Desire Lines (Welsh Blades, #3)

by Elizabeth Kingston

  Her sadness came from the discovery of how different she was from her sister, who did not seem as if she had tried very hard to avoid this life, nor did she mind it so much. In this way, it was as Aunt Mary had said: they were so different that none would believe they were sisters. Nan could not imagine ever being happy to bare her body to a strange man – to many men – and let him do what he will. Even before that terrible lustful lord had made it seem a terror to her, she had been that way.

  But Bea was different. Bea was Bargate Bettie, a thriving bawd even at this young age. And there was more as the day went on that made Nan feel more alone than she had expected to, if she ever found her sister.

  Even while she was glad Bea was not a timid little thing, she was loud and brash in a way that grated on Nan’s nerves. Her man Fergus arrived, and though Nan had known worse men by far, she could find nothing pleasing about him. His wit was slow and stupid, and he stank as though he’d not washed in a month. Even had he not looked over Nan with lascivious eyes when her sister’s back was turned, she would have thought him unworthy of Bea. Yet her sister clearly loved him well.

  Most disagreeable of all were the little things Bea said from time to time that made Nan feel an unaccountable shame. When asked, she described the comfits she had tasted for the first and only time at Morency last year – only to have Bea sniff and say, “Well, it’s a fair fine life you lead.” And Nan thought to tell her sister about her best friend at Morency, but when she said Robin was the son of a minor lord, Bea asked if she had any friends who were not gentry.

  Nan turned her face down at this, hoping to hide how her sister’s resentful tone wounded her. It was not envy of her life, she thought, but just a different flavor of the same sentiment she had felt from Aunt Mary. She had no words for it, but she knew it was a way of letting her know that she was not like them. That she did not belong in their world, at least not for longer than a visit.

  But where did she belong, if not with the last of her family? Unbidden, the Welshman came to her mind, and the way he talked of his home. It was lost forever because even if he stood on the same soil again, too much had changed. The home he remembered – the place and people and feeling – was gone, and he was doomed to long for something that he could never have again.

  As evening came on, the house became busy with the comings and goings of customers. Bea must attend to business now, and she called for the little black-haired girl to take Nan to a room for the night. “It ain’t as grand as you are used to, I’m sure,” she said, again with that faintly hostile air, “but it’s away from grunting and the sweating, and there’s enough room to stretch your legs out.”

  There wasn’t room for much more than that, but Nan was glad of this small space where she could close the door against the sounds of the brothel. Because she could not sleep, she thought over the long day, amazed that it had begun in the home of the friendly falconer.

  She had not even said a farewell to the Welshman. The joy of finding Bea had wiped out all thought of him. Now she remembered the outline of his face against the glowing grate as he reproached himself for repaying her charity with dishonor.

  It was the first time a man had ever said anything like that to her. There were men aplenty who had taken more than she wanted to give, but this was the only one who was sorry for it.

  Sleep would not come to her, weary as she was. There was too much to consider. She spent long hours contemplating the vast distance between the sister she had sought and the sister she had found. It seemed impossible to bridge the space between them, until the door of her room opened and Bea was there. She came in quietly as Nan admonished Fuss to silence, and slipped under the blanket to lie next to Nan in the dark.

  “Do you think of him still?” she whispered, and Nan could hear tears in her voice. There was no question who she was talking about. “I think of him most days.”

  Her hand found her sister’s and their fingers intertwined.

  “Aye, how could I not?” She felt her own tears leaking out but, as she had when Bea was just a little girl, she did her best to hide them. “I promised her to look after you both.”

  “There weren’t no way to save him, Nan. I’ve thought of it over and over. He were too little for anything but a wet nurse, and us with no way to pay one, and starving ourselves.”

  She felt Bea’s face press into her shoulder. This was the inescapable truth of sisters, of siblings. No matter how different they were, no matter how far apart life took them, there was no one else who shared these memories. The same early sorrows filled their hearts, and the same joys. When they slept, the same places and faces appeared in their dreams. Only the two of them remembered the brother they had had for a little while, and only they could whisper his memory between them.

  “It’s like I told you, little Bea. He’s our own angel in heaven now, for how could he be anywhere else.”

  “I hope it’s so.”

  “It is,” she insisted, suddenly more sure of it than ever. “How else can we both still be alive, and doing as well as we are? We’ve had more than our share of good fortune. It’s him looking out for us.”

  She felt Bea’s arm wrap around her waist, strong and full of life, holding her close as they had used to do when they were girls.

  Her sister. She had found her sister. It was all she had wanted, and here it was, holding her in the dark and sorrowful night.

  Chapter Eleven

  He woke at dawn with the image of Brother Clement lingering in his mind and dread choking him. But when Gryff turned his face into the bed linens, he remembered where he was. He remembered that she had slept in this bed, and that gave him a kind of comfort, as though a part of her remained here in his friend’s home.

  Her words came to him, as they always did now in these moments of dread. She had insisted it was a mistake to hide from memory, and already he had learned she was right. He made himself open his eyes and listen to the distant sounds of the waking house while he carefully summoned his last memory of Brother Clement. Somehow the sound of Hal’s child crying downstairs made it more bearable.

