But for Mortimer, our Prince would yet live, she wrote. I vow on my life I will not let him be rewarded with half of Wales. She had spent days choosing the words. They must implicate her without being an outright declaration of guilt. They must put others beyond reach of suspicion. My son is loyal as a hound to Edward, she was careful to include. My husband even more so.
Joan entered in the hour before the evening meal, as she always did, to ask if Eluned would eat in the hall or remain in her rooms.
“In the hall, I think, but I will not stay long. I grow weary of these courtiers.” She paused in her writing to look up at Joan. “You will be married to Sir Heward when you are returned to Ruardean in the spring. I have spoken of it to my son and, do your parents give their consent, there is naught to prevent it.”
Joan blushed and smiled. “My father has raised no objection, my lady.”
Good. That was one more thing done. “Let us hope he likes the marriage contract equally well. I have looked over it and think I could do no better for my own daughter.”
She waved off Joan’s thanks and reached for the ivory box that she had set on the table. It was a pretty thing, one of her few possessions that came from a mother she had barely known. Inside was a lock of her mother’s hair and a little blue flower, pressed and dried, and other small keepsakes that meant nothing to anyone but Eluned. Yet anyone near her for all her life knew that she always kept it close, and it was always locked. She took the key to it, opened it and dropped the letter inside, glad to note that Joan’s eyes followed her actions.
“After the Epiphany, there will be many who will leave court. I would send word to my brother’s son who is at Holywell, if you find a party who will journey that way. But I would not have it known commonly.”
“I will be discreet, lady.”
“It is no secret, I only want no tiresome questions. On the king’s mercy my nephew is allowed to live with the brothers there, and he is stripped of all title and lands. But he is my brother’s son and my family, for all that he fought Edward’s rule, and I have been remiss not to send news to him.” She locked the ivory box and made a show of putting the key, on its long string, around her neck and tucked away beneath her gown. “My lord husband returns from the hunt tomorrow. See that his bed linen is fresh ere he lays in it.”
After that, there was little to do but sup in the hall, where speculation ran high as to how many wolves had been killed. Eluned found herself speculating more about the snow that had begun to fall. It seemed light enough, but came in hard, mean little flakes that rode on bitterly cold winds. She would trade the cutting wind for more snow, if she could. There were many in Wales now who had been displaced by the fighting, and without good shelter the wind was cruel.
She returned to her room early, telling Joan she wished to be left alone. She had pulled the bundle of herbs from her trunk and was just finishing their preparation when Nan arrived.
“Take this,” she said, holding the envelope out to the girl. “I have mixed it with spices so that you may easily put it in his wine without suspicion. A fat pinch of this and he will want sleep far more than he will want you.”
“There is much here,” observed the girl. “You said…I thought I was to give it to him once, and then find you.”
“Aye, but you will find me only on the Epiphany, or after. There will be four nights until then, and he may reach for you each one of those nights. What else but this can be your defense against him?”
“Haps he will choose a willing woman instead.”
“Nan,” she said kindly. “If you thought he might, you would not be here.”
Still, the girl plainly had misgivings. Eluned had said only that she would help her to escape his advances if Nan would drug Mortimer and then help Eluned to slip into his room unseen. Probably she worried over what Eluned might do with him while he lay senseless, but Eluned had no intention of telling her.
“Here,” she said, putting the bottle of mead and some coins into Nan’s hand. At the hesitation on the girl’s face, Eluned took one of the rings from her own hand and gave it to her too. Clearly this generosity roused her suspicions, though, and Eluned watched the big blue eyes look back and forth between the coins and the pouch of herbs. Smart girl. Cynical girl. Had she ever been an innocent?
“It is not poison,” Eluned said. When Nan did not seem reassured, Eluned took the herbs from her, cast a healthy pinch of them into her own wine, and gave the cup a brief swirl. “There, I will do well to sleep soundly tonight.”
She drank it down and watched the girl’s expression lighten.
“No sooner than the Epiphany,” Nan said with a firm nod. “I will watch him drink it, and find you in the chapel.”
“And after,” said Eluned, and paused. “If ever you are questioned about it afterwards?”
“I will tell no one, I swear it.”
Eluned looked at her. She was a determined little thing, and it was not hard to imagine her refusing to speak. “You will, if they would hurt you. Promise me that. I will not have you on my conscience. Lie at first, however you will, but give the truth if you are threatened. Remember that. The truth is more apt to be believed when it is hidden behind a lie.”
Then, whether Nan gave her name or suspicion fell on her for other reasons, they would take Eluned. They would question her ladies, search and find the letter, and all blame would be hers alone. She could only pray she had thought of everything.
The girl ran a finger over the tiny chips of sapphire embedded in the silver ring Eluned have given her, and looked at her with hundred questions in her eyes. She asked none. Smart girl. When she nodded, Eluned yawned and said, “You see, already I want nothing more than my bed. Go now.”
