Fair, Bright, and Terrible

by Kingston, Elizabeth

  “Only a fool overlooks a thing because he thinks it beneath his notice, you said to me once.” She could feel him looking at her, and she shifted her eyes away from the bread. “Anything might matter, and so it all matters.”

  She pushed away the memory of the servant who had told Walter that his wife had smiled too much at a young man. Yes. It all mattered.

  So his friend knew, then. In his face, in the way he held himself, she could see that this man knew Robert had been her lover. She could also see that Manton reserved his judgment of her, as much as she reserved her judgment of him. Yet why would a friend who was like a brother bother to reserve his judgment?

  “Ah. You need me,” she said to Kit Manton, dispensing of the delicate dance she might have indulged in, had she more time or inclination. “Is it some scheme against Mortimer, or must you simply get by him to achieve some other end?”

  From the corner of her eye she watched a wry smile curl Robert’s mouth. “I wonder if my lady can deal with a man without she schemes or looks to gain the advantage of him.”

  She would have scoffed at this critical tone and asked him if he had ever dealt with any men who did not scheme for advantage with every breath, but Kit Manton cast a silencing look at his friend and then looked directly at her.

  “Mortimer holds my son as hostage, my lady, and I would have him back. Call it what you will, only help deliver him home.”

  There was an urgency to him, an intensity that suggested he felt danger breathing on his son’s neck at this very moment. All her senses focused on him, everything in her alert and attentive.

  “Which Mortimer?”

  “It was their father who demanded a hostage, the old lord before he died. My son has dwelled in the household of Isabella Mortimer for more than a year.”

  Of all the Mortimers, Isabella was the least likely to instill fear. And to demand hostage was no strange or cruel practice in itself. She waited for him to say more, but he did not. It must be a tangled tale indeed.

  “Come, tell me.” She could hear that imperious ring in her voice, which had no place in this small room with these men. She took a deep breath and strove to control her tone. She did not like being in these close quarters with them, this intimate talk. She missed her cold and empty bower. “I can only advise you if I know the full circumstance. How came you to be compelled to give your son as hostage, and what are the conditions of his release?”

  He nodded once, firm and decided. It made her like him, that he did not bristle at her impatience or take a condescending air, nor show an overweening deference. It was a rare thing to be accepted as an equal, from a man. Indeed it was a rare thing to be called to counsel her husband at all.

  “My estate is small next to Mortimer, and to the great abbey that bounds us to the north, but its value is not small. There is silver in the ground at the western edge, and we are given permission of the king to mine it.”

  He went on to tell how thieves would come and come again, as frequent and unstoppable as rats to a granary, harrying the guards at the mine and stealing what they could. They slipped onto the property from the west – from Mortimer land – “Though I do not accuse Mortimers of profiting from it,” he was quick to say. It was only that they did nothing to prevent the thieves. Finally one day, they had learned where the thieves were camped in the wilds just across the river on Mortimer lands. Word was sent to Mortimer’s castellan, but Manton did not wait for his powerful neighbor before acting.

  “The castellan gave no reply, and Mortimer himself would be at least a week in answer. And I knew he would only say that they could spare no men from their…Welsh campaign.” Here he cast an apologetic look to her, then shrugged. “So I sent my own men. But when they arrived in the place, they found no thieves. They found only some of Mortimer’s garrison men, who accused us of sending armed soldiers west without permission of the king.”

  He did not have to say more for her to know the accusations against him: Mortimer would have thought Manton had sent an armed party to Wales last summer, at the height of the fighting.

  “Had you any dealings with the Welsh princes, that your allegiance to the crown might be questioned?” But she knew the answer. If Manton had ever inclined toward helping the Welsh, she would have known of him long ago.

  “Nay, my lady, nor did my father ever have any such dealings. And so did I say to Mortimer, but still he saw aggression where there was none. He demanded proof that we did not conspire to lay claim to that corner of his lands. It was his true fear from the start.” Here he waved a hand in irritated dismissal. “There was an old dispute over that border between our estates, but it is long dead.”

  “It would not matter,” she said. “He would see only that you sent armed men onto his land without his permission, and he would seek to explain it as greed and ambition. As a show of good faith, you offered your son as hostage?”

  “Aye, on the condition that he be returned to me when I renounced any claim to that land. And so I did, but old Mortimer died just days before the quitclaim reached his hands. Now his son pretends ignorance of the terms and keeps my boy as surety against future aggression.”

  No doubt there was some reason, something that motivated Mortimer to keep a hostage of seemingly little value. With time and ample consideration, she might guess at it. But she had stopped caring why cruel men were cruel, and what their cruelties revealed. All that mattered was that the Mortimers did as they pleased, and took whatever they wanted only because they wanted it.

  “How old is the boy?”

  “Robin has had his eleventh birthday last week.”

  She could not help but give a little flinch at the name, but resisted looking toward Robert. “I do not say it is right, but still you must see that he is in as fine a household as you could hope for, at an age where he would be sent as squire anyway. Many would be glad to have their child in the charge of a lady such as Isabella Mortimer.”

  “He is not there as squire.”

