Fair, Bright, and Terrible

by Kingston, Elizabeth

  He made to bring the flagon to his lips again, but his hand was suddenly empty.

  “Dress, not drink,” said Kit, helping himself to the ale, which he had taken from Robert somewhere along the way. “The procession has begun and there is naught but half an hour until she arrives at the church.”

  Robert looked at the gray tunic, and the rust. Did it really matter which? It was eighteen years. It was marriage. If she did not like what she saw of him at first glance, it was doubtful she would turn tail and run back to Ruardean.

  “I am told the stray branches have been cleared from the path,” he said as he pulled the rust-colored tunic over his head. There had been a storm that left debris along the road where the bridal procession would travel. “Tell me it is true.”

  He reached for the belt covered in topaz and emeralds as Kit answered. “Aye, cleared of every stray leaf, and there’s new thatch on the storehouse and the stables are so clean you could serve the feast in them. You can be proud of it, Robin.”

  Robert fastened the belt, slipped a leather pouch into his pocket, and took a short deep breath before looking up at Kit. He held his arms out slightly, hands up, and gave his friend a doubtful look.

  “Well? Will I please this regal bride?”

  Kit frowned in consideration a moment, then shrugged. “Even were she not regal, she is still a woman. No man can predict what will please a woman.”

  Robert dropped his hands and headed for the door. “By Mary, what kind words from my bosom friend.”

  “Kind words or honest words, Robin. A bosom friend can offer both, but not always at the same time.”

  She was only a green and gold shimmer in the distance, and he almost could not bear the anticipation of seeing her. He found himself fixing his eyes on the place where her hands held the reins.

  There was music, and the chattering of a thousand voices. There were banners flying, ribbons fluttering, and colorful petals falling, flung over her and strewn in her path on her slow ride toward him. But all he could hear was the beat of hooves that had galloped toward her a lifetime ago. All he could see was the memory of his own hands gripped tight on the reins, knuckles white and aching, as he rode to meet her that first time and chanted to her in his head, Please be there, please be there.

  She was close now, sunlight flashing off of emeralds and cloth-of-gold around her perfectly serene and familiar face. The years had barely touched it. It was a white, smooth mask that showed nothing. Please be there, he thought.

  He might have stood there for hours, just looking at her, if Kit had not cleared his throat rather too loudly. Then Robert was in motion, striding toward her, reaching up to lift her from the horse, and the feel of her weight, her body – how she so naturally leaned down and put herself into his waiting hands – caused all the color and sound to burst forth on his consciousness. It was Eluned. Eluned in his arms. Here and now.

  “My lord de Lascaux,” she murmured with downcast eyes, and it looked as though she meant to bow her head to him, to pull away and bend her knee in some sort of courtesy, but he would not allow that. He could never allow that.

  “Cariad,” he said.

  Her eyes were on him then, a flash of gray intelligence under a still luxuriant sweep of lashes. She looked startled. But she did not smile even a little, and her chin stayed stubbornly level as a little pinch formed in her lips. He remembered that pinch, though it had not used to be so severe. It meant she was suppressing unwise words.

  Without thinking, he did what he would have done years ago in a secret sunlit patch of grass, far from prying eyes. He kissed her, pressed his lips to that endearing pinch. The crowd was pleased. He could faintly hear them over the pounding of his heart. She was warm, a sudden heat rising from her face accompanied a sharp intake of breath. He ended it quickly, fearing she would stiffen or pull away.

  Amid the cheering the priest beckoned them forward, and holding her hand high in his, Robert led his bride forward to the church doors so that they may say their vows. It was strange and yet perfectly right, he thought, that these would be the first words spoken between them after so many years. As he waited for the cheers to subside, she looked full at him, her eyes roving over his face. He could not read her expression except to say that he saw no chagrin or regret. He thought he looked much as she did, with more lines around his eyes and less tautness to his face, but still recognizable for all that.

  “I pledge to you the faith of my body, that I will keep you in health and in sickness, and in any condition it pleases the Lord to place you.” He repeated the words after the priest, watching Eluned closely for any emotion. Her composure was absolute, a stark and unnerving contrast to the tumult in him. “And that I shall not abandon you for better or worse, until death parts us.”

  She said her own vows steadily, easily. Even when the priest enjoined her to promise obedience and compliance to her husband, she repeated the words without hesitation – without even a sideways glance at him – and Robert began to fear that he had dreamed everything about her, and all that had been between them.

  Once they had entered the church to celebrate the mass, he let himself look at her in quick glances and secretive gazes. There were furrows etched into her brow and her hair was a darker brown now, with strands of silver running through it. It was coiled in heavy braids inside a golden net that glittered with emeralds. He imagined anyone looking at her would see what they were meant to see: wealth in great abundance, power and status that set her apart. But he looked at her and saw her hair unbound, sliding over her bare shoulders. He knew the feel of it in his hands as he braided it, softness between his fingers as she sang a Welsh melody to him.

