing. So did the babe. As I heard the tale, he turned black with melancholy and thus agreed to have his head shaved with the tonsure for his sins.” Then he shrugged. “No marriage would have been possible even had he wished it. She was a villein’s daughter.”
“He seems cheerful enough now. Perhaps his heart has healed.”
Again the man shrugged and bent his back once more to the cleaning of the stalls.
“Two brothers who could not be more different,” Thomas said after a long while.
“They share their father’s stubbornness, but Master Ranulf looks like his mother and took on a brittle version of her faith. As for Master Huet, he has his father’s build, but, if I didn’t know his mother to be an honest and most Christian woman, I’d say some spirit exchanged her babe for another in the birthing room.” His brow furrowed. “If a switch did happen, it gave the master a sweet-tempered lad with the voice of angels. That change would never have been made by any evil imp, would it?”
Thomas shook his head. “If the master’s first wife was a good woman, perhaps God wanted to make up for the firstborn,” he suggested. “You have heard him sing?”
The man brightened. “I overheard one of Master Stevyn’s guests once say that our old King Richard would have been jealous of the lad’s skills, but Queen Eleanor, the Lionheart’s mother, would have made Master Huet a rich man for his songs.”
Thomas did not reply and slowed his pace as he finished with the stall and began to curry the donkey. Soon the stableman was done and offered to complete what the monk had started. Thomas refused, claiming he would be through soon enough, and the man left.
The monk continued to work on the donkey’s coat, a task he usually found both pleasurable and soothing, but this time the work did not keep troubling thoughts from pricking at him.
He had taken an almost instant dislike to Ranulf, and he now condemned himself. The elder son might be made with edges sharp enough to cut anyone who offended him, but wasn’t there merit in that? Surely his unbending spirit also gave him firm direction and method, even if it also rendered him incapable of seeing his failures or listening to different ways of managing the land. Others who had experience in the work knew well enough how to do the tasks required. As the stableman said, all a man had to do was learn how Ranulf thought and discover ways of circumventing his instructions when necessary.
Disliking the intermittent grooming, the donkey flicked his ears and snorted with vexation.
In spite of himself, Thomas laughed and scratched between the donkey’s ears. “As you do well to remind me, even an ass knows how foolish it is to burden competent servants with ignorant masters,” he said, “and strategy without wisdom is as destructive as no objective at all.”
Perhaps he had thoughtlessly found merit in Ranulf’s benighted ways because Huet seemed without any direction. The younger son was a difficult man to comprehend and that unsettled Thomas. Huet was truly as nebulous as a shape-changing imp. He might be charming but he had also demonstrated irresponsibility by showing disrespect for an influential lord who had paid for his education. Why had Huet tossed aside a fine future? For a lute-player’s life? The man must be mad. Or was his witty grace but a thin-coating that hid an evil heart?
Thomas shivered. Maybe the second son truly was a changeling after all and not some gift from a sympathetic God. On the other side of that argument, Huet might also be a good youth who lacked only one wise man to guide him on a more adult path.
He wished he could simply dismiss Huet as a charming and perhaps indolent fellow, but he liked him. Too much. Satan must be making sport again, and he had suffered enough. First, the Prince of Darkness had turned the sweetness of Thomas’ love for Giles into a bitter and earthly Hell. Next, the Evil One destroyed his sleep by sending rampant imps to seduce him into sinful acts, and most recently, at Amesbury, the creature had filled him with lust for another man. No sooner did he recover from the wounds of one encounter then the Devil sent another affliction. Did he not have cause to fear Huet?
He quickly checked the donkey to make sure he had finished with him.
These recent nights had been innocent enough. The two men slept in each other’s arms, nothing more. Thomas, however, had found too much comfort when Huet held him closer and wondered whether the man had really done so just for the greater warmth it provided.
Did Huet know his weakness? Was he using his wiles to seduce Thomas? Or did he hope that giving him such a minor pleasure would distract him from seeing some other evil that Huet had committed? Painful though the recollection might be, Thomas did remember that the man had left the hearth the night Tobye was killed. What he could not recall was exactly when he had disappeared. The absence was far too long for any trip to the privy and long enough to commit murder. But was it early enough to have left a corpse barely stiffened?
He cursed himself. Huet might well be as innocent of evil intent as a babe, while he, an accused sodomite, cloaked the poor man with his own frailties. And hadn’t the man’s sweet songs and skillful lute playing given Thomas as much pleasure as the music at Tyndal Priory? The stableman was right when he said the steward’s younger son had the voice of an angel. How could such a creature be wicked?
But his next thought chilled. Was he confusing pleasure in sacred things with some shallow and lewd semblance? “Dare I trust myself to know the difference?” he muttered.
As he stroked the donkey’s neck, Thomas concluded he must not be taken in by Huet’s clever manner and engaging talents. Nightmares born in his prison days might have effectively unmanned him, but he had cause enough to fear the aching sweetness he found in Huet’s arms. Since the day he had lost Giles, his heart had never ceased to weep with loneliness, although he had become more skilled at deafening the sound. Nevertheless, he knew how liable he was to grasp at false suggestions of ease.
“I cannot think more on this,” he whispered, swallowing bitter-tasting tears. Then he forced his thoughts to another purpose, looked around, and discovered that he was quite alone.
Kneeling in the straw, Thomas retrieved the blood-stained knife he had hidden in a corner of the donkey’s stall, just before Master Stevyn and his son entered the stable, and wished he had been wrong in suspecting the sheriff’s men had failed to look for it.