  “Nay, but I do not doubt he is tutored as one and treated well.” It made her tired, these cares of his. She did not want more cares, not even for a moment, not even borrowed from this man who could not simply be glad that his son was whole and healthy. “I have said it is not just, but there is no harm and much good that may come of it until you learn a way to gain Mortimer’s trust. Wherefore this urgency to have him out of her hands?”

  “But that’s just it, my lady. Isabella will soon deliver my son to the safekeeping of her brother Roger Mortimer.”

  At this, the fatigue in her fell away and a flare of rage rose up to steal her breath. It was so swift and fierce that she felt dizzy with it. She was saved from voicing her outrage only because words were impossible to marshal, so she simply stared at him with eyes wide and her mouth falling slightly open. Kit Manton spared a glance toward Robert, and she saw some kind of understanding between them. It was Robert who spoke, and now his voice was gentle again, devoid of irony but still a low rumble that reminded her he was no longer a boy.

  “The Welsh princes of Powys,” he said. “I did not doubt you would know of their fate.”

  “They were kin to me,” she said, the fury pulling her voice tight. “Through my mother’s side, they were kin. I petitioned the king for their keeping when they were orphaned, but he gave them to Mortimer.”

  She had fumed about it for months. Two orphaned boys, last in a royal Welsh bloodline, and Roger Mortimer had been made their guardian. When their little dead bodies washed up on the shores of the River Dee two years ago, with no one left to inherit their vast lands and wealth, it was Roger Mortimer who was granted everything. The vicissitudes of fortune, said the Mortimers. Murder by design, believed Eluned and many others.

  For a moment, she imagined Robert’s reaction, and Kit’s, if she told them she was already planning to kill Roger Mortimer and so they need not worry. They would laugh and think it a jest. Even she almost laughed at it, the idea of someone like her – a slight, aging woman of
diminishing worth and importance – somehow killing a professional soldier as formidable as Roger Mortimer. That was why she could do it, of course. There was sometimes great value in being dismissed as unimportant. There was an advantage to absurdity.

  But these men before her did not think her unimportant, nor dismiss her worth. Kit Manton looked at her, honest and grave, concern for his son written on every feature. She could see how, in this one aim, he was like her: Whatever it took, no matter who must be made ally and what must be sacrificed, they would do it all and gladly, to win against Mortimer.

  “I lived away from England too long,” he was saying. “I tell you plainly, lady, that I understand little about the Marcher lords save that they are known to have more power than other lords of equal rank.”

  “More autonomy, I would say,” she corrected him. “And more of a taste for brutality, among other things. They answer to no one but the king and even he cannot control them entirely, as I presume you will have discovered when you appealed to Edward.”

  It was Robert who answered her. “He said it is not a matter to be settled by the crown, and dismissed it.”

  “As is to be expected. It is a dispute between two lords, and the more powerful man wins.” She paused as Kit’s features hardened with a bitterness she understood more than he could ever know. “It is a harsh truth, better accepted than denied. Might wins in the Marches as it does in all the world.”

  “You do not think I can win against so strong a house as Mortimer, then?”

  He had the look of a plain-dealing man forced out of his element. Her eyes roamed over his fair hair, ears that stuck out straight from the sides of his head, the lines around his eyes and mouth that showed he had lived a life of laughter. She felt a sudden pity for him, so clearly was he a good man whose only concern was his son’s safety.

  “I think force will not win your son back. Cunning is a more sure way, but first you must have something the Mortimers need badly enough to give up this advantage they have over you. And that will likely require too much time – years, even. Since force and cunning are not available to you…” A faint smile tugged at her lips. “You can wrestle with a trained bear or dance with it, my uncle used to say. You may risk looking foolish to dance with a bear, but are a little less likely to be torn to pieces. That was always the strategy he employed when he must deal with Mortimer.”

  Kit’s eyes lit with curiosity. “You have an uncle who has won against Mortimer?”

  “Against old Mortimer, and only in small confrontations.” She looked at her hands, white fingers against the dark wood of the table, and prepared herself to speak the words. She had not needed to say it aloud, before now. It would hurt. “He is dead. In the fighting this summer past.”

  “Not your Uncle Rhys?” Robert held his cup suspended halfway to his lips.

  At her nod, such a look came over him that she had to turn away. She tried to swallow through the terrible burning in her throat. She had only to endure it until it passed. From the corner of her eye she saw that he reached toward her as though to take her hand. But he stopped the movement short, and that hurt too.

  “He called you the keenest wits in your family.”

  She gazed at him for a long moment, enduring the pinpricks to her heart, the unexpected flood of gratitude that left no room for anything else. She was suddenly a starving child who is given a crumb and would beg for more. Who else was left to her, that knew this about her uncle? Who else understood what he had meant to her? If she thought there was a chance she could do it without losing command of herself, she would ask him to repeat to her everything he remembered of what she’d said. She would beg for every word and every story about her uncle that she had told Robert, that he had kept fresh and pristine in his memory, locked in the same place as his foolish love for her all these years.

  Now he raised his cup and said, “A good man, and a life well lived. May his soul be at peace.”

