Chapter 13

The Terrible

––––––––

E luned was relieved to know that Robert too wanted to be away from court as soon as was possible. At his urging, she came with him to meet with his brother and Burnell, the king's right hand, and learned everything there was to know about the lands that would be granted to him. The division of Wales would be set forth by law in weeks and instead of feeling only fury and bitterness to see how it would be doled out to English lords, she had as well the satisfaction that one piece of it would fall into her hands. And she could not deny her pride in knowing that Robert would become the first Baron de Lascaux, lord of the new principality of Darian.

She squeezed his hand when she heard the name. "Darian is a Welsh word. It means shield. Protection."

There would be access to the sea, which would facilitate the wine imports. Even better, they were formally granted Eluned's childhood home of Dinwen, and they could easily go there now. Though other visitors to the court would wait a bit longer to scatter, she and Robert prepared to leave only a week behind Ranulf's departure. While Robert drank and dined with her son-in-law, Eluned searched out Nan to tell the girl she would have a place in their household and need no longer suffer Mortimer's advances. The girl blushed and stammered her thanks, but said there was a stable boy who wanted nothing more than to marry her, and he was not like to want to move deeper into Wales.

Eluned did not press the matter. She only said that Nan and her stable boy were welcome if ever they wanted a new home. Then she went to find Robert's brother and talked with him throughout the evening meal about his father, Simon's hopes for his sons, and his own ambitions. It surprised her, how willing she was to believe the good in him. That was Robert's influence. Without it, she would not have seen the genuine eagerness in Simon, the way he so clearly wished to know his brother better, the surprisingly little greediness in any of his desires.

"If we go to Dinwen now, we will be there for the spring planting," she said to Robert as they lay in bed that night. "Haps I will ask Gwenllian if she will come to us there, to visit. Your brother has said he will come in summer with his sons, so that their education may begin."

"His education, or his son's?" asked Robert, looking up from where he rested his head against her breast.

She smiled. "Both, though God willing it is only his son will ever rule there, should we have none of our own. Tonight he assured me that the succession has been approved by the king and written into – why do you laugh?"

"Nay, not for that," protested Robert, pulling himself up to the pillow. "I only thought that while you spoke of grave matters of succession with my brother, I watched your daughter's husband threaten Sir Hawse's future generations. Hawse drank too much and said something unkind about..."

A dark red flush came to his neck. "About me?" she asked, but then remembered it was Ranulf who had threatened the man. "Ah no, he insulted Gwenllian?"

Robert nodded. "I think he did not realize Ranulf sat so near to him. Barely had he declared that she would make a better carthorse than a wife – your pardon, my love, they are his vile words and not mine – than Ranulf had slipped a dagger beneath his ballocks. I have never seen a man sip his ale so calm while his companion sweated and stuttered and dared not move a hair. And Ranulf said only that Hawse must never speak of the lady of Morency again in his life, unless he cared to lose first his manhood, and then his life at the point of Ranulf's sword."

Eluned absorbed this description, relishing the picture he painted and furious at the insult to her daughter. Mostly, though, she grappled with a new and wholly unexpected emotion that accompanied the image of Ranulf of Morency defending her daughter with his famed blade.

"God preserve me," she said, as startled by the thought as by the giggle that suddenly escaped her. "I may actually come to like the man."

Robert's look of mild disbelief caused her burbling of delight to gradually become shouts of laughter. His growing smile only made her laugh harder, until she was gasping and tears sparkled at the corners of her eyes. His rumble of laughter joined hers, and she thought there was no sweeter music in all the world.

Oh, she remembered this kind of incautious joy. She remembered now what it was to be naked and carefree and happy. To be warm in winter, to know that spring would come again.

