Chapter Sixteen

Will saw the change in Margaret at once when he returned with his mother's husband. Lord Robert was an astonishingly genial man – astonishing only because he was so unlike Lady Eluned, and because the two were very clearly besotted with one another. Where Eluned caused most everyone in her wake to brace themselves, Lord Robert caused them to forget their worries, with an ease and warmth that all the king's court envied.

But even his good cheer could not banish the tension in Margaret as they all sat at the high board and drank his excellent wine. She was pleasant and hospitable, but William saw the way she angled herself slightly away from Lady Eluned, how empty was her smile and how eagerly she left them to go to the chapel.

He watched his mother closely, but she gave nothing away. She rarely did. When he found himself alone with her, he considered probing in some subtle way to find what had happened between the women. Instead, he stumbled into corners of his mother's territory he had never intended to go.

It began innocently enough, with her questioning Henry's education.

"He has not asked to study with the bard?" she asked Will, and he knew it was no simple inquiry born of curiosity, no matter how bland was her tone.

"Nay, he is content with Master Edmund's lessons."

"The same wisdom and more could he gain from Gwenllian, did he humble himself to learn from his mother." Eluned frowned just enough for faint lines to cut across her upper lip. "But he is of an age to scorn his parents now. It is why I thought him likely to wish to study with the bard, because the Welsh consider a boy is become a man at his age."

When she had been lady of this place, the bard was a man who had served her own Welsh family, and was greatly esteemed. That man's sons now served Ruardean, though they were rarely called upon. Will found little use for Welsh bards except when there were visitors to entertain.

"Will I send Henry to the Welshry, then, to hear their poetry? Or do you prefer I summon them here to the hall where they may sing in the evenings?"

Though her expression did not change, he felt her surprise.

"Nay, if you think there is no advantage in it for him, then to be sure there is none. It was but a notion."

There was nothing to do with the Welsh that was merely a notion with his mother. But he let her say it, and let them both pretend he believed it. He told her of how they had gone into the Welsh villages, how Henry had ensured there was no miscommunication, how gladly he was greeted. "It pleased me to have him at my side," he said to her.

She nodded, then murmured something about the faded hanging on the wall of the solar where they sat. He said perhaps he would replace it; she answered that it had been commissioned by his grandfather and might be repaired instead. He thanked her for suggesting it.

This was how it went with his mother when they did not have clear and concrete affairs to attend. It was hard – damnably hard to find the ease of speech that came naturally with anyone else. If only he knew why she had come here. In four days of observing her, he had perceived no disapproval, no criticism, no undue curiosity. She and her husband were congenial guests who would bid farewell to Ruardean tomorrow, leaving Will to wonder if he had passed or failed some imperceptible test.

"The spyhole in that corner," she said suddenly, with a nod toward the place. "It is closed up?"

The spyhole in question was obscured by the deep shadow of a corbel, which meant his mother could only know it was closed up if she had already checked. And she would only have done that if she wanted to ensure they could not be spied upon. It caused the fine hairs along his forearms to rise up in anticipation of what she might say.

"By my command was it filled in, years ago." He meant to reassure her, but somehow it came out sounding almost patronizing. "None will hear what you say to me here, Mother."

Her hands folded together in her lap. She was as pragmatic and cool as ever she was, save for the way she did not look directly at him.

"Then I will speak plain. Your position at court is weakened. Nor do I know the extent of it, for I have lost my taste for intrigue. But I can see very well the damage done by Lady Margaret's foolish conduct."

"Aye," he acknowledged. He was as painstaking as she was, to keep any expression from his face. "The vultures circle."

"I do not doubt your judgment in these matters, nor do I say that you should seek my counsel in this." Her hands smoothed the fabric of her gown across her knees, a brief and uncharacteristic show of nerves. "But I would have you mindful of the danger."

He wasn't sure whether to be touched by her concern or insulted by it. "You think me careless?"

