Fair, Bright, and Terrible

by Kingston, Elizabeth

  If she did not need to dress, she would have delayed returning to their rooms. But she was too acutely aware of her nakedness beneath the robe, the unrelenting chill in the air, and the sounds of the household waking. She was relieved, upon entering, to see that the servants were already stoking the fire and setting out food and drink. She was not ready to face him alone.

  Robert stood at the window, holding open the tapestry to look outside and letting in a flow of frigid air. He did not turn, even when he heard the servants greet her.

  “Nay, leave the water on the fire,” Eluned said to the girl who had hurried to pour it out for her. It was her habit to wash in the morning, and she felt the need of it more acutely than ever. Under the robe, she smelled of him. Of them together. But she would wait until she might do it discreetly. “I will wear the velvet gown, the yellow.”

  The girl went to the inner bedroom to fetch the clothes. Eluned reached for the linen square near the basin, dipped the edge of it into the water over the fire, and wiped her face free of tear stains while his back was still turned. Then she took up the cup and drank honeyed water down in gulps, easing the burning dryness in her throat. She gripped the goblet and stared at the fire.

  “My lady.” The servant emerged from the bedroom, holding the yellow gown. She wore a troubled look. “I do not find your shift.”

  The heat had only begun to creep up her neck when Robert turned. His look pinned her, forbidding her to move as he came to stand before her. It was a more commanding look than she had ever seen from him, and it sent an incongruent surge of strongest lust through her belly. She turned her eyes down to hide it from him, and saw that he held something out to her. It was only a ball of fabric clutched in his fist, but she knew it was her shift by the button he held between his thumb and forefinger. The griffin etched into its surface seemed to mock her.

  “Leave us.” The girls seemed to hesitate at his command, looking to Eluned for confirmation. She opened her mouth, but he spoke before she could, loud and firm. “Go. Now.”

  The girls hurried out and left them alone, but she did not raise her eyes to his. She could not look away from her shift in his hand. She waited for him to say whatever he would say, fearing her mind was not quick enough to answer him well. But he said nothing, and the silence spun out between them. When she could no longer bear it, she took a deep and bracing breath and spoke.

  “You were looking to the sky.” She gestured faintly toward the window where he had stood, where last night he had kissed her. “Do you ponder some great question?”

  “I was watching Kit depart. He journeys to his home today.”

  “Oh,” was her witless reply.

  She had meant to be distant and cool, but he was in command of the moment. She looked at his fingers gripping the linen, curled and motionless, and tried not to think of how different her body must have felt to him. Soft with age, a sagging imitation of the body he would have remembered. His was more solid, harder with muscle, and she should not be thinking of it. His friend – they were speaking of his friend, who went to retrieve his son.

  “Fortune is with him,” she said, “that the snows have been so light. But it will be a bitter cold journey.” Robert stayed silent. She swallowed. “You did not go into the yard to bid him farewell.”

  “I waited here. For you.”

  She heard accusation beneath the words, and knew she should choose her response carefully. There were ways to manage men, to placate and cajole and distract – yet she had no wish to manage him. She could not bring herself to maneuver and gently deceive, not with him. Shrewd thinking was well out of her reach in any case, so she could only speak plainly.

  “And here I am.” She summoned her courage and met his eyes. There were shadows beneath them. “What would you have me say?”

  There was a long moment in which he looked at her, considering. She felt a stab of apprehension about what he might see in her, and stiffened her spine, gripped her hands together.

  “Why did you end what was between us, those many years ago?”

  She blinked. “Why…why I ended it?”

  “Why that moment, what prompted it?”

  Caught off guard, she only stared at him. It confounded her, that he would demand an explanation of her actions eighteen years ago and not for last night. But she could see he was in earnest, impatient for an answer.

  “I told you then, why we–”

  “You said only that it was impossible.”

  “It could not last, we both knew–”

  “Damn you, forget what we knew.” His hands were on her shoulders now, his breath hot on her face. “Tell me what happened that I must swear never to come near you again, that you would not come away with me, tell me why.”

  There was pain in her shoulders from his hard grip, and tension in her neck from straining away from his vehemence. Everything in her had gone still in reaction to it, even her breath. It woke her from her bewilderment, made it easier to issue a freezing command. “Release me,” she said through clenched teeth, “and I will tell you.”

  He eased away from her. One step back and his hands fell in fists to his sides as he waited for her to answer him. She clung to the little anger that had granted her the icy calm, but it was already slipping away. She had too near an understanding of madness to think him beyond his senses, and too clear a view of his nature to believe he would want to frighten her, or hurt her.

  “Walter suspected me,” she said shortly. “A servant spoke careless words. He never knew your name, nor did I wish him to learn it and so I knew it must end between us.”

  His thumb passed over the button – the ugly, lumpy, long-forgotten button from a shoe she had never worn again – and she knew from the way he traced the edge of it with his nail that he had done so over the years a thousand times, a hundred thousand, a million. She turned her face away and looked instead at the gown that the girl had set on a chair. The golden velvet seemed to catch all the morning light. Her eyes ached with the glow of it.

