Chapter 33
Easter Mass was celebrated in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and everyone who was anyone attended, in order to be in the reflected glory of the king.
Angelet and the others went along with the Lord of Braecon and his family.
They all sat on one side of the church, while Otto and his family sat on the other.
Most of the people pointedly ignored the other side, a task aided by multiple, huge stone columns that held up the roof of the round church.
Angelet prayed fervently—for justice and forgiveness and mercy, things she wasn’t sure could be reconciled.
Then she went back to the house to worry about the coming audience.
Despite the king’s graciousness during the private meeting, she had no idea how he’d rule.
Otto was a baron, and Rafe merely a knight.
The little she knew of politics suggested that power and influence mattered far more than who was right.
For the audience the next day, she dressed in the same white and blue gown. She nearly fainted when she entered the large audience chamber where the king would hear Otto and Ernald’s grievance. If ever a place was designed to make a person feel insignificant, it was this lofty, cold room.
She saw Rafe, who wore his usual black. He sat between Alric and Luc, with Octavian nearby. Whatever animosity had disrupted the men’s alliance, it was over now. Angelet was grateful, though she hoped that Rafe wouldn’t need their help by the end of the day.
Rafe caught her eye and gave her a tiny wink. He appeared much more confident than she felt. But then, she felt as if she were made entirely of butterflies.
Otto and his entourage came in, filling many seats. Ernald glared at everyone, and sat far from Otto. That was interesting. Had the two quarreled? Lady Katherine sat just behind Otto. She looked down at the floor and never anywhere else, from what Angelet could tell.
Once everyone was assembled, the king entered, along with Lord Drogo, who seemed to be in charge of orchestrating the proceedings.
He began by listing the details of the grievances, and then said to Otto, “You are Lord Otto Yarborough, and you hold the manor of Dryton, as well as other properties in Leicestershire and Lincolnshire.”
“Yes.”
Drogo turned to Rafe. “You are Sir Raphael Corviser, son of Sir Michael Corviser.”
“Yes.” Rafe stood proudly. Otto leaned over to mutter something to his aide.
“You hold no properties,” Drogo continued. Otto smirked.
“Not yet,” Rafe said, though he didn’t look downcast by that.
Drogo proceeded to recount the whole sequence of events, based on the accounts people had given him. Where they conflicted, Drogo questioned the parties involved until he seemed satisfied.
Unfortunately, he was not often satisfied.
Too often, there was no hard evidence to fully prove that one person was lying or another person told the truth.
Witnesses were accused of showing bias, or being blind.
Angelet began to despair. If no one could prove Ernald planned to rob the cortège and hurt Angelet—and with his confidante Bethany already dead—he could easily win his case.
While her mind wandered, Drogo had just asked Rafe something, and he was responding vehemently.
“…and my own defense,” Rafe was saying. “There has been an accusation of theft and kidnapping. You heard the evidence, and you can see there’s no proof for them. I refute both charges.”
Drogo glanced to the king, then said to the gathered assembly, “When we questioned the lady Angelet in private, she declared that you are innocent of any charge of kidnapping. Indeed, she says she implored you to take her south, relying on your knightly oath to protect her.”
“After the attack, we could not be sure who was responsible for it,” Rafe agreed. “So yes, I escorted her south with the hope of finding a safe place for her. As you know, circumstances prevented us getting any further than Shropshire.”
“I heard her,” Stephen added. “The lady’s testimony was not that of a woman frightened. She gave her account very ably, and without contradiction. She seems credible, even though she is a woman.”
“Your grace,” Otto objected. “That she is a woman is all you need to know to discount her testimony! She has doubtless been seduced by this man, and will now say anything he wants her to.”
All eyes turned to Rafe. He took a breath, weighing his response. “Even if I wanted the lady to offer a particular answer to the king’s questions, I wasn’t there, and I could hardly dictate her responses. Whatever answers she gave were her own.”
The king put up a hand to call Drogo to him.
He whispered to his advisor for a few moments.
Then he nodded. “Truly, she seemed honest and forthright. And as for having her head turned by a handsome face…well, then she would not have asked me to find a place in a different nunnery for her, once this is all over.”