"I think you cannot know what poisons the Mortimers pour into ready ears at the king's court, nor what vile inducements they may offer to your rivals. They would have you on your knees, that they might trample you with ease." Her voice had grown tight, her coolness melting a little, and he watched her pause to regain a perfect composure. If not for the Mortimers, Will might never know his mother had a temper. "But you are a match for them. As I have said, I do not doubt your skill."

With a courtier, with his sister, even with the king, he would have smiled teasingly and wondered aloud why she had sought privacy if not to question his judgment or skill. Alas, she was Eluned – Lady of Darian, former ruler of Ruardean, daughter of an ancient noble Welsh lineage – and he had learned long ago that she was impervious to charm. His charm, at least.

"If not my skill, then there is aught else you doubt," he said, and watched her face so that he would miss nothing of her response. "It is better you are blunt than silent in this. What is in your mind?"

"It is not doubt, William, but simple curiosity. I would know why you have not yet cast your wife aside."

Her head tilted slightly, polite and attentive, poised to hear his reasoning. The question inexplicably irritated him – affronted him, even – and he took the time to bury that reaction. But the slight pause it required resulted in a fatal error: he waited an instant too long to reply. Just enough for her to sense the truth.

He must admit it, then. Evasion would be weakness.

"Such a scheme did not occur to me." He meant to say more than that curt response. Instead the idea unfurled in his mind – how it could be managed, how neatly he might disentangle himself, how easily Margaret might be persuaded to take herself off to a convent for the rest of her life. It was an obvious course, and yet… "Never did I think of it."

Eluned blinked. Her amazement was palpable. "You did not think of it," she echoed. "Not once?"

There was the barest hint of something like amusement in her. She had never mocked him before, and the idea that she was doing so now caught him at the throat. It was terrible, a half-forgotten sensation from his childhood, all those times he wanted to join in the games of the older boys, or tried and failed to best his sister in any physical match.

He was not a child anymore, though, and embarrassment could be buried as easily as irritation. He swallowed it down and said nothing.

"It would cost you much time and a fair amount of money, but it could be done," she continued. The trace of amusement had disappeared, as though it had never been. Now she spoke dispassionately of business, of lands and contracts and practical things. "You were both of an age when you married, but no doubt there can be found a spiritual relation of some sort between your father's family and hers. A pity your betrothal to Lancaster's girl could not be used in a suit for annulment."

"A greater pity that the fever took her, I think." He found himself staring into the hearth, his back to her, unaware of when he had moved away from her. It was not easy to keep a neutral tone when she so blithely made plans for him. "You think I should rid myself of Margaret – that it is the best course."

"Nay, I do not call it the best course, but the one most obvious to me in the limits of my knowledge." There was another careful pause, another long moment when her look burned along his spine, before she asked, "Why have you not considered ridding yourself of her?"

It sounded too much like reproach, too near to that earlier mockery. His anger flared up, an eruption of feeling where there should be none.

"Because she is my wife ." He made himself take a breath, but the fury still simmered, too obvious. There was no call for it, no reason at all except that he did not want to hear this. "She is the Lady of Ruardean."

"Aye," came the infuriatingly calm response. "And she is a threat to Ruardean."

"So too was my father. Why did you not leave him?"

His heart beat fast and violent, a throbbing all through his head. Never had he spoken so hostile to her, not in all his memory. And never did they speak of his father. Never.

He dared to turn his head just enough to see that her face was a blank wall, as it so often was – except for the pinch of her lip where she held back untold torrents. But she answered. She was not daunted, oh no. Not her.

"It was he who abandoned me. And you. And Ruardean." Her chin lifted, her tone taut. "What threat he posed I was well able to manage. And I pray you are not such a fool that I must explain how the world will indulge a man's madness a thousand times before it will embrace a troublesome woman."

It did not feel real, these words. That word.

"Madness," he echoed. He told himself this was a conversation like any other. A strategy of speech and silence, tidbits buried and surrendered as a matter of course. "Was my father mad in truth, then?"

Another fatal error, that he had failed to hide how much the answer mattered to him. She could see it, of course, every ounce of dread and hope. He watched the swallow in her throat, the tiny shift of her eyes away from him, and knew she was not unaffected. It mattered to her too. For just an instant he thought he had never felt so close to her, so like her, knowing that the air burned in her lungs as in his, that her stomach curdled too.

