Fair, Bright, and Terrible

by Kingston, Elizabeth

  They took their leave amid smiles of satisfaction and reaffirmations of great esteem. A lady-in-waiting showed them to their rooms, which were so large and well-appointed that they were the greatest sign of royal favor yet. Eluned walked through the outer room to peer into the bedroom. In the main room, she looked at the small refreshment set out for them, asked him if he required aught else, and when he indicated that he did not, dismissed the servants.

  They were alone, or as alone as anyone could be at court. He watched her as she went slowly about the room, looking closely at the tapestries on the walls, a casual inspection to find any obvious spy-holes. He saw none, and did not think any would be discovered. This was not Windsor, and there was no need for trickery to learn secrets when there were so many servants and courtiers happy to listen and gossip.

  She touched the fur-lined blanket that had been placed on the long, cushioned seat beneath the window, and ran a finger across a velvet-covered pillow. “How highly Edward values you. I do not like to think what his wrath might have been, had his duchy been lost.”

  Robert shrugged. “Even were it not the last piece of his French inheritance, he would not be best pleased to lose it. Any man would be loath to lose the Aquitaine.”

  “Nor would his grandmother have been best pleased by it. Haps he fought so hard for fear the great Eleanor would chastise him from the grave.”

  He was sure she pictured it, the ghost of the famed Eleanor terrorizing the king. Her face was almost alive with it, amusement softening her eyes and satisfaction in the set of her mouth. These glimpses of her true feelings came when he least expected them. He knew that he was a fool to look for them, to wish for them. He was fool to think they were any kind of truth.

  “How much of it was real,” he asked, “and how much was put on for show?”

  She looked at him squarely, amusement gone from her eyes. She did not ask what he meant. “With this king, all is for show. But that does not mean it is not also real.”

  “You fear him?”

  “I should,” she said. “I am sure I should feel fear.” She sat under the curving casement. There was a little carved ivory box on the seat, which she smoothed over with one hand, like a talisman. “To go on my knees before him, to give him the book of King Arthur’s history… Know you that Arthur was a Welsh king?”

  “Aye,” he said. She had told him that, long ago.

  “Wales is Edward’s now. Everyone in it, and everything it will be.”

  She fell silent, looking at the box under her hand. For the first time, she looked almost old to him. The lines on her forehead were more pronounced, her eyes tired.

  “There is the piece of it which may be given to me,” he reminded her. “Though it seems you have little care whether it will be mine or no.”

  The pinch formed in her lips. “Wherefore did I abase myself before Edward if not to ensure that he does not withhold your prize because of me?”

  “I do not say you are against it. I say you have little care.” He waited, but she did not deny it. He wanted to go to her, tip her face up to his, and kiss the tightness out of her lips. But it would change nothing. She would only bear it, and he would only hate her for bearing it. “Why did you consent to marry me? I was fool enough to think it was for love, but you make it plain you have none. Nor do you share any of the ambitions of this alliance, or the fortune and power that it may bring. Verily, I have thought until my head aches and cannot guess the truth of it.”

  She hesitated before speaking, and he recognized the look on her that plainly said she could find no reason he should not know the truth. “My son wished it.” she said, and lifted a shoulder in a helpless little shrug. “I do not want to live closeted away in a nunnery, nor as a widow who must defend my land alone and be forever rejecting suitors who lust for my wealth. What else is left for a woman, but to marry?”

  “But why me?” he persisted. “You would have no lack of suitors, as you have said. Is it because my offer came first?”

  She shook her head faintly. “Because I knew you would not…” Her hand smoothed over the ivory box again, as though it held the words she wished to speak. “Because you would never be cruel, or dishonor me. I knew you were good.”

  She made him think of it, of what her life with Walter might have been. He had known she did not love her husband, that she was unhappy, but he had never heard – from her or from rumor – that Walter of Ruardean was anything worse than overly zealous. Pious to the point of madness, but not a monster. Yet she would let kindness and honor be her chief concern when choosing a new husband. What woman held such things in high regard, unless her last husband had none of it?

  “You think I will give you no reason to spit on my bones.”

  She let out a little sound, the ghost of laughter. “Aye, I think that.” She looked full at him. “Nor did Walter give me good reason for that profanity. Was only my foul temper. In faith, I have thought me many times that he deserved a more pious and obedient wife.”

  He looked her over, this seemingly demure and dutiful woman, and felt a keen stab of resentment for the way she had stamped out all signs of the girl he had cherished. She wanted him for his lack of cruelty, and not because she had missed him for eighteen long years. How improbable it was that such a careful lady had once been his most passionate lover. He allowed himself to remember her younger, impudent tongue and how it had used to glide over his cock while her husband was away at war.

  Thinking of that was a mistake. Now the image was with him, and instead of making it easier to hate the woman before him, it set his blood on fire. She would never be that way again. He knew it. He had only to look at her in all her disinterested detachment, to know she was absolutely and irrevocably changed.

  “I do not want piety from you,” he said, and all the things he did want from her flashed through his mind.

  She could not have guessed his thoughts, or else there would not be that little relief that crossed her features.

