Rumors at Court

by Blythe Gifford

  ‘I have sent someone to bring her from town.’ He turned, as if to leave. ‘The steward will show you to the room as soon as it is ready.’

  Weary as she was after endless days on the horse, she was tempted to retire to the bed he offered, but she had been handed a husband and the life that went with him. She would not let him run from her again.

  ‘Wait!’ Her voice was loud enough not to be ignored.

  He looked back, the surprise clear on his face.

  Would he raise his hand because she interrupted? Not with his men so close. She must speak now. ‘If we are to be married, this will be my home.’

  ‘I told you. We will not be here.’

  ‘Even when we live with the court. Even if...’ She gasped at her mistake, not realising until the word escaped how deeply she wanted to stay. A pause, and then she rushed ahead. ‘Even when we go to Castile.’

  She donned her contrite expression, hoping he would not shout at her for her doubt, then rushed to speak some words of appeasement. ‘And we will go to Castile. I know.’

  Some remembered pain gripped him, sharp at the corners of his eyes. Her fear ebbed. It seemed that neither the man’s heart nor his home had seen comfort in a long time.

  Her voice turned soft. ‘This is the land you hold, the land that will belong to...’ Could she risk the words? ‘Our son. I would see it.’

  A moment’s silence. She tried to read his face. Surprise? Anger? Scargill had always lashed out immediately. This man seemed always to reflect first.

  A sigh. A shrug. ‘The steward can show you.’ He shifted his weight, as if the conversation was over.

  He could face a sword, it seemed, but not this. What was here, in these walls, in this earth, that he feared?

  ‘Not the steward! You.’ Her voice, not as strong as she had hoped. ‘I want you to show it to me.’

  She held out her hand.

  Her fingers trembled and she tried to hold her arm steady as she met his gaze. His blue eyes seemed at once to burn and freeze her, leaving her unable to speak or move.

  If he touches my hand, if I feel his skin on mine—

  But he did not stretch out his hand.

  She let her shaking arm drop and looked down at the floor, feeling the heat of shame rush to her cheeks. He did not want a wife.

  He did not want her.

  ‘Very well. Come.’

  And she had to take quick steps to follow him out of the room.

  Valerie wondered, as they walked the corridors, whether she might have learned more if she had been guided by the steward. Here is the hall. Here are the stables. He volunteered little more than the name of each chamber. No mention of childhood memories. Not a word about his family.

  Who had lived in these empty rooms? What had life been like for Gil at five or six? This was his home, the place he had lived as a child, and yet she had heard more feeling in his voice when he spoke of Castile.

  ‘You will learn what kind of horse will be your husband’, he had promised. And yet these empty walls only deepened the mystery.

  ‘It has been a long time,’ she began, softly, ‘since anyone lived here.’

  ‘Yes.’

  The steward might have managed the tenants, but he was a terrible housewife. Perhaps he kept his own quarters tidy, but dust, spider webs, even birds’ nests filled the castle’s corners. What furnishings that remained were rude. She saw not even a decorative candlestick or a threadbare tapestry to grace the halls. Of course, no careful steward should waste time and money to keep empty rooms ready for a master who never visited. ‘Was it like this when you were a child?’

  ‘Nearly so.’ There was a grim set to his lips. ‘When I came to Losford Castle I knew nothing of courtly arts.’

  ‘And you had no brothers or sisters?’

  ‘My brother became a monk. I have not seen him in years.’

  She understood. It was the way of things.

  Finally, they reached the master’s room. The servants had done what they could. The dust was gone. The bed, covered with sheet and blanket, looked as simple as one in an almshouse.

  And yet, it was a bed. One they might share some day.

  She looked away. A marital bed had never been a pleasant place for her.

  He walked to the window, gazing out, and did not look back at her when he finally spoke. ‘You told me that I should know what I am getting,’ he said. ‘That no man should buy a horse without inspecting his teeth and his forelegs.’

  The words sounded colder than she had intended. ‘Yes.’

  He turned, finally, and faced her. She tried to read him, uncertain whether she had angered or saddened him with her questions.

  ‘And you should know the same.’ He gestured for her to sit.

  A small stool stood beside the bed. She ran her hand over it, to see that the dust had been cleared, sat and clasped her hands, waiting.

  He did not speak immediately, but stood, first looking out of the window, then letting his gaze take in the chamber and whatever memories lurked here. Finally, he met her eyes and took a breath.

  ‘My mother was a Brewen.’

  Brewen. The very name seemed evil. She had heard the tales, too wild to be believed, of things that had happened before she was born: men who had extorted money, raped women, and priests who had disappeared, never to be seen again...

  ‘But that was years ago,’ she said, as if time could erase such wickedness.

  ‘It began before this King sat on the throne, before we went to war with France. Full forty years and more ago.’

  Yet men still crossed themselves when the name was spoken. And now, this man, one who carried that blood, would be her husband and share her bed. She tightened her fingers, as if to pray. ‘Tell me.’

  He looked at her, silent for a moment before he began.

  ‘My Brewen grandfather had seven sons and one daughter. The girl was my mother.’