"Aye, he was mad," she said, as simply as though confirming that the fields were in hay or the rents had been collected. "He was no holy man, but beset by devils and visions without sense. It was madness."

The worst of it, the most mortifying, was that her eyes were softened with a tender pity. It said what he already knew – that he should have understood this years ago, that any doubt should have died out by now. That there was no fool greater than one who refused to look squarely at the truth.

The hearth behind him held no fire, no warmth for him to lean into. He pressed his back to the cold stones and stared at the rush mat beneath her feet while she spoke.

"Never did he seek to preach or bid others follow him, nor did he ever speak heretical thoughts, else the Church would not have tolerated him," she continued. "And in truth, they were persuaded to look more favorably on his ravings when he so readily opened his purse to them. But I warn you, William – I warn you most earnestly that if his enemies had been set upon his ruin, all his wealth and my guile together could not have saved Ruardean."

The urgency in her voice reached him as through a fog. A warning. He was to believe it was a warning.

"Is this why you are come here? For fear Ruardean will be lost?" He shook his head, rejecting it. "Full well do I know you loved to rule here, but I have seen you have no real care for this place."

"Ruardean is yours ." Her voice rose, all her cool composure replaced with a breathtaking vehemence. "It is your strength. Your honor and your name. I will not let it be taken from you, and I am come to warn you of the threat to it. If you will use your wit you may be free of that threat, and Lady Margaret happier in the abbey. She is far more suited to that life, and you are well rid of such a woman. Only see what her carelessness has cost you already. She has not even a fraction of the wit or the worth required to be lady to –"

"She is my wife before God!" He shouted it, incensed at her insults, his voice ringing through the room. "Her honor is my own. Nor will I disavow her only for your fear of the Mortimers." He stepped forward, full of his own warning. "You would do well to remember you no longer rule here, lady. My position is not so diminished that you may speak freely with a venomous tongue."

He might have said more if not for her reaction. It was the way her eyes darted briefly toward the door, quick to find an exit. How her whole body tensed – just for an instant, like an animal poised to run from danger – all of it so clearly involuntary.

She was braced. She was fearful.

With a sudden, sinking sensation, he heard Gwenllian's haunted voice, saw her pale face as she said, You are the very image of him. And then she had described how she clung to their mother while his father dragged her away.

Will looked down at his hands. They had curled into fists. He forced his fingers to loosen, and stepped back until he felt the stone of the mantel again.

"Your pardon," his mother was murmuring, so soft and coaxing, so full of conciliation when it was he who should be begging pardon. He wondered how often his father had heard her speak so. How often she had had to appease him in his ravings. "Never would I wish to give you insult, by my hope of heaven. Pray forgive–"

"What we do for love." He said it suddenly, a burst of words because he could not bear to hear her apologize. Because there was a pain in his chest, too close to his heart. Because he had no control of his tongue, or of all the many things that hid beneath it. "You said to me once, the things we do for hate, and those we do for love – they come back to us, one by one."

She had said it a lifetime ago. It had been almost like a dream. He could still feel the coolness of her fingertips against his face, soothing and sweet as she said it. Such a strange moment of calm in a tempest. It had confounded him because he knew it was real. Nothing to gain, no manipulation or strategy or even plain good sense. Just one real moment of warmth from a loving mother, long ago and far away.

Now her fingertips were pressed tight against her hands, the flesh gone white beneath the nails.

"You care for her," she said.

"And you do not." He tried to think why it mattered, why they were even discussing any of this at all.

"It little matters what I feel for her."

There was still a placating note in her voice – dismissing herself, soothing him. In other times, in another conversation, he could admire her for being so deft at it. But now it only shamed him.

"You need not shrink from me, lady. I am not my father."

"To be sure," she agreed. "You are nothing like him at all, except in appearance."

How naturally it fell from her lips, as simple as confirming the sky was blue. He supposed he had waited all his life to hear her say it. He supposed he should feel relief.

