“Must you be so hard on our son, Nan?” he asked, finally driven to be as blunt as I. “You always have been and I have never understood why.”

Once again, I thought guiltily of the other boys, of our firstborn, young William, lying so still and cold in his winding sheet, his face composed as though not even death could rob him of his sweet nature. So many hopes had rested on that tiny boy. I remembered the small oak coffin that for all its sturdiness looked too fragile to protect my beloved son, and I felt my heart crack again and the grief spill over, flooding through me. Twenty years of hurt, and yet the pain was still as sharp as the cut of a blade when it slipped past my defenses. Why had William died and Robert survived? I knew the answer to that, secretly. It was hidden away in the same place I locked the shame and the guilt of Robert’s conception. Robert was strong; he had the ability to fight.

“I... He...” I knew that William’s criticism was just. It was not Robert’s fault that he had thrived where his older brother had not, and even less was he to blame for his begetting. “Robert is too wayward,” I said evasively. “He indulges in women, and drink and now violence...”

“He is a young man,” William said with a tolerance that infuriated me. “A handsome boy who likes carousing. Let him be.” There was a glint in his eyes as though he was remembering a time when he, for all his quietness, had been of a similar inclination, and I saw that this was an argument I could never win with my husband; very likely he envied Robert his young man’s freedom.

Another shiver caught me by surprise, enough to make me repeat my fears. “It is only that he scares me,” I said. “There is something about Robert... When he is possessed of an idea or a cause, it can rule him beyond all sense. It becomes a fixation in him and he puts all of his passion into it.”

William did not contradict me this time. He too had seen both the way Robert could attach himself to a cause and inspire others to follow him. People loved Robert; his cousins, my sister’s boys, had followed his lead blindly since childhood despite the fact that they were all older and should know better than he. They were not the only ones. Frequently such devotion led to trouble.

“It is a pity,” I added, unable to keep all sharpness out of my voice, “that Robert does not attach himself to the tenets of his faith as readily as he does to more worldly interests such as womanizing. If he were to embrace chastity, humility and poverty—”

“Then he might as well become a monk,” William said, bursting out laughing. “You ask too much of him, Nan. But I do agree that he can be reckless and that a steadying influence would not come amiss.”