Chapter Nine

Each morning, Will told himself not to seek her out. It was curiosity that pushed at him, as though there were anything to find besides the same tiresome woman he had known for years. Better to wait until nightfall and then enjoy who she became in bed.

And yet each day, he found himself observing her in daylight: the rigid spine, the incurious eyes, the ceaseless prayers. Dull and drab by day, blazing to life at night – the contrast proved irresistible.

"Think you there is no greater sin, Henry, than unbelief?"

Will paused outside the solar when he heard Lady Margaret's voice within. He had expected to find her instructing Henry, but he had not expected her to pose the question as though a boy so young might have some fascinating insight into Church doctrine.

"Heresy is the greatest sin," Henry promptly responded. "To know faith and reject it is a more grievous sin than the absence of faith."

"Aye, so does Thomas Aquinas teach us, whose wisdom was surely inspired by the Holy Spirit." Now she was almost apologetic, reluctant to boast of her own learning. "But what of actions? If a man rejects the faith but, for instance, performs the seven bodily mercies – can we then say such a man is less worthy of heaven?"

He entertained thoughts of ravishing her in the daylight, driving the tedious words out of her mouth and replacing them with her delightful moans. But there was the inconvenient matter of his nephew, whose ears were now turning pink as he gave his answer.

"Nor do I know what Thomas Aquinas teaches in that regard. At Morency, I was not given much time for these studies." At Lady Margaret's surprised look, he quickly said, as though to defend his schooling, "Certes I can name the mercies. Feed the poor and give drink to the thirsty, clothe the naked and care for the sick. Visit the imprisoned. And…and bury the dead."

A silence followed, in which Henry seemed to wait for praise and Lady Margaret seemed to shrink as she considered whether to correct the boy. Though it was her duty to ensure Henry learned these things, it was obvious that the very idea of wielding even this smallest authority distressed her. As though confidence were a sin equal to heresy.

Will felt a familiar spurt of contempt at this display of meekness. But now it came with a sweet echo – the memory of her body rising up to meet his, her hot flesh tightening around him. It was probably another kind of sin, that the contempt made it all the more delicious.

"Shelter the stranger," he said, his voice cutting through the awkward silence in the solar. Lady Margaret looked up at him, her expression registering – was it pleasure? A flash of something, before turning her face down again. He looked to Henry, who had spun around to face him. "You forgot it is a Christian duty to shelter the stranger."

Henry nodded, spots of color staining his face. Then he frowned thoughtfully, a student who sought a point of clarification. "But for how long, Uncle Will? A lord cannot feed and clothe and shelter all the needy for a lifetime."

"Nay," he agreed. "Nor should he, for it weakens men to depend so fully on others to provide. A lord has many duties, not only those charged to him by the Church."

If he had not looked at her in just that instant, he would have missed it. The little tightening of her jaw, the minute flare of her nostril. Possibly anger, definitely disgust – and all of it buried beneath her air of humility. She must feel it too, that contrast of daylight loathing with nightly lust.

He watched her bow her head as though she might begin a prayer even now.

"To the yard, Henry," he said. "The master at arms awaits you. Your mother has only now spoken to him of your lessons."

Gwenllian had come back from Aderinyth yesterday, after ensuring that mother and child were returned home and in excellent health. Now she would pass a few days in seeing that Henry was settled here, before returning to her own home and other children.

Henry did not relish his practice with the sword, but he dutifully left them and went to it. In the quiet of the room after his exit, Lady Margaret did not look up. She only ran her fingers over her beads and silently gazed down at the table on which her book of hours lay open. It was a very plain and well-worn book. He had often wondered why she did not commission a new one with more and better illumination.

He meant to ask it. To suggest she find a scribe, consult the bishop about an artist – an innocuous conversation. Instead, he said, "You did not like the answer I gave Henry."

He watched her breath speed up almost imperceptibly, her fingertips going white where they squeezed the string of beads. Now the disdain rolled off her in waves, like heat from a fire. It was pure sanctimony, and it put a sour taste in his mouth. Her self-righteous judgment may add to the sweetness of bedding her, but in the moment it only angered him. His feet brought him forward until he stood just inches from her, waiting for her to answer.

"My lord spoke to the boy of a lord's duties, as is right and good." Did he imagine it, that anger beneath the cloying voice? "I know only a lady's duties, and none of those can have such great import."