S he had expected to be overwhelmed to return to Dinwen after so many years but it only felt comfortable, and right, and good. The people greeted her warmly, though only a few of the oldest servants remembered her from her girlhood. When she spoke to them in Welsh – and more, when Robert greeted them with the few words of it he had learned – they breathed easy. When they were assured that until King Edward proclaimed otherwise, their grievances would be heard and judged according to Welsh and not English law, they gave their hearts completely to their new lord and lady.

April brought with it the little blue flowers, wood bells that spread like a carpet across the ground in every direction. She took him to a place where they bloomed as far as the eye could see, an isolated clearing with trees all around, and there she laid back among the flowers and made love to him in the sunlight. Every day, more and more, there was hope in her breast and dreams in her head – and none of it felt new and different, but old and comfortable. She was meant to be thus, and if she ever worried that it could not be so easy to slip back into a skin she had shed so long ago, she reminded herself that he believed in her. He believed in her.

When the message came, she and Robert were in deep discussion, trying to recall what Aaron of Lincoln had ever said about the methods used in England to persecute his people. "Be assured they will employ similar laws against the Welsh to prevent them having equal power to the English," she said with a sigh. "Except they cannot say the Welsh are not Christian. We can hope that is some protection."

They had only got as far as determining which of the nearby churchmen were more likely to be unsympathetic to the Welsh when the messenger was announced. He brought word from Simon, who was leaving the king's court sooner than he had planned. He was traveling to see their father, who was ailing unto death.

"You think I should go to him, too," said Robert when they were alone.

She heard the question in it, how he wanted her to tell him why he should or should not go. But her only thought was the selfish one, that she did not want him to leave her side. There lived in her an irrational terror that he would not return. She forced herself to dismiss it as superstition, saying, "And you think he lies and says he is near to death, in hopes you will come."

Robert shrugged, the wry smile curling his lip as he looked away. "Haps."

"But it is Simon who has said it," she pointed out. "And if your father were to deceive you into coming to him, he would not think his own poor health would be the best way to bring you to him."

He gave a huff of a laugh. "Now in your wisdom you will ask me which I would regret more – to go to him, or not to go? But I have no answer to that."

She put her arms around him. "Then I shall be very old and wise and tell you that the answer will come in the morning, do you sleep well on the question."

So he did, and in the morning he said he would go. When she replied that she would come with him, he stopped her words with a deep kiss, pressing her into the pillows and leaving her breathless. "Cariad," he said. "Never would I forgive myself if I took you away from here when every day brings a hundred new decisions that will affect these people who are all your concern. Stay."

She stayed. It was nearly three weeks until she had word from him that his father had had last rites, and Robert would soon return to her. I have not spoken to him of his deceit, for I do not want to speak also of my many years of defiance, he wrote. A lifetime of strife cannot be reversed in an hour, even if it be the last hour, and no more can he or I be made different from what we have always been. But I am glad I have come .

William had brought her this message in the last leg of its journey to Dinwen. Her son had come here after leaving court, on his way to Ruardean. She sat with him in the small solar one morning, distracted by how much he looked like his father and answering his queries about the management of the Ruardean estate, when a mud-covered man burst into the room.

"Where is Robert?" she asked, her voice absurdly polite and calm while her heart stopped dead in her chest. For she recognized this man as one of Robert's, who had ridden off with him a month ago and who should not be here without his lord. He was panting and covered in mud, and she could not rightly hear what he said for the panic rising in her.

He was saying Mortimer and something about murder and hostages and retaliation. She could understand nothing at all in the world, except that Robert was not here. Finally she forced air into her chest and leaned forward to grasp the man by the ears, to hold him steady and silence his babbling. She spoke her words like a curse. "You must tell me plain if my husband has died."

His eyes went wide and he shook his head. "Nay, lady, not dead."

Blood seemed to flow into her heart again, all in a rush. Only when William touched her shoulder did she release the man, who sat back and rubbed his ears as he looked at her in astonishment. She stood, fighting the weakness in her legs, turning from them and demanding composure from herself. Oh Mary make me brave , she prayed. Let me not be undone .

