by Nicole Locke
He was angry, but it wasn’t any anger she was familiar with. Not like Rudd, nor like Agnes. She wanted to hear more of his voice, more of his words. Her heart wouldn’t stay in her chest. ‘I thought it was for my cakes.’
‘Your cakes! I wasn’t there for something sweet, it was for you. I recognized your voice that night long before I saw the men and Rudd. How could I recognize your voice when I barely heard it before? Everything I’ve done since then was for you. So what do you do? Go to my enemy, come to some agreement that I still know nothing about and I don’t know why. You could have died!’
He moved restlessly around the room, his breath was abrupt from his speech, his eyes almost pleading.
‘I’ll tell you why,’ she said.
He’d come to Reynold’s to save her. Her love was rapidly blooming, like when she doused too much ale to flour. She felt as though she needed her hands on her chest to hold it in.
‘When you bake, sometimes you forget the cakes are in the oven. You get distracted by someone yelling for more ale, or you’re wanting to know what rosemary does to a biscuit, or some such emergency that keeps you away from what’s important.’
She hoped she was making sense. She’d run to Reynold, trying to save Rhain from his shadows. She knew why she loved him, but the only other thing she understood was baking.
‘When you do that,’ she said, ‘when you keep the cakes too long in the oven, they burn. If you’re quick, sometimes you can save them. But often you don’t have the time to find something to protect your hands. You just have to reach in the fire and yank them out.’
He stood stalwart, silent, and his eyes roved over hers. His breath was steadier now, almost as if he forced the air calmly through his lungs so he could hear her words.
‘It’s worth it, though, to save the cakes. The price you pay either by some burns on your hands or by losing a purse full of silver. You’re worth it.’
He adjusted his stance. Just a bit, just enough, so it was she who stood still to hear every word he said. ‘Are you, by chance, comparing me to a cake again?’
She nodded, unsure at first and then more emphatically. ‘That’s what I was doing when I went to Reynold. I was yanking you out.’
He released a breath. ‘Because there wasn’t time to save yourself or think things through.’
When she nodded her head this time, her brimming tears flew from her eyes, so she wiped them, which made his puzzled expression more clear.
‘But what do cakes have to do with silver?’
‘With the purse of silver I took to pay him to leave you alone. I assumed that’s why you were angry with me.’
‘You thought he’d leave me alone because you paid him with silver?’
‘No! That’s ridiculous, that’s like saying the cake is going to be delicious because you took it out with your bare hands. Taking it out of the oven means it’s not burnt. But that’s a far cry from being delicious.’
He opened his mouth to say something, then closed it again.
She cursed her silly useless words.
‘To be delicious, a baker has to know the ingredients,’ she said. ‘How much and the quality. That’s what makes a good cake and that’s why Reynold’s going to leave you alone. I understand about ingredients.’
‘That is convenient for you, but I am not a baker and I am no longer following this conversation.’
‘It was his burns, Rhain. You told me he’d suffered from swords’ wounds and fire, and nothing killed him. I know about withstanding that kind of pain. I appreciate what it is like to lose a sister as he had a brother. Reynold suffered through all of that. He carries similar ingredients to me!’
‘Are you comparing the most powerful and corrupted man in the country to flour and honey?’
‘Well, yes. I thought it would be easier to understand.’
‘To you.’
‘I can see that now.’
‘Am I to conclude you talked him out of killing me and going after my men and family?
‘Yes—’ she pointed to him ‘—long before you showed up, and then I didn’t know what he was going to do when you did. He already agreed to the silver; I couldn’t offer him anything more. I think he was—’
‘Toying with us.’ He threw up his hands. ‘I have never been so terrified in my life when I realized you were in his hands.’
‘I thought you were angry about your silver.’
‘I didn’t know about it until now. How did you get into my—Never mind that for now. I thought I was about to lose you. I was angry, and frustrated, and terrified. I was also trying not to pull you into my arms.’
She knew how he felt then. ‘I thought he’d kill us both until you gave him the necklace. Oh! Your mother’s necklace!’
His eyes softened. ‘I don’t care about the necklace. Not any more. I would have given every bit of my property and stitch of clothing to get you back.’
She saw Rhain’s face when he’d handed the necklace over. He hadn’t even looked at it, but she couldn’t believe it meant nothing to him. ‘What about all your searching? You could return to London now. You were close to finding the answers.’
‘Answers I don’t need. No, more than that. I wasn’t asking the right questions. I was searching, but I thought I needed to know my past. I just needed to know my future. You’re my future.’
A smile tugged at his lips, even as his brow furrowed. ‘Tears, Helissent. Ah, you’ve a soft heart and I’m only going to hurt you.’
‘No, you came back for me. We’re safe. We can be together and—’
His smile disappeared. ‘You’re my future, Helissent, but I’m not yours and can never be. I’m not a savior, remember? I’m not...right for you.’
Because he was perfect. He hid himself to cover his beauty and he came from wealth and had earned his spurs. What was she? Homeless, penniless.
He stepped back and growled. ‘You do not see it. Everything that is wrong with me is inside.’