He kept himself from scoffing outright. There were many ladies who, like her, did not concern themselves with anything more consequential than the management of a household. But there were also those like his mother, who had ruled Ruardean with a formidable cunning, or his sister who was capable of commanding armies. Even so, the management of a household was a skill that was very far from inconsequential, yet Lady Margaret's sad lack of imagination allowed her to believe it was.

"There is a matter of great import that falls to you now," he said, sure she would see it as such. "We will have the Bishop of Stowell as guest, in a week's time or more."

There was a moment, just barely a breath, where he was certain she was far from pleased at this news. But it was swept away by the delight that immediately poured from her. He found himself at the center of her radiant smile, as though he had given her a gift of incalculable worth.

"The bishop, here? Oh, what honor! Such great honor to this house and all in it, I will pray to be worthy, that we are all as worthy as you, my lord, whom he does esteem so highly–"

"Nor will he stay long," he interrupted. The pleasure at seeing her smile was lost, replaced with irritation at her effusive outpouring. "One or two nights only. I will trust you to see to his every comfort."

She nodded, beaming. "As we have lately said, my lord – food to the hungry, drink to him who thirsts, shelter the stranger. How great is our fortune that we are called to give succor to the bishop himself."

There was no one less in need of succor than the well-fed bishop. From anyone else, the words would be said with a wry twist of the lip, a scathing irony. But from her there was a guilelessness so complete that for the first time it seemed unnatural to him. Practiced.

He watched her very carefully as he asked, "Tell me true – what vexed you in my answer to Henry?"

The question did not catch her unawares. She only blinked, and drew her brows together. "I am not vexed, husband. But you did say to him that a lord has more duties than those given him by the Church, and I determined that I should pray for you to remember that our duty to God is paramount. If ever it is in conflict with the charges laid upon us by men, for our immortal souls we must do as God, and not man, bids us."

Beneath the gentle earnestness was a prim little chastisement, a phantom finger wagging at him to mind his catechism. He felt his temper rising again, as it ever did when he spoke to her for any length of time. He liked her better in the dark, when she did not speak at all.

"And if I tell you I take care to act with prudence and foresight, but seldom in consideration of my own immortal soul – what say you to that, Margaret?"

She blinked at the sound of her unadorned name on his lips. Then she put a hand to her breast, and protested, "You cannot mean it, my lord."

When he did not answer, she looked almost as if she might weep with happiness at a reason for more prayer.

"If my lord will not consider it, then it falls to me to beseech the Blessed Virgin to guard your soul and guide your hand, for the keeping of your everlasting life in the light of God is all my purpose and my joy."

To his great exasperation, she picked up the book of hours, going to her knees and beginning a prayer before the pages were even open.

"Stop, lady, there is no need–"

"Incline O Mother of Mercy thine ears of piety unto my unworthy supplications," she recited with a passion, "and be merciful to me, a most wretched sinner, and be unto me a helper in all things."

It was for show – loud proclamations of piety were always for show, no matter how genuine the sentiment behind them – and he knew well that he should not care about harmless prating. But his disgust was complete, his anger swift.

"Come," he said sharply. He grasped her arm, pulling her up from the floor. "Already have I commanded you in this." She only gripped the book tighter, lowering her voice to a whispered frenzy that beseeched the aid of John the Apostle. Almost was she weeping, near to losing herself in a religious ecstasy. He gave her arm a firm shake, and found himself almost shouting. "To the chapel with your prayers–"

Without warning, he felt himself grasped from behind and shoved against the wall. It was so sudden that it stole the breath from him, and filled him with wild confusion. He could see nothing of his attacker, just a blur that slammed into him so hard it lifted his feet from the ground.

All of him tensed in preparation to push off the assailant, to reach for anything that might be used as a weapon, but a forearm was pressed against his chest and held him like a vice. It pinned him against the wall as he gasped and stared, all thoughts of defense draining away.

It was Gwenllian. Of all people, it was his sister who looked back at him.

He choked out her name, struggling for air in the aftermath of the blow she had dealt him, but she only glared as though he were an enemy set against her. There was no confusion in her. She meant to do this. To him.

He could not fathom why, and now his confusion was swiftly outpaced by anger. It was such an alien feeling; he could not ever remember being truly angry with her.

"Release me," he said at last.

Her answer was to press him harder to the wall, forearm against the base of his throat. He found one of his hands was free and tried to push her away, only for her to capture his wrist and smash it to the stone wall, holding it there immobile. He stared at her, unbelieving, wondering dimly if he must fight her off in earnest to be free.