  “Did he hurt you, Eluned?”

  She did not know how to answer the gentle question, but found she had begun to shake her head in denial nonetheless. She stopped, and frowned. “No. Yes. I…you have heard he was mad?”

  “I heard the rumors later.”

  “That was the beginning of it. The Church did not name him holy, nor did they wish to name him heretic. He did not preach nor seek followers, so they took pity on him.” She smiled a little wryly, remembering Brother Dominic’s letters. “Aloud, they called it fervent belief, and in whispers they said it was a kind of madness.”

  She heard Robert draw a breath, and knew what he would ask. She raised a hand to forestall it. “He believed my soul in great danger, and he must watch over me every instant. I knew it must end between us, that it should never have begun. So I banished you from my life.” She stroked a finger across the velvet, against the nap, then again to smooth it over. “I tell you, it was not lightly done.”

  He came toward her, a hesitant step that brought him near enough for her to hear the soft sigh he gave.

  “You made the choice for both of us, then,” he said with a disapproval she could not miss, “to protect me from him.”

  She swung around so swiftly that she nearly collided with him. She stepped back a pace to accommodate her outthrust chin. “Gwenllian,” she said too loudly. “My daughter, to protect her. Aye, and you – and me, and all my family. Think you that it could have been any different if you had known?”

  He looked at her, his dark gaze passing over her face. “Nay. Even had I known, you would have decided it the same. And I would have been even more lovesick and full of vain hope for all these years.” He dropped the shift finally, and it came to rest atop the golden gown. He looked at it now, and she could not read his expression. “Yet you might have come away with me, if you did not love your place here so well.”

  This was too much. “My place here? At Walter’s side?” She did not hide her scorn. �
�You forget I risked it every moment I was with you.”

  “And you forget that I know you, Eluned. Even then, you wielded what power your marriage gave you with relish. You were born to it. You had great dreams, and no small ambitions.” He gave a rueful smile. “I have only ever wanted you, but you wanted all the world.”

  For a wild moment she looked about for something to smash, so forceful was the anger that swept over her. But it dissolved when she saw in his face that this was not accusation at all. It was only the story he had told himself for so long. It was what he believed of her nature, and his own. She swallowed, grasping at calm reason amidst her indignation.

  “Do you say you have only ever wanted me?” she challenged. “Oh, verily. That is why you bought the lands from Aaron and improved them, and why you stayed to the bitter end at Kenilworth. That is why you have toiled for years to increase the value of your French estate, to build your wealth through the vineyards. That is how you preserved the Aquitaine from Spaniards, how you have made yourself a favorite of the king and even now will gain a Marcher lordship. Through your lack of ambition.”

  After a moment his mouth quirked in a familiar half-smile, the one designed to deflect suspicion that he cared for anything at all. “Most of it was done in defiance of my father.”

  “Then call it your greatest ambition, to displease your father by making a great man of yourself. Only do not say that I am the only one with ambitions that kept us apart.”

  She turned away, regretting that she had said those last words. It did not matter now, her own vain hopes so long ago. It did not matter that she had grown sick as she waited for him when Walter went off on Crusade. She had indulged foolish dreams for months, knowing he would hear of it – and then more months, sure he had heard of Walter’s madness – until she finally understood that Robert would not return to her. He had made a new life for himself, and she had forbidden him to come to her in any case.

  That was when she had truly put away the last of her love. She did not fault him for it, then or now. If there had been no kind of respectable life for her with him in France, there had been even less for him as her lover in England. But it had hurt, and she had felt like such a fool for expecting him to run to her side at the first opportunity, so many years later. She had almost forgotten that time, and would be happy never to think of it again. But by Mary, let him not pretend that he had done naught but sit in France pining for her.

  “No matter,” she said quickly. “It is past. It is all the past, and I will not relive it. Any of it. I will not.”

  Her eyes fell on the psalter, still resting on the seat beneath the window. In the silence she stared at it, and the light that sparked off the jeweled cover seemed to mock her. Even as she declared the past dead, she could hear her uncle telling her that the little ruby on it was plucked from the crown of the Queen of Heaven, and Brother Adda gently chiding him for teasing her.

  She put a hand to the bared stone wall between the tapestries to feel the steadying cold against her palm. This was not why she had come here, to lose herself in love, to resurrect all the old feelings and sort through them. She had one purpose only, one duty left to her. She must choose carefully what she dared to desire, and the desire for revenge on Mortimer was sharp, strong, uncomplicated. It did not cause her to weep the night through.

  Suddenly Robert’s step was behind her, quick and purposeful, and she turned to find he was headed to the door. He opened it, calling to one of his men, a member of his household guard.

  “Go you and find the hunting party that leaves this morning,” he instructed the man. “Tell them I will join them directly. Then let young Henry prepare my mount and weapons.” Robert turned back into the room and, without looking at her, walked into the bedroom.

  She watched him open a trunk, pull out a cloth bag, and begin to gather clothes into it. He did it all in silence but not in anger. He only looked weary. When he finished and swept his cloak across his shoulders, he paused at the threshold of the door to look back at her.