Somehow she knew he was about to tell her something worse than Reynold. ‘Please don’t.’
‘Don’t what? Tell you the truth, that you risked your life for nothing? Because you did.’
* * *
Rhain paced. She deserved to know. It was time now. It was time before she ran off to save him. His heart still hadn’t recovered and it might never. He could have lost her. He was angry, desperate and he didn’t deserve her.
Knowing why he didn’t tell her was no comfort. Especially since, the moment he did, he’d lose her. Truly lose her. That utter look of joy she had when he arrived at Reynold’s had hit him like a divine force straight to his heart.
Though he’d ignored her, Reynold, with his smug look, knew what she meant then. Reynold, who let them go. Now he had to let Helissent go.
‘It’s a long tale and one only a few people know. Not even Nicholas knows this.’
‘Then don’t. It doesn’t matter.’
‘It does with you.’
Helissent slowly sat on a chair, her eyes never leaving him. Eyes that he still couldn’t say what color they were. But he watched how they lit when the sun shone on them and how they darkened with passion. He only wished he could see their colors in all the changing seasons and years. Years he would never have with her.
‘My mother wasn’t the Lady of Gwalchdu. My father wasn’t the Lord either. Her name was Ffion and she was the sister to Lady Gwalchdu. I thought she was my aunt. I still think of her that way. I still think of Teague as my brother instead of my cousin.’
He exhaled, shook his head as if dislodging those thoughts. ‘Ffion was also... She was also sister to God, having joined the abbey. Having grown up thinking I was the second son, I went happily to Edward’s court and trained. When the time came, I returned to Gwalchdu no more knowledgeable than wh
en I left.’
Rhain paced the room while Helissent sat. His body still shook from Reynold’s threat, from Reynold’s unbelievable grant of freedom. Now this. A story he never expected to tell. But Helissent was unexpected and she deserved to know.
‘I don’t care if you’re noble born or not,’ Helissent whispered. ‘I wouldn’t care if you’re noble. Why would I? It makes it—’
‘Easier?’ He turned to her then.
She nodded. Her eyes looked determined, but hopeful. Of course they would. If his separation from her was only as simple as nobility, he might even feel a shred of that hope.
‘Just wait. That part of the story I’ve reconciled with long ago. I was a second son. I had a brother who deserved to be first born. My skills are enough to earn any spurs, nobility or not. No, the fact that my mother wasn’t my mother doesn’t cut me. In fact, there’s almost a blessing in that. You taught me that blessing.’
‘I did?’
He nodded. ‘I never knew Lady Gwalchdu, who died when I was born. I had a chance to know my mother. Remember those garden stories, the journals and the smell of lavender? I was telling you of Sister Ffion, my true mother. Though she never told me who she was, she spent time with me, taught me some gardening and healing. You’ve shown me that those are happy memories, despite that I never wanted to remember them as such...despite what I must tell you next.’
He wanted to pace again and just stopped himself. There was nowhere to go with this tale. ‘All her life, my mother suffered a terrible illness. She had seizures. Remedies were tried, but nothing made it better. Rumors began that she had the Devil’s own blood in her. Teague, my brother...cousin...paid the Church to keep quiet and took the rumor for himself to protect her.’
‘It made him greatly feared on the battlefields.’ Rhain let out a humorless laugh. ‘He wasn’t only protecting his aunt, he was protecting me. But we didn’t know that then. We didn’t know who she was to me or what she wanted.
‘But she let us know, when I returned to Gwalchdu. Teague began receiving threatening messages. At that time, there were many Welsh people unhappy that he’d sided with the English in the fight for Wales. The messages weren’t that unusual. The timing was.
‘Plagued by this, he and I searched for this enemy, only to discover it was our aunt, my mother. She wanted Teague and his wife dead. Teague wasn’t pure Welsh, I was. I had returned to Gwalchdu, and she wanted me, her true son, as ruler.
‘When I discovered what had happened, when I tried to rescue them, my mother took poison and died almost immediately. But not before revealing I could find my father with that necklace. That’s what I’ve been doing, trying to find the pendant, trying to find my father.’
‘All in vain, all to no consequence.’ He shook his head. ‘My mother died by her own hand. Went mad in the end. Mad because she suffered from seizures from her Devil’s blood.’
Rhain breathed deep, walked the room again. Slower this time because the more difficult words he still had to say. He still had to let Helissent go.
‘My mother is dead, my father unknown, and it’s likely I’ll never find him. I have no need to now. I think I had some childish hope that if I did find him, I’d find some great man, from a strong lineage with powerful blood running through his veins. Strong enough to counter whatever ran through my mother’s. What runs through mine.
‘So you see, despite everything, despite that you rescued me, I can’t have you. We can’t get married. We’ll never have children.’
* * *
Helissent felt her tears; felt the constriction in her chest.
His expression stark. Utter desolation. Vulnerability. This was the source of his pain. Why he prayed in the garden and why he pushed her away. ‘Do you believe all this?’ she said.
‘I know all this,’ he replied.
Though it shouldn’t, though more had to be said and understood, something eased within her when Rhain said, ‘Despite everything.’