"Lady Gwenllian! He meant me no harm." Lady Margaret's voice came from somewhere near, but he did not turn to it. Gone was her breathy diffidence, replaced now with a firm reassurance. "Look you and see there is no hurt on me."

Gwenllian blinked at this, but did not otherwise move. It dawned on him that his wife had already understood what he only now began to grasp.

He forced his lips to move, and tasted blood. "You think me so villainous, sister?" He asked it low, his lungs filling with fury and shame, that she would think so little of him.

At his words she changed, a kind of consciousness coming into her face. The warning glare was gone, replaced with a faint but growing dismay. Suddenly instead of looking at a deadly foe, he was looking at his sister again. Yet it was Gwenllian as he had never seen her, uncertain and fearful.

"Leave us now, Margaret," she said.

"But–"

"Go you now. Go ."

It was a command as might be heard on a field of battle, and Margaret seemed to recognize it as such. He felt her look pause on him as she passed by, exiting swiftly, leaving them alone. In the silence, he stared at his sister, and waited. There was a throb of pain in his lip. Heat engulfed his whole head until his ears burned.

Her arm fell away at last, freeing him. He watched the red in her face fade, all her color draining away to leave her a sickly white. Whatever fury and incredulity that was in him vanished when she said, "Will, I…" She swallowed. "You look so like him. I thought… In faith, it were like he lived again."

He could make no sense of that. She seemed not even to see him as she whispered, "You are the very image of him."

Their father. She meant their father.

All of him went still – breath and heart and mind. Above everything, he noted that she would not look at him. His fearless sister could not look him in the eye.

Often he had heard how much he looked like his father, but never before had anyone looked so sick at the very thought of it, as his sister now did. It bewildered him. All their lives, she had never spoken ill of their father. She bristled at the insults against him, challenging anyone who dared to call him mad in her hearing. Their father's great failing, she had always said, was that he was too fervent in his prayer – so fervent that he neglected Ruardean.

Long ago Will had decided to believe in her version of the past, of their father. He had not questioned it, or her. Ever.

Now he must correct that error.

"Tell me, Gwenllian." He watched her eyes close, the faint movement of her head that tried to say no. "Say me what fears came to you that you must constrain me when you mistake me for him."

When she looked up, her gaze went no higher than his chin. "There was a time – it was long ago. He was… not well. I had forgotten it until this moment." She shook her head a little, her voice weakening. "Nay, never did I forget. I only have not thought of it for many years."

Now she stepped back from him and fumbled with the pouch tied to her belt. Her hands reached in with halting movements to pull out a square of linen. Of course she would tend to his lip, small though the hurt was. What wounds we cause, we are honor-bound to heal if we can , she had so often said.

"Tell me," he said again, when she was silent too long.

She nodded, and he watched the color bloom unevenly in her face, patches of red appearing in the pallor, just like her son.

"We were in the tilting yard watching the men at their practice. Mother was telling me tales of gallant knights, and he..." Water from her flask spilled to the floor as she wetted the cloth. She stared at the puddle at her feet, and he tried to remember if he had ever seen her hands less than steady. "He was so large," she said. "Bigger than all the other men. Like you. He seized her, and dragged her away. He threw her into the chapel. He shouted at her that she must repent."

She stopped to close the flask, then used the wet cloth to wipe gently at his mouth and chin.

"Repent of what?"

The cloth pressed at the corner of his lip. She was recovering some of her efficient, business-like manner. "It little matters. Sit you down, that you may tilt your head back and slow the blood a little."

He moved only a step to his right to avoid the spilt water, and slid easily to the floor, ignoring her protest. "Repent of what?"

"I know not, Will. Nor did I know what strife was between them." One hand turned his chin upward, the other pressed the linen firmly against the throb at his lip. She knelt on the floor before him. "I tried to hold fast to her. I kicked him. Our cousin pulled me off and said…" Her eyes met his finally, an infinite sadness in them. "He said I must let it happen, for it was her husband, and there was naught anyone could do to stop him."

There was a burn at the back of his throat, like a poison swallowed. When he could withstand her look no longer, he tipped his head further back to stare at the ceiling.

Stupid. He was so stupid, in the same way that had caused him to silently mock other men. But in the end he was just like them. Just another fool who had invented an easy story to tell himself. Now his mind worked furiously to sort through it all. To discover what it meant – what it had always meant, and he had not known.

