Cleve looked nervously into his flagon. He drank, swallowed twice, and then looked up at Talon. “I must ask, sir. Talon is not a common name, and that was the name of the earl’s son who I heard was cast out of Hawksedge. Might you ... that is, I wondered ...”
Talon smiled, welcoming the unpleasant topic. No matter what the local folk thought, ’twas time they learned his identity. What his relationship with the earl might mean for them, and him, they would discover together.
“Yes, I am the earl’s son. But, at present, the only claim I have on him or his title and lands is given in King Edward’s writ, which I showed to all at the alehouse yesterday.”
“I heard of that, sir.”
“Would you like to read the writ?” Talon withdrew the folded parchment from within his jerkin.
“Thank you, no. I cannot read.”
“Then examine the seal, and I will have the priest read it to you when he returns.”
Cleve picked up the parchment and studied the impression in the sealing wax. “The seal is indeed as I’ve been told: the king himself seated on his throne and holding his royal things.”
“Then will you accept my authority until the earl can be found or Father Timoras can confirm the writ?”
“Aye, Sir Talon, I will.”
“I will write to King Edward and inform him that the earl is missing. After the priest is found, I will send for Baron Le Hourde. Give the orders to send the messages we spoke of. Then help Alice to get the servants back to work along with returning the livestock. This keep is filthy.” His mind formed a picture of Larkin on her knees beside the bed in the solar, and she was not busy cleaning. Curse her for filling his thoughts so.
“’Tis well to inform the king,” Cleve muttered into his empty flagon. “But I have to tell ye, the women won’t come here without a chatelaine, so there’s none to clean the keep regular like.”
“Why won’t they come?” Even clever Larkin could not clean the huge keep on her own. The guardsman hesitated. “The stories, sir.”
Talon clenched a hand around his tankard. Could the man not just get on with what he had to say? “What stories?”
“About the earl’s wives and how they died.”
Could those stories cast light on his mother’s death? Or provide information that might prove the earl had no right to repudiate his only son? He refilled the guardsman’s cup and watched Cleve take a long drink.
“Do these tales explain why the earl has not remarried since his last wife’s death?”
Cleve coughed in midsip. Ale trickled down his chin and onto his tunic. “The earl was powerful worried about having an heir, so he tried, sir. He’s been betrothed three more times since Lady Rosham died. None of those women ever arrived at the keep.”
Talon could understand. Without a legitimate heir, Hawksedge Keep might yet come to the earl’s repudiated only son. Since the earl held the title and lands in fee simple, he could leave the lands to whomever he pleased. The title would revert to the king, but the crown could not take the lands, unless the earl died heirless. Then the king’s claim to Hawksedge would be strongest. Or would Talon be better off trying to earn Hawksedge and the earldom from Longshanks?
“You mean these women just vanished. And the earl never looked for them?”
“Not to my knowledge. As I said, the earl didn’t like to spend money. He let the women’s families search.” Cleve took a deep draught of his ale. “Wouldna surprise me if those women ran away. Were I a woman, I’d not want to wed a man who’s had four wives die.”
“So what happened to his wives?”
“Well, ye know Lady Rosham’s tale. She was the fourth. Gossips say the earl beat the second and third to death for failing to conceive.”
“Did he?”
“Mayhap. ’Twas afore my time and I could not say.”
“What of his first wife? I was very young when I was sent from the keep.” So young he’d been unable to find the place when he returned. But Talon could not resist the question, even though he knew better than most what had happened to his mother.
The guardsman took another long drink of ale. “Story goes that she had a son—that’d be you, sir—then died trying to birth a second. She was not cold in the grave, so I’m told, afore the earl announced that she confessed to adultery on her deathbed and you was no son of his but a bastard. ’Twas pitiful, say folks who’d seen you sent from your home in the same day you buried your mother. First, you was cryin’ and pleadin’ like any child, then stiff and swearing how you’d come back b’cause the earl would need a son and you was all the son he would ever have.”
Talon ground his teeth. The story matched his memories, though he’d not understood at the time what adultery meant. His mother had been the kindest and truest of women, and he could not, would not believe it of her. “An interesting tale, Cleve, but not one that matters now.”
The guardsman quailed beneath Talon’s look. “Aye.”
“You’d best be about your tasks. We’ve much to do if we wish to put Hawksedge Keep to rights.”