Desire Lines (Welsh Blades, #3)

by Elizabeth Kingston

  “They killed Philip Walch,” said Eluned softly from her place by the window, and he felt it like a stab to his heart. “He would not tell them. He did say that he swore a vow, as his father had done, and his father’s father before him, that none but the prince and his falconers would ever know the nesting places. They hanged him, and three others before they saw the vow would not be broken no matter how many falconers died.”

  His knuckles had turned white where they gripped the cup. The female is the fiercer creature, he heard Philip say to him. It was true. But it was men who had murdered him, and men who had sworn him to a secrecy that killed him. And for what? Nests and birds. Wealth, pride, and a king’s vanity.

  He began to understand a little, what it might mean to have enough hate in his heart to burn down the world entire.

  But he could also hear what his father had said so often, what Philip had taught him, too: To rule well, you must learn what it is to be a servant to one who serves you. He had fled, and Philip died because Gryff had not been there to serve his people. Hate would not change that, nor would it absolve him of his own transgression.

  “Who rules there?” Gryff asked. The love he had for the place, that he had denied and hidden and tried to contain for so long, came vividly back to life, a ferocious protectiveness. Some cruel new lord was likely seated in his father’s hall even now, hanging stubborn falconers and looking over his spoils of war. “What new barony has been made of it?”

  “None.” Lord Robert poured more wine. “Rhodri makes a claim for it, of course. Will has argued against him these many years. He has said to Edward that yours is the rightful claim, and you a true and loyal servant to the crown. Will argues that it is Welsh law, not Norman, that would allow a bastard to inherit – and that Edward should not rule with Welsh law.”

  Gryff snorted. “Ever has Edward chosen the law that serves him best.” It was the cause of most Welsh grievances against the king. “Will has developed a silver tongue indeed, if he has held him off so many years.”

  “Is not commonly known, but when Edward divided the conquered lands among his barons, he did agree to Will’s suggestion: to keep Aderinyth free of rule for five years, in case you should return to claim it. And here you are.”

  They stared at each other while the words sank in. Lord Robert was thoughtful and assessing. Gryff was stunned. Five years from the division of Wales – that would be only months from now, in the spring of next year.

  “He would...” Gryff struggled for words, astonishment making his tongue slow. “I have only to claim it?”

  A sound of derision came from Lady Eluned, who still stood at the window.

  “You cannot know Edward well, do you think it so simple,” she said. “There is no knowing what game he will play or what dance he will lead you. And at the end of it, you may have your lands or you may not. He holds all the power. It will be as it pleases him, not you.”

  Gryff looked to Lord Robert for confirmation of this grim declaration, feeling the hope of his home slipping away again.

  “Never would I gainsay my lady wife in such a matter as this one. But I think me she will agree that Will is best positioned to know Edward’s true mind.” He paused, and Lady Eluned inclined her head, conceding this as truth. “Even now, Will is at court.”

  “So too is Rhodri there.” Lady Eluned looked at him from her place by the window. Whatever she sought in Gryff’s face, she seemed not to find it. Her cool gaze moved to her husband. “Does he know the true prince lives, Rhodri would not waste an instant to find him and see him dead.”

  Lord Robert nodded and looked into his cup, considering. Gryff had lately learned to hear words that went unspoken, to judge a mood and a moment by more than what was said. Lord Robert was straightforward, trustworthy, as cheerful and warm as Gryff had first perceived. Lady Eluned was none of those things, and though her knowledge was greater it seemed she was now giving a decision to her husband: the decision of what exactly to do with him. Gryff did not know whether to be glad of this or to despair.

  “Is there no one else who knows you live?” asked Lord Robert finally.

  “Only one man, and I will not name him.” If he could do nothing else, he could keep Hal safe and free of all this. “He is no lord, and he will keep the secret well.”