  “I am full glad to hear it.” She smoothed her hands over her skirt and rose with a polite smile and an air of decision. “I would sup here and not in the hall tonight. The morning is soon enough to face the curiosity of the full court. Will my lord join me?”

  He was caught between laughing and recoiling at the image of sitting through a meal alone with her, the hours of stilted conversation. “Nay,” he shook his head. “I go to find Kit, and see if he has discovered when Mortimer arrives.”

  “Soon,” she said. “Isabella is expected tomorrow, and Roger Mortimer but two days behind her.”

  He did not ask her how she knew, but wondered at the awkwardness that seemed to creep over her after she had spoken. When she said no more he turned to the door to leave her.

  “Robert.”

  The urgency in it caught his attention nearly as much as the fact that she had spoken his name. He turned back to her, breath held in anticipation of what she might say. Her back was stiff, her face expressionless.

  “I do not ask where you have passed your nights, and gladly will I continue in my ignorance. But now we are here, it is better that the king and his court think you are not displeased to keep company with your wife.” She looked toward the bedroom, and then to the wide seat beneath the window that might easily serve as a bed. “I do not say that you must constrain your conduct in any other ways. It wants only a little pretense, to avoid unseemly gossip.”

  He wanted to laugh with her about it. He wanted to say that they had vast experience of this pretense, but in reverse – months spent pretending not to share a bed, pretending they did not want each other. But he stood in the silence and ignored that irony, because she said she would gladly continue in ignorance. The permission she granted him was as plain as the limitations on it. It was another kind of irony entirely that he could not help but observe aloud.

  “The first time in eighteen years my name is on your lips,” he said, “and it is to tell me you will not constrain my conduct.”

  She
flushed, and he did not know if it was embarrassment or anger that caused it.

  “I have no doubt there are beds more inviting than mine where you will prefer to lay your head. But it is only in mine that you may find a lordship.”

  “Then to be sure, my lady,” he said with his cockiest smile and a slight bow as he gestured to himself, “you will find this lordship there tonight.”

  He turned away and left with haste, trying to ignore the way she jutted her chin out, the momentary blaze of spirit that might only be his imagination.

  “I think your brother is closer to Burnell than you thought him,” murmured Kit from behind his cup. He nodded toward the front of the hall, where Simon sat with a clutch of Edward’s advisors. “See how they speak in each other’s ears while their eyes never cease looking over the crowd. Like a pair of gossiping grandmothers.”

  It was true. For once there was no derision in Robert when faced with the sight of Simon diligently seeking to curry favor. Instead he felt something like admiration.

  “How much does he hate me, I wonder?” Kit looked at him as though surprised by the question. Robert shrugged. “Think but a moment on it. I went to Kenilworth in defiance of our father and the crown, then to France where I refused to wed or do anything that it did not please me to do. Simon is the good son who has done everything our father wanted of him and more. But I will be rewarded, not he – though it is he who works tirelessly at gaining this fortune.”

  Kit looked at Simon, assessing him from their position at the far end of the hall, and scoffed. “Do you say he gains nothing from all this?”

  Robert smiled. “Haps he has lived these many years in hope of my death, and has so accustomed himself to disappointment that he is happy to call Burnell’s whispers his reward.”

  They were leaning against a wall in a quiet corner, where they had some hope of privacy as long as they kept their voices low. Kit turned to him now, resting his shoulder on the thick tapestry that hung behind them. He was suddenly serious.

  “Do not say it even in jest, Robin.”

  “Jest? Nay, is no jest that he loves the position he has gained here.”

  “Do not say he has wished for your death. If he has lived in hope of anything, I think it has been your approval.” When Robert snorted at this, Kit shrugged. “He looks at you as a hound does, waiting for some sign of favor.”

  “Simon barely knows me well enough to call me brother. Is our father he means to please.”

  “You do not see it.”

  There was a sigh in Kit’s voice, as though he knew his words would be disregarded. It was unusual for his friend to disagree with him when assessing someone’s character, and Robert valued his opinion especially when it came to his family.

  “What do I not see? Tell me.”

  “Think you that your father has ever let Simon feel as worthy as you? But if there were envy in your brother, he would have not have wanted you in England. See how fully he is embraced by Edward’s favorite advisor.” He nodded to where Simon leaned in to listen to Burnell. “He could urge the king to keep you in France forever, and ask to be given greater holdings of his own here. Instead he uses his influence to give you power and contents himself with whatever he might gain from your advancement.”

  Even as Robert considered this, his brother’s eyes found him. In them, he saw the eagerness, the hope that Kit spoke of. How had he not seen it before? Robert had felt their father’s disappointment so persistently that he had given little consideration at all for what his father might feel toward Simon. But it was likely that he was not the only one to be compared to a brother, and found wanting.

  He let out a short, rueful laugh. “I am glad to have a friend so shrewd. You save me from my own blindness.”

  “Not blind,” countered Kit, turning to face forward again. “Though you would have it otherwise, you care for them both. Your judgment is overcome by your heart.”

