Lord of Midnight Read Online Free PDF

“Oh don’t, Felice… Not now…”
    “I only speak the truth. He has brought us all to ruin. At vespers we will be thrown out naked into the storm!”
    With a wail, Amice fell back into tears.
    They were late-born twins, only two years older than Claire herself. Both were beautiful, with the blond hair and fair skin of their mother’s English heritage, and fine bones given them by their Norman father. In temperament, however, they were two sides of a coin. Felice was haughty as a falcon, and just as sharp in beak and claw. Amice more closely resembled a terrified rabbit, constantly atwitch over something.
    Unlike falcon and rabbit, however, they were inseparable, each seeming to need the other. Amice needed Felice’s fierce strength; perhaps Felice needed someone to dote on her.
    Whatever the case, Claire needed neither tears nor complaints at the moment. She went over to where her grandmother sat hunched in her chair by the hearth, staring into the flames.
    “Did”—Claire had to swallow to clear her throat—“did anyone say exactly how he died?”
    “By a sword,” said Lady Agnes, bitterly. “In the chest.”
    “But how? In battle?”
    “How else?”
    “But there haven’t been any recent—”
    “What does it matter?” Lady Agnes looked up, face grim. “Pay attention!”
    Claire jumped. “What?”
    “We had no choice, either.” Her grandmother glared between the three of them. “We had to let them in. We hoped it was our own men returning victorious—my father, my brothers. We knew in our hearts it wasn’t. We knew strangers had come to seize Summerbourne.”
    Oh, sweet Mary mild. Clearly her son’s death had turned Lady Agnes’s wits. She was back nearly forty years to the time when the Normans came to England. Claire gestured a servant over, intending to order a soothing tisane.
    “Stranger to us than these are to you,” Lady Agnes said. “Pay attention, Claire!”
    Claire waved the servant back again.
    “Foreign devils on their big horses with no hair on their faces. Armor different. Weapons different. Language different.” She thumped her stick on the floor to emphasize each fact. “Strangers, they were. Invaders who’d killed our men at Hastings. Come to take our home.”
    Lady Agnes had never said much about those days, but there were daunting similarities. Claire sank to a bench by her side. “Did you resist?”
    The old woman turned to speak to her alone. “We had more sense than that. Our walls can keep sheep in and wolves out. Two-legged, or four. But not the Norman kind of wolf.”
    “What happened?”
    “Do rabbits fight wolves? All our able-bodied men had gone with my father and brothers to stand against the Normans. Only women, children, and ancients were left. We all hated him—Thomas of Argentan, arriving here still stained with the blood of slaughter. We cursed him behind his back, and gave poor service, but my Thomas was wise enough not to use the mailed fist. Of course, the first thing he did was marry me.” She turned away to look into the flames. “I was given no say in it, so I lay under him in the bed and gave poor service there, too.”
    Claire frowned. She’d never thought of how her grandparents had married. Her early memories, however, were of a happy couple. “But you came to love him?” she prompted.
    “Oh, aye.” A smile flickered, giving a brief illusion of youth. “He didn’t add fat to the fire, see.” She turned to look at Claire. “My Thomas was a good man. He didn’t bring in his own ways all at once. He listened. He respected the people’s traditions. He helped bring back prosperity.”
    “Then I wish he’d spent some of the money on stone walls!”
    Her grandmother shook her head. “Stone walls are a mountebank’s trick, girl. They’ll not keep out a fierce enemy. The secret is not to make fierce enemies. Thomas had no enemies, so we never needed stone walls.”
    Perhaps grief had addled her after all. “They’d be useful now,