  He told them then, of how he had been smuggled out of Lancaster’s keep by a man now dead, and how at the abbey only Brother Clement had known his identity, and he was dead too. Gryff had thought it an advantage, that it would allow him to begin a new and nameless life of his own choosing. And it was an advantage – it had kept him alive. But as he told it, he could only see a long trail of broken ties and lost lives stretched out behind him. Somehow at the end of it, he still lived.

  Robin appeared with a tray of food. He said not a word. He only set it down and left, but not before giving a look to Lady Eluned that seemed sorrowful, another to Gryff that seemed accusatory. As he walked out, he snapped his fingers at Fuss, who had been sitting unnoticed at Gryff’s feet. The dog looked up at him as if asking approval before answering Robin’s call and bounding out of the room.

  When he had gone, they spoke at length of what transpired in Wales, of who had been given lands to rule there and why. Lord Robert told him who held power at court, which favorites held sway with the king and the matters that were most pressing. He had a clear distaste for the intrigues of court, and despite her aptitude Lady Eluned seemed to have no interest in it. She stood quiet at the window, listening while the food grew stale and her husband related only the most necessary information without embellishment.

  But at the end of it, Lord Robert sat back and said, “I ask my lady wife what course she thinks best. We must tell Edward you live, and deliver you to him. But I would send word to Will in secret, and let him choose what is safest to tell the king and when.”

  “Safest for Prince Gruffydd, you mean,” observed Lady Eluned, a pinch to her lips. “But I consider what is safest for you, my lord husband. There is risk in secrecy. Edward will not like to learn of this too late.”

  Lord Robert gave a reassuring smile, the kind that only cocksure fools or justifiably confident men gave. “I put it in Will’s hands, and he is a trusted favorite at court. If he delays in telling the king, I do not doubt he will have ready explanation for it.”

  She looked like she might protest, but did not. She only gave a short nod and said, “William will know the risk, and handle it well. We will give the message to Robin to carry, and I will choose the words with care.”

  Lord Robert agreed and then looked at Gryff. “I will trust you not to flee again, and promise you my protection as long as you are in my household. Rhodri would be hard pressed to reach you here and do we stay alert, there is naught to fear of him.”

  He stood, saying he would show him to the chamber that would be made ready for him, and Gryff only briefly considered the possibility of fleeing in the night. To do so would be worse than foolish – it would make him seem guilty in some way, and they would hunt him down soon enough. If not the king’s men, then Rhodri himself would find him.

  Even those practical realities were nothing to the new realization that pressed in upon him: that if he ran now, he could only keep running, and forsake Aderinyth. What a child he had been, an impulsive boy who had thought only of his own life when he fled, and in the years since had thought only of his own longing to return. And while he feared for himself and dreamt of home, his people suffered and died.

  They called him a prince, and so he must act as one. There would be no more running. It was time and past that he face his fate, no matter how cursed it may be, just as all other princes of his land had done.

  It was only on his way out of the room, as they passed the window where Lady Eluned stood looking out, that he finally asked her. He knew she would know.

  “My mother did intend to go to the sisters at Cairusk.” It had comforted him to think of her there, knowing how greatly she preferred her prayers even to he
r family. He used to think she only waited for her husband to die, so that she might retreat behind a cloister’s walls.

  “She is there. She is happy to live much removed, from what little I have heard of her.” Lady Eluned seemed strangely subdued. “Full well will it soothe her to know she has a child who lived.”

  There was no condemnation in it at all, but he felt damned by the words. Another sin to tally, that he had let his mother wonder and worry about his fate.

  “My brothers,” he said. “My father.” He saw her close her eyes briefly, almost as in a silent prayer. “I would know how they died, and where they are interred.”

  It was Lord Robert who answered.

  “Your father fell in battle, an arrow to the neck and a quick death. Aiden too was wounded and died quickly, a blow to the head.” Here he put a hand on Gryff’s shoulder, firm and bracing. “Owain was captured and imprisoned, but fell ill within a fortnight and died before he could be taken to the king for judgement.”

