Stealing Heaven

by Madeline Hunter

  “Damnation, the witch is with them,” Arundal said. “Perhaps she intends to lead the attack.”

  Marcus moved his horse close to Addis. “I am going to send them an offer to negotiate.”

  “Carwyn has already refused to parlay, and won’t do so now, not with our troops arrayed.”

  “I think that he might. I will ask for a meeting. He can bring whomever else he wants, but Nesta must accompany him.”

  “He will never risk coming down.”

  “He might if our messenger is kept up there until he returns. Especially if the hostage is an important man.”

  Addis flipped up his visor. His eyes reflected resignation as he absorbed just who Marcus thought that hostage should be.

  “I doubt we can get Arundal to go, and Hubert is not valuable. Neither of them is clever and quick-witted enough anyway,” Marcus explained.

  Addis sighed deeply. He pulled off his helmet, and called for his squire to take it and his lance. Hubert and Arundal watched with surprise from twenty paces away.

  “What am I to say?” Addis asked.

  “Get him and Nesta to a meeting between our lines. Say that the presence of my betrothed in their ranks distresses me, and that I believe she is being held against her will. Let Carwyn think that I might agree to something disadvantageous to us.”

  “I do not think he will listen.”

  “He might not, but Nesta will. Those cheers were not only for him, but also for her. Llygad’s daughter has power with that army, and Carwyn knows it.”

  Addis began trotting forward. Marcus called to Hubert and Arundal to stay behind, and accompanied his friend.

  Addis turned to look at their astonished comrades. “Don’t let them do something stupid. I don’t want to be kept.”

  “If something goes wrong, I will ransom you.”

  “You seem very calm, as if things are unfolding much as you had hoped.” He tightened his reins and prepared for a gallop as they approached the point where Marcus would have to turn back. “Hell, I hope that you know what you are doing.”

  Marcus sat in the tent that had been set up between the two armies. A table had been built out of planks and logs. Crude stools, requisitioned from the camps, surrounded it. A fire pot cast some warmth.

  Addis was up with Carwyn’s men, but Arundal and Hubert had insisted on joining the parlay. Marcus would have liked to avoid that. He would not be able to speak frankly with them present.

  Horses approached. All of them fixed their eyes on the flap through which their enemy would walk.

  Nesta entered first. She examined the three of them with noble disdain. Even the gaze that lingered on Marcus contained little warmth.

  When we meet again it will be as the King’s man and Llygads daughter, but know that you are in my heart. He held on to those words, and doubted that his own expression hid his heart as well as hers did.

  Carwyn ducked his tall body through the tent flap, and two other men followed. Ale was poured and drunk.

  Finally, Arundal spoke directly to Carwyn. “Surrender. We outnumber you. We have had scouts in those hills these last days, and they count no more than one hundred fifty.”

  “Unlike your camps, which are easy to find and count, ours are scattered and keep moving. Perhaps we have only fifty men, the ones you see on that hill. Then again, maybe we have two thousand.”

  “No matter what your numbers, you are at a disadvantage,” Marcus said. “The men of Barrowburgh and Anglesmore and Arundal are experienced and battle hardened and well equipped, not farmers just plucked from their fields.”

  Carwyn laughed. “That is the great offer that caused this delay? The offer to surrender?”

  “Nay,” Arundal growled. “We offer you a quick death, instead of that of a traitor.”

  “We offer no death at all,” Marcus corrected. “I received no command from the King for recriminations.”

  Arundal and Hubert were halfway through their objections when the King’s command was mentioned. That stopped their words, but not their scowls.

  “You do not know the half of it,” Carwyn said. “However, since we indulged you in this parlay, we should hear what you offer in terms. Make it quick, however. My men have waited too long for this fight.”

  “I offer you what the King offered. You will disband, and I will marry the daughter of Llygad, so that amends are made for the insult done to his honor.”

  “If we considered such a marriage suitable amends, we could have all stayed home.”

  “It is the King’s offer, and mine. I must add one more term, however. You, Carwyn Hir, must leave the realm.”

  “I’ll be damned first.”

  “You will be condemned if you do not.”

  Carwyn laughed. A sneer twisted above his dark beard. “Now hear my terms. You withdraw from this valley, and from Llygad’s manor, and you end this betrothal that you forced. Perhaps then you will live to fight another day.”

  “There will be no battle on another day. If we engage, I end this here. There will be no quarter. You have taken my betrothed prisoner, and I am not in a merciful mood.”

  Hubert’s head snapped around. “She doesn’t look like a prisoner to me.”

  Arundal snorted his agreement. Nesta said nothing.

  Carwyn’s blue eyes lit with acknowledgment, and approval. “Your responsibility to her, and for her, should be worth more than what you offer.”

  “That responsibility is why you hear any terms at all. Send your men down, and see where my blood is on this.”

  “It will be pouring into the ground out there, that is where it will be.”

  Marcus lifted his hand. “I have done my duty to try and avert this. If you want a battle, so be it.” He reached down for a sack resting near his leg. “Here are some of your things, Nesta, so that you are not without some comforts in that camp.”

