The halls of Rouen's keep were draped in shadows, though it was scarcely past midday. Thick rain battered the leaded windows, blurring the world beyond into gray smears.
Within, torchlight guttered along the stone walls, casting long claws across the tapestries of saints and Norman conquests.
Robert of Normandy walked those corridors with hands clasped behind his back, his boots striking measured beats upon the flagstones. Each step was calm, deliberate; like a fox through high grass.
His elder brother, Duke Richard III, had departed weeks ago on pilgrimage to Rome, bearing gifts and letters for Pope John XIX.
Officially, it was to secure Normandy's place in the wider tapestry of Christendom, to show due concern for the rumors drifting across Frankia; rumors of Northmen once more haunting the western seas, burning abbeys and carrying off priests.