  Gryff almost asked what the illness was, but decided it didn’t matter. It might have been poison sent by Rhodri, or only the flux, or a common sweating sickness. If the illness had not killed him, the king likely would have. Traitors to the crown did not meet happy fates, even if they were only boys.

  “He was buried in Malmesbury, and your father and Aiden in a small churchyard near where they fell.” It was Lady Eluned. She did not turn to him, but looked out over the fields and sky as she spoke. “I discovered the place, and two years ago was granted leave by the Church to move their bones to Aderinyth. They rest there now, in the valley where your ancestors are laid.”

  Gryff looked at her profile, at the lift of her chin and the press of her mouth, at all the things she did not say. It was her doing, all of it, learning how they had died and going to such lengths to return them home. He had never thought of her as anything more than Will’s mother – wife to a Marcher lord, clever and powerful, not to be trifled with. But now he saw she was more than that. She was Welsh. She loved, and lost. She understood it, at least this part of it.

  He bowed deeply to her, in the way his father had taught him he must only bow to someone the equal of a prince, as he had only ever bowed to his king.

  “My thanks to you, lady, for the honor you have shown them.” He said it in Welsh, and the formal words came more easily than he would have guessed. “For this I will ask God’s blessings on you with every breath unto my last, and hold you in my memory as dearly as my own family. Only say what you would have of me in return for the kindness you have done, and it is yours.”

  She turned to him then. He could feel her gaze on the top of his bowed head for a long and thoughtful moment.

  “I do not do what is right for the approbation of princes – or of kings or lords or peasants in the field,” she said. “I honor those who are deserving of my honor, be they high or low. And that is what I would ask of you, Prince Gruffydd. It will not be an easy request to grant. You will see.”

  He rose, and she turned back to her window, leaving him to wonder what she saw when she looked out onto the world.

  Chapter Twenty

  Nan stood in the door of the manor kitchen, watching a boy sweep ashes from the hearth. It was a small kitchen, but as warm and welcoming as any other. The bustle of the evening meal was long finished, the cleaning done and the servants scattered, and now the sun had set.

  She knew, long before he appeared beside her, that Robin had found her. He had probably searched for her all day, but she had discovered a secret stair that took her to the top of the tower where she looked out across the fields for hours and hours. For the first time in their friendship, she had avoided him, because to share this moment with him or even to look at him would make it real.

  When he came to her, he stood close and gathered a fold of her dress in his fist. He had done that when he was a child, when he felt especially protective of her, or very lonely or scared for himself. It had been years. Now the fold he gathered was nearer to her hip than her knee, because he had grown so tall.

  “Do you remember,” she asked him, “the mice when we slept in the kitchen at Dinwen?”

  He leaned against her a little, warm pressure at her shoulder. “And Hawys snoring, and the smell of dried fish when the wind blew southerly.”

  The boy at the hearth had banked the fire, leaving the embers faintly glowing. He nodded to them and stepped out of his wooden clogs as he left the kitchen, walking with bare feet toward the hall. Now he would go to his own bed, wherever it was, prepared to wake early to start the day’s long labor. Stoke the fire, turn the spit, grind the spice. All of it was as familiar to her as breathing.

  A prince. Not a falconer. Not even just a lord. A prince.

  “Will you sleep with me by the fire?” she asked Robin.

  “Nan –”

  “Say you will.” She was the one who used to say it wasn’t right for him to sleep by her side in the kitchen, for all that he was a page at the time. “I want to be just Nan, with her Robin at her side. Just for a little while.”

  They made a place in the corner by the hearth, his cloak spread below them and hers over them. He grumbled a little about the hard floor and she teased him for growing soft. When they laid down, he did not curl his back against hers as he used to. Or maybe he did, and it felt different. Everything was changed. Everything.

