FINALLY, AFTER FAR too many hours, the audience-chamber door was opened to let in the cool air of the September afternoon. The king, beginning to recover from being shut up with Gwilym the steward and Gwallter the chamberlain settling the state accounts of the past year, had been interrupted by a runner from the English border with disturbing news of Mortimer—after all these months, at last, concrete news of Mortimer, and astonishingly damning too. After receiving it in brooding silence and dictating several sharp responses to send back east at once, Noble could do nothing further for the moment, and he was trying to push it from his mind. Now he just wanted to be down on the tourney field with his men but there were other domestic duties to attend to first.
He did, however, indulge himself in a few moments of Gwirion’s prattling.
The prattling had sunk to this level: “Think of all the furrows you’ve ploughed, and never a seedling or even a weed reported yet. You haven’t the power to spawn. It’s God’s punishment upon you for seducing that darling bride of Christ when we were young.”
“She hadn’t yet taken the veil,” Noble insisted mildly, nostalgia pulling at the corner of his mouth.
Gwirion was already back to the present. “Face the truth, sire,” he said with a mischievous grin, knowing there was no danger he would be taken seriously. “Your wife is obviously having an affair. It’s another man’s son.”
Noble laughed a little, stretching across the leather chair back with leonine indolence. “Even for a fool, that’s dangerous territory.”
Gwirion rose to his knees on the cushion and leaned against the king’s shin. “She’s so distraught when she learns of your indiscretions. A little upset would be one thing, that would be her being a woman. But she becomes hysterical,” he insisted, although he knew she didn’t. Working within the inconvenient confines of reality was Noble’s burden, not his. He lowered his voice conspiratorially. “The one who cries ‘Foul’ the loudest is usually guilty of the very sin he denounces. That’s an ageless truth. I warn you, she’s been carrying on with another man.”
Noble, grateful for any trivial distraction, played it out. “And whom do you suspect?” he asked with all apparent seriousness.
“Well, sire,” Gwirion answered, equally straight-faced, “she’s very religious. Do you think it might be Father Idnerth? I think it might be Idnerth, sire.”
“He’s old enough to be her grandfather.”
Gwirion gave him a knowing look. “Some women prefer older men for their experience.”
“Of which Idnerth must have untold thimblefuls.” Noble laughed and stood up. “Thank you for bringing it to my attention. Go make mischief elsewhere. I must visit with my wife, assuming her living chastity belt will let me through the gates.”
“There’s no one left for me to make mischief with.” Gwirion frowned, also rising. “You’ve disposed of everyone who made good company.”
“I’m still here,” the king said expansively, affronted.
“I said everyone who made good company,” Gwirion corrected, and Noble, grinning, made an obscene gesture at him.
“Then go harass someone,” he said, picking up the Mortimer scroll from the arm of his chair. Turning toward the door, he was surprised to see Adèle standing at the threshold, in a dusty shaft of sunlight from a hall window. “There you are, Gwirion, practice on that.” He walked past the old woman without a greeting, and disappeared into the hum of the great hall.
Gwirion and Adèle stood for a moment staring at each other, two wiry bright-eyed creatures in their masters’ castoffs, aflame with mutual defiance. Suddenly Gwirion smiled and said heartily, without sarcasm, “I appreciate that you hate me as much as I hate you. It takes a certain courage for anyone, especially a mad old woman whom nobody likes, to be that genuine. But weren’t you going to persecute me? After that delicious fodder I provided? I almost offended my own sensibilities,” he said, confidingly.
“What has my poor girl ever done to you,” Adèle demanded, “that you would try to convince the king she’s been unfaithful to him?”
“He didn’t believe me.”
“Of course he didn’t, but you were in earnest.”
“I was not!” Gwirion said, laughing.
“That’s blood lust,” she insisted with intensity, as if she hadn’t heard him. “You’re a sick creature, and a demeaning influence on His Majesty.” She turned to walk away.