  “There are wolves near the village, and Edward would have them hunted.”

  She nodded and searched the silence for something to say. “God grant you will find them soon, in this cold.” He did not move, nor speak, and she could not help herself asking, “You will return this evening?”

  “I cannot say. It is not likely,” he said, and she bit her lips against protesting the danger of it.

  She should be relieved. In his absence, she could lay her plans and prepare. With luck he might even be gone until the Epiphany. Her tongue would not move to bid him farewell.

  “All night I have lain awake in an empty bed, with only this to dwell upon. Whatever your reasons in the past, I cannot escape the truth that if you wanted me now there is naught to stop you having me. Yet you shun me, and flee our bed, and stand there stiff in every limb. I will live no longer in hope and dread, Eluned.”

  She opened her mouth, but could say nothing. She could only hear his words echoing endlessly inside her head. Hope and dread. They were such living things. How long does love live on, she had wondered, if left unfed? Here was her answer.

  It was better this way. For him, for her. She was sure it must be better.

  “If I have made a great man of myself, it is because I knew you then.” His mouth tried to form that half-smile, but failed. He abandoned his well-worn irony and all his charm, and spoke so plainly that it caused a burning in her throat. “To love you was the making of me. But now it is only my undoing.”

  He left, and she stood there – stiff in every limb, just as he said – staring at the spot where he had been. She stayed there for so long that when Joan came to find her, the noon bells were tolling.

  It was easier, when he was gone. There was no distraction, and she could give herself entirely to her purpose. Aside from the first night of his absence, when she had made the mistake of trying to sleep in the bed she had shared with him, she felt only an increased detachment. When the hunting party had been out for five days, Isabella Mortimer came into the hall, brushing snow from her cloak and saying they had sent word of their success and would soon return.

  “I would guess from the messenger’s words that they could have had it done in three days,” mused Isabella as she warmed her hands by the fire. “But it is the season for diversions, and they would prolong their sport.”

  Roger Mortimer had joined the party, a fact that had threatened Eluned’s pleasant detachment when she learned of it. But she had wasted no time in taking advantage of his absence. Isabella spoke freely of his tendencies and habits, giving Eluned a fine idea of the best way to strike at him. She even thought his sister would not mourn him much, so plainly did his debauchery disgust her.

  She watched now as Isabella Mortimer’s eyes strayed discreetly to the musicians who played a sweet chanson. The handsome man whom Kit had named Robert de Hastang stood there looking toward them. Eluned was sure he had the musicians play the song only for Isabella, who had become much better at hiding her feelings over the last weeks. Indeed, had Eluned not seen her blush weeks ago, she would never guess that there was anything between these two.

  “The entire party will return tomorrow, then?” she asked Isabella, who nodded.

  That would leave four days and nights until the Epiphany. She wondered if Robert would return to their bed or stay away from their rooms altogether. Whatever he might choose, she would contrive to avoid him. The court gossips had little interest in their doings, she had found, being far more entertained by the many Twelvetide diversions. So long as she and Robert gave no other reason for tongues to wag, they need not share their nights together. He plainly wanted the distance between them now. Now and forever, she reminded herself.

  She steered the conversation with Isabella in such a way that she could confirm Kit Manton’s son was undoubtedly released and on course to be home within days. Then she excused herself to seek the serving girl at whom Roger Mortimer had leered for weeks. The girl had done her
best to stay in the kitchens, but ventured out more in these last few days because she knew he was gone on the hunt. Eluned had first approached her as she drew water from the well two days ago. The girl had nearly jumped out of her skin when Eluned had come near, only to relax in clear relief when she saw it was not Roger Mortimer sneaking up on her.

  Now Eluned found her in the buttery with a few other kitchen servants.

  “The men return from the hunt tomorrow and I will have them served a certain mead from my own stores, to congratulate their success,” she said with a calculated brusqueness. “I would put it direct into your hand so you may be sure to serve it. Do you understand, girl?”

  She was called Nan, and her large blue eyes turned up to look directly into Eluned’s for a single swift moment of understanding before she cast down her look and said, “Yes, lady. Will you bring the bottle here?”

  Eluned wondered what the young girl’s life must have been like already, to be so skilled in necessary deception. No one observing her would guess she had ever spoken to Eluned without fear, or that she had expected this request. Her timid deference made it easy for Eluned to play the great lady.

  To that end, she gave a little scoffing sound and smoothed the fur trim of her cuffs with an idle air. “You will come to my rooms after this evening’s meal. And if you leave the hour so late as to wake me, I will find another who will be happy to have the task.”

  Nan bobbed her head and was still murmuring her promise to be there when Eluned swept out and made her way to her rooms. Once there, she arranged the small table and chair near the fire to keep her fingers warm as she wrote. The letter was already half-written, but she had put aside the task until she could be sure Joan would see her at it. She wrote slowly, saying a silent word of thanks to her uncle for ensuring she had been taught to write as well as read. He was the one who had told her not to disdain the work, for if she learned it then she need not trust a scribe or cleric with her words.