  Nesta reached for the sack, but another hand grabbed it first. Casting a suspicious glance at Marcus, Arundal loosened the string and rummaged through the contents.

  His eyes narrowed and glinted triumphantly. Giving Hubert a knowing nudge, he withdrew a folded parchment “Well, what do we have here, Marcus? A love poem? Or something more damning?”

  Barely containing his glee, he unfolded the parchment. His face fell with disappointment. The sheet fluttered from his hand to the table.

  It bore only a painted picture of a lamb and four angels.

  Nesta’s eyes subtly widened. Carwyn’s gaze locked on the image before he darted Nesta a sharp, questioning glance.

  “Reconsider, Carwyn,” Marcus said quietly, looking Nesta directly in the eyes. “This will not unfold as you expect.”

  “Even if we lose this skirmish, we will not be defeated,” Carwyn said. “Others will join us.”

  “Others may join you, but no one will aid you.”

  Carwyn began to speak, but Nesta’s hand moved almost imperceptibly, silencing him. She leaned over and whispered in his ear.

  A silence fell, broken only by the sounds of Arundal pawing deeper in the sack.

  Nesta looked right at Marcus, and he looked straight back. He read the question in her eyes, and he let her see the answer.

  She rose. “I will not be an ox sold at a market, or a prisoner who keeps trading one cell for another. Before any further discussions take place, I will speak with this marcher lord alone.”

  She turned and left the tent without waiting for agreement. Marcus followed, not waiting for approval either.

  She mounted her horse before any squire could help, and began trotting north, toward a hill on which the flank of Marcus’s army was positioned. Marcus swung up on his own horse and followed, catching up and falling into place beside her.

  She did not speak or look at him until they reached the hill. “Tell them to leave,” she said as she pushed her horse to climb to the top.

  Marcus gave the word for the soldiers to go down the hill. There, on its top, with the English army spread out on one side and the den
se forest filling the other, with the high hill in the distance banded by Welsh, she dismounted.

  She would not look at Marcus. She could not. Her shock at seeing the design in the tent had not dimmed, and the war in her heart raged as it never had. Anger that he had obstructed her final move clashed with heartbreaking humiliation that he had discovered her final betrayal.

  He knew about the message scraped into the parchment. He had all but said so in the tent. He had read it, no doubt, and comprehended how treasonous that betrayal had been.

  He had known when he let her escape, and during their last night under the stars…Her throat thickened.

  Half of her wanted to weep and half of her wanted to scream at him with fury.

  She looked to the Welsh who waited for Llygad’s daughter to return. They did not know yet that she had failed them. “I have often thought that this would have been so much easier if the King had chosen a stupid man,” she said.

  There was no response to that.

  “How much do you know?” she asked.

  “I know that you have used the designs to send plans and messages. From the look on Carwyn’s face when that parchment unfolded, some went to him, but some were sent to the Scots. This last one did not arrive, however, as you can see.”

  She sighed. He had even surmised who their allies were to be. She had hoped he had not. “Who else knows?”

  “Addis and Paul.”

  Only those two. He had kept it a secret, to protect her. He had helped her escape, so she might be safe when the truth became known.

  She did not like admitting that. She wanted to hate him, and to see his own deceptions as black and heartless. If she accepted defeat, she wanted to do so spitting curses at the man who had brought her to it.

  “The one you sent with David also will not reach the Scots,” he said.

  Her heart cracked and sank. If he had only stopped the last message, it was possible the plan still stood a chance. But if he had intercepted the one before it too, where she reaffirmed the alliance despite Genith’s disappearance, all could be lost.

  He came closer, until she felt him near her shoulder. “There is one more thing that you should know. I replaced David’s design with a new one, Nesta. It contains a very different message scraped into it. An announcement of a retreat here in Wales and a repudiation of the plan. It bears your mark of the dragon, and informs your allies that they cannot count on Wales rising.”

  She pivoted, finally looking at him, her mind reeling with shock. In that instant she suddenly comprehended the fullness of what he had done.

  He had not merely obstructed her. He had allowed her to proceed, so he could remain one step behind, using her betrayals to his own end.

  “You think that you are very clever, don’t you, Marcus?”

  “Clever enough to stop you, woman.”

  “Is that what it was all about? Stopping me?” She all but spit the words, and cursed herself for the outburst. It revealed that more fed her fury and confusion than the death of the dream. She did not want to acknowledge the other pain scorching her.

  He grabbed her to him. “Do not let hurt pride make you a fool.”

  She squirmed to get away as tears filmed her eyes. She gritted her teeth to hold them in. “You played with me like a puppet. You even let me escape so that I would go to them, and be present when you held this parlay.”

  “I prayed you would flee, but I counted on your disobeying me. It is well you are here. I do not trust Carwyn’s judgment. I do trust yours. When you explain to him what I have told you here, he will accept my terms. You will see that he does.”

  The events of the past weeks played out in her mind. An insidious, new suspicion about one of them made her freeze and look up at him. “Genith. Did you let her escape? Permit it somehow?”

  “I saw her with Dylan. I suspected he would not take her to Carwyn. Aye, I allowed them to escape.”