Eluned slept, and woke, and watched from afar the next day as the hunting party returned. She spent the following days avoiding Robert, treating him with a mutual cold courtesy whenever they must speak or be near one another. It was easier now that he did not try to reach her. There were no charming smiles, no sidelong glances, no warmth directed at her at all. At night, they slept apart as they had before, with no comment. He moved past her in their rooms like she was not there, and she did the same.
Sometimes during the night, she would hear his breathing in the next room and feel the threat of tears rising up. Not sadness, but the terrible panicked sobs that threatened to take her. Then she would retreat to the chapel, lamp in hand, and stare hard at the statue of the Madonna until it was under control. It made her laugh a little, knowing that the trick to keeping her head was not to think too much.
On the night of the Epiphany feast she watched Mortimer in the hall, growing steadily more inebriated, reaching ever more determinedly for Nan as she filled his cup. Finally, just as the revelers had reached new heights of merriment, he caught her around the hips. He carried her and her jug of wine out of the hall, laughing. Eluned excused herself from the boisterous hall, pleading a headache, and waited in the empty chapel. Nan came to her within the hour, a quick wave from the door of the chapel.
Eluned followed her at a little distance, down the corridor and up a short stair. Nan gestured at the door left slightly ajar, saying, “He is there, in the chair by the fire, almost asleep when I left him.”
“You are well?” Eluned asked in a whisper. “Did he harm you?”
Nan shook her head, but Eluned saw the start of a very large bruise on her wrist. She fought the urge to embrace the girl, and instead dismissed her quickly. “Back to the hall and serve until the celebrations are ended,” she instructed Nan.
Then she was alone, staring at the door. She reached beneath her cloak and pulled out Madog’s dagger, running her thumb across the crude etching in the otherwise plain square pommel. It was meant to be an eagle, but she only knew that because she had watched him as he had practiced drawing it with a stick in the dirt, trying to perfect it before scratching it into the handle. He must have been about twelve years old. He had been so proud of it.
She looked
at the dagger a long time. In her other hand she held the small phial of nightshade. Now that she had come to the moment, she thought it might be poison instead of the blade. But when she set eyes on him, she would know which to use. She put the dagger in her right hand and held it behind her back, in case his eyes were still open when she entered. There was a draft of cold air that flowed from behind a loosely hung tapestry next to her. There must be a window there, behind it. She could hear Robert’s voice asking, do you still look into the sky?
It was still possible to walk away. The stair was behind her, the door before her, the dagger resting lightly in her palm. But when she imagined walking away, leaving the universe undisturbed, everything in her rebelled. She could only see the bruise that even now spread on Nan’s thin arm. She could only remember the laughter on Madog’s lips as he died, and she knew she could not bear to be in a world where Roger Mortimer lived and laughed and prospered. The memory of Llewellyn’s head swaying above London sent a spike of purest hatred through her heart, shot down her arm to tighten her fingers around the weapon as she stepped forward.
With her arm outstretched to push open the door, she felt a sudden grip on her wrist behind her, one strong hand wrenching the weapon away easily, another coming over her mouth. Her heart hammered. He was tall, looming over her as he dragged her back from the door, down the stair. She had only just gathered her wits enough to draw breath and begin to struggle when he set her down, put her back to the wall, and reached above her to pull a torch from its bracket. He looked down at the dagger and raised his brows in recognition of it before turning his gaze to her.
She did not even try to hide her shock as she looked back at her daughter’s husband, Ranulf of Morency.
Chapter 10
The Unseen
Robert had the strong suspicion he was the only entirely sober guest in the hall. Even Edward seemed more jovial than could reasonably be expected of a king. It was loud and crowded, and Robert wanted more than anything to be out of it. But he had seen his wife leave – he was still incapable of ignoring her comings and goings – and planned to wait long enough that he would not interrupt her as she dressed for bed. He did not think he could stand that paralyzing awkwardness atop their frozen courtesy.
“Come, have more.” Simon was trying, with limited success, to fill Robert’s cup with more of the punch. It splashed to the floor, narrowly missing their feet, but finally enough made it into the cup that Simon grinned in triumph. “To your good health, brother. To your fortune here in England.”
They had already toasted both of these things, and many others, several times. But Simon was celebrating more than the Epiphany. Edward had given the command for the royal ordinance to be drawn up, outlining the new Marcher lordships, and the de Lascaux name would be on it. When it was done and the king set his seal to it, the new order of Wales would be law.
“It’s your doing as much as my own,” he assured Simon. “And it will be your son’s fortune one day.”
If Robert were in a better humor, Simon’s expression would have made him laugh. He watched his brother choke on his drink in surprised dismay. When he’d finished spluttering he gripped Robert’s shoulder and looked with a determined steadiness into his face, eyebrows drawn low.
“You don’t mean to go back to France.”
“How much have you drunk? I have no mind to return to France.” He watched relief, almost comical in its intensity, wash over Simon’s face. Becoming better acquainted with his brother was, Robert thought, one of the few pleasurable surprises he’d had at Edward’s court. “I meant only that it will be your son’s because I am unlikely to have a son myself.”
Simon gave an audible sigh of satisfaction and sat back, his grip on Robert’s shoulder relaxing. He reached for his wine again, but Robert pulled it away. It was amusing to see his careful and proper brother in his cups, but he didn’t like the thought of Simon getting sick all over his warmest cloak.