“Wait a moment, then!” Gwirion cried. “Why don’t you ever fret about His Majesty being a demeaning influence on me? Do you think I was born to be this way?”
She paused, looked back into the room, and for a flicker of a moment seemed on the verge of lowering her armor. “Do you think I was born to be this way?” she asked, quite earnestly.
“Of course,” he answered at once. “That face was never beautiful. You’re not going to be her midwife, are you? You’ll scare the wee one half to death, one look and he’ll try to climb back into the womb. Then he’ll rupture her spleen in the effort and she’ll die and it will all be your fault. There truly are such things as killing looks!”
THERE was a slightly awkward formality between them, and he would have to be the one to overcome it: He knew her pride was wounded that he now no longer sent for her, that both he and Gwirion were so casually blatant in setting up his trysts. It did not inflame her righteous indignation as it did Adèle’s, thank God, but it took a toll on her already rattled spirits.
“You are well?” he asked at last.
Isabel was having a difficult time of it, but she only nodded and adjusted her wimple in the mirror. The silver threads caught the fading daylight from the window and glittered prettily about her wide face, but they were stiff and confining and she would happily have traded the whole thing for a simple Welsh veil. Adèle still insisted on the wimple. “There is only the nausea, and Adèle has concoctions for that. I’ve invited Thomas for a visit.”
“You’ve what?”
“When I wrote my family, I invited Thomas for a visit.”
A cold hand closed over his heart when he heard this and he gripped the scroll harder. With effort, he kept himself calm and asked, “Are you sure it was wise to tell them?”
She frowned. “Why wouldn’t it be?”
“Your status has changed,” he said. “You’d make a far more attractive hostage now, carrying my child.”
Her eyes widened and she turned from the mirror to face him. “Noble, don’t be ridiculous. They’re my family, not my enemies.”
“No, I’m your family and they’re my enemies,” he said.
“You married me because you aren’t enemies anymore,” she said with some exasperation.
“Then why is your uncle acting like one?” Noble snapped.
She hesitated. “What do you mean?”
He threw the scroll down onto her bed, almost as if he were expecting a confession. “Mortimer tried to buy the loyalty of our eastern and southeastern guard,” he announced. “He’s been working on them for months. My men have been playing along with him to see what he’s up to—”
“Southeast?” she said, confused. “Your southeast border touches the deBraose lands, not Roger’s.”
“Yes,” he said, annoyed. “Our southeast border does. Either Roger is trying to hire my men as mercenaries to attack deBraose, which I would consider ungentlemanly but forgivable, or he’s trying to use deBraose as a shield to plan something against us. Which do you think is more likely?” She was too shocked to speak. “I’m sending more men to the area and I’ve already written deBraose and Prince John. This will be resolved quickly now. But nothing is what it seems at the moment, Isabel. I won’t stand any hostile elements having access to you.”
“You consider my own brother a hostile element?”
“Not Thomas,” Noble said impatiently, “Roger. Roger will see this child only as a prince of Maelienydd—a new target to dispatch.”
“All of that is over now,” she said firmly, with a frustrated sigh. “And justice was served, after all, he paid for his crime years ago.”
“No he didn’t,” Noble snorted.
“Yes he did,” she corrected. “Henry imprisoned him for two entire years. Do you know how extraordinary that is? For the English king to imprison an English lord for killing a Welshman?”
“For two years!” Noble flared. “Two years! What kind of punishment is that for regicide? Anyway, it wasn’t for regicide, it was for disregarding the writ of safe passage—it’s a debt Mortimer paid Henry Plantagenet of England. It has nothing to do with the debt he owes Maelgwyn ap Cadwallon of Maelienydd.”
She shook her head. “What are you talking about?”
“He owes me a blood fine.”
“What, an eye for an eye?”
“No,” he scoffed. “How pathetically English of you. It’s to prevent an eye for an eye. It’s the law of Wales—I thought you studied that this summer with my pudgy little judge; didn’t you bother with anything that wasn’t to do with my cock? The killer pays a fine—a galanas—to the victim’s family. And then it’s over.”