  Kit murmured something similar, and they drank to her uncle’s memory. She nodded, pressed her trembling fingers to the table and fought for composure in the lengthening silence. It came only when she recalled they had been speaking of Mortimer and how best to win against him. She could help this man.

  “Edmund, the older brother, will be like his father. Concern yourself with his judgment,” she said when she was sure her voice was steady. There, that was better. Easier to talk about these mundane plans, soothing even. “To play friend to Roger Mortimer is wise as well, but by law it is Edmund who holds your son. Roger has nearly as much power as Edmund, and from rumor he will soon be equal in wealth too. Is certain he will be given a piece of Wales to call his own. But it is too much to hope the brothers will be rivals. They have too often acted as one in common interest.”

  “You say I am to play friend to the Mortimers? While they falsely hold my son?” It was gratifying to see that Manton did not seem offended by the suggestion, merely skeptical.

  “At least you must not play at being their enemy, which is what they will expect from you. You have sought my experience of dealing with Marcher lords and what I know is that without fail, they hold tight what power they have and seek to increase their lands at every opportunity. Where opportunity does not exist, they create it. This is even more true of a Mortimer, by far.”

  The weariness had crept into her again. Endless hours spent in consideration of how best to kill Roger Mortimer only energized her, yet these few minutes of focusing on someone else’s problems exhausted her. It left her undisposed toward diplomacy, yet she must think of a kind way to tell Kit Manton that he was weak, that he must be like the dog who bares his belly to show submission. “You must discover why he thinks you are a threat to him, and then show him you are not. You must make him believe that you do not share these ambitions.”

  “That will be easy enough. I do not share them.” Kit eased back in his chair, his features relaxing. “I am not an ambitious man. I leave it to my son to strive for more one day, if he is so inclined.”

  “Nor will he be inclined, if he is anything like his namesake,” said Robert. Then he slanted a crooked smile in her direction, a careless little thing. It caused warmth to bloom in a region of her heart.

  She found herself on her feet, the sound of her chair scraping against the floor filling the room. Both men looked at her with slightly widened eyes, as startled as she was by her sudden move.

  “I would rest before the evening meal.”

  They both hastened to rise even as she made her way to the door. Manton opened the door for her and made a brief bow, thanking her for her counsel. She looked at his gleaming gold hair flop over his forehead as he straightened, and watched as he pushed it away in what was surely a habitual gesture. She decided that she liked him. In the usual way, a man like him – easygoing, no great ambitions, artless in every way – would only rouse her contempt. But the world looked very different to her of late, as did the men who moved in it. If more were like Kit Manton, perhaps she would have been quite different, too.

  “I will speak to Isabella Mortimer. She holds Edmund’s trust. We can hope that she will give some indication of why they contrive to hold your son, but she is no fool,” Eluned cautioned. “And she is a Mortimer through and through.”

  Kit smiled at her. “If I could choose any wit to match against hers, lady, I would choose yours.”

  She could think of no reply to this, so she merely nodded in what she hoped was a graceful acknowledgement. As she left, she caught sight of Robert choosing a round of wastel bread. He picked one that was stuffed with apple, as she had known he would, and he tore it in half and in half again. What useless bits of knowledge her famed wit held onto.

  They sat together at the high board in this little manor house a half-day’s ride from the place where Edward held court. They were joined by other highborn guests, as was usual, but there were few in this place. She watched as Robert laughed with Kit Manton until that man said he would find the scribe and send a letter to hi
s wife before they reached court. Now the guests next to her spoke to one another, leaving Robert and her alone in an expectant silence. He drank, and she watched his throat move as he swallowed, and was made dizzy with a lust that was no longer only a memory, no longer theoretical.

  She had miscalculated, or had failed to calculate at all, the effect he would have on her.

  How careless she had been, to think that she was past the age for such feelings. In all the memories she had forced herself to stare in the eye, she had somehow forgotten the physical reality of him. He was only an inch taller than she was and did not tower over her as her husband had done. Though he had thickened with muscle, his youthful litheness was not entirely lost. The result was a presence that was not intimidating or dominating in the least, but still imbued with a very comfortable masculinity. It infiltrated her senses until she could taste him on the air she breathed.

  She did not know where he slept at night, but it was not at her side. The young girl in their party with the copper curls and inviting smile often drew his eye, but if he bedded her he was uncommonly discreet about it. Eluned looked now for the girl among the diners and found her in a cluster of other maids, her bright laughter at a finely calibrated volume designed to draw male attention without grating on the ear. The girl was clearly vexed at Robert’s failure to look in her direction and surreptitiously shifted her glance to Eluned, who was poised to meet it.

  It was an unexpected pleasure to watch the flush on the girl’s face grow deeper until it was almost purple. It was exceptionally unbecoming, Eluned thought, clashing as it did with her red hair. The poor thing looked mottled and mortified. Ah, youth.

  Robert’s inquiring voice interrupted her thoughts. “It is more than a decade, is it not, that you ruled Ruardean in your late husband’s absence?”

  “Fourteen years.” Her breath quickened uncontrollably, though she told herself it was witless to grow nervous because he spoke to her. It was only that he had not spoken to her alone like this since their wedding night. She was unused to it, to him.