"Nothing like him, but still I am unworthy of ruling this place." Best to say it all now. Have it out in the open. Why not? When would they ever speak like this again? "Never will I be what I should – is that not so?"

"What harsh words are these?" She drew her brows together in dismay. "Who dares to think you unworthy?"

"Nay, it is never said. But they look at me so closely, you know. Every time." He could not move, could not take his eyes from her. "One asked me if I am my mother's son. I know little Welsh, but enough to understand that."

A guarded look came into her face, and all at once he was certain – another thing he might have known already, if he had truly wanted to. But the last Welsh uprising was more than a decade ago, and those who had openly fought King Edward were naught but bones in the blood-soaked earth now. The few whispers at court about his mother had stopped years ago. They had been mere hints of suspicion, the king's closest advisors carefully assessing what Will knew.

What he had known was nothing at all. He had been a boy in Lancaster's household, a child ignorant of anything his mother did. Then he had become a man, and kept himself ignorant. Until now.

"You knew Llewellyn well," he continued, amazed at how calmly he could speak. "Your own brother fought for him, and your uncle." He spared a thought for the Welsh Prince Llewellyn, whose life was spent in the vain pursuit of freeing Wales from English rule. He was dead too, and his whole family destroyed for his efforts. "It would have been a boon to the Welsh, to lend the force of Ruardean to the fight. And by God, you have always had the daring. And the wit."

She did not tremble or grow pale, nor show any outrage. He accused her of treason, and betrayal, and her only reaction was to press her lips together and avoid his gaze. She stood and paced the few steps to the window where she looked with unseeing eyes onto the forecourt, her fingers twisting together in agitation.

His unshakeable mother was shaken. It was all the confirmation he needed.

"It would have cost me Ruardean," he said. "My strength, my honor and my name, as you have lately said." He tried to find his anger, and could not. There was only a distant kind of pain at having to say it out loud. "Even then, you thought me unworthy."

"Nay," she said in a voice so fragile that he scarcely recognized it. "Never that. You were more than worthy, else I would never consider such a scheme. I knew well you could recover from any blow. Just as I knew my Welsh kinsmen could not."

He spared a moment to try to imagine how he might have recovered from such a thing. No doubt she was right and he would have found a way. He so often did. But he had not needed to.

"Why did you not do it, in the end?" he asked.

"Many reasons. Most of all because Gwenllian refused to be part of it. She was certain we could not win. And without her, we could not."

He closed his eyes against this thrust. It had been bearable until now, until this. God, what a fool. He had thought she would say political considerations, or financial restraints, or fear of the king's wrath – and some part of him wanted it to be him, that she had decided against risking the damage to her son's fortunes.

But it was none of that. It was worse. It was his sister. His sister, who would have commanded the men of Ruardean in a rebellion against the crown, because their mother was that daring, that brash.

She said no more, and the silence pressed down on him, like the weight of an unbearable sadness. He would have found himself on the opposite side of a war from his sister. His mother had planned that.

"And how would I have recovered from that blow?" he finally asked. "Did you not consider that at all? My sister. Who I loved so well, and admired above all." He tried to imagine it. "You would have torn us asunder. You would have made us enemies."

Now he looked at her. She seemed small, her arms wrapped tight around herself, the barest tremble in her chin. For a moment he wondered if she would weep, and what he might feel if she did.

"I hoped…" She stopped, staring at nothing. "It tormented me. Nor could I even think of it without my heart would ache. But you cannot –" She bit her lips together, then took a steadying breath. "I pray you never know what it is to choose between the fortunes of your child and the destruction of your people."

Her face was ashen, her voice threadbare. He wanted to say that the Welsh were not destroyed, that they lived and prospered as much now as they had under their own princes. But that was a lie to be told only to the credulous who did not see, as his mother surely did, the ways the Welsh were treated under English law. He could not deny they had fought for good reason. But it was not a fight that was ever his.

"I will pray instead that I am never compelled to choose between my children." He said it to the tight tangle of her hands, to the cool green silk of her gown. "Haps I will send one to foster when still in swaddling, as you did, to make such a choice easier."