She tried, and failed, to imagine her uncle acquiescing to this. “And if it’s never paid?”
“Then we devolve to the barbaric customs of your own beloved nation,” he said dryly, “and it does become an eye for an eye. But it need not be Roger’s. Any Mortimer suffices.”
“Is that a threat?” she demanded sharply.
He had meant it merely as a barb, but her response made him think. “Only if you consider yourself a Mortimer.”
“Don’t play games about this, Noble—of course I’m a Mortimer. If I’m not a Mortimer, why did you marry me?”
“If you are a Mortimer, why did you marry me?” She blinked at him, and he nodded. “You understand, I hope, that I require an answer before I can allow you to see your kin again.” He left, pulling the door closed behind him, as the severity of this sentence sunk in.
She rushed after him and threw the door open again. “Noble!” He paused on the first step, his back to her, his broad shoulders silhouetted against the light from the hall below. “What exactly did you mean by that?” she demanded.
Without turning to look at her he said firmly, “I mean that I will not allow fraternizing between a Mortimer who is in physical possession of my heir and Mortimers who would like to dispossess my heir.”
“But I’m not a Mortimer, I’m the Lady of Maelienydd,” she said, trying not to sound desperate.
After a pause, he turned and with a cocked eyebrow appraised her. “Is that so?” She nodded. “I’m glad to hear it. The Lady of Maelienydd has no earthly reason for wanting to spend time with those wretched Mortimers, so obviously the issue of doing so, or even writing them, will simply never arise. Until the child is safely delivered and can stay in my custody should you make the questionable choice of discoursing with Mortimers, you shall not be discoursing with any Mortimers at all.” He gave her a politely triumphant smile and descended the staircase, not noticing Adèle in the shadows of the balcony. The old woman gave him a murderous look as he passed by her.
THE harvest feast that night, the feast of Michelmas, would include the official announcement of the queen’s condition, as well as a celebration of her birthday, but it was mostly a festival of thanksgiving for a successful harvest and an acknowledgment of the leaner months to come. It was the time of year when masses of Noble’s subjects migrated with their herds and flocks from summer farms in the hills to the winter dwellings closer in to the villages. The valley of Cymaron saw its population increase by nearly a third this month.
The hall had been swept, the floor covered with dried rushes and aromatic meadowsweet, and the heavier winter tapestries hung upon the walls. Some of these were new, brought by the queen from England and mostly religious in theme. Gwirion had stood in front of each of them in turn, caricaturing Christ and paraphrasing scripture—obscenely—with an exaggerated French accent, until the chaplain arthritically swatted him away. The other hangings, although not as colorful as the English ones, were old favorites of heroes, battles, and hunting scenes. Above the main door hung an elaborately braided ribbon of what looked like hay: the very last tuft of grain harvested that day in the king’s fields, brought into the court earlier amidst laughter and ceremony that Isabel could not begin to comprehend. Adèle assured her, bristling, that it was not Christian.
For the feast, hundreds of oaten threshing cakes with thyme and savory had been prepared; rook cakes with thyme and savory were baking; gallons of rabbit stew with thyme and savory had been seasoning for days. This year there would be an additional and exotic treat, wholly novel to the Welsh palette: a ginger dish, with neither thyme nor savory, that the queen’s woman had brought from beyond the border. Adèle was given a corner of the kitchen and enough eggs and milk to make jance sauce for several hundred—a chore even for her industrious hands. Marged the cook, proprietary and motivated as much by suspicion as curiosity, loomed over Adèle as she worked and insisted on sampling it before allowing it to be served to the king. With an unpleasantly surprised expression she spat it out, but having recovered, she demanded to sample it again and then, after another involuntary grimace, a third time. Gwirion, chuckling, pronounced it a success, reminded Adèle with a hopeful grin that he was waiting to be persecuted, and returned to the bustling hall to wrestle with his harp. Noble had bought him wire strings from Ireland, which he was having a calamitous time experimenting with. The bright, almost harsh sounds they made as he tried to tune the instrument reverberated off the rafters, and half his notes, it seemed, were swallowed up by the echo. “Crazy Irish!” he spat at last, and changed back to gentler horsehair.