"Tell me," she turned and said when she had command of herself, "and waste no words."

"Barely more than a day's ride from here, we were overtaken by Roger Mortimer's men. They accuse my lord of a plot to murder Mortimer. They claim he employed a servant who tampered with the saddle on Mortimer's horse and when that failed, put poison in his wine. The servant was caught in the attempt."

She could feel her son's bewildered look on the side of her face, like heat from a nearby fire. She did not take her eyes from the muddy man who spoke.

"Why does Mortimer believe it was my lord husband? What proof has he?"

"Lady," he said in a strained voice, "the servant was betrothed to a girl who was known to be in possession of a ring that Mortimer himself saw on your hand. Mortimer believed it was given to the servant as payment for the deed, and the girl was questioned. When asked on pain of death who plotted against Mortimer, she gave the name of de Lascaux."

The blood pounded in her ears, beating the name through her brain: Nan, Nan, Nan . For an instant, Eluned thought she might be ill. But it was only an instant. There was no time for blame, for this fury at herself. Later. She would indulge those thoughts later. Now there was only room for action.

William was asking questions about where they had captured Robert, how many men – so many unimportant words flowing forth. She held up her hand in a silencing gesture to cut him off. "You tell me Roger Mortimer holds my husband captive, but you have not told me his demands. What ransom would he have?"

The answer was unlikely, but she expected it all the same. "His life, lady." The man spared a glance at William, but spoke only to her. "They hold him at a nearby manor called Rowland, to await Mortimer who is three day's travel from there. They have said Mortimer himself will..." He seemed unwilling to put words to it. "With his own hands, they said."

"The king will never allow it," said William.

"The king will not know until it is done," she said through numb lips.

The man who delivered the news – what was his name? She must remember to ask – held worn leather gloves in his hands. She stared at the cracks and creases in them, her eyes following the lines that intersected like rivers, like lives. She could see it all there – how Mortimer would call it defense of his own life, how he would twist the facts and bide his time and somehow be forgiven. Likely he would arrange it so that someday, somehow, he would be granted these lands that had no natural heir. Why not? He had the advantage, so long as he did not hesitate to strike. She had three days.

She went to the window. The fields were all upturned earth, the sky was endless blue. There were hidden stars behind the daylight sky, just as there were hidden advantages to being a woman whose heart could be made stone.

"Mother, only think." William was speaking urgently at her ear now. "If we can reach Edward quickly, we can use this circumstance well to–"

She held her hand up again, and knew by the look on him that it was the force of her anger more than the gesture that silenced him. Her son who she so little knew, who was so like her. Opportunity in strife, always finding a way to turn adversity to advantage – had she passed nothing else on to him? A forlorn regret swelled in her at the thought.

She touched her fingertips lightly to the side of his face. She had not touched him so since he was a child, and he looked down at her, rapt. Whatever she said now, he would remember it.

"The things we do out of hate, and those we do for love," she told him. "They come back to us. One by one, they return to us in some form, some time."

She turned back to the window and breathed the cool spring air. She gathered together everything she knew of the Mortimers, every last scrap she had hoarded while at court. She looked deep inside her heart, to assess its worth to her if Robert was not in it.

Around the blazing fire at her center, she let the cold seep into every part of her. Into the waiting silence, looking out dry-eyed across the lands she had so lately claimed, she spoke her command.

"I will have the twelve finest of our knights with me, mounted and armed. Send the marshal to me now, and make all haste," she said as she swept past them, already halfway to the door. "I ride within the hour."

I t was easy enough to find the place when she asked the Welsh villagers in their own language about the woman with hair like sunset, whose sons were little lordlings. She had not thought to find both boys there, but took it as a stroke of luck. It would have been better luck still if the woman had been a little more stupid, but Eluned overcame her reticence by saying, "Come closer, and I will whisper a secret from your beloved."