  * * *

  Gil hated the telling, hated reliving a past he wanted only to forget. But no one else had told her the truth, so he must be the one.

  Seven Brewen sons. Too many for the land to support.

  He had known, even as a child, that his family carried shame. Youngest of the line, his Brewen mother had married a Wolford, but still could not escape. His father had died when he was young and Gil had lived with his mother, still in the Brewen home.

  They had called it the Castle of the Weeping Winds. Blood stained the walls and watered the ground.

  Certainly, his family’s sins were still buried here. But he would not speak of that, even now.

  His grandfather had maintained the pretence of respectability, but Gil had seen his uncles come and go at all hours, retreating to the protection of the castle walls when the law came too close. Only one, who had become a priest, appeared to have escaped the curse.

  The family had turned to crime a generation, even two, before that. Those were the years before the current King had solidified his power, before a man could earn a fortune in ransoms from fighting the French. In that time of unrest, it had been easy for a man to make his own law.

  His mother had told him that her brothers were righteous men, that they were standing up against corrupt churchmen, so he did not know, exactly, all they had done. So it was not until he left home to foster at Losford that he discovered fully what it meant to be a Brewen.

  He had wondered, over the years, why such a powerful man had taken him on. Later, when he knew the way of things, he learned that one of his uncles, perhaps more, had fought beside the King in France, their crimes pardoned because they helped win the glorious victory at Crecy.

  Even outlaws could be useful to a king.

  And so, the Earl had taken him in at the request of the King, no doubt thinking to remove him as
far as possible from the bad influence of his family. But when Losford himself wasn’t in the room, the other boys, the squires, even the knights ostracised him, refusing to see to his training, muttering that they did not want to teach him to swing a sword that he might use to run them through.

  He carried Brewen blood. That was enough.

  Gil’s younger brother had retreated to the monastic life, perhaps to pray for the redemption of his uncles’ souls. Gil chose the salvation of war, a way to prove his honour and escape to a foreign land.

  As a squire serving Losford in France, he had that chance. In every action, he adhered to the code of chivalry. When some squires might pocket a coin or a bauble before turning over the rest, he never did. In the midst of battle, some knights might kill a man who had fallen, rather than taking him alive, ruled by fear more than greed. Gil did not. He would hold to honour, he decided, even at the cost of his own life, for without respect, he would rather abandon this existence.

  Gradually, among those who fought beside him, the taunts faded. His own deeds grew larger in memory than his family’s and he was knighted at a younger age than most of his peers.

  Still, after the Earl of Losford died in France and unwelcome peace returned, Gil had to return to England. That was when Marc, a Frenchman who knew nothing of the Brewens, had taken him on and taught him more of fighting.

  These were years of peace and Gil did not want peace.

  So he joined Lancaster’s service and returned to the Continent. After the battles in Castile came Aquitaine, Calais, Harfleur, Abbeville, Cognac, Limoges, and more. He stayed as far away from England as he could for as long as he could. And if peace came again? Then he would find another way to fight, in Italy or the Ottoman war.

  But while he was away, one by one, his remaining uncles died: taken by the plague, by a river in flood, by a fall from his horse. One, they suspected, had been killed by the hand of one of his victims, though no one questioned too closely. Not one of them had spawned sons. So when his own mother died, the castle, the shameful legacy of all the Brewen blood, had come into his hands, an unwanted burden. He was finished with England, ready for a life in a place that knew nothing of his past and only of his own reputation.

  He would not have returned at all, would never have seen this crumbling castle again if it had not been for Lancaster’s promise of a home in Castile and the need to go back to England to prepare. He had thought it worth the risk, for it meant the chance to live in a place that knew only El Lobo.

  And had never heard the name Brewen.

  * * *

  Gil had not looked at her, the whole of the time he had spoken, gazing into the past. He spoke as though to himself, for he had never been able to share the pain of it with anyone else.

  And he could not face her still, wondering what she must think, now that she knew.

  Still, he had not, could not, tell her all. Could tell no one of the things still buried in the earth...

  Our Castle of the Weeping Wind, his mother had called it. Now, so empty that only the wind remained.

  And even that wind could not blow away the disgrace.

  Chapter Ten

  Gil turned to face her, finally, expecting to see fear or disgust in her gaze, and yet it seemed nothing in the expression on her small, serious face had changed. Had she heard him at all?

  ‘Now you know,’ he said. He should have told her long ago, as soon as he realised her ignorance. Instead, they had stumbled into a betrothal neither had wanted. ‘So you may ask the church to free you from this marriage. There must be a way. It is your right.’

  He waited, expecting her to rise, to flee, to break the bonds that bound them and leave them both as they had been before. Yet the thought did not bring the relief he expected.

  Instead, she shook her head, stood and reached for his hand. This time, she did not wait for him to take hers. Instead, she grasped both his hands in hers, more a blessing than a caress, and held them, tightly, between her palms.

  ‘Oh, my husband, do you think you are the only one who has walked with pain?’