Angelet looked at the floor, too embarrassed to meet anyone’s gaze, and in particular Rafe’s. After all this, she would end up essentially where she started.
Otto looked annoyed by all the talk of Angelet being credible, and stood up to regain control of the situation.
“Your grace!” he said. “Everything I did, I did out of concern for my daughter-in-law. She was a dutiful wife to my son, and bore an heir. Even later, when she suffered visions and disrupted the household, I saw to it that she was cared for. Angelet, tell them it is true.”
Angelet regarded her father-in-law, feeling nothing but distaste. “I will not.”
Otto’s eyes narrowed. “What ingratitude, after all I have done for you.”
“You’ve done nothing for me,” she told him. “Don’t pour me poison and tell me it’s wine.”
“What?” he gasped.
“You used me at every turn,” said Angelet.
“First I was a simple wife to your son to get an heir. Then I was a bargaining chip in your negotiations with other barons during the war. You even used my sewing for your own ends!” She turned to the king.
“The altar cloth I gave you, your grace, was intended for the Abbot of Basingwerke. Otto insisted I make it as a gift, probably to soften the abbot’s annoyance once he learned he’d get no other payment. ”
Drogo said, “Perhaps some of this is true, but the last part is an invention of a lady’s overwrought mind. We know Lord Otto sent other payment, for everyone saw it at Dryton. He could not have known it would not arrive.”
Otto grunted in satisfaction at the point, sitting down in the wooden chair.
Angelet felt ready to cry, so she closed her eyes and recited a prayer, trying to remember counsel the Lady of Braecon offered that morning—a woman who cried was a woman who lost.
Then a thin, wispy voice said, “He knew.”
Everyone looked in astonishment at Lady Katherine, Otto’s usually silent wife.
“What do you say?” Drogo asked. “Stand and speak up, my lady!”
Lady Katherine stood awkwardly, uncomfortable with all the masculine authority staring at her. “He knew that the gold would not arrive, because there was no gold sent along with the cortège.”
“Katherine,” Otto began in warning, but he was quickly hushed by the king.
“Everyone has recounted seeing the gold before the cortège left,” Stephan said. “Explain what you mean.”
“First,” she said, very nervously, “I must go back much further, back to the marriage of Angelet to Hubert.”
“Well? Do so!”
She cleared her throat. “It is true that the Lady Angelet was married to Hubert Yarborough, and Hubert’s death left her a widow in our house. However, according to the terms of the contract, she was not to remain with the Yarboroughs.”
“How do you know this?” Drogo asked.
“I read the contract drafted by Lord d’Hiver before the marriage took place. It was in Otto’s study.”
“What were the terms of this contract?”
“Most were what one would expect of a marriage contract. Angelet’s dowry was agreed upon, and there was a list of items she would retain possession of in her own right—some household goods and jewelry, a breviary worked in ivory leather, and such.
“But d’Hiver insisted on a special clause. Because Hubert was already known to be in poor health—though we still hoped for his recovery—there was an agreement that Angelet and her dowry would be returned to the d’Hiver family if her husband died before Angelet was sixteen, which he did.”
Drogo nodded. “Because d’Hiver would have arranged another marriage for a daughter still young enough to breed. But then Angelet was kept at Dryton anyway?”
“At Otto’s wish, yes,” Katherine explained. “The baby was the excuse at first, and I kept quiet because I did not want to part mother and child. Little Henry would feed from none but his own mama.”
“He would be weaned soon enough. What happened?”
“Otto told me to forget what I read in the contract, and not to speak of it to Angelet. She was too young to truly realize the implications of the contract, even if she’d known to ask for it.
Otto said the war changed everything, and he had mind to keep Angelet close.
I was scared to oppose him. I am his wife; it is my duty to obey him…
but I never liked it. I knew it was wrong to keep the poor child from her family. ”
“Did Otto seek to marry her again, to his own advantage?”
Katherine shook her head slowly. “At first I thought that was in his mind, but he never seriously looked for other suitors. It is my belief that Otto concealed the contract and held Angelet at Dryton so he could keep her dowry for himself.”
Otto looked furious at his wife’s betrayal, and sat staring at her in hatred, his face growing red.
“Where is the dowry now?” Drogo asked Katherine.