It meant that his father had never been a sensible and admirable man, beloved of his lady wife and a good lord to his people until he went to Jerusalem. Or perhaps he had been some of those things, once. But no man in full possession of his wits could treat Eluned of Ruardean so. Few women were as formidable as their mother, so sharp-witted, and proud, and strong.

Though there was little warmth between him and his mother, it was yet painful to think of her so humiliated. Now he remembered that when, after fourteen years, his father's bones were brought from the Holy Land to the chapel at Ruardean, his mother had asked if they were certain it was him, certain that he was dead. And then she had laughed a wild laugh.

Not from shock and grief, as he had always believed, but relief. It was relief at finally being free of her husband.

And then Will had asked her to marry again, immediately. He had thought only of the advantages the match would bring to them both – had even told himself she would be grateful to have a husband again. It had also neatly taken her away from Ruardean, and allowed Will to rule it without her interference.

"What else?" he asked, and pushed the cloth hard against his swollen lip until all his face ached with the pain of it.

He could hear Gwenllian pause in rummaging through her bag, and glanced to see she had brought out some leaves and a small phial of some healing concoction. "There is naught else." She sorted through the little leaves on her palm. "I only remember that she told me later that I need not worry for her, and that I should pray his mind be not grasped by such a fever again."

A fever. A simple explanation to give a child. Just a fever.

"And did you pray?"

She shook her head slowly and said, "I wept." Suddenly she was holding back tears, a shimmer beneath her lashes that was gone in an instant. She dropped a pinch of leaves into the phial. "I whispered curses instead of prayers, and I wept. Mama began my lessons with the sword then, to distract me."

Blithe, unwitting Gwenllian. She was not like their mother, or like Will. She did not look for the intent behind every action and reaction, and so she thought the new study was only a tactic to distract a child from her weeping. All these years, he had wondered why someone as clever as his mother would take the risk of teaching her daughter in secret to fight as well as any knight. But of course it was for this – so that Gwenllian could never be easily dragged anywhere by a husband.

The old childish resentment pricked at his heart, as it ever did when reminded of how much care their mother had taken of her daughter, and how little of her son. It did not matter, though. It made sense now. It all made so much sense. But it did not matter.

"You were a child," he said. He concentrated on her sure hands emptying the contents of the phial onto a fresh cloth. Her confidence was soothing to see, an antidote to the black dread rising in him. "He was in his madness even when you were a child. Before he went to Jerusalem."

"Aye, it happened well before he left for the Holy Land."

"When?" She was dabbing the stinging medicine on his lip and did not answer. He grasped her wrist to force her attention. "When, Gwenllian? How soon did his madness start?"

She frowned at him. "Ever did he speak of God and devils, from the beginning of my memory. But only that once did I see him do violence." She gave him a probing look, all her attention trained on him. "Wherefore does the hour of it weigh on you so heavily? What meaning do you give it?"

He should stand up from this floor. He should say it was only curiosity, and seek out a strong wine to numb his lip, and never speak of it again. Instead he made himself hold her gaze. He made himself put words to the thoughts that had been buried in his boyhood, that she had unearthed.

"Do you not think the seed of madness is in me?" he asked. "That it is passed from father to son, and is like to ripen into fruit at the appointed hour?"

Surprise and then compassion softened her look – but it was Gwenllian, so compassion was not her chief response. She sat back on her heels and considered him, a faint line appearing between her brows. She shook her head, so certain.

"Nay, Will. Never have I thought it. Nor would I ever have so dire an imagining."

"Never?" He kept his eyes on hers as he brought his fingers to his torn lip, raising his brows. "Was it your great faith in my sound mind that caused you to restrain me, then?"

He watched the protest form in her, only to die before it left her lips. This was hardest, he decided – the silence that came from her while she searched her mind for a reasonable rebuttal. But there was none. Her instincts had already spoken for her.

"You look so like him," she said helplessly, almost a whisper now. Then her eyes fixed on his fingers pressed against his wounded lip, and the sight seemed to give strength to her voice. "My wits fled but for a moment, Will. Do not judge yourself by my fear."

He gave a gentle snort of disbelief. "Aye, because your fear is so common?"

She looked away and did not answer. Her fingers fumbled, retrieving a flat bit of jade stone from her bag. It was cool against his lip, soothing. So many ways to ease pain, so many cures at her fingertips. Yet there was nothing she could offer him to prevent the thing that had made their father a mockery of a man.

