Hereford called the emotion from which he was suffering rage, and the reactions he was displaying were very similar to those of anger, but the truth was that Roger of Hereford was frightened. Again and again since he had begun this affair, his plans, so carefully made, so near fruition, had been twisted awry. And always it seemed that the damage was done without ill will to him by those he trusted most. Every time his spirits rose through some success that permitted him to throw off the cloud of depression he labored under, a new misfortune took the savor from the victory. Every time he took one step forward to his goal, he was dragged two steps back.
It was as if he were being warned to go no further in this venture, as if a great voice was crying out that the harder he strove the greater would be his final defeat. The pattern seemed clear enough; he would be defeated by desertion. He did not believe it would be a desertion that a shift in policy might cause in Gloucester or Chester—that would be too easy to guard against. Perhaps it would be a desertion by death, Hereford thought, staring out at the tender green of new grass in the bright spring sunshine.
Alan had already left him in that way, left him with Walter as his right hand, a right hand he could not have faith in. Alan's grave would still be raw in the earth of Hereford churchyard, but soon it would be green with new grass. Hereford's throat tightened and he pulled at the mail as if it were that which was choking him. Perhaps his own death … He jerked his mind away. That was a sick fancy. If he must die, he must die, but to fear it beforehand when there was not even a real danger present was to destroy his own usefulness.
At that idea, a cold sweat broke out over his body. "O God," he prayed, "forgive me for not heeding Your warning. I hear, and I would obey, but I cannot. I have passed my oath on Your Name to help Henry to the throne. It is a just cause. Have mercy upon me and upon my bleeding land. God, O God, if I must fail, let it not be through weakness and dishonor. Let me fail through death, if that need be, but not through the desertion of my own courage."
Walter meanwhile had been frowning over his mother's letter, not because he was angry but because he was puzzled. He read it through once to make out the words and again for the sense, but was little better off after the second reading.
"Roger," he said imperatively, "do you know what Mamma is writing about? Roger, what the devil is the matter with you? I never thought you cared for the old man; I thought it was Radnor you were attached to."
Hereford turned slowly. "I was just thinking of death in general. It is very hard to realize that I will never see Gaunt again, that Alan is lost to me in earthen bonds he can never break … What did you say about Mamma?" he asked briskly, trying to shake off his mood. To Walter least of all could he confide his fears.
"I asked if you knew what this damn letter was about. Surely you cannot be considering breaking your marriage with Chester's daughter. You would do better, if you do not trust her, to keep her prisoner. To ask for an annulment and bring Chester down upon us at this time is madness."
Irritation was an excellent restorative in Hereford's case for depressed spirits. He came back and seized the letter, rereading it quickly. When he finally looked up, there was such a mixture of fury and humor in his face that Walter did not know which emotion to comment upon.
"Women!" Hereford exclaimed, "Women! As if I had not troubles enough. I swear God made men and Satan made women to be sure that all men would go to hell. It will be a miracle if I do not slay them both. Did you ever hear of such a thing? Did you? One insane creature is cross with me—God knows why, for I swear I had done nothing to enrage her—so she rushes across the breadth of England like a bitch with a sting in her tail, disrupts the plans I have painfully spent months bringing to the point of fruition, nearly costs me my head, destroys my household guard and my best and most loyal servant—and then she will not deign to tell me why. No, she must spill the tale to my mother—who loves her not. Heaven help me! I will beat her black and blue when I see her next. Then the other idiot—and how my own mother could be so addlepated I cannot tell—not content with the damage the first has done me, proposes that I should rid myself of my wife, and of course her revenues, to the tune of my entire fortune and hers, and, that loss not being sufficient to satisfy her love for me, bring political disaster upon myself also." Hereford gasped for breath, feeling much better already. "I will beat her black and blue too," he continued, when he had mastered a fit of coughing. "This not being enough, she informs that proud bitch of a wife of mine that she intends to write this to me and that I will surely obey her." He began to cough again. "I have not obeyed her since I was seven and left the women's quarters, but doubtless my wife, having less brains and more stubbornness than a sow, will believe her and write to her father craving redress."
