The Reckoning - 3 Read Online Free PDF Page A

welcome at the French court.
When he had impulsively offered to share Bran's flight, Hugh had expected danger and adventure, both of which he found in full measure. But he had not expected to have his life transformed as if by magic; he had not expected
Paris. He could feel his joy rising again, and he twisted around in the saddle to look upon his young lord, laughter about to spill out.
What he saw froze the smile upon his face. It was not yet noon and Bran was already reaching for the wineskin dangling from his saddle pommel. Hugh hastily glanced away, and they rode on in silence.
Hugh had often heard lurid tales of the young de Montforts' hellraising. The three elder sons, Harry, Bran, and Guy, had been notorious for their whoring and carousing and ale-house brawling, in decided and dramatic contrast to their austere father, for Simon, a crusader who'd twice taken the cross and adhered to a rigid code of honor, a moralist who'd worn a hair shirt into that last doomed battle of his life, had been utterly devoted to his wife.
Like most youngsters, Hugh was intrigued by scandal, by these colorful accounts of Bran's turbulent past. It puzzled him, therefore, that the Bran of legend was so unlike the Bran he now knew. For a man reputed to have such a blazing temper, Bran seemed surprisingly equable. Not once in these four weeks had Hugh seen him angry; even the inevitable vexations of the road were shrugged off with admirable aplomb. At first, Hugh had much marveled at Bran's unfailing forbearance. Only slowly did he begin to suspect the truth, that
Bran's patience was actually indifference.
Bran was not taciturn, and he and Hugh had often whiled away the boredom of the road in banter, filling their hours with easy conversation. Hugh had confided his entire life's story long before they'd reached Wales. And Bran, in turn, had shared with the boy memories of his own youth, of the two brothers they would soon join in Italy, of the mother and sister awaiting him at Montargis. But not once did he speak of Evesham, or of the father and brother who had died for his nustake. And Hugh came gradually to realize how deceptive was Bran de Montfort's affability, how effective a shield. Bran remained a man in shadow; he might lower the drawbridge into his outer bailey, but there
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would be no admittance into the castle keep. Even after a month in Bran's constant company, all Hugh could say with certainty was that Simon's son was generous, utterly fearless, and that he drank too much.
When Hugh first comprehended the extent of Bran's drinking, he had been dismayed and alarmed. All he knew of drunkards came from overheard shreds of gossip: an ale-house stabbing, garbled accounts of cypshotten villagers taking out their tempers upon wives and children. Hwhad observed Bran's drinking, therefore, with some trepidation. But his qualms were soon assuaged, for Bran did not act like the quarrelsome drinkers who'd so enlivened Evesham folklore.
He did not become bellicose, did not bluster or swagger or seek out fights.
Drunk or sober, he treated Hugh with the same casual kindness. But drink he did, quietly, steadily, beginning his day with ale, ending it with hippocras, taking frequent swigs from his wine flask with the distant, distracted air of a man quaffing a doctor's brew. Hugh could only watch, bewildered; if drink brought Bran so little pleasure, why did he seek it so diligently?
A small castle overlooked Montargis, but it was not there that Nell de
Montfort and her daughter had found a haven. The woman born to palaces now lived in a rented house upon the grounds of a Dominican convent.
Hugh was eagerly anticipating their arrival; his curiosity about the Countess of Leicester was intense. Like her husband, she was a figure of controversy, both loved and hated, for she had never been one tamely to await her fate, as women were expected to do. This youngest daughter of King John and Isabelle d'Angouleme had been a royal rebel. It was said she