  The revelation astonished her. “You knew about the alliance that early?”

  “I did that for myself alone. She was not the daughter of Llygad whom I wanted.”

  She twisted violently, to break his hold. “I do not believe you. Everything that you did, everything, was aimed at our defeat and destruction.”

  “That is not true, damn it.” He held her tighter yet, and took her face in his hand so she would have to look at him. “If I wanted your defeat, a battle would be raging down there right now. If I wanted you destroyed, no man fighting under your father’s banner would leave the field alive.”

  She pushed away from him, confused and furious. She strode to where he could not reach her, and turned her back on him.

  “Damn you. You let me touch the dream but not grasp it fully.”

  “It was not your dream, but another’s. You did not choose this duty. It was given to you.”

  “As yours was given to you. Better if you had locked me away at once, as soon as you suspected, so their undoing would not be my fault.”

  “It is not their undoing, but their salvation, that we give them today. And if I had put you away, or exposed what you were doing, you would have been lost to me.”

  Her breath caught in surprise. She swung around to face him.

  He stood there, ten paces away, in all his youthful, strong perfection. His face showed a warrior’s resolve and a lordly severity, but the deepest lights of his eyes revealed gentler emotions.

  The implications of his last words had her wavering at once. She could not deny that he had taken a harder, riskier path to this victory than was necessary. She tried to block from her mind the evidence that he had chosen it, and because of her.

  All the same, her anger began slipping from her grasp, sliding away despite the way she frantically clutched at it.

  He held out his hand. Cold steel encased the arm, but his palm beckoned with human warmth. Her emotions still churned from an internal storm that whirled in her head and chest.

  “Come and accept me, Nesta. We will say the vows with both sides as witness.”

  “So now you expect me to agree to be your wife? After you have done this, and used me in this way?”

  “I do not only expect it, I demand it. You and I and Carwyn know that your father did not raise his banner because of you, but many of the Welsh believe it. As the King’s representative, I will rectify that insult today.”

  “You cannot demand it. In this one thing, in this last, small part of all of this, what I want finally matters.”

  “Then accept me because you want to.”

  “You are so sure of what I want?”

  “Aye. We want each other. That is the only thing that I have known for sure these last weeks. Wanting you was the only clearheaded truth I could hold on to.”

  She tried to close her ears to him. She did not want his calm, quiet words working their soothing charm. Seducing her. Luring her to weakness, as they had so often done. Confusing her, and dividing her heart.

  “The King’s man should not be so easily swayed by passion, Marcus.”

  “The King’s man did his duty. If he found a way to do it and avoid a war, he is content. If he found a way to do it and also keep the woman he loves, he is satisfied. If that woman takes his hand willingly, he will consider it the greatest victory of his life.”

  His hand still waited for her. Down below, Carwyn and Arundal and Hubert had left the tent and watched. In the distance she could see the Welsh army’s attention on her, and the speck of color that was Addis’s surcotte.

  “I don’t really have a choice, do I?” she said.

  “Your body does not. Your heart does, however. What choice does it want to make?”

  Her heart. That acceptance would not be a public avowal, no matter what the watching armies would see. It was private, between the two of them alone. It was a thing apart from the words that would be said, and the bargain that would be made. It always had been.

  Her heart had chosen long ago, and she was helpless against its decision. Unfettered by worries
about betrayals and loss, it now shouted its affirmation. The love in it relished the freedom to grow that this marriage provided.

  Mark took one step toward her. The wind blew his hair around his handsome face and the day’s grey light shimmered off his armor. His wonderful eyes held understanding. “Let your heart accept me, Nesta. Let us make our love all it can be.”

  “Will you accept me too? In my treason I betrayed you.”

  “You never did during our truces. We will make a permanent one today, and we will forgive each other for what our duties required. Come and take my hand now, so they all see that you do so willingly.”

  She took a deep breath, and walked toward him. The whole world watched, but that did not matter.

  She was shaking by the time she placed her hand in his. Trembling. Relief overwhelmed her. So did an exhaustion of the spirit. Each step took her closer to a transforming vitality, however, as an uncontrollable love filled her with its enlivening light.

  Laying his palm on her face, he looked into her eyes. She saw no warrior then. No lord. No defeat or victory. All that existed was the man who made her feel alive and young and full of sparkling grace.

  “This marriage will be seen by many in the wrong way,” she said. “Not as England expiating a sin against Wales, but as Wales submitting to England, as a woman submits to her husband.”

  “Some may see it that way. Others will say England was seduced, and made weak by desire. The story of Marcus of Anglesmore and Nesta verch Llygad can be sung in many ways.”

  He turned his back on the watching men, so that he could kiss her privately. It was a beautiful kiss, deep and soulful. The possessive embrace in which he clutched her spoke of a triumph different from the one that others would see. His touch, his kiss, his eyes all contained a warmth and gratitude to match her own.

  The bliss permeated her whole being and poured out until it united with his joy. It surrounded them like an invisible cloud from heaven.

  “You risked much doing this as you did, Mark. One false step, and you would have fallen with me.”

  “You were well worth the risk. So was the chance for peace.”