"Was he mad in truth?" he asked finally. "Or holy?"

She lifted a shoulder, a resigned ghost of a shrug. "Is there a difference?"

When he was a boy, he had asked Master Edmund that very thing, only to be treated to an overlong lecture about the faculties of reason and the Greek philosophers. The bare truth was that some men raved, and other men judged if it was holy or not. In the end they were the same thing: a life lived at the whims of moment and mood, full of visions and voices.

"Ever have I thought a change was wrought in him by the Holy Land," he said. "But you tell me his mind was fevered even before my birth. What age were you when you began the lessons?"

She was returning items to the pouch at her belt. "Eight years. But I know not if it was sickness or anger that drove him that day. Only our mother can say."

"Will you not ask her?" He watched her eyes widen, her head shake in refusal. "I must know, Gwenllian."

"Then it is for you to ask her." She held up a hand to stop his protest, with such a look of forbidding that it froze his tongue. "Nay. I will not speak of that time to her. Never."

Such vehemence. He turned his face up to look at the rafters again and considered. When Gwenllian had eight years, their father was the same age as Will was now. He supposed he need not ask his mother anything. "I need only wait," he said. "Soon we will see."

She came to her feet and stood over him, filling his vision with her judicious frown. "It is folly to think this way. Rarely is any sickness as simple as you have made it, Will. And there are things even you cannot control, or predict."

"If ever I do not try to control or predict a thing, then will you know my mind is weakened in truth." He smiled – or it was something close to a smile. Close enough to please his sister, at least, who was all too glad to end this talk.

The rest of his day was spent in restless wandering, while the scene his sister had described played over and over in his mind.

His feet took him to the chapel, and he stared at the place where they had brought the jeweled chest that held his father's bones. They were buried now, and Will had ordered a renovation of the chapel years ago. It bore little resemblance to what it had been when his father had lived. Voices carried through the space now, indistinct murmurings that had the rhythm of prayer – his wife and Constance, because of course they were here.

Margaret's eyes came up to meet his, her lips stilled as her friend continued the prayer. Her gaze fell to the bruise at his mouth, and she moved as though to stand and come to him. He turned and left, in no mood to battle her aggressive piety.

In the yard he watched his nephew train with the sword, letting the ringing sounds of metal on metal fill his head. When he could stand the noise no more, he drifted through the mews and the stables, past the orchard and the fishpond, and walked all along the curtain wall. It was his, as far as the eye could see and beyond. He had been born so that it could be put in his hands. It was his whole purpose.

When night fell, he stood on the wall-walk and looked at the fat sliver of moon in the sky. Thoughts of his father's strangeness, of his mother's humiliation, of the lies he had told himself – it all pressed in on him, for hours, until he was so weary that he stumbled as he climbed down.

He meant to go to his own bed, to sleep alone. But he found himself instead at his wife's chamber door.

She was awake, waiting for him, her hair already unbound. It flowed in a cloud down her back, as though she had spent the hours combing through it with restless fingers. When he did not approach the bed she came to his place in the shadows, a rustle of bed linens, the firelight illuminating her thin shift.

Now she would begin a prayer, or abase herself and ask forgiveness for a wrong she did not commit. She would be the virtuous lady who thought him wicked and full of sin, who barely tolerated him outside of their bed. He tried to brace himself for it.

But she said nothing at all. Her chin tipped up to look at him, her eyes dark and wide as they fixed on his mouth. Her brows drew together, soft concern as she looked at his small injury. Her fingers came to his jaw, a feather-light touch as she rose up on her toes. She pressed her lips gently, so gently, to the cut at the corner of his mouth.

It was sweet. So sweet. Like honey, dropping slow and heavy from her lips, sinking down into him. His whole body ached with the sweetness of it. He had not known there was such sweetness in the world.

He opened his mouth, slow and careful, remembering the stiff and certain rejection when he had tried to kiss her those many years ago. Now she was all gentle response, her mouth warm and inviting beneath his.

"Will you come to bed, my lord?"

Her voice was tentative, her breath a tease against his skin. He wanted to take her here, now, against the wall or down among the rushes before the fire. He wanted to stay here unmoving, her lips on his and nothing more.

"William," he said against her lips. "My name is William."

Her hands did not stray from his face, tracing lightly along his jaw. "William," she whispered, like a secret between them, and opened herself to his kiss.