She shook her head faintly, a distracted denial. "It was not my choice, but your father's command."

"You chose in other ways." It was not chance that had kept him from the Welsh cousins whom his sister adored, and all the many things that came with that close connection. But he was not angry. He understood it now. He understood. "Nor can I fault you for it. You could not want me near when I was so like him."

Her chin tipped up, her eyes fixed on the ceiling as though the words she must speak were written there. "Nay," she answered, fragile and thin – and now he thought she truly might weep. "Because you were so like me."

She turned to him, but did not meet his eyes. Instead she looked fixedly at some point between them, and he wondered dimly if this was the mother his sister knew. Doubt and sorrow, regret and relief. She was so suddenly, painfully human.

"Even as a boy," she said. "You were so clever, so quick to see everything, so cunning and so… And I feared your spirit too would twist into my likeness, as I was then. Hard. And sharp. And bitter." Now she looked at him, her eyes clear. "I have feared it all these many years, more and more with each passing season." A woeful shadow of a smile touched her lips. "Until now. Until I am come here and see…"

He made himself breathe, made his lips move to ask, "See what?"

"You care for her," she said simply. "In despite of yourself, and more than you know, you care for her."

Margaret. She meant Margaret, and he did not bother to pretend she was wrong. "Yet you would have me put her aside."

She nodded, the flood of emotion receding from her features, her control returning. "For the danger she poses, I can only wish her far from all that I hold dear. But you care for her. And you are no fool, William. You can see there is much more to her than she would have you believe."

He looked at her and thought of his wife, of the new caution in her since his mother had spoken to her. For all Margaret's secrets and scheming, she did not have a ruthlessness in her as Eluned did.

"Aye, there is more to her," he conceded, because this was the moment to ask. It was the moment of opportunity, never mind that he was exhausted. "What said you to her, when you spoke private with her?"

But it had ended, the fragile thing that had existed between them for these few minutes. It blinked out of existence as he watched. Her face was like a door closing, swift and secure. It became a blank wall that told him nothing, and everything.

"We but played at chess." She met his look calmly, adding a careless little lift of her shoulder to convey how unremarkable it was. "We spoke of naught but the game. The many ways a queen may shield an imperiled king, and how the other pieces might be sacrificed in service of saving him."

Pieces to be sacrificed. Like his sister in battle armor. Like himself, an ignorant child at court as she plotted against his king.

"A welcome change for her, I am sure," was all he said. "With so much penance, she has surely grown weary of speaking of God and the saints."

They were empty words meant to fill the space between them, preparation for ending this meeting. The restrained geniality had seeped back into the room, settling over them like a calm after the storm.

"We spoke a little of those too." She paused a moment before taking a breath. "Well. That is all I had wanted to say to you and more. I will go now and see that all is prepared for our departure on the morrow."

He watched her move toward the door and let himself feel nothing. Later, he thought – later he would decide whether he admired or deplored her. For now he only noted her straight back, her stately bearing and measured pace as she left him.

But then her step paused. She turned slightly, and the sight of her cool, expressionless profile stopped his breath. He had found her just so, in this very room, after his father died. She had stood before the window, still as a statue, imperturbable even in the face of great upheaval. For a moment he had wondered if it was an illusion – if beneath her still composure, she was devastated. Vastly, irreparably devastated.

All these years later: the same room, the same woman, the same distance between them. He did not know why he had ever thought it could be different.

"I have never thanked you," she said now, and she was achingly human again, unbearably real. "For my husband." Her eyes were fixed on the floor. "Did you not ask me to marry, I would even now live with the sisters of Saint Anne. I would yet be as I was then – wretched and bitter and…" Only her hands moved, fingers curling into tight fists and then relaxing again. "I love him. With all my flawed heart. I let myself love him, do you understand?" She turned her eyes up to him, and they were all softness and truth. "It has given me the greatest happiness I have ever known."

