No Dark Place Read Online Free PDF

them.
    He had been seventeen when she died.
    Three years later, he had lost Ralf.
    The seven months since Ralf’s death had been a torment to Hugh. Losing his foster parents had opened a great chasm of emptiness inside him that he was terrified to contemplate. Even during the years that he had lived with them, he had known deep down that he was balancing precariously on the edge of a precipice. But Adela had kept the terror away. At least, for most of the time she had.
    Why can’t I remember?
    It was not a question he often asked himself. He had always known that it was safer not to remember. For thirteen years he had been content to live as half a person with half a life. It had been enough that he was the son of Adela and Ralf.
    But they were gone now. They had died and left him alone.
    Who was he, really? Who had he been before Ralf had found him starving in the streets of Lincoln?
    He remembered some of what had befallen him before he reached Lincoln. He remembered the traveling mummers who had wanted to use him in their show. He remembered what one of the men had tried to do to him and how he had escaped from their clutches.
    But of the time before that—nothing.
    Could what this Nigel had said possibly be true? Could I be this missing Hugh de Leon?
    All of his inner self rose up to deny it.
    Why am I so sure it isn’t true?
    Why am I so afraid?
    Is it because I saw my father being murdered? Is that why I lost my memory?
    A drop of hot wax trickled down onto Hugh’s hand, bringing him back to his surroundings.
    Slowly he walked into his bedroom and began to undress. He had told his bodyservant he wanted no help this night.
    He pulled his jerkin off over his head, and bent tounbuckle his boots. As he stood next to the bed in his hose and beautifully embroidered shirt, he shuddered, and it was not with cold.
    The bedroom next door was occupied this night, but not with the people he loved.
    He stripped off the rest of his clothes and got into his solitary bed.
    I don’t know how much more of this loneliness I can stand , he thought desperately as he burrowed his face into the embroidered pillow that Adela had made for him so lovingly.
    Perhaps it won’t hurt to speak a little further with this Nigel Haslin on the morrow .
     
    There was no chapel at Keal and consequently the household met for the first time in the hall. The first meal of the day was always a simple one of bread washed down with ale, and then everyone dispersed to their morning chores before they reassembled again at noon for dinner.
    “I must be back in Lincoln by evening, lad,” Bernard said to Hugh as the three men sat over their ale cups at the high table.
    Hugh had begun to pick up his cup, but now he set it back down again on the table. “Of course,” he said with careful courtesy. “It was good of you to come to see me, Bernard.”
    The knight scowled. “I don’t want to leave you here alone again,” he said frankly. “It isn’t good for you.”
    Bernard could almost see the shutters come down behind the boy’s light gray eyes.
    “This is my home,” Hugh said.
    “You may have another home,” Bernard said deliberately. “That is, if you can find the courage to fight for it.”
    The boy’s finely cut nostrils quivered with an emotion that could have been either anger or amusement.
    “You must be desperate to get me away if you have to resort to insulting me,” Hugh said.
    It was amusement, Bernard realized.
    “Listen to me, lad,” he said, gripping his ale cup in tense, hard fingers. “The evidence presented here by Nigel is too persuasive for you to turn your back upon. You may very well be who he thinks you to be. You owe it to yourself to pursue the matter further.”
    Hugh looked away from Bernard and for a brief moment fixed his eyes on the scoured oak of the table at which the three of them were sitting. His profile gave away nothing. Then, slowly, he turned his head the other way and looked at Nigel Haslin.
    “Why