“Do you mean she’s barren?”
The question startled him, not least because there was such genuine concern in Simon’s voice. Robert could think of no answer that did not announce his intention to avoid sleeping with his wife, an intimate detail that was more than he cared to share with his brother. If Kit were still here, though, he might speak of it. He could say to his friend that the thought of going to her out of duty, forcing himself to do the act as she lay cold and stiff and indifferent – he could tell his friend how it sickened him even to think it. And if she was not cold, if she melted beneath his hands and kissed him with a greedy passion – if she did that again and then turned cold again, it would be even worse.
Even to Kit, he did not know if he could explain why and how it would be so much worse. If he could stop loving her to desperation, it would be easy enough. Maybe one day he would stop. But no. Kit had said she would always have his heart, and it was true. Robert was too old now, to learn another way to be. He should have tried, somewhere along the way, to love someone else.
And now Simon was looking at him expectantly, wondering if she was barren.
“Nay, I have no reason to think it,” he said, hoping to move Simon off the topic. “She is not a girl, though, and neither am I young enough that we can expect to be so blessed. Your oldest is how old?”
“Ten, this past summer.”
“Send him to us for squire, then. Unless you have other plans for him? He’s of an age with Robin, who will come to us and they can learn together.” He smiled at the thought, but Simon seemed confused.
“Robin?”
“Kit’s son. Christopher Manton, my friend,” he explained patiently. “His boy Robin is released from Mortimer’s custody and will be fostered with me.”
Simon began to look too flushed, and a little too careful not to look Robert in the eye. Robert wondered if he ever drank this much. It was possible he’d never had so much good news to celebrate. “Walk with me where the air is fresher, Simon,” he said, grateful at the chance to be out of the hall.
It was too cold to wander outside, so he steered Simon down the corridor that led to the rooms he shared with Eluned, where even now she had retreated to avoid him. The color in his brother’s face was dying down until he paused, leaned against the wall, and startled to see a couple hiding behind the tapestry. Robert laughed to see the red come into Simon’s cheeks again as he muttered an apology and fairly ran away. They walked farther down, Robert laughing all the while. It really was too bad he had spent years away from Simon. He was proving to be a diverting companion, as was any brother who was easy to tease. The sounds of the hall began to fade as they walked on, until they were nearly to the queen’s small chapel.
Simon frowned in the direction of the isolated little chapel. “We’re likely to disturb some other young lovers, if we wander in there.”
“Aye, is the place I would choose for it, were I young and daring again.” Except that when he was young and daring, he had chosen the chapel only as the place where she would leave the sign to meet him somewhere more remote, more safe. “Down these stairs instead, then. Tell me, will you stay here with Edward’s court even now the prize of my lordship is won?”
Simon shrugged, his steps slowing to an easy, lazy pace. “Haps there are more prizes to be gained, do I stay near and listen well. But I will ask our father what he would have me do.”
“The French estate,” said Robert. He had been thinking of it for days. “I have left it in capable hands, but if you have no plans for your second son I would see him as seneschal there. If he has the wits, it is important work.”
“He has such wit that we have thought to give him to the Church.”
“It is yours to say which will suit him best. But if you will ask what would please me well, it would be to have you learn the place and the people, the business of the vineyards, so that you may to teach it to your son. It has grown in wealth and consequence, and if I am to be a Marcher lord here then I fear I will neglect–”
“You want me t
o administer the French estate?” Poor Simon looked as though he were somewhere between dazed and determined, trying to force his unwilling mind to make sense of the conversation.
“For a time, yes. Only if you wish to. And only if you will learn to hold your wine with more grace,” Robert answered with a broad smile. “There will be much more of it in France.”
Simon had stopped walking and was looking at him in surprise. He shook his head as if to clear it and leaned back against the wall.
“Father said… He worried you would go back there yourself, I think.”
Robert had spent the last week and more thinking of just that prospect. So difficult had it proved to imagine living with Eluned – this life where she ignored him and he pretended he did not notice her every breath – that he tried to think of how to compose a life without her at his side. They did not have to live together, and she was well practiced in ruling in an absent husband’s stead.
Though it was not like to please the king, Robert could return to France, go back to a place he understood better. It had not always been easy, but compared to this new life in England it was like a sunny dream. There were no dashed hopes there, no complex court politics, no need to establish himself as a new lord. In France there were days of routine work, improving on something he’d already built. There was laughter with old friends and watching little Robin grow into a man, the amusement of frustrating his father from afar and the distant, glowing memory of a woman he had once loved and lost.
He could go back to that comfortable kind of dream. There would be no bosom friend, because Kit would stay here – and no Robin to brighten his days, nor any unspoiled memory of Eluned to soften his most solitary moments. It would never be the same. But even so, it would be easier than the path here. Which was likely why his father had thought he would take it.
“Haps I should go back only to bedevil him.” He said it with a smile, but quickly perceived his brother saw nothing humorous in it. “Simon, be easy. I said it in jest.”
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