He stopped walking.
The realization settled in him with the same cold solidity as the stone beneath his boots. Not because he had suddenly become noble. Not because he was better than he had been. Only because, somehow, against all reason, she had opened his heart and forced life back into places he had long believed dead.
A clatter in the yard below pulled his gaze.
A rider had come through the outer gate, even at this hour.
Reginald straightened at once.
The horse’s flanks were dark with sweat. The rider slid down stiffly and spoke quickly to the gate watch. Another man ran toward the hall. Within moments, Seamus appeared in the yard, followed by Tomas with a lantern in one hand and his cloak thrown half over his shoulders.
Reginald knew it was border trouble. He was already heading down when Seamus saw him.
“Tracks again,” Seamus said without preamble as Reginald crossed the yard. “North of the old ash this time. Two cattle gone. One outbuilding fired but caught before the roof took.”
“Not the same families?”
“No. Fintan’s people. Farther north.”
“Any dead?”
“Not tonight.”
Reginald nodded once. “Riders at first light?”
“Sooner, if Tomas stops reading the report like a love letter.”
Tomas ignored him and held out the folded parchment. “The boy from Fintan’s holding says the raiders didn’t press inward. They wanted to be seen and gone. Testing the line again.”
Reginald took the report and read it in the lantern light. The details were sparse but clear enough. Hoofprints where they should not be. A shutter broken. Fire started and checked. A message, not slaughter.
He handed the report back. “Double the northern watch. Send men to the holding before dawn. If they are testing us again, they’ll want to know how quickly we answer.”
Seamus nodded and strode off at once, already calling for two gate men.
Tomas lingered. “There is another matter. Father Cillian asked me to find you if I saw you wakeful.”
Reginald looked up sharply. “Why?”
Tomas reached beneath his cloak and drew out a folded sheet of parchment. “Because the bishop’s clerk left behind a copied account among the letters he brought. Father Cillian has been looking for the right hour to put it in your hands. He nearly burned it as scrap. Then he saw the names.”
Reginald took the parchment.
The handwriting was a clerk’s hand, the sort of hand that believed history could be made orderly with ink. At first, it looked like exactly what he expected: some churchman’s retelling of old grievance, polished into moral instruction.
He almost handed it back unread until one line caught his eye.
The king in wrath spoke lament, not command, and those who heard zeal where law had not been given made of anger their own authority…
Reginald read it twice. Then a third time. The words did not change.
Not command. Anger. Their own authority.
He had told himself, all these years, that Henry’s rage had been charge enough. That what followed in Canterbury had not begun in him, but in service. That he had been a blade drawn by another hand.
But the account said something he had never allowed himself to name.
Anger was not command. Hearing command in anger required interpretation. And the interpretation had been theirs.
