“Do not wax poetic, sirrah,” Reina said with mild disgust. “So she was beautiful. Just say it.”
Walter smiled sheepishly. “Aye, she was indeed beautiful, and every page, squire, and knight was a little in love with her.”
“Including yourself?”
He only shrugged in answer. “But once Lady Anne saw Ranulf, she was blind to all else, or so it seemed. She sneaked down to his quarters to visit him whilst he was bedfast from the whipping, and that is where their affair began. As you might guess, he was thoroughly smitten. The trouble was, he thought she was as well.”
“If you are about to tell me a broken heart caused his mistrust—”
“Would that was all, lady, but if you are not tolerant enough to listen.”
Was that how she sounded? What was wrong with her? So she was listening to tales of her husband with other women. She had asked to hear them.
“Do you continue, Sir Walter, and I will endeavor to curb my hasty conclusions.”
As that was as close as she was likely to come to an apology for her interruption, he nodded, his expression now as serious as she had ever seen it. “Their passion for each other lasted for months, but the day inevitably came when it bore fruit. The Lady Anne confessed to Ranulf she was with child.”
Reina was not particularly surprised. She would have been more surprised to hear that Ranulf had never sired any bastards. That he had one by a lady was not that common, but then again, certainly not unknown to happen. His noble half brother was proof of that.
Without censure, she asked, “Was it his?”
“Aye; at least he had no doubt.”
“Did they marry?”
“Nay. He was willing, desperately willing, you might say. He wanted her. He wanted his child. But she would not have him. Oh, she played him along for a while more, giving him one excuse after another why they should not tell Lord Montfort they wished to marry. But Ranulf would not let up, and she finally succumbed to the pressure, telling him the truth.
“She would not marry a squire, a landless squire, not for any reason. She had property, you see, just a manor, but Montfort had promised her that because of her beauty, he would find her a rich husband, and that was what she wanted, all she wanted. She laughed when Ranulf mentioned their love for each other, telling him that wealth was the only thing worth loving as far as she was concerned.”
“Not very diplomatic of her,” Reina said dryly, annoyed with herself for feeling a twinge of sympathy for the young Ranulf. “And the child?”
“Lady Anne returned to her manor to bear it. But when Ranulf got over his reaction to her rejection, he realized he still wanted the child, no matter how difficult it might be for him to raise. Only he could not discover where she had gone, and by the time he did and went there, it was to find the lady had already borne the child, recovered from it, and was living in the north with her new husband.”
“She took the child with her?” Reina asked doubtfully.
“Nay, she foisted it on a family in her small village to raise, wanting naught more to do with it.”
Reina jumped ahead with her own conclusion again, thinking of Kenric and Lanzo, Ranulf’s squires. Kenric was too old to be his bastard, but mayhap Lanzo
Walter was not finished, unfortunately. “I had gone with Ranulf to her manor. He had feared she would keep the child with her, so he was delighted that she had given it away. He had brought a few coins with him and thought it would be easy to buy the child from the villeins. And the family was easy to find. There were no secrets in that place.”
“Why do I have the feeling I am not going to like hearing the rest of this?” Reina said uneasily as she watched his expression darken.
“Mayhap I should not go on.”
“Nay, you have gone this far. I must hear it all now, good or bad.”
“The family the lady brought the child to just a few days after its birthing was poor, verily, the poorest in her village. They were also the largest family there, with seven children already. She knew that. They had protested they did not want the child. She forced them to take it anyway. Within a fortnight it was dead of starvation.”
“Oh, God!” Reina moaned.
Walter did not look at her, continuing softly. “’Twas the only time Ranulf and I ever fought. He wanted to kill the whole family, and burn the village besides. I could not let him. ’Twas not their fault. They were the sorriest lot of villeins we had ever seen, slowly starving themselves. They had too many mouths of their own to feed to spare aught for their lady’s cast-off bastard. One of the manor servants later admitted Anne had not wanted the child to be there should she return. She had known what could happen, hoped it would happen. She got what she wanted.”
Reina closed her eyes, unable to speak for a moment. She wished she had stopped him. She had not wanted to hear this, not this.Jesú, children were the only true innocents. So many died of natural causes, but this was unnatural, deliberate. What kind of woman would do that, when it would have cost her little to find the infant a decent home?
“What—what was it, do you know?”
“A girl child, strong and healthy at birth, which was why it took so long—”
