Justin had been half-hoping that his father would be away; much of a bishop's time was taken up with official visitations to the monasteries within his diocese. Not only would that have avoided a meeting with Fitz Alan, it would have postponed his own reckoning with the bishop. Luck was not with him, however. As soon as he was announced, Aubrey came hastening into the great hall to greet him.
"Justin, you are well?"
Justin blinked in surprise. "Yes, I am fine. Why would I not be?" Aubrey's brows drew together in a familiar frown. "Why, indeed? Mayhap because the Earl of Chester told me that you'd vanished without a trace. He said the knight he'd sent with you returned yesterday, claiming that you'd gone missing like the ransom."
"I was trying to find out what really happened to the ransom. What did you think, that I was off carousing or drinking myself sodden in some Welsh alehouse? They do not have alehouses in Wales," Justin said sharply and Aubrey's scowl deepened.
"No, you young fool, I thought you might be lying dead in a ditch with a Welsh lance in your chest!"
Justin opened his mouth to retort, then stopped, not knowing what to say, and the bishop remembered that their quarrel was taking place in a public setting, his own great hall. "Come with me," he said and strode off without waiting to see if Justin was following or not.
He led Justin upstairs to the greater privacy of his solar, neither one speaking until they could close the door upon the rest of In world. Gesturing for Justin to sit, Aubrey began to pace. Justin sat down on a bench, taking longer than necessary to readjust his scabbard. He still did not know what to say, and as the silence lengthened, he wondered if Aubrey did not, either.
"You said you were trying to find out what really happened to the ransom." The bishop halted his pacing and turned abruptly toward Justin, as if finally realizing the import of those words. "The earl led me to believe that you already know what happened, that it was stolen by Davydd's nephew, Llewelyn ab Iorwerth."
"So everyone wants to believe. The only problem is that it is not true."
"No?" Aubrey sounded surprised, but not skeptical, and Justin realized that his father had no cock in this fight, no preconceived notions about Llewelyn's guilt or innocence. "You seem very sure of that, Justin. What do you know that the earl does not?"
"Quite a lot, actually," Justin admitted, making up his mind then and there to confide in his father, at least as much as he was able.. If his idea was a daft one, Aubrey would tell him so. That he did not doubt. "I must ask you to keep whatever I say in confidence. Is that acceptable to you?"
Aubrey was beginning to look curious, even intrigued. "Of course." Settling himself in his high-backed chair, he said, "What makes you think that Llewelyn is not guilty?"
"Because I've learned who the robbers were and they were not Welsh. Nor were they English or Norman-French. I was told that they spoke a foreign tongue. I know it was not Irish or Breton, for they are somewhat akin to Welsh. One of the men may have I been named 'Joder,' and that sounds to me like it might be German or Flemish.
Aubrey nodded thoughtfully. "I agree. I suppose you'd rather I not ask how you came into this bit of interesting information. Are you sure that you can trust your source?"
"Yes."
Aubrey smiled faintly. "If words were coins, you'd be the despair of beggars everywhere. Assuming, then, that your source is correct, what next? How would you even begin to hunt for these men?"
"Well, I have a little more to go on. I was told that these outlaws did not seem to be experienced horsemen," Justin said and saw by his father's expression that Aubrey was not following his line of reasoning. Hoping he was not about to make an utter fool of himself, he continued cautiously, "I thought about that, and it occurred to me that men who are not used to riding horses and who speak a foreign tongue might well be sailors."
"'Sailors,'" Aubrey echoed, sounding startled. After a moment, he smiled. "That is very clever of you, Justin. I doubt that I would have thought of it. So… that is why you are here. Chester is the closest port to the Welsh border."
"That was my thinking," Justin acknowledged. "I know it is a road that may not take me anywhere. But I thought it was worth exploring."
"Does the Earl of Chester know about this?" When Justin shook his head, Aubrey said, "Well, you need to tell him straight away, lad! Surely you do not think that the earl is somehow involved in this wretched business?"
"Passing strange, for that is exactly what the Lady Emma called it, too. And no, I do not suspect the earl. But I do not want to risk exposing my source until I am sure he is out of harm's way."
"That is commendable, of course. Do not confuse your priorities, though. Nothing must matter more than recovering the ransom for the queen." The bishop was beginning to sound like a tutor instructing a well-meaning but slow pupil. As Justin was accustomed to being lectured by Aubrey — most of their past conversations had been sermons of some sort — he took no offense. Aubrey continued on in this admonitory vein for several moments and then grinned unexpectedly. "Was I not right," he demanded, "about the Lady Emma?"
Justin grinned, too. "Indeed you were." It was a strange sensation to be sharing a companionable moment like this with his father; he could not remember it ever happening before. Nor was it likely to happen again. "There is something I must tell you. When I arrived at Rhuddlan Castle, I encountered someone I had not expected to find there, and he took me by surprise." Justin exhaled his breath slowly. "It was Lord Fitz Alan."
"What?" Aubrey was on his feet, staring down at Justin in dismayed horror that was not long in giving way to outrage. "And you told him I was your father? Jesu, what a fool I was to trust you!"
"No, I did not!" Justin rose so swiftly that his scabbard banged on the edge of the bench, hard enough to leave a bruise upon his thigh. "But he heard me introduced as Justin de Quincy and naturally that aroused his curiosity."
"I cannot imagine why!" the bishop snapped. "So what did you tell him, then? What could you possibly have said?"
"Other than the truth, you mean? I told him that you and I were involved in the recovery of the ransom, and I implied that this was why I'd taken your name."
"For the love of God, could you not have done better than that? How long do you think it will take Fitz Alan to come to me with questions I cannot answer?"
Justin gave a half-shrug. "It could not be helped."
"Oh, but it could. If you had not chosen to claim a name that is not yours and will never be yours, none of this would ha happened!"
Justin flinched. "You are right. But it can also be said that none of this would have happened if you'd not broken your vows and seduced my mother!"
"Your mother was — " Aubrey cut off the rest of that sentence so abruptly that he all but choked on his own words, and Justin went cold, for his father had always refused to tell him anything at all about the woman who'd died giving him birth.
"My mother was… what?" he challenged. "Go on, say it!" But the moment was already gone. Aubrey's jaw was clenched, his the unfriendly, guarded eyes of a stranger. He shook his head and gestured toward the door. Justin had seen him dismiss servants and underlings like that over the years, waving people away when he no longer had need of them. It was easy enough to obey, far easier than it would have been to resist, to stay and demand answers he was not likely to get, answers he might even be better off not knowing.
~*~
As he entered the great hall of Chester Castle, Justin bumped into Thomas de Caldecott, quite literally. Thomas swung around with a reprimand that never left his lips. "De Quincy! Christ Jesus, man, where have you been? I told the earl that you might well be dead!"
"Well, I ant not," Justin said tersely, not wanting to deal with Thomas's interrogation, not now. His brusqueness did nothing to mollify the other man, who glowered at him with the indignation of the unfairly wronged.