Having worked himself up into a royal rage, Hereford became literally speechless. That rage was the best thing that could have happened to him at the moment for it permitted the transfer of all his frustration to a real object and his fury temporarily obliterated his fear. Moreover, it was not a rage that was likely to last long. Already his sense of the ridiculous was striving with his anger, and Walter, his head down on his arms on the table, was frankly helpless with laughter.
"It serves you right, Roger," he crowed, when he had breath to speak. "You will involve yourself with them. It does not matter though. You need only write to Chester and assure him it is only women's nonsense."
"I will write not only to Chester. Oh, could I but lay my hands upon them, I would mend their ways. I tell you I will blister both their ears for this." Hereford was still panting faintly, but a rueful smile was already curving his lips. In a few seconds more, he too was laughing. "The cream of the jest, Walter, is upon me, you know. I would not harm a hair on either of their heads, and I love them both, perhaps more dearly than ever, for being so—so like women."
Walter made a disgusted gesture. "I cannot see why you wonder about Mamma's brains being addled when you are so much like her after all. I have always said so and always will."
"I must suppose you are right, yet I have had much pleasure from this disorder. Strangest of all is that I would not part with Elizabeth even if she had acted in malice, though I was sure she had not even before she told Mamma— Can you imagine that?" he asked, growing heated again. "Can you imagine such idiocy? The course of a whole kingdom's fate might have been altered by the mad whim of one woman. Perhaps God is not against us after all. Had He been opposed to our cause, that was the moment to destroy us."
And Hereford, greatly refreshed and restored by the release of his emotions, stormed off to write his letters and further relieve his heart. Having dispatched his couriers, Hereford emerged from this epistolary episode like a giant revitalized, to plan his next move with his brother. The violent surge of energy provided by his fury had made decisions easy. Suddenly all seemed clear. With good fortune he and Walter should be able to take another small keep in the next week or two and begin an attack on a third. That attack he would leave in Walter's capable hands while he took a small troop of men as secretly as possible to meet Arundel and Henry.
Depending upon the success of Walter's lone venture, he might well be able to leave the raiding in the south to him. It was something he liked to do and would not readily tire of—and to Salisbury and John Fitz Gilbert, while he himself rode north with Henry to Scotland, picking up Chester on the way. All that remained was to plan where to direct his attacks.
There was, of course, not the slightest need for Hereford to assure Elizabeth that he did not intend an annulment. She might be stubborn, but she was not stupid at all and did not trouble herself for a moment over that part of Lady Hereford's outburst. She knew her value politically and financially to her lord too well, and that would outweigh in the long run any amount of ill will he had toward her. Nor in any case would she have written to her father in her present state of guilt and depression.
When Hereford's first letter directed to Elizabeth arrived, Lady Hereford was so incensed that she actually considered making Elizabeth's life in Hereford untenable. She too had come to the realization that her son could not afford to part with Elizabeth, but she had hoped that he would be furious enough to drive his wife out to one of her dower castles. Even that hope was destroyed when Elizabeth heard from him so soon after their quarrel, and Lady Hereford saw that the only way to be rid of her unwanted daughter-by-law was to drive her out herself and pretend Elizabeth had gone of her own free will.
One day, exceedingly uncomfortable for both ladies, although for far different reasons, passed before Hereford's second courier arrived. Lady Hereford had begun the ousting operation and was completely miserable about it, while Elizabeth, absorbed in her own problems, was so unhappy that she had not even noticed. Lady Hereford's uneasiness was caused to a very small degree by fear of what would happen if Roger discovered what she had done, but primarily her distress came from her own kindliness.
Elizabeth did not look well, her skin having that greenish tinge pallor gave her; her eyes were sunken and ringed with dark circles; and she spent a good part of the day mutely staring into space. Had Hereford not interfered by writing either letter, his mother would very soon have been forced by her own compassion to try to comfort the girl. She told herself that Elizabeth was bad for Roger, trying to stiffen her purpose, but she was a pious, truthful woman, and the knowledge that she was acting out of jealousy was slowly forcing itself upon her.