  Fuss settled at her feet and they all lay in the dark for hours, not sleeping. She thought of the steward at Morency, and how she had once considered becoming his wife because he was a good man and wanted her. She had let go of the idea easily, because she could not fathom marrying so high above her.

  A prince. The last living prince of Aderinyth.

  Deep in the night, she turned onto her back. Robin turned too, like he’d been waiting for it. He took her hand in his, and they stared up at the blackness above them a long time before he whispered to her.

  “Do you love him, Nan?”

  She tried to remember words. She seemed to have lost them. There were sounds that meant something, that would say what was trapped inside her. Breath and tongue and teeth and lips. Simple sounds. They would make it real.

  “How can I love a prince?”

  It was so plain, when she said it out loud. Princes were not there to be loved. It was as senseless as loving a barrel or a trout or the pope. She could still hear Lady Eluned reciting his string of names and title, word after word after word. Then her own name next to it, one little sound anchored to nowhere and nothing. How could she love a prince.

  “You like him more than pork pie,” said Robin quite reasonably. “That is no small thing.”

  Nan turned her face to him. She could barely make out the outline of his profile.

  “Do you still love Ansel?” she asked, and felt his fingers twitch against hers.

  Robin had loved him from their boyhood, though none but Nan knew it. He had gone to the tourney knowing Ansel would be there, and they would see each other for the first time in many years. Last night he had whispered to Nan that Ansel was cordial and warm, with all the same passionate interests as when they were boys, and their meeting was joyful – until it was not. Ansel did not want him. Not that way. Robin did not say it outright, but he did not have to. She knew the sound of a broken heart.

  “I know not,” he answered at last. “I think me I know naught of love.” He squeezed her hand, and twined his fingers with hers. “Nay, I know the hurt of it. But that is all.”

  She turned her face back to the ceiling. There were tears that spilled over and trickled their way to her hair. She could weep for Robin. It must be for Robin. If she were to weep for herself, she might never stop. Her brother, her mother, Oliver, Bea. The Welshman. There would be no end to her weeping, so she must not let there be a start.

  “Only a fool could not want you,” she whispered. “And he’s worse than a fool, to hurt you.”

  She listened to the steady rise and fall of Robin’s breath, and felt his hand tighten gen
tly on hers.

  “He cannot change what he is, Nan. Though it brings pain to one who loves him, he cannot change what God and his birth have made him.”

  The words were meant for both of them, a bitter truth. Her life had been spent in accepting injustice and sorrow, knowing from birth that to rail against it was wasted energy. But now there was something in her that seemed to beat against the bars of a cage, howling that it was not fair, it was not fair.

  A prince. God save her, a prince.

  “Make haste, girl, she waits!”

  The lady frowned at her amid the bustle of the kitchen, the morning light so bright that it blinded. Nan fumbled as she washed her face and hands. It seemed impossible to braid her hair neatly, and she wished her kerchief was cleaner. The knot in her stomach did not abate when she sipped the watered beer on offer.

  Robin had left before the kitchen stirred, whispering to her that he was not a child anymore, and he would not have anyone think her lewd. He was ever chivalrous, even to a nobody like her.

  “Honeyed water, not plain,” Nan said to the servant assembling the tray. “And cheese. He won’t ask for it, but he always likes a bit of cheese.”

  Both the lady and the servant scowled at her when she did it herself, but she did not care. This was something she knew, and she could not let it be done incorrectly. Her lady preferred honeyed water in the morning, and Lord Robert loved cheese. She chose the most pungent, then set a milder one next to it. And a pile of wastel bread for him, too, with bits of apple in. She looked for anything else to add, but the tray was already laden with a variety of food, more than two people could ever eat.

  Her hands were empty as she followed the scornful lady, because they would not let Nan carry the tray or the jug. They treated her as guest and not servant – a guest who had slept on the kitchen floor but was summoned to a private audience. It was not the solar they took her to, but a smaller room next to it. There was a large window, beautiful tapestries, and two chairs at a table set by the hearth.