  When the dread had subsided, he took himself down to the main room to find Hal’s daughter smeared with porridge and smiling broadly at him. At the sight of it, all the melancholy in him vanished as though by magic. He suddenly felt himself the most fortunate man in Christendom. Only weeks ago he’d had nothing but a pair of birds, a belly full of hunger, and certain death breathing at his neck. Now he had choices he might make, and a fast friend, and the agreeable sight of a smiling child to greet him.

  Hal’s wife Sara was intercepting the little girl on her way to Gryff, holding the baby boy in one arm and attempting to wipe the girl clean with the other. Gryff laughed at the sticky hands reaching up at him, which delighted the girl so much she squealed and stamped her feet.

  “God save, is there any maiden you will not woo?” Hal came from the yard and scooped his daughter up, wiping her hands and face clean. “Beware your heart, little one,” he said to his daughter. “He is too old for you.”

  The instant Hal let the girl go, she came straight at Gryff, who lifted her off the ground. “Too old,” he affirmed to her shining face. “And unworthy of a maid who is born of the line of Sir Morien himself.”

  It was an ancestral claim that had been invented as a jest when they were boys, but Gryff had not expected Hal’s wife to laugh quite so much. Patting the baby on the back, she said, “Those were some of his first words to me, that he is descended from Sir Morien himself! As though I would surrender my virtue sooner if I could imagine him a knight of the round table. Did it work on many maidens when he was young?”

  Gryff opened his mouth to answer, but his friend gave him a look that stopped his words. Then he could only laugh as Hal went down on his knee with hand over heart and declared to his deeply amused wife there were no maidens before her – or if there were, she had eclipsed them all in his first sight of her – and many other extravagant compliments. He ended
by begging her to give him a token he might wear as favor while he raked out the mews.

  She gave him the porridge-soaked cloth and a kiss, and sent him on his way with a teasing, “Off on your quest, then, Sir Morien.”

  Gryff felt an absurd moment of disappointment, as he had when they were boys, that it was only a jest. It had been his own invention, but he had always secretly told himself it was true – or at least that it could be true. He had liked to think that Hal was Welsh too, and both of them descended from Arthur’s knights. He still liked to think it.

  In the mews, they fed Tiffin handsomely. The sooner she put on weight, the sooner her feathers would begin to moult. Then, months from now, she would be ready to hunt again.

  And during all those months, Hal would be here with his laughing wife and growing children.

  “I do not dare to stay here, Hal. Not even for the coming summer months.” He looked up and down the row of perches, valuable birds whose owners might come at any time, any minute, to see their hawks. Most were Norman lords, and some might easily know Gryff on sight. He could risk himself, but he could not risk Hal and his family. “Naught has changed in five years – or all has changed, and I cannot know it.”

  Hal paused in cutting the meat he was preparing to feed an impatient goshawk. “Where will you go?”

  It had been in his mind, but he had not truly thought of it. Now the choices were clear. “There are two paths, I think. To Edward’s court, and beg his mercy. Or to flee again, to France.” He paused. “Or Aderinyth.”

  “Will we pass the day in debating the merits of each path,” Hal asked mildly, “or will you tell me now that you go to Aderinyth?”

  Gryff stopped breathing for an instant, transported back to another mews, another time, another man who knew him so well. He let his breath out in a long sigh. “By God, you are like your father.”

  Hal smiled at this, almost as if he had expected it. “Nay, my father would have your journey planned already and send you forth without delay. I have not his wit nor his foresight.”

  “Yet you know I think to go home, though there be naught for me there and no good reason in favor of it.”

  Hal fed the last bit to the goshawk and wiped his hands clean. He spread them out before him as he faced Gryff, as though the answer were evident.

  “Ten years have I known you and called you friend, Gryff. Ever have you sworn that you have no love nor duty to that place, but the lie is in your face each time you speak of it.” He shrugged. “It is your place. They are your people. You cannot say there is naught there for you.”

  There might be nothing left but the hills and the mists. All over Wales, Edward was tearing down the old and building enormous new castles. He was discarding laws and destroying customs. Gryff was afraid to know what he was doing to the people.

  “Were I to go there, I could never again lay claim to my name or family, lest Edward hear of it. Better that I am thought dead or in exile forever, and I live out my days as any common Welshman.” He laughed a little, unexpectedly cheered by the thought. “I have played that game well enough these five years past, and have found it rare pleasing.”

  Hal handed him a broom and invited him to begin this commoner’s life now by sweeping out the gravel. Gryff did it gladly, all the while remembering that long-ago day when he had ridden away from his home, and how he had never thought to be away for so long. How certain he had been, as a boy, that he belonged there and would return. How he had spent years trying to forget that certainty, and how right it felt to have it again.