For Elizabeth also, Roger's demand that she act as intermediary between himself and her father came at a bad time. Normally she would have greeted such a request with enthusiasm, feeling it to be a mark of her husband's recognition of her worth and being sure she could accomplish exactly what he asked. Now, although it was true that the worst of her agony had passed, she was in a numb state of convalescence in which her soul had begun to heal itself. What he wrote, however, flung her again into a bottomless pit of despair, because her faith in herself was broken.
She was sure she would be incapable of handling her father properly, that he would ask questions to which Roger had given her no answers and that she was still too shattered to chance answering on her own. Chester was a difficult man to deal with sometimes—none knew that better than his daughter—and if something in her manner or his own situation set him off, he could easily refuse to have anything further to do with Hereford's cause. Elizabeth knew also that her father was quite capable of stubbornly adhering to a plan of action disastrous to himself to spite someone else, and she was terrified that in her present state she would do or say something wrong and start him on a path inimical to her husband and his own welfare.
The mirror before her reflected a face that Elizabeth stared at without seeing for some time as she automatically unbraided her hair to go to bed. When she finally focused upon it, she dropped her head on to the table before her and began to weep. If she showed her father that countenance, so drawn, so hollow-eyed, with a disconsolately drooping mouth, he would immediately conclude, no matter what she said, that Hereford was cruel to her, and again her very existence would bring about the failure of her husband's plans. She could not go to Chester, she could not.
Besides, she did not wish to go. If Roger came home—perhaps, though, he would not wish to see her. After all, it was very likely that when she was not there to show him how very sorry she was and, she had to add, stir his passion, he might dwell more on the enormity of her actions. She reread those last lines in his note in which he said she was not to trouble herself over his welfare and that she took to be a cold rejection of her concern for him and then crept miserably into bed. How she longed for his warmth beside her; how she longed for the caresses she had so often repulsed.
Elizabeth did not realize it, but it was a sign of the restoration of her emotional balance that she now wanted Roger to comfort her whereas previously she had clutched her unhappiness fiercely to herself. His assurances of affection would no longer burden her with greater guilt. They could not erase her consciousness of evil-doing. Elizabeth would bear the scar of what she had done to her dying day, would treasure it in later years, in fact, when she came to realize that her sorrow had made her a whole woman, but now Roger's love could heal her heart.
The next day began evilly with the deaths of two more of the wounded men and blossomed into complete horror with the arrival of Hereford's second courier. Lady Hereford read her son's missive with wide, unbelieving eyes. Never before had Roger written in such a way to her. He was bewitched. That she-devil had enchanted him. Only, when she looked up at her daughter-by-marriage, who was also reading a letter of Roger's, she could see that Elizabeth had turned even greener. Apparently, enchanted or not, Roger was not writing love letters to his wife.
"I must leave Hereford keep, madam," Elizabeth finally said in a dull voice.
So Roger had ordered her out of the keep. Instead of being glad, Lady Hereford's heart was wrung. How could she have written that letter and betrayed Elizabeth's confession to him. "There is no need, Elizabeth,” Lady Hereford said. “Roger is angry now, but it will not last. I know him well. If you go, you will only have to return for he will surely ask you to do so by his next letter. See," she said, holding out her own letter to Elizabeth, "he is furious with me also."
At first Elizabeth did not take what Lady Hereford offered, knowing full well that if Roger had intended either of them to see the other's mail he would have saved parchment and effort and written one letter to both. Her hesitation was brief, however, for she was moved by a sense of unity with Lady Hereford against Roger, another sign of her improving spirits, as well as by curiosity. The first glint of humor she had felt since her unfortunate decision to go to Corby Castle flickered in her eyes as she took one letter and handed Lady Hereford the other. Roger would have a fit if he could see them, she thought.