Instead she whispered that her knights could easily take the boys by force, and was it not easier to give them over peaceably? Then she turned to the boys and bent to say to them in a gentle voice, "There now, your mother will have your bags packed in a moment and then it will be only a day of travel. Just a short visit. Won't that be a lovely surprise?"

They were intrepid little souls, who thrilled at the speed of the ride and thought it great fun to sleep under the open sky. When their party met up with the small host that waited among the trees a mile from Rowland, they were filled with questions about the longbows but did not ask why so many were assembled here to meet them. Eluned sent her chosen envoy with a message to the manor at Rowland, then dismounted and spoke to Sir Lucas, who held the command of these men.

"We stand ready, lady. Our scout saw Mortimer's arrival only an hour ago. He came with a woman, who is described in every particular as his lady sister, and six men-at-arms."

He told her about the low wall that ran across a field to the west of the manor house, and they made their way toward it as they waited for the envoy to return. All the while, he described the meager defenses here, how many more armed men made their way on foot from Dinwen, and the reported state of the roads between here and Ruardean.

"If I signal," she told him when the envoy rode into view, "it is meant for Sir Alan, who has my instruction. When there is aught the greater host must do, you will hear it from my own lips. Heed me well and do not dare to defy me, for it is my lord husband's life in the balance. And you see plainly what I am prepared to do in defense of that life."

He bowed his head in agreement, and the envoy approached. It was Father Morgan, a Franciscan who was more than eager to play peacemaker, and pleased to tell her that Mortimer had agreed to a meeting. The strain in the priest's smile told her that Mortimer had only agreed to it when he learned she came with a host of armed men. "I have seen your lord husband with my own eyes, Lady Eluned," the priest assured her. "He is treated as an honored guest by this house and is very well, though his patience is sorely tested. He has sworn to me that he knows nothing of a plot to kill Lord Mortimer, of course."

"Because he is entirely innocent," she said, and watched the priest recoil from her vehemence.

She chose one knight to accompany her to the meeting place, and told him he would wait outside and only enter if she called for him. It was a little stone building not far from the trees, just barely within sight of the manor but in plain view of the wall where her soldiers waited. It was used by hunters, the priest babbled as they made their way, and the master of this manor was happy to offer it and wished for a quick and peaceful solution to the troubles that had landed at his door only because he called Roger Mortimer his liege lord.

She strode past the horses that were tied outside, past the man who had already collected an assortment of blades and demanded that her knight disarm if he was to enter, and into the room where Roger Mortimer stood with hands on hips and a thunderous expression. She did not hesitate or pause, but walked straight on, fury compelling her, feeling the drag and billow of her cloak behind her as she rounded the corner of a long table until she was inches from him. The fabric swirled at her ankles with the suddenness of her stop. She locked eyes with him and spoke with iron in her voice.

"Give me my husband."

He opened his mouth a fraction, taking in air as preparation to a mocking laugh, but she had the satisfaction of watching the intention die in the face of her unwavering stare. There was a rustle beside her, a familiar voice saying her name, but she did not turn.

"Your husband is unharmed, as your priest has seen," said Isabella, her voice taut.

"Give him to me," repeated Eluned, never taking her eyes from Roger Mortimer, "or it will be war."

Mortimer raised his brows. Now he was mocking. "War? A fine war you will wage with barely more than seventy men."

"Against your six, and the two dozen that defend this manor," she replied.

"They can hold this place against your force for the few days it will require to bring a hundred mounted knights. My men are well trained in dodging the arrows of Welsh longbows, I promise you, and even more experienced in killing ragged Welsh soldiers."

She bit her tongue as the memory of her uncle's blood-spattered face rose up in her, his lifeless hand in hers. She willed herself not to look away, not to rage at him and lunge at his smug face.