She knew what the ‘everything’ was and she would fight for it. She only wished she had her mother’s spoon to either wave or hit Rhain with to make him see. All she could do was stand. ‘Well, then, I know something as well. You’re a fool, Rhain of Gwalchdu, mercenary of unsavory mercenaries.’
‘No doubt that, too,’ he said with a voice full of derision, which she understood now he pointed at himself.
‘But no more fool than me. You think you deserve pain, deserve no future, because of your mother?
‘I was that way once, too,’ she continued, ‘but then I met this mocking man who kept to the shadows, who was somehow kind to me. I met these surly mercenaries, who asked for my advice. Then I came to York and I saw others living with injuries, some as bad as my own. I knew not all of them could be merely accidents. Some of them had to be on purpose like mine.’
‘On purpose?’
‘I’ve carried a shame all my life, Rhain of Gwalchdu. It has scalded my every action and thought.’ She rubbed her hands along her skirts, shook them out as if there was flour there. Wished her feelings were as easy to brush away. ‘When my mother and I ran to the house, I promised her I’d get my sister free. The look she gave me was the last I ever saw of her.’
Fear shortening their breath, skirts raised to their waists, their bodies bent forward with purpose. Her mother had looked at her with pride, gratefulness and determination. Love. Helissent swallowed the tears building, this wasn’t the time for tears. ‘She believed me. She believed my promise and I broke it when I tripped. I can’t help but think if I hadn’t, we would have made it.’
‘That is why you show your scars to strangers, so they could see them and you could hurt yourself.’
‘Partly. I broke a promise, but I was also a coward.’ She spun away from him then, didn’t want to see his eyes. ‘When the ceiling collapsed, my sister and I were trapped. I was able to free myself, but not her.’
Silence. While she waited for her words to sink in. Waited until she could finish her thoughts.
‘You didn’t leave her though you could,’ he whispered.
Helissent closed her eyes on Rhain’s steady words. He was still seeing her as courageous. She shook her head. Not ready to finish her thoughts. Her tears shook with her and she wiped her face.
‘And you think this is shame?’ he said.
He drew in a breath and she knew he’d argue his point. But she hadn’t made hers yet. She turned around then, but still couldn’t look him in the eye. ‘The Church teaches us it is wrong to cause our own deaths,’ she said. ‘The innkeepers’ perseverance in saving me and kindness taught me it was wrong to, even for a moment, have had such a thought.
‘But I held my sister’s hand, held her eyes as long as she held mine. Even when hers had closed, I held her hand. When I realized I’d broken my promise, when I realized my entire family was gone, I laid down with her. That’s when the blackness overtook me, too.’
Utter silence then, and she still didn’t raise her eyes to his. Didn’t want to see what she knew was there.
‘You may be more a fool than me, Helissent from a village of no name.’
She swallowed, clenched her eyes, then looked up. ‘No doubt a fool and overflowing with shame from broken promises and weakness.’
His eyes... Warmth, incredulousness...compassion. ‘Not weakness. My God, I thought you brave before for rushing into the fire. But there is no word for what you did. You stayed in the fire. You didn’t abandon your sister. She knew you were there for her until the end.’
‘And then I stayed because I was a coward. Because I wanted to die so I didn’t have to face my failures or my shame.’
He shook his head wildly. ‘Not shame. Grief. Your entire family died. Your sister right before you; you were feeling devastation and loss.’
She tried to catch her breath, tried to tamp down f
amiliar feelings of being broken. It was easier now. After all he’d shown her, he’d made it easier now.
‘I see that now. I didn’t see that then or most of my life. All I felt was shame and regret.’
His brow furrowed, his eyes going beyond hers like he was seeing something else that troubled him more than her shame. ‘You have regret that can never be changed,’ he said.
‘It doesn’t have to be,’ she said. ‘I’m seeing it differently now. I’m no longer scalded by regrets because I have been reminded of something far more substantial. Far more hearty and sweet.’
‘Your cakes?’
Mockery again. She knew why he did it and wanted to soothe the chaotic thoughts behind his amber eyes. ‘Didn’t you love your mother?’
‘You think a fool has no feelings?’ He turned and traced the design on the back of the chair, his fine fingers usually elegant, now restless. ‘Yes, I loved her. Even in the end when she tried to kill my brother. It’s one of the reasons why I left.’
So many similarities between them that they shared, but he couldn’t see all that yet. She had to make him see. ‘Did she love you?’
He silently drummed his fingers against the scrollwork. ‘I may have been the only one she loved.’
‘So she went mad, was ill, but still someone loved her...and she loved in return.’
‘It was not enough,’ he said, his voice warning her.
His eyes were full of remorse, almost like he hadn’t rescued her from Reynold and she had died. But she felt very much alive because love was enough.
‘You think I don’t know the power of love when it’s been shown all my life? I failed my little sister. I didn’t get her out of the burning house. She screamed. Like a coward, I tried to die so I wouldn’t feel the pain of failure. When I was rescued, I believed I deserved to live with the agony of shame. But being with you taught me something else. I might have failed my sister and broke my promise to my mother, but I never failed at loving them.