taken in him._

"You are--how old--twenty?"

Simon nodded.

"At your age most men, especially those like you with vast estates and
great responsibilities, are married or at least plighted."

Pain poured out with Simon's words. "I have been rebuffed twice. The
name of de Gobignon is irrevocably tainted."

Friar Mathieu rubbed the back of his donkey's neck thoughtfully.
"Evidently the king does not think so, or he would not have honored you
with so important a task."

"He did everything possible to help me. When my mother and my
grandmother fought over who should have the rearing of me, the king
settled it by making himself my guardian and taking me to live in the
palace. Then his brother, Count Charles d'Anjou, took me for a time as
his equerry."

"Why did your mother and grandmother fight over you?"

The hollow of dread in Simon's middle grew huge. Now they were coming to
the deepest secret of all.

"My mother married the troubadour, Roland de Vency. My grandmother,
Count Amalric's mother, could never accept as a father to me the man who
slew her son."

He felt dizzy with pain, remembering his grandmother's screams of rage,
his mother's weeping, Roland facing the sword points of a dozen
men-at-arms, long, mysterious journeys, hours of doing nothing in empty
rooms while, somewhere nearby, people argued over his fate. God, it had
been horrible!

Friar Mathieu reached out from the back of his donkey and laid a
comforting hand on Simon's arm. "Ah, I understand you better now.
Carrying this family shame, fought over in childhood, no real parents to
live with. And the burden of all that wealth and power."

Simon laughed bitterly. "Burden! Few men would think wealth and power a
burden."

Friar Mathieu chuckled. "No, of course not. But you know better, do you
not? You have already realized that you must work constantly to use
rightly what you have, or it will destroy you as it destroyed your
father."

_Yes, but ..._

Simon thought of the endless fields and forests of the Gobignon domain
in the north, what pleasure it was to ride through them on the hunt. How
the unquestioning respect of vassals and serfs eased his doubts of
himself. He thought of the complaisant village and peasant girls who
happily helped him forget that no woman of noble blood would marry him.
He reminded himself that only three or four men in all the world were in
a position to tell him what to do. No, if only the name he bore were
free