"The men of Ruardean are a fine match for them," she said evenly. "My son rides to there now in preparation. I have only to say the word. And though their march is longer, the forces of Morency are not to be dismissed as ragged soldiers. Or did you forget that I am not alone?" She allowed herself the barest hint of a smile. "Our Welshmen from the north and west, Ruardean from the south, Morency from the east – and if it come to that, there are the de Lascaux men who will set sail from France when they hear their lord is threatened. You have heard how well they defended the Aquitaine against all the forces of Castile, yes? And how well my husband is loved by the king for that service?"

His eyes narrowed. She could almost hear him recalculating.

"The king loves me no less. He will not like to hear how nearly I was murdered by your husband's design."

"Fool." With that one scathing word, she turned from him and addressed his sister. "You are not vain or empty-headed, Isabella. Tell me, then, why Robert would want your brother dead?"

Isabella sat and smoothed her hands over her knees, as though determined to discuss the matter civilly. "There are reasons aplenty to be guessed at, but we are little concerned with them. It is the evidence that has brought us to this."

"Evidence? The word of a servant girl, no doubt given at knifepoint, and who had the name of de Lascaux at her lips only because of the ring I gave her, not my husband. It was a token in thanks because she served me well, no more than that, with my wishes for a happy marriage. And this you turn into a payment for murder." She curled her lip in scorn. "Such weak reasoning is not worthy of you."

Eluned turned back to Roger Mortimer, who did not seem in the least to be reconsidering his stance. Indeed he seemed only to grow angrier as she stared her hatred at him. She had forgotten Father Morgan, who now decided his intervention was called for.

"Surely with reflection and prayer, a compromise can be found that will prevent bloodshed," he began in a soothing tone, but Eluned did not care to hear more.

"There is no compromise. You will release my husband. Today."

"Do you think to command me?" Mortimer thundered, blood rising in his face, incensed by her imperious tone. "I am not ruled by shrewish women!"

"You are ruled by vile passions and greed and you will not imprison my husband for the wild fantasies in your head!" She heard Isabella leap to her feet in alarm. "I tell you it will come to war if you hold him one more hour , I swear it on my soul."

"War! What know you of war? I have led the king's army and won Wales. Think you that you can win against me?"

He was like a bull, a great wall of muscle staring her down and snorting his rage. She lifted her chin and considered him calmly.

"Haps not," she said, and allowed the honest uncertainty to be heard in her voice. "I am not a soldier and I have fought in no wars. I am but a woman, with a woman's weapons." She walked to the window that was behind Isabella, which faced west. Far across a broad field there was the stone wall, her men ranged out behind it. She turned her head over her shoulder and beckoned. "Come you and see the weapon I have mastered."

It was the priest who came first, standing at her shoulder and looking out across the field with her. He gestured to the others, who came closer. She could feel them at her back, the heat and bulk of the brother, the cool caution of the sister.

"What am I meant to see but these men you have brought?" Mortimer asked. "They are so far even their longbows cannot reach us."

Eluned swallowed against the dryness in her throat, raised her hand, and waved it out the window. An answering wave came in return. A moment later, two boys were hoisted up to stand along the distant stone wall. The younger had strawberry blond hair that caught the afternoon sun and caused his aunt to gasp. It took Mortimer a fraction of a moment longer to realize.

"My sons."

He whispered it as he stepped closer to the window, and she knew she had not miscalculated. He stood too close to her or else he would have struck her, she was sure. Instead he gripped her shoulders and pressed her to the wall. He had only begun to shake her, looking to smash her head against the stones, no doubt, when Isabella managed to wedge an arm between them. He roared, and his sister shouted frantically at him to stop.

"Listen to her!" Eluned spat the words at him. She smiled and thrust her chin upwards, not caring that she must seem mad, only knowing that she would not shrink before him, that she would die before she surrendered her will to brute strength again. She smiled a cold smile and pointed out the window. His eyes followed. The boys still stood on the wall, waving now, and one of the archers stood behind them with arrow poised.

"Release me, and the danger is removed." His hands fell away from her and he stepped back. She raised a hand in signal, and the archer lowered his bow. "Release my husband and no harm will come to them."