  The heat of her hand on his, the look of forgiveness in her eyes, hit him as strongly as a blow. But instead of the agony of a wound, he was filled with the warmth and comfort of a fire in winter.

  Was this what a wife could give?

  He pulled his hands from hers, not to escape, but so that he could trail his fingers across her cheek. Surrounded by her widow’s wimple, her face seemed light and luminous, dark eyes, pale skin, parted lips soft and sympathetic. He could not say she smiled, no. But her expression was more true, more real, than any of the smiles she had donned to disguise her feelings.

  Now she knew the shame of who he was and, instead of recoiling in fear, she had reached to touch him.

  His fingers bumped against the dark cloth covering her hair and he cupped her cheeks in his hands. She did not pull away, or look down, but as the heat of his hands settled on her skin, her eyes closed, her lips parted, she took a breath...

  And he kissed her.

  Her lips warm and soft. A moment in which she melted against him, the heat of her body, his, a promise, acceptance that cared nothing for the past.

  His hands slid away from her face to her shoulders, then he pulled her close. She leaned against him, trusting in his touch, and he tightened his arms, wishing her gown, his tunic, everything that separated them would disappear.

  And then, suddenly, he held a stiff, cold woman in his arms. She did not pull away, no, she was too obedient for that, but the comfort he had craved was gone. The fire he had wanted to spark sputtered like a flame on wet wood.

  He set her away from him, with stiff arms and saw the flash of fear on her face. The truth.

  She had said all was well and offered her comfort but, it seemed, only because it was her duty as a wife.

  For now that she knew him as a Brewen, she feared him more than she had feared El Lobo.

  * * *

  For a moment, Valerie forgot.

  She reached for him without fear, wanting to ease his pain. And when he kissed her, she had been a different woman, one who might join with him in joy.

  And then, her body remembered what it was like to be taken. Remembered and responded, emptied of everything except the need to endure.

  Now she had displeased him.

  He rose. Moved away, further than an arm could reach. ‘You fear me.’ Not anger. Sorrow.

  The edge of a laugh escaped. ‘No. I do not.’ After Scargill no man could frighten her.

  ‘Is that a lie?’

  She shook her head. ‘It is true.’

  It was her own feelings she feared.

  There had been a rush, a yearning to join, to be a part of this man. Physical, yes, and worse. As if she might feel something for him.

  And wanted him to feel something for her in turn.

  As he studied her, she wondered whether, despite all she knew, that might be possible.

  ‘I think,’ he said, finally, ‘that it is time to lay aside your mourning garb.’

  Startled, she touched the wimple hiding her hair. Swathed in dark garments, she had worn the public protection of grief as a shield. The clothes, and the grief, both lies, a way to stay untouchable.

  But she was no longer only a widow, but about to be another man’s wife. Now, suddenly, the cloth covering her hair, neck and throat seemed to be choking her.

  She nodded yes and tugged on the fabric, but it did not slip away easily. He drew closer and lifted his hand to push it aside. Near enough now that she caught the scent of him, a faint echo of herbs and earth.

  She closed her eyes and leaned into him again. Hoping. Waiting...

  The cloth dropped away and sweet, fresh air caressed her.

  ‘Brown,’ he whispered. ‘Your hair
is brown.’

  She bit her lip. ‘You wanted a fair-haired wife.’ As she had feared.

  He shook his head and threaded his fingers through her hair, then trailed them, light on her ear, his palm cupping her cheek again. ‘I just wanted to know.’ His breath, warm, close...

  And his lips met hers again.

  For a moment, she stiffened. This was the way her husband had begun. Moving in, overpowering her, so that she could not escape even were she to struggle.

  She had learned not to struggle.

  But this man’s arms, though strong, were gentle. His touch spoke of protecting her from harm, not pummelling her into submission.

  And now, her body, instead of becoming stiff to resist or limp to acquiesce became alive, moving to him, with him, as if a kiss might be something they could do together, not something that was done to her.

  Was there wind? Sun? Was it day? Night? Nothing but him and his lips, for a long, slow, time...

  And then, parted, gently, as if waking from a pleasant dream. A breath. A sigh. Even a smile.

  And opening her eyes to see the same on his face.

  A fierce, unfamiliar feeling stole her breath. Not desire, exactly, but hope. Hope that—

  ‘My lord, the midwife is here.’

  Valerie stumbled. Even Gil seemed caught speechless. The Queen. While she had been kissing her betrothed, both the Queen and Lady Katherine were waiting, each in her own kind of pain, for Valerie to return with the wise woman.

  She wrestled with her wimple, but it would not go back into place. ‘Take me to her,’ she said, to the wide-eyed page. ‘She must know the Queen’s condition.’

  Gil put a hand at her back. A pause. ‘We leave in the morning,’ he said. ‘And we will not come here again.’

  She fled the chamber, calling herself a fool.

  She had acted as if she had learned nothing in all her nineteen years, as if all those horrible days, and worse nights, of the months before Scargill had left for war could be forgotten.

  She had survived the pain by becoming numb to it, by teaching herself not to feel. Not to care. She had learned it well enough that no man would ever be able to hurt her again.