  She wore a bliaut of deep green, touched with gold embroidery all over. The inner lining of the wide sleeves, the laces along the sides, and a border at the hem – all were made from cloth-of-gold, and he had an idea what such extravagance cost. It was her veil that made him smile to himself. Made of some wondrous sheer golden fabric, light and shimmering, it hung from the net that bound her braids. It draped across her throat and framed her face. Any other woman who was no longer a fresh girl would use the veil to conceal the few threads of silver in her hair and draw attention away from her face. But she did the opposite. This was the Eluned he knew, bold in her declarations and daring the world to see her as she was.

  His Eluned was in there, beneath all the riches and all the years. He was sure of it.

  But his conviction was tested as the day wore into the evening. He expected her eyes to come alive with keen assessment when he presented her to his father, but she only uttered commonplace greetings and calmly assured him that she was honored to join herself to his family. Others came to embrace her and congratulate them and, whether well-known acquaintance or stranger, high-born or humble, family or not, she was polite and distant.

  She was a perfectly agreeable bride, pleasant and bland. In his direst imaginings, he could not have envisioned this.

  Even when she introduced him to her son, she did not betray any extra warmth or animation. He could never forget how well she adored her daughter, which made such a striking contrast to her indifference toward her son. Robert began to feel the first trickle of real dread as he looked at the boy who had been born more than a year after he and Eluned had parted, and who looked so like his dead father.

  What had these years been like for her, how had they so changed her that she would be like a stranger to her son? She almost seemed to embrace the distance, to pull it close and shove it between herself and her son even as the boy – so obviously, to Robert’s eyes – wished to close it.

  “I have hoped to meet you in France, my lord, but am full glad that you are come to England instead.” William smiled at him, and it caused Robert to catch his breath. It was Eluned’s smile, that he had last seen before this boy was born, shining forth from her son’s face.

  “Wherever your fair lady mother is, there I am glad to go.” He watched William slide a tentative look toward Elune
d, and endeavored to find a topic less awkward for the boy. “But tell me, do you travel to France soon?”

  “First I will go to court and make my oath to the king, but after some time attending my affairs at Ruardean it would please me to see Gascony, I think.”

  “May it please you to taste Gascony first.” Robert waylaid a passing servant and, taking a goblet filled with wine, offered it to William. “It is from our own vineyards.”

  He smiled at William’s fervent compliments on the wine while closely scanning the crowd. There was no one, in the Ruardean party or anywhere else in the hall, whom he thought could be Gwenllian.

  When he took his place in the middle of the high board with Eluned seated beside him, he could think of nothing to say to this quiet woman who did not look at him. He watched as she stirred her spoon in the pottage of beef and wine, the silence growing between them until he decided he must say something. Like a blind man feeling his way, he carefully touched on something he knew to be close to her heart.

  “My lady, I am sorry I do not find your daughter among our guests.”

  She looked out over the noisy hall as though to verify this before answering him. “I would not have her travel such a distance when her child will soon be born. It is best for Gwenllian to stay at her home in Morency.”

  “It is not her first child, though?”

  “Nay, her son was born two years ago and by the grace of God both child and mother came through it in good health.”

  He wanted to ask if she was happy her daughter had married so much later in life than she had. I had not even an hour between being a child and becoming a mother, she had once said to him, with furrows in her brow that echoed the ones etched there so many years later. But he could not mention such regrets now, in this place and with this company. He did not know if she had even told anyone that they had known one another years ago.

  “Morency,” he said instead, and watched her mouth pull taut. “You have married your daughter to a formidable man. I have seen him fight at tourney, and think I have never seen a man better at the sword.”

  Her chin thrust outwards, a gesture that said everything to him. The glittering veil at her throat fluttered, almost distracting him from the matching spark in her eye. He felt warmth spreading through him at the sight, like a burst of summer had visited him in the chill.

  “She is more than a match for him.” There was the hint of a triumphant smile at her lips.

  “If your spirit runs true in her, I would expect no less.”

  She seemed for a moment as though she might contradict him, but said nothing. Instead she gave him a startled glance, as though she had forgotten and then been reminded he was there. Her mouth pinched shut again, holding in words he was sure she might have spoken if not for the many listeners nearby.

  “Yes, her spirit.” She took a sip of spiced wine.

  “Even in France we have heard many rumors concerning Ranulf of Morency over the years. I trust he is not so bloodthirsty as the gossips would have us believe?”

  “I have had little acquaintance of him. But it has been enough to know that only the most foolish would trifle with him, even were he not great friends with the king.”

  There was a bitterness in her voice at the last word, and a tension that radiated from her. So she did not like King Edward. Maybe she even hated him. He opened his mouth to ask but a flourish from the musicians, heralding the entrance of the next course, interrupted him. He felt a stab of annoyance. There was so much to ask her, so much he wanted to know. He wanted to hear about every minute of her life for the last eighteen years, and what she had felt when his name had been spoken and she was asked to marry him, and if she remembered the time it had been so wet and cold that they had huddled together beneath their cloaks and only talked for the whole afternoon.

  But this was not the place for that. Later, after they finished the feasting and revelry, they could talk freely.