  His friend was looking over the crowd now, probably searching for that red-headed flirt. But they had known each other so long that Robert was very aware that Kit was refraining from voicing certain thoughts. He knew as well that they were not thoughts about Robert’s family or fortunes. He took a fresh swallow of ale before asking.

  “And what of my judgment as concerns my wife?”

  Kit was shaking his head almost before Robert had finished speaking. “There lies a trap I am not eager to step into. Let us speak of anything else.”

  “A trap! You can only call it that because you would speak ill of her, or of me.” Robert smiled in disbelief, more amused than annoyed.

  “Nay, I call it that because I have me a wife. Do you give me your opinion of her, or of my marriage, in all the time you have known me?”

  “I have not, but I will give it now in exchange for yours.”

  Kit narrowed his eyes at him, considering. They were both half-smiling and serious at the same time, as was the usual way when one of them issued a dare. Finally, Kit raised his brows, let his grin widen, and said, “Very well. I will not let you forget it was your idea. Let us move closer to the door so the cold will keep others away, and I would have our cups filled.”

  They moved to do it, and when they had drink enough and were sufficiently isolated from the courtiers and servants, Kit pulled his cloak tight against the draft and raised his cup as a gesture that Robert could begin.

  “Your wife is a fine woman,” he started. Kit looked at him in patient expectation until Robert continued, “But she acts so like a mother toward you that I wonder you can lie with her.”

  Kit tipped his head, conceding the point. “Is rare enough I have done so.”

  “Rare? Enough to sire seven children.”

  “Ah but how many have I sired on women more welcoming?” Kit’s broad smile faded as he looked into his cup. There was little accounting for his serious turn, except that he had likely sensed some of Robert’s disapproval. “Now you must give an honest opinion, as you want one in turn. Tell me what you think of my wife’s husband, that you have not said before now.”

  “I think,” said Robert carefully, “that she is merry and full of kindness. And I think her husband is too glad that her wits are not sharp and her heart inclined to trust. I think she depends on her husband to act with discretion, and would only suffer if her husband made her seem a fool.”

  “If her husband fucks his way through England, you mean.”

  “Aye, that is my meaning.”

  They drank a moment in silence while Robert tried to gauge how his words had been received. All he could see was that Kit was preparing to offer his own insights. Robert was beginning to regret entering this conversation. But then at least half of the time they dared each other, one of them regretted accepting the challenge.

  “Your wife,” said Kit finally, “is more comely than you deserve, more clever than either of us can guess at, and as cold as the frozen sea.”

  Some jongleurs were drawing the attention of everyone else in the hall, beating a drum and singing a song about some battle or another. Robert looked toward them, and tried to imagine Eluned laughing, or dancing, or reaching for him – for anything – with hunger. All he could see was her on her knees before the king.

  “She used to be filled with fire.”

  “And I used to have more hair on my head,” said Kit, and there was impatience in his tone. “You are both far from your youth. You have married a woman, not a memory.”

  “I never dreamed the woman could be so far from the memory,” he confessed. He had not told Kit what she had said on their wedding night. In his mortification, he could not describe any of it to his friend. He had only been glad to have someone to pass the nights with, talking of nothing important while Eluned slept alone.

  “Eighteen years is a long time,” said Kit. It was hard to know why he was so thoughtful, as they had both expressed this sentiment a hundred times in the last month. “Her brother died, you said, and her uncle.”

  Robert nodded. “Both dea
d this year, when Edward took Wales.”

  “You have said she had more pride for being Welsh-born than ever she had for her Norman marriage. Now she has lost her Welsh family, the Welsh home where she was born, the Welsh prince Llewellyn.”

  “She was there to see the judgment and punishment of the last Welsh rebel, Dafydd,” Robert added.

  Kit’s eyes widened a little at that. “And she is freshly widowed and freshly married. All this in the last twelvemonth.”

  All this was true, and Robert had thought it many times since his wedding night. There was reason for her to be so changed. The jongleurs struck up a new melody, a gay and carefree air that could not have been a starker contrast to their conversation. He waited for Kit to say more, but his friend stayed stubbornly silent. Finally Robert braced himself with a deep breath and spoke.

  “Now you have said what you think of my wife, tell me what think you of her husband.”

  “I think he loves her.” Kit turned his head and looked him in the eye. “I think he is better than a brother to me, but he is a fool who has lived these eighteen years as slave to a memory.”

  Robert looked away from this accusation. Kit had likely seen this in him for all the years of their friendship. But Robert himself had not seen it until she sat before him and declared that she did not hold those days as a treasure. Cards on a table, she had said, as though it were an afternoon’s amusement for a bored lady. He saw her cold white fingers idly shuffling through the only hours he had felt fully alive, his deepest desires laid out before her in little painted squares.

  “Take heart,” Kit was saying. “In time her sorrow will pass and she will return to herself.”

  “What if she does not?” asked Robert. “What if I tell you that I have misremembered her, that I was wrong about everything?”

  To say it aloud made it real. It gave a name to the formless fear that had been born when he glimpsed her bare neck in the firelight. From the smallest, most beloved detail to the most defining feature of her character, he had been wrong about her. It felt like catastrophe, yet he had said it so coolly that Kit only shrugged.