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Page 443
to Joanna. That would mean months, perhaps even years of agonywaiting, fearing, begging and praying for news that could never come. Tears oozed out under his closed lids.
"They did not look for him at once," he said, very softly, his voice breaking. "Salisbury did not regain his senses until late in the night and even after that he was wandering in his wits for most of the next day. After the battle, after Philip's men had withdrawn with their own dead and woundedAlinor, believe me, just believe me. There is no hope. Do not make me say more."
He did not need to say more. Indeed, he had to leap to his feet to catch his wife whose eyes had rolled up in her head at the unbearable idea he had conveyed to her. Alinor knew of the scavengers who crept out onto a battlefield to rob the deadand to kill those who clung to a thread of life so that they could also be robbed. Geoffrey had not been found because his armor and sword were rich. The carrion pickers had doubtless stripped him naked. Perhaps his face had even been battered in so that it was unrecognizable.
Alinor did not actually faint. Ian carried her to the bed and made her sip some of the wine she had brought to him. Then he sat down beside her and took her hand in his. They did not speak. There was nothing to say. One thing Ian had not told his wife, one little thing, that made his agony more intense because it would not allow his hope to die. Geoffrey's shield had not been found either. It puzzled him. Even if the shield had been torn away to make it easy to strip the body, it should have been there, close to the naked corpse. The vultures who scavenged battlefields were often embittered enough to mutilate the bodies, but they had no use for shields. Mail and weapons could be sold or even melted down for their metal, but a shield was too large and heavy to make the small amount of metal on it worth the effort of carrying it away. Many poor despoiled corpses were identified by the shields left beside them.
It was not a thing he would mention to Alinor. If that little, wounding, stinging hope, which would not allow him to grieve in peace and accept his grief, ever should bring on a

 
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