There was a whisper of silk over the rushes. Then her hand was on his shoulder, a light pressure that pulled him down as she rose up on her toes. She pressed a quick, almost furtive kiss to the corner of his jaw. "It is all that I wish for you." Her palm on his cheek, her breath against his ear, the vital urgency in her whisper. "Don't forget."

And then she was gone.

That evening, Will had cause to learn that habit was a more valuable commodity, a more potent thing than he had ever properly considered.

It was habit that let him sit through the meal and speak with bland courtesy to his mother and her husband. Habit kept him smiling pleasantly while the musicians played and the people danced, a merry farewell of an evening for the honored guests. Habit made him avoid drinking too much of Lord Robert's excellent wine and slipping into a reverie. It stopped him from re-examining everything his mother had said and everything his sister had never told him. Everything he had wrongly decided to believe for so long.

In his bedchamber he stretched out alone in the dark, and gave in to his habit of dwelling far too much, too deeply, on insignificant details. He thought of how the past might have unfolded, how young he might have been when Ruardean declared against the king, and what he might have done. He contemplated why his sister had hidden it from him, whether her silence meant that she would have done it – that she had wanted to do it.

He wondered if any of it even mattered anymore.

There were better things for him to consider, more important things: the spite of the bishop, the treachery at court, all the marvelous deceptions of his wife and where they seemed to be leading. He tried to turn his mind to them, but all he could hear was the urgent whisper: It is all that I wish for you. Don't forget .

He found himself at Margaret's door, looking at the lamp that burned low and steady beside her bed. The bed curtains were parted, her sleeping form facing the door as though she had fallen into slumber while watching it. Long, long after the hour when it was his habit to come to her, she had waited for him. He imagined walking to the bed, slipping in beside her, the warmth beneath the blanket that would spread through him like a sweet ache.

It was…imprudent, to come to her in this mood. Unwise to seek her out when his thoughts were in chaos. But she sighed in her sleep, and he stopped caring how ill-advised it might be.

When he came to her side and snuffed out the lamp, she stirred. There was the sound of the bedclothes rustling open, her warmth against his forearm, her scent rising up to welcome him in. His body lowered, slow and heavy, until his head rested beside hers, their noses almost touching.

"You are weary," she sighed, still full of sleep.

"Weary and more weary," he agreed. "As a bark buffeted on the sea, tossed from wave to shore and back again." It did not sound like something he would say. He should have hidden it, but habit failed him. It so often did with her.

"Mmm. So too was I weary after speaking with your mother."

His hand found her heavy braid and swept it over her shoulder. He let his arm rest there, draped over her, holding her loosely.

"What did you speak of?" It was a question born of habit, the instinct to ask while defenses were down. He felt her stiffen just slightly. She was coming more fully awake now, considering what she should say, which face to show him. "Nay, do not tell me," he said quickly, before she could speak. His lips moved lightly across her forehead. "Do not tell me."

He could feel her waiting for him. Her face brushed against his, nuzzling, her fingers coming to rest at the base of his throat, her body silently welcoming him – no more than that. Every night he felt the urge in her, to reach out to him, to put her hands on him, to touch him as he touched her. Every night he let her pretend it was some notion of sin that restrained her.

Tonight he was too tired of games. He did not want to guess, or tease, or coax. He wanted only to lay here in her warmth. So he did just that, for a long time.

At length, she spoke. Just above a whisper, sure and gentle. "Your lady mother did not come to catch you unawares." Her palm moved softly at his shoulder, a soothing touch. "She is here for the love she bears you."

"Love." His scornful laugh did not escape; it stayed in his chest and curdled into something that lodged hard against his breastbone. "To love me would gain her naught."

Her hand came to rest, warm and soft against his neck. "Love does not seek to gain. It cannot, or else it is not love."

The ache pressed up from his breastbone to his throat, under his tongue, behind his eyes. She made it sound so simple. He opened his mouth to explain that it was nothing to do with love. But he was too infernally tired.

His body shifted, moving lower, until her heart was beneath his cheek. She said nothing more, only smoothed his hair back from his temple over and over again, slow and rhythmic. She let him lie there, her breath falling on his temple, her heartbeat his companion in the dark.