Mortimer stared out at the distant gleam of his son's hair. She watched his jaw work, his fists clench. It was pride that kept him silent, the disbelief that he must concede defeat. It was a very fine thing, to watch him struggle to swallow it.

"You would not." Isabella stood tall and cool and almost certain, blinking down at Eluned. "It is too cruel. You would not kill them."

Eluned kept her eyes on Roger, who swung around at his sister's words. He looked at Isabella, then back to Eluned. He studied her closely through narrowed eyes.

"In faith, haps my sister has the right of it." He glanced out the window again, then back at her, trying to see whether she dissembled. "It is a hard heart that would murder innocents."

Eluned tilted her head quizzically. "How hard was the second King Henry's heart when he plucked the eyes from twenty-two Welshmen he held hostage? My grandmother's grandfather was one of those he blinded. We remember."

"The second King Henry!" he scoffed. "A hundred years ago at the least–"

"And then there was your King John," she continued, her voice rising, "who murdered twenty-eight Welsh boys, hostages whose safety he claimed to hold sacred until he hanged them from the walls of Nottingham castle. Boys as young as your sons, all of them. One was my father's uncle. We remember."

"What has this to–"

"And the Welsh princes in your care, sons of Powys, last of their line." She was shouting now, the blood rushing in her ears. "They were kin to my mother, did you know it? Two innocent little boys and they were drowned and we remember ." She took a ragged breath, listening to the echo of her voice ringing off the stones in the small room. "Do not think me incapable of cruelty toward innocents. I have learned it from masters of the art."

"And do you kill my sons, lady, then I shall kill your husband and that is the end of it!"

"Think you I will stop there? Nay, my lord, for I prefer the flavor of a wound well salted. War, I have said, and also..." She looked to Isabella and said, "There is a place called Northop, and a man named Robert de Hastang there. Three men who are loyal to me lie in wait. At my word he will be captured." The blood drained from Isabella's face. "What think you I will do to him, if I am made mad with grief for my husband?"

There was no pleasure in it for Eluned. There was only the mirror of the fear and helplessness that lived in her own breast. Certainty came over the other woman's face as Eluned watched. She did not have to ask Isabella what she would do to protect the man she loved. They both already knew.

"She will do it, Roger," Isabella said tonelessly. She was looking at Eluned, her eyes clear. "If you would have your sons safe, end this now."

A long, silent moment, and then the air in the room changed, and she knew she had won. Roger Mortimer nodded. Eluned turned and swept past the priest she had utterly forgotten, until she reached the door. She turned back in afterthought.

"Two boys are fairly exchanged for two hostages in kind. Does the serving girl who confessed live?"

"Aye," said Mortimer with a shrug. "Is only her betrothed I killed, then I brought her here to give evidence."

As though he had planned a fair trial. But at least Nan was here, and it was easy enough to guess why her betrothed – or anyone who cared for her – would want Mortimer dead. She was Eluned's responsibility now.

"I will have her from you too, with my husband. You shall have your sons. And then let this business between us be over."

T he priest walked between the hostages as they came out of the manor, and Eluned allowed herself to look away from the distant figure of Roger Mortimer to rake her eyes over Robert. He was perfectly well – unhurt, slightly rumpled, a bemused look on his face – and then she spared a glance for Nan, who was not well at all. But she did not let her gaze linger, preferring instead to keep Mortimer in her sights until they were well away.

To the boys, she said, "Your father is anxious to see you, and your auntie too. Go now to Father Morgan and he will bring you to them." She took Nan onto her own mount while Robert was given a horse, and they rode off immediately, with no time for any words, before even the boys had reached the doors of the manor house where their father waited.

They traveled until night fell and were half way to home when they stopped and made camp for the night. Eluned had little experience with comforting overwrought women, and little patience for them, but she did not want to push Nan away. The girl cringed and shook, but only wept if she tried to speak. Her face was purple with a large bruise, but when Eluned asked if she was otherwise hurt, she shook her head.

