I knew the worst had happened. I searched his eyes. “What’s happened, Matthew? Tell me, where is my wife?”
A look of deep sorrow came onto his face. Oh, God … I almost did not want him to tell me the rest. He led me by the arm to the remains of our home. “There were riders, Hugh. Ten, twelve… They swept in, in the dead of night, like devils, burning everything they could. Black crosses on their chests. They wore no colors. We had no hint of who they were. Just the crosses.”
“Riders …?” My blood was frozen with dread. “What riders, Matthew? What did they do to Sophie?”
He placed a hand gently upon my shoulder. “They burned three dwellings in their path. Paul the carter, Sam, old Gilles, their wives and children, killed as they fled. Then they came to the inn. I tried to stop them, Hugh, I did,” he cried.
I seized him by the shoulders. “And Sophie?” I knew the worst had happened. No, this could not be. Not now …
“She’s gone, Hugh.” Matthew shook his head.
“Gone?”
“She tried to run, but the men took her inside. They beat her, Hugh…”He pursed his lips and bowed his head. “They did worse. I heard her screams. They held me as they beat and raped her. Knights tore up the place, ripping it post by post. Then they dragged her out. She was like a lifeless thing, barely alive. I was sure they would leave her to die, but the leader threw her over his horse while the others released their torches. It was then that…”
I could barely hear him. A distant voice was echoing, No, this cannot be! My eyes welled up with tears. “It was then that what, Matthew?”
[77] He bowed his head. “They dragged her away, Hugh. I know she is dead.”
All strength drained from my legs. I sank to my knees. Oh, God, how could this-have happened? How could I have left her to this fate? My Sophie gone… I gazed upon the charred ruins of my former life.
“Norcross did this, didn’t he? Baldwin …?”
“We do not know for certain.” Matthew shook his head. “If I did, I would go after them myself. They were beasts, but faceless ones. They wore no crests. Their visors were down. Everyone ran to the woods for cover. Yours was the only house they entered. It was as if they came for you.”
For me … Those bastards. I had fought two years for Baldwin ’s own liege. I had marched across half the world and seen the worst things. And still, they took from me the one thing I loved.
I grabbed some dust from the rubble and let it slip through my fists. “My poor Sophie…”
Matthew knelt down beside me. “Hugh, there’s more…”
“More? What could be more?” I looked into his eyes.
He put a hand on my face. “After you left, Sophie had a son.”
Chapter 24
MATTHEWS WORDS HIT ME like a stone wall, collapsing over me. A son…
For three years Sophie and I had tried to conceive, to no result. We had wanted a child more than anything. We even spoke of it that last night we were together. I had left her, and never even knew I had a son.
I turned toward Matthew, a flicker of hope alive in my heart.
“He is dead, Hugh. He wasn’t even a year old. The bastards killed him that same night. They tore him from Sophie’s arms as she tried to flee.”
A wall of tears rushed at my eyes. A son… A son I would never know or hold. I had been through the fiercest battles, the worst of all horrors. But nothing could have prepared me for this.
“How?” I muttered. “How did my son die?”
“I can’t even say it.” Matthew’s face was ashen. “Just believe me when I say that he is dead.”
I repeated my question, this time fixed upon his eyes. “How?”
His voice was so quiet. “As they threw Sophie’s lifeless body over his mount, the leader said, We have no room for such a toy. Toss him in the flames.’ ”
I felt a pressure building up, an anger clawing at me as if my insides were ripping through my skin. God had smiled on us [79] after all that time. He had blessed us with a son. Now He spat at me with the sharpest mockery.
How could I have left them? How could I still be alive if they were dead?
I looked at Matthew and asked, “What was his name?”
Matthew swallowed. “She named him Phillipe.”
I felt a lump catch in my throat. Phillipe was the name of the goliard who had raised me. It was her tribute to me. Sweet Sophie, you are gone. My son too … I felt the urge to die right there amid the charred ash, the ruins of my old life.
“Hugh,” Matthew said, lifting me up, “you have to come.” He led me up the trail to a knoll where I had just stood over the town. A small slate stone marked my son’s grave.
I sat down under a shroud of tall poplars. “Phillipe De Luc, son of Hugh and Sophie,” was scratched into the stone. “Year of our Lord MXCVIII.”
I laid my head on the earth and wept. For my sweet Phillipe, whom I would never see, not even once in my life. For my wife, who was surely dead.
Was this why I was spared? Was this why the Turk had not swung his murderous sword? So I would live to see all that I loved lost? Was this why the laughter had saved me? So God could laugh at me now?
I took off the pouch that contained the things I had brought back for Sophie: a perfume box, some ancient coins, the scabbard, the golden cross-and I dug a hole next to my baby’s grave. I gently placed my “treasures” in it. They were worthless to me now. “They belong to you,” I whispered to Phillipe. My sweet baby.
I smoothed out the earth and once more laid my head on the ground. I’m so sorry, Phillipe and Sophie. Slowly my grief began to harden into rage. I knew Baldwin had ordered this. And Norcross had carried it out. But why? Why?
I’m just an innkeeper, I thought. I am nothing. Just a serf.
But a serf who will see you dead.
Chapter 25
A CROWD GATHERED around us as Matthew and I came back into town. Father Leo, Odo, my other friends… Everyone wanted to comfort and bless me. And hear of my two years in the war.
But I pushed past them. I had to go to the inn. Its ruins… I sifted through the charred wood and ash, searching for anything that breathed of her, my Sophie-a piece of cloth, a dish, a last memento of what I had lost.
“She spoke of you all the time, Hugh,” Matthew told me. “She missed you terribly. We all thought you were lost in the war. But not Sophie.”
“You are certain, brother, that she is dead?”
“I am.” Matthew shrugged. “When they took her she was already more dead than alive.”
“But you did not actually see her die? You don’t know for sure?”
“Not for sure. But I beg you, brother, not to cling to false hope. I’m her flesh and blood. And I damn well pray she was dead as they dragged her out of here.”
I met his eyes. “So she may not be dead, Matthew?”
He looked at me quizzically. “You must accept it, Hugh. If she was not then, I’m certain she was soon. Her body could have been left somewhere along the road.”
[81] “So you searched the road? And did you find her? Has anyone traveling from the west come upon her remains?”
“No. No one.”
“Then there’s a chance. You say she never doubted me. That she knew I would return. Well, I do the same for her.”
I found myself in the part of the inn where our living space had been. Everything was cinder. Our bed, a chest of drawers… On the floor, I noticed something reflecting light.