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Day Three
Rhys
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Rhys arranged for the body to be sent to the laying out room near the chapel, which was still the best place to put John, even if he was a nobleman, and then they set off for the castle, plank in hand. Simon walked beside Rhys, matching him stride for stride.
“Such has been my self-absorption that I haven’t asked how it goes with you and your family,” Rhys said, welcoming the feeling of camaraderie with Simon. It really was starting to feel like old times. “You have a new son, I hear?”
He’d caught Simon by surprise—at long last. “How did you know?”
Rhys grinned. “Just because I didn’t reach out to you doesn’t mean I haven’t been keeping up.”
“He is well. My wife won’t let anyone else touch him, not even me most of the time. He eats night and day.”
“As he should. Your second, yes?”
“Second son. Third child.” His chin jutted out. “I would do anything to protect them.”
“As you should.” Rhys paused. “That’s probably why I haven’t married.”
Simon shot Rhys a sharp look. “Prince Edmund wouldn’t—”
“—hold my family hostage to my good behavior? Maybe you’re right about Edmund, but the king would. There is nothing he would not do if it served his interests. I temper my speech with everyone but you, but do not mistake me or my thoughts.” Rhys’s tone had hardened, involuntarily at first, but he let it continue. No lies, they’d said, and by God he was sick of hiding. It scourged his soul daily. Simon would never know how many times he’d been a hair’s breadth from letting him know he was alive. Always he’d held back, telling himself it was better the way it was.
It wasn’t.
Simon had to know the truth if they were to continue in each other’s company as more than just old companions thrown together one more time. “Just because words are not spoken does not change who I am and what I feel.” Then, in Welsh, Rhys added, just to be provocative, “Every nobleman in that castle has the blood of my people on his hands.”
Simon threw out his own hand. “Do I have to remind you where you are?”
Rhys felt a frisson of satisfaction. “So you do understand more than you let on.”
“I understand you. It’s speaking Welsh that eludes me.”
Rhys continued to stand his ground. “You are Norman, descended from a knight who rode with the Conqueror. I am Welsh, of a lineage that has opposed yours for over two hundred years. We have to accept we have differing opinions about the way things should be—and let it go. Even as I chafe at this new station I’ve had forced upon me, I have accepted you and your loyalties. I need you to accept mine.”
Simon opened his mouth to speak, but they’d reached the castle gate, and the commotion beyond the barbican brought them both up short.
Rhys swallowed hard at the sight of men and horses crowded into the small bit of space that wasn’t under construction and thus available for them to mingle in.
“Prince Edmund has come early,” Simon said softly.
“Are you sure you want to come with me?” Rhys said.
“I am no fair-weather friend, Rhys.” There again was the proper pronunciation.
Sure enough, three paces into the great hall, Guy fitz Lacy met them with a furrowed brow, and his words were for Rhys. “Prince Edmund wanted to see you the moment you appeared. I am to take you to him.” He looked Rhys up and down. “He will be pleased you are wearing his colors.” He strode away, expecting them to follow.
“It wasn’t as if I had a choice,” Rhys said as an aside to Simon. “I actually feared he might be angry I was wearing them without permission.”
“I find that unlikely,” Simon said prosaically, “but soon you will be before him, and then we will know.”
From in front of them, Guy laughed mockingly and then turned around, walking backwards and talking at the same time. “What’s that about?” He gestured to the board.
“Come with us to speak to the prince, and you will see about that too,” Simon said.
Rhys was prepared for humiliation, which was the last thing he wanted Guy to witness, but now that Simon had included him, he couldn’t prevent it. The corridor to the receiving room seemed very long. It irritated Rhys that he felt like he had as a youth, when he’d been caught up with Hywel in one infraction or another, and marched to see Hywel’s father.
Rhys told himself he didn’t owe Prince Edmund a thing. If anything, Edmund owed him for saving his life all those years ago. When Rhys had served both princes, he’d done so faithfully, without reservation or prejudice. He’d left Edmund for Llywelyn at the point he could no longer execute his duties with a pure heart.
With this new death of John le Strange, Rhys found himself in the very strange and unanticipated position of actually being able to help both king and prince again. Back in the Holy Land all those years ago, Rhys hadn’t thought the activities of the Baphomets or the Templars, for that matter, were directed at either royal brother. Maybe back then they hadn’t been. But if a Baphomet conspiracy had made its way all the way to Gwynedd, he was the logical person to root it out. And if it was someone using the Baphomets for his own despicable ends, there was no one more qualified in Gwynedd than he to discover that too.