  The kitchen kept by Bargate Bettie was not used much for cooking meals. Most food was brought from the cookshop across the way and Bettie herself saw no need to hire a cook when the customers did not come here to eat. But there was a fine, broad hearth in the kitchen and Nan never could stand to be useless, so she spent her time making barley bread and pottage and other simple things that could be easily managed with little help. Today it was a fish stew.

  She had always felt most at home in a kitchen. Even at Morency, where she had no business among the pots and the platters, she found reasons to visit often. Kitchens were always warm and rarely still, and they all felt familiar as no other place ever did.

  Over the last few days she had learned the rhythms of this house, of the women who worked here and the men who came at all times of day and night. She had not known what to expect of a brothel, but in many ways it reminded her of any other kind of serving work: few of the workers were enthusiastic about doing it, but it must be done every day. It was a clean house and all the women were kept fed, warm, and healthy. Bargate Bettie had standards, as she regularly emphasized to Nan.

  “I’ve brought the wine.”

  Little Cecilia had crept in the door, and would surely slip away almost as silently. The youngest member of the brothel seemed to like helping Nan, but had taken to vanishing any time Bea might be near. There had obviously been some disagreement between her sister and the girl, one of the many mysterious dynamics here that Nan tried to disregard. It was her sister’s business, and Nan had no intention of becoming a permanent part of the household.

  She smiled her thanks at the girl and poured the wine into the pot. When she turned back around, Cecilia was gone. A moment later, Bea appeared.

  “We’ll be fair spoiled, do you keep on like this.” Her sister took a long and appreciative sniff of the kitchen air. “Fergus had thought to make this a proper inn, but I said to him it were better to make use of my whoring than my cooking, as I had plenty of one and none of the other.”

  Nan stirred the pot silently for a moment, her back to her sister. Being here, she often thought of the inn that she and Oliver had planned to run. It was going to be their future. Funny, how easy that had been to forget for so many years.

  She could tell Bea about it now. Just open her mouth and say she had a husband once, and his name was Oliver, and he had wanted to keep an inn but then he was killed.

  “You can learn cooking,” she said instead. She tried, but could not stop herself from adding, “I could find a place for you in the kitchen at Morency, or in the –”

  “Oh, when will you stop,” came the predictable interruption in Bea’s gently irritated voice. “I don’t want no place at your Morency, nor serving any lord or lady.”

  “It need not be Morency. I will find a place for you somewhere, and respectable work. Only come away from here, Bea.”

  This had become her constant refrain, her reason for staying. She did not want her sister to remain in this life. Yesterday they had argued about it, with Bea saying that her immortal soul was her own business and Nan had no right to judge her – and Nan protesting that it had naught to do with sin or judgement. Why would anyone want to live this life unless they must? It was hard and filthy and reviled, and Bea did not have to do it anymore now that Nan could help.

  But saying so only made Bea turn cold, as though Nan only said these things to boast of the high and mighty people she knew.

  “Just as well could you stay here and I find a place for you. I’ve got men asking after you already, did you know they call you the Bargate Beauty?” Bea let out a laugh of genuine amusement before subsiding into thoughtfulness. “I’d have you making twice the coin with half the work, and all of it on your back. An easy life, Nan, if you want it.”

  There was a gleam in her eye that was more than amusement. She meant it. Every word. And for a moment – just a fleeting moment, no longer than the beat of an eyelash – Nan fought down an impulse to pick up the nearest blade and send it into the wall an inch from her sister’s head. That would stop her words.

  The impulse faded quickly, but the anger behind it did not. It showed in her face along with all her disgust, for she had no hope of hiding it. She turned her back to Bea again and picked up the long spoon with a shaking hand. It had been years since the anger had come on her so swift and strong.

  When Nan had begun to tell how she had dodged the groping hands of lustful men in the ki
ng’s hall, her sister had laughed like it was a fine story. Nan had gone on to tell about the time one had caught her, how he had yanked her dress down to drool on her bared breasts but was too blessedly drunk to do more than that before he was snoring. Bea had shrugged and called her fortunate.

  After that, Nan stopped trying to tell the important things. Silence served her better. It had for many years.

  Now she took her time pulling the pot off the coals. There was a hard knot forming in her, a fist closing. She might love her sister, but she could not give all of herself to someone who could laugh at her past torments, and ask her to make a living on her back.

  “Our mother never wanted that for either of us,” she said calmly. She stirred the stew, knowing she must taste it to see what seasoning it wanted but having no appetite for the task. A memory came to her, and tugged her lips into a smile. It was better when they talked about the old things. “Do you remember what she did when the bee stung you?”

  Bea shook her head sadly. “I don’t remember nothing of her. Just her shouting as the baby came, and then she was gone.”

  “It stung your hand, and you cried and cried. She put honey on it.”

  “And... and she said honey was the cure for a bee’s hurt.” She looked at Nan, startled, her face brightening. She loved these crumbs of memory. “I do remember! A cure for Bea’s hurt. She was clever, wasn’t she?”

  Nan smiled. “Clever enough. You stuffed your hand in your mouth to suck off the honey, and we heard no more of your wailing. Well, until the next time you wanted honey.”