  Three roasted swans, so elegantly reconstructed that onlookers could be forgiven if they thought the birds quite alive and swimming to the dais, were followed by two equally impressive peacocks and one magnificent crane whose gray feathers were painted silver. There were enough sounds of appreciation as the servants carried the dishes through the hall that Robert thought it must be a sufficiently splendid display, but he could not help looking to her to see if she took any delight in the festivities. She smiled at it all – at the dishes sailing toward them, at the merry music playing, the chattering guests – but there was no mistaking the emptiness behind the smile. It worried at him, that hollow pleasantness she wore. It caused something like despair to rise up in him to see her wear it so consistently.

  As she held her hands under a stream of fragrant water that a servant poured forth from a golden ewer, he watched her closely. There was a wistful look that floated across her features as she looked at the ewer that was shaped like a dragon, water pouring forth from its mouth, and he remembered a brooch of a similar shape that she used to wear all those years ago. A bit of my old home, she had called it, because dragons were a symbol of Wales.

  In a flash of insight he suddenly understood, and felt like the callow young fool she had named him on their first meeting. He waited until the servant retreated before speaking.

  “Eluned. I am sorry we could not meet before our wedding feast, for I would offer you comfort in a less festive company for the loss of your brother. And Dinwen, that was your home before Ruardean.” She paused in drying her hands. “I have remembered well how you spoke of its beauty, the bluebells in spring.”

  Her gray eyes turned to him again and knew he had not imagined the sadness in her. She did not speak for a long moment, and he began to worry he should not have said it. But then she nodded in acknowledgement, and spoke.

  “I would petition the king to grant us those lands, if my lord husband wishes it.”

  There was no doubt his father had communicated his ambitions to her, of the lands and titles he hoped this union would bring. But he did not want to speak of such arrangements just yet. Lands, titles, political ambitions, all the things her wealth and connections might accomplish in the future – all of these seemed like the smallest, easiest prizes. Far greater was the challenge of finding her again beneath this stilted speech, this empty expression.

  “Hardly can I even believe I am your lord husband. But knowing that it is so, I am content to let you tell me which lands will merit the effort. Your talent for such things can only have grown since you recommended this estate to me.”

  There was a moment of startled confusion in her eyes again, and then it was as though his words had woken her from a deep and troubling sleep. She looked at him directly at last, in recognition, a tiny smile playing at the corner of her mouth as she spoke.

  “You have done well with it. This manor house is tripled in size from the days when Whittington held it, and the land and villages so much improved they are near unrecognizable.” She leaned a little closer. “Did my lord Whittington’s curses follow you to France?”

  “Curses were the only thing he had in abundance, and I invited him to spend as many as he liked.”

  Her response was a look of such fondness that it dazed him, made him a green boy again. Then she turned to wave away the servant who offered her the swan in mustard sauce, taking instead the woodcock baked in pastry. With a little puff of steam, she broke open the hard pastry, and as she spoke the fragrance of the bacon that was wrapped around the tender meat made him reach for his own plate.

  “I have thought often of the good it may have done for Aaron of Lincoln, to sell it to you,” she said. “But we can no longer name him Aaron of Lincoln since he has quit that place. I fear Whittington may have done him harm out of spite.”

  “Let your mind be at peace. Aaron came to me in France for a short time before moving on to Basel.” He spooned the mustard sauce over his meat, his appetite fully recovered now that she spoke so naturally. “It was not the anger of Whittington he fled, but the
mood of England toward the Jews here.”

  There was a short pause as she sipped the wine. “You told him to come to you.” She did not ask it, but he knew it was a question nonetheless.

  “I did. He was so burdened with worry for the fate of his sons, and what protection I could offer was trifling. I am sorry France was no better for him than was England, but he has had great success in Basel. If he had known of your concern, is sure he would have sent word to ease your mind.”

  This admission did not alter the arrested look on her face. It seemed to trouble her, though he could not imagine why. She only murmured, “Your kindness would shame the saints,” but she said it so softly that he was glad to pretend he hadn’t heard it.

  He watched her fingers playing with a bit of pastry crust. Her earlier indifference was now replaced by an air of distraction, as though she were thinking very hard and only sometimes remembered to take interest in the celebration around her. From the corner of his eye he saw his brother approaching, only to be intercepted by Kit before he could reach the place where Robert and Eluned sat. Kit drew him into conversation, and Robert smiled his thanks at his friend before turning to Eluned again.

  “Only last week I wrote to Aaron, and gave him news of our wedding.” He took his cup in hand and gestured at a servant to fill it with the plain wine, unspiced because it was a finer vintage. “He is a merchant now, and we deal together in wine. Taste and you will see why it is in high demand, and why he is so glad to know I will always keep a portion aside for him.”

  He held the cup to her lips and she drank a swallow. Her lashes lifted, an expression of pleasure at the taste, her eyes meeting his over the brim of the cup. In an instant they were back in that moment a lifetime ago, when she had looked at him over the edge of her cup and he had known they would become lovers. For only a breath, the thrill of deep awareness connected them – and then she looked away and said something about the wine as he watched her skin go pink and then white.