Guy had led the way down the corridor, and now he opened the door to Edmund’s quarters, such as they were, given that this was a castle under construction, and gestured them inside.
As Rhys stepped into the room, Edmund swung around from where he’d been looking out the window, open to the sea air as few of the windows in the castle had yet been filled with glass. With a flick of his hand, he dismissed two men who’d been conferring with him, and they left by another doorway.
For a long moment, the two men gazed at each other. And then Rhys remembered his manners and bowed. “My prince.”
“Reese.”
By the time Rhys straightened, Edmund was only three feet away, and he kept coming, ultimately grasping Rhys by the upper arms and looking him over thoroughly. “You look well, particularly for a dead man. Thinner than last I saw you.”
Rhys’s slighter build must have been pretty obvious for Edmund to have noticed. Two years ago, Rhys would have said he felt much the same as he had as a youth when he and Simon had gone on crusade. At the time, he’d been heavier set with thicker shoulders from a lifetime of warfare.
Cilmeri had changed all that. Rhys was almost slender now, compared to when he was in his prime, thanks to the long recuperation from his injuries. He had headaches when the weather changed, and his knees creaked. And this last year had put white streaks at his temples, with more white in his beard.
By contrast, the prince was shorter than Rhys, with fine Norman features and dark hair he kept cut above his ears. At thirty-nine, he was six years younger than the king and only a year older than Rhys himself. But he’d developed something of a paunch since Rhys had last seen him, masked to some degree by expertly crafted clothing.
“My lord.” Rhys would have bowed again if Edmund hadn’t still held his arms. “I never thought I would stand before you again. And I would say the same about you, except for the latter observation, of course.”
It was a jest about Edmund’s rounded belly, and perhaps a daring one, but it broke the ice, and Edmund actually grinned. “That is prettier talk from you than I remember.” Then he waggled a finger at Rhys. “Except for casting aspersions on my weight.” He glanced over at Simon. “It was always you who was the diplomat.”
Simon bowed. “Do not misconstrue, my lord. The mind behind those pretty words remains the same.”
Edmund met Rhys’s eyes again. “You have hidden yourself away long enough, Reese. It is time you stepped back into the sun.”
Rhys cleared his throat. “My lord—”
“Don’t perjure yourself by telling me it was never your intent to deceive. Of course it was.” The prince barked a laugh. “But no longer. You will give me your pledge before another moment passes.” He finally let go of Rhys enough to gesture to the emblem on Rhys’s chest. “You wouldn’t be wearing that if it was a pledge you couldn’t keep.”
Rhys didn’t allow himself to sigh or give any indication that his appearance here was under duress. From the moment he’d heard the king was coming to Caernarfon, he’d known he was being confronted with a choice. He could have ridden away then, but he didn’t, and that meant he’d known this moment was possible—and had accepted it.
Still, until he’d walked into the room, he genuinely hadn’t known if he was capable of going down on one knee before Prince Edmund, just the two of them, without a phalanx of other lords between them. In the great hall after King Edward had arrived, Rhys had sworn, along with the rest of Tudur’s men, to follow him. When he’d done so, however, it had been as an anonymous knight, one of many who served Tudur. The king had accepted in similar fashion the fealty of a thousand men over the last year.
This was different. This was pledging his allegiance man to man, and Edmund would expect him to look into his eyes when he did it.
No lies, Rhys had said to Simon, but rarely in his life had he felt the desire to equivocate more than he did in this moment.
And yet, in the breath he took before he said, “Of course, my lord,” he found the answer he needed. By offering himself to Edmund, he could avoid pledging directly to Edward, at least for the immediate future. And it was even possible that Simon had known exactly what he was doing when he dropped his tunic with Edmund’s crest over the top of Rhys’s head.
Although he’d been blunt with Simon earlier, he had still kept back some of what he felt. What Rhys still hadn’t said out loud was that his feelings for Edward had gone beyond mere hatred to something that frightened even Rhys. Edmund, however, hadn’t been at the ambush at Cilmeri. His disagreement with Llywelyn had been that of one lord to another, over power and land. Like Simon, Edmund was a younger brother who did only as his lord commanded.
Like Simon, Edmund could be forgiven.