IT was unthinkable to Noble to apologize for anything, but when he saw his wife approach the high table as the feast began, her face so grim within the pale wimple, he regretted what he’d said to her and drew her to him to whisper that she was free to welcome Thomas for a visit. She relaxed into his embrace, grateful and appeased; there was something more vital than mere affection binding them together now and her respect for that was visceral. But she couldn’t bring herself to reciprocate any show of affection, feeling Adèle’s eyes on the two of them: In Adèle’s very black-and-white world, the king was very black, and tonight Isabel lacked the energy to fend off her chastisements for weakening to him. Even she was getting weary of Adèle’s venom, although the old woman only ever deployed it in service to her mistress.
Hafaidd called out sharply for silence so that Father Idnerth might deliver his blessing. It was in Latin, which meant nothing to most of them, and almost at once he was competing with a dozen whispered conversations round the hall about more important things, such as who was joining in the peat-stacking party this year, or whose ailments had been healed magically by the old wise woman in the hazel grove. When Idnerth had said amen, the smith was given, as he always was at feasts, the first drink of the evening. “That’s because,” Gwirion called out approvingly, “a sod like you needs an early start to get at all inebriated!”
When the meal was over (Adèle’s jance sauce having been admiringly discussed but not much eaten), servants cleared away the board and trestles, and the guests gathered around an open space in front of the dais to dance and play games. Gwirion was in his element here, and despite her general resentment, Isabel finally saw a side of him that was not entirely repugnant to her. He was by instinct a common entertainer, and harvest was a time for common revels. Almost everyone had brought instruments of some sort—crwth, pipes, and harps of a dozen strings at most—and when Gwirion began a tune they all joined in, those without instruments singing. It was a raucous but innocent and truly joyful din and Gwirion, Isabel realized with grudging appreciation, was its natural conductor.
But when the third or fourth tune was in full swing, just as she was willing to concede that he might even have a winsome touch, the common entertainer in him once again appalled her. Carefully he laid his harp down on its back, then leapt up from his stool and in rapid succession grabbed a young woman and some half-dozen men out of the torchlit crowd. He steered them nimbly through a short, bizarre ritual in which the girl and one man were tossed into the air together by the other men, her skirts flying and their legs tangling together while everybody roared with approving laughter. Isabel had no idea what they were doing, but it seemed obscene, the leavings of some pagan fertility ritual of which Gwirion was a perverted form of minister, and at the end of it she was dismayed that the entire hall, even children, burst into deafening applause and cheering. She caught Adèle’s eye; the older woman shook her head. “Godless heathens all,” she mouthed in French, and exited calmly to the kitchen to prepare for Gwirion’s death.
AFTER about an hour the general hilarity of the crowd was softened by the ready flow of ale, and the guests’ instruments, at Hafaidd’s urging, were finally put away. Now there would be gentler entertainment in honor of the queen.
Gwirion (under orders he resented) began this too, leading a pack of village men through a Christian hymn in stunning close harmony, with more parts to it than a full English choir. Hywel the bard, his voice growing ragged from years of overuse, told a story of King Arthur’s heroic exploits that startled Isabel with its violence. Poets and musicians attached to the households of visiting lords contributed songs and stories, including one praising Noble’s maternal family line, which went back to Rhodri the Great and the legendary Elystan Glodrydd. There was a rash of obsequious toasts, and then the messengered greetings were read aloud; even Anarawd, the cousin who would no longer be the heir, sent warm regards that sounded plausible. The only moment that displeased the king all evening was a last-minute delivery on horseback: the proclamation of congratulations sent from Llewelyn of Gwynedd—a patently political move, nothing more than an excuse to have his status as Noble’s supposed peer trumpeted in front of Noble’s subjects.
Adèