“You spurned him, then?”
“Every time.”
“Then nothing occurred between you?”
“No.” There was a long pause. “Except that once.”
His tone was glacial now. “Go on. Except that once?”
“That charter was everything to Warnod,” she said. “If his claim could be enforced, he and my sister could live in happiness and comfort instead of scratching a living on his land in Llanwarne. I did it for them. For Aelgar.”
“Did what?”
“Secured the charter from the sheriff.”
“How?”
“I took it, my lord.”
“Yes, but how?” he pressed. “There’s more besides. How? ”
“I agreed to come to him one night.”
“To that pig of a sheriff?” he said in disgust.
“Hear me out in full and you may not be so harsh on me. I did it to gain access to his chamber here. His wife sleeps at their house in Leominster. He often stays at the castle when business keeps him here.”
“I am sure that he does!”
“I knew that the charter would be here,” she said. “If I spent the night in his chamber, I would have a chance to find it. It was our only hope.”
“So you slept with that ogre first.”
“No!” she protested. “I did not and could not do that!”
“The two of you alone all night in his chamber?”
“We were not alone.” A faint smile showed. “I brought some ale with me. A very special brew. The sheriff preferred wine, but learned to drink my ale to please me. I knew that he would take this potion if I offered it.”
“Potion?”
“I have been brewing for many years,” she said. “There is little I have not learned about the trade. I can make an ale that tastes like honey, but has the kick of a donkey. One sip of it would send the strongest man to sleep.”
“He drank it down?”
“The whole draught.”
Ralph began to laugh. “What happened?”
“He did not wake up until noon the next day.”
“By which time you and the charter had long gone.”
“Yes,” she said. “My absence he noticed at once and realised he had been duped. The theft of the charter he did not discover till later.
He is certain that I took it, but has no means of proving it.”
“And is this the full extent of your crime?” he said as he came back to her. “Teaching a lecherous sheriff a lesson that he will never forget?”
“I thought it would turn you away from me.”
He grinned. “Has it?”
“It did at first.”
“You have my deepest apology and profoundest thanks.”
“Thanks?”
“Yes, Golde,” he said, taking her in his arms. “Without that charter, we should not have come to Hereford with such haste. Warnod was abused. You brought it to our attention. There were other matters that arose from the returns of the first commissioners, but that piece of land in Archenfield was the main one.” He hugged her then laughed aloud. “I would love to have seen Ilbert the Sheriff snoring away like that! No wonder he was blunt with you.”
“It was not only the charter that I stole from him.”
“Something far more precious was taken away from under his greedy nose?”
“Ilbert has not touched ale since. He sticks to wine.”
“Let’s forget Ilbert,” he said. “There is no place for him here. I came back to be with you, Golde. You have been honest with me and I respect you for that.” He pulled her close. “I merely wish to ask one question of you.”
“What is that?”
“Will your sister expect you back tonight?”
Golde looked at him and all her doubts fed away.
“She will have to learn to manage without me.”
The events of the day had exposed a vein of conviviality in Richard Orbec which had been hidden for some years. He was a generous host.
In the hall of the manor house Gervase Bret and Idwal the Archdeacon were treated to a delicious meal and offered a choice of fine wines.
The dishes set before them were so tempting and so plentiful that the Welshman fell on them with a vengeance, gormandising with such relish that he actually stopped talking for a while.
Orbec himself was a revelation. He joined happily in the banter and led the laughter. The death of Maurice Damville seemed to have lifted a huge rock from his back. He was no longer pressed down into a life of frugality, self-denial, and defensiveness. Orbec ate more during that one meal than during the whole of the week. Wine brought out a gentle mockery in him.
“Are you telling us, then, that God was a Welshman?”
“Probably,” said Idwal.
“Do you have any Scriptural basis for this claim?”
“It is something I feel in the blood and along the heart, my lord. We are a nation with hwyl. Not a spiritless people like the Saeson. Not a gloomy race like the Normans. We love our religion with a passion unlike any other. God put that passion there for a purpose.”
“We have noticed,” said Gervase with a smile.
“What, then, is your ambition?” asked Orbec.
“Ambition is a sin,” said Idwal, waving an admonitory finger before using it to pop another eel into his mouth. “The quest for personal gain is unchristian. What I have is not the sneaking lust of an ambition, but the soul-enhancing joy of a mission in life.”
“And what might that be?’
“To become Archbishop of Wales!”
“Your country has no archbishop,” Gervase pointed out.
“We will, my friend, we will. My mission is clear. When it pleases God to choose me, I will become Bishop of St. David’s without-I hope and pray-having to be consecrated by the Archbishop of Canterbury.
That will make me nominal head of the Welsh Church. I can then don my lambskin cloak and go to Rome for an audience with the Pope himself.”
“What will be your request?” said Orbec.
“It will be a demand,” corrected Idwal. “To recognise that we are a separate people with our own spiritual identity. To appoint me Idwal, Archbishop of Wales.”
He reached across the table for another piece of bread and almost fell from his seat. Rich food and heady wine had overtaxed a consti-tution that was accustomed to simpler fare. Idwal began to sway dangerously.
“I must take my leave of you,” he said with an air of maudlin contri-tion. “Thank you for your hospitality, my lord. I must now beg the use of your chapel so that I can get down on my knees and ask a pardon for my gross indulgence.”
Orbec called a servant to help the Welshman out. They bade him good night, then finished the last flagon of wine. Gervase was ready to retire to his bed, but Orbec wished to talk a little longer. The latter’s joviality fell away. A more soulful mood gripped him.
“Idwal was right,” he said. “Ambition is a sin.”
“That depends on the nature of the ambition, my lord.”
“Mine was based on a craving for power. I fought to acquire this demesne so that I could surround myself with a vast moat of land and hide here within my citadel.” He gave a bleak smile. “Not all that land was acquired honestly.”
“We have taken note of that, my lord,” said Gervase.
“Maurice Damville was partly to blame,” continued Orbec. “As long as he was my neighbour, I could not rest for one second. I had to patrol my estates like an army of occupation lest he steal them away as he stole so much else. Now that Damville is gone, my imperatives have changed.”
“You were the victim of his malice, my lord.”
“There was more to it than that, Gervase. He did not devise his plan simply to spite Richard Orbec and bring the fury of the Welsh down on me. He had a wider ambition than that.”
“What was it?”
“To become Earl of Hereford.”
“By inciting violence on the border?”
“Precisely by that means,” said Orbec. “Why do you think he spent so much time on his fortifications? Ewyas Harold was the bulwark against the Welsh. If they had ridden around it and laid waste on my estates, Damville would then have sallied forth and harried them back across the border. He would have been given the credit for ending a Welsh incursion that he himself had provoked.”