"Nan," she whispered as the men lit a cook fire. "You need not fear my anger. There is no blame to you. You did well. You did exactly as I told you." Only the certainty that her own tears would distress the girl more kept Eluned from weeping. She felt Robert's presence at her shoulder and looked up to see him there.

"Nor do I blame you," he said to the girl. He did not look at Eluned, and she felt the force of the words he did not speak. All his attention was on the shivering servant girl. "Rest easy, Nan. You are safe now." His eyes turned to Eluned and his look softened. "You are under my wife's protection, and she will let no evil befall any who are in her care."

Nan clung to her all night, and he kept his distance. Only once, as the men sat around the fire talking, did he look to her. The man who had wielded the bow that threatened the captive boys was asked by one of his fellows if he suffered pangs of conscience for the act. "Nay," scoffed the bowman, "for I did not even nock the arrow. My lady gave only the signal for a show, not action."

Robert's face was unreadable in the little firelight, his eyes shadowed but fixed on her. She held his gaze and wondered what he thought until he turned away.

They reached Dinwen the next day, just as the sky turned to twilight. After giving instruction for messages to be sent to Ruardean and Morency, she took the time to give Nan over to the keeping of an old Welsh woman who worked in the kitchens and possessed a practical sort of kindness. The woman wrapped a length of wool around the girl, thrust a hot drink into her hands, and then went about her work, narrating her every action in an unbroken murmur of Welsh that seemed to soothe Nan.

Outside the door to their bedchamber, Eluned paused and leaned against the stone wall. He was here. He was safe. That was what mattered, above all else. There should be no reason for her to fear facing him, for her to shrink away from it like a girl caught out. She was too old for such childish worries, but still she wanted to weep at the thought that perhaps he did not like her very much.

When she entered he was looking with a frown at the psalter that had belonged to her uncle, where it sat on a little table near the bed. His finger was on it, tracing the jewels set in the cover, but he turned away when he heard her. He busied himself by sitting on the only chair, taking off his boots, and knocking the clumps of mud off them.

"You were not hurt when they captured you?" she asked in a voice that seemed impossibly small.

"Nay."

"They did treat you with honor?"

"Aye, it was a very civilized abduction."

The dry irony was in his voice again. He reached for a square of cloth that hung beside the hearth and began to wipe the mud that clung to the boot in his hand. She wanted to laugh and be easy, to tell him to leave this work for a servant, to join her in the bed. Instead she sat on the edge of the bed, watched his hands working across the leather, and said, "I am sorry." His hands stopped. "It was my sin, and almost did you pay the price of it."

He looked at her, and she saw it was not this that troubled him. "Would you have killed them?"

She took a breath and returned his look. "They were never in the least danger. I knew Mortimer loved them too well to risk them. That is why I took them, because I was sure of it."

"And if he had refused to let me go, kept me imprisoned? Or injured me? Or slain me?"

"That is why I wasted no time in getting to you."

"You do not answer my question."

Her lips pinched together, and his gaze went there to her mouth. He knew her too well, and knew when she bit back words. She knew him, too, and knew he was thinking of his friend's son who had been Mortimer's prisoner for more than a year and who had never been threatened with a weapon in all that time.

"What would I do if he had killed you? I know not, Robert. That is the truth of it."

"You would have killed his children in revenge?"

"I cannot say what I would do, for I cannot contemplate a world without you." The truth was unnerving, terrible to see. But she would not turn away from it, or pretend she was something she was not. "You are my heart, Robert. If they kill you, they make me heartless."

She could hear men below their window in the yard, talking loudly and laughing. They seemed a thousand miles from this room where the only man she had ever loved sat across from her in an endless silence.

"Eighteen – no, nineteen years ago now," she said finally, "I risked my soul to eternal hellfire to be with you. Did you not know even then the kind of woman I am? If you would love me, you cannot love only the woman who lies with you among the flowers and laughs and sings. You must love also the woman who will bring the whole world to wrack and ruin if she loses you again, and who will scorch the earth to save you."

He did not look away. He only said, "You will not do evil in my name or for my sake. If it comes to that, remember this moment, and that I made you swear it."

She nodded solemnly. "And so I do swear it."

A strange and unexpected relief flowed through her, and something in his expression relaxed. He dropped the forgotten boot to the floor.

"Think you I do not know the fire in you, that I have loved the memory of some sweet and guileless girl? Such a one could never burn so bright and hot that I am kept warm by the memory for eighteen long years."

He leaned forward to catch her hand, and pulled her toward him until she was close enough to kiss soundly. "I only ask you do not make such a tangle that you must threaten to scorch the earth again."

She gave a choked laugh into the side of his neck, settling into his lap. Now, with his arms strong around her, she began to tremble a little. "I am sorry," she said again. "He suspected you because of me. Whatever might have befallen you, it would have been my doing."

"Well," he said with his mouth against her temple, a smile in his voice, "You might have confessed it to Mortimer and spared him that scene yesterday."

"I thought of it," she told him, and felt him stiffen in surprise. "I would have, but I feared he would only accuse us both of acting as one."

She kissed him again, to stop the shaking that had taken root deep inside, reaction to the threat of losing him. He was warm and alive and in her arms, and eventually his hands were pushing off her headdress, his mouth on her neck. She found the ties to his jerkin and pulled at them until it was loose, then answered the low rumble of desire in his throat by keeping her mouth on his as she stood and pulled him to the bed.

He was only a little taller, and their eyes were level when they stood like this. It struck her again, how good and gentle he was, how there was nothing menacing or intimidating in his person or manner, and never had been. "In faith, you meant it," she asked, still a little disbelieving, "that you love even the ruthless part of me?"

He held her face in his hands. "I will tell you true, Eluned, that there has been only one thing in you that has ever given me pause. It is no failing of yours, but my own vanity." He hesitated, and she saw resentment in the set of his mouth for the barest instant. "You stopped loving me, when we were parted. You put it away, like a deck of playing cards, when I could not. It is an easy thing to forgive, for we were so certain never to meet again, and now I can see that I should not have held on so tight to it for so long."

"You think..." She blinked at him. "You think I stopped loving you in truth, for all those years?" She shook her head. "I will love you until I die, Robin. I said that once, and meant it. It was as true then as it is true now."

But she could see he did not fully believe her, that he thought she spoke pretty words only to soothe him. Her hands covered his, where they rested at the sides of her face. She tried to conjure the words to make him understand, but knew there were none. "Cariad," she whispered, and pulled away from him.

The ivory box was on the mantel shelf, and the key was on a long ribbon in the purse that hung from her belt. She took it out, pausing a moment to stroke a finger over the silver button that hung with the key. How small and how important, these sentimental tokens of young love. She reached into the ivory box, then turned back and walked the few steps to where he stood. He had dreamed of this, he said – of loving her as they grew old together. How could he think she would not dream as far and as long as he?

She kissed him as she had used to do in a secret clearing, in a time and a place that was theirs alone. And just as he had done every time they met, she slipped the little stone into his palm. He raised his hand between them, looking at it in amazement, its rosy sheen undiminished by the years.

"It hurt too much to want you, when I knew I could not have you." She lifted his other hand and kissed his fingers. "But never did I stop loving you."

"You kept it," he breathed, still staring in wonder at the humble pink stone. "All those years, you kept it."

She waited for him to raise his eyes to hers again. "I knew I could not call you to me. But I wanted to, my Robin. I always wanted to."

They followed the ritual, begun when they were young and interrupted for too many years: their mouths joined, the stone passed between their hands, their clothes falling away as they reached for one another. He kissed her, made her all his own again, and she called up the best parts of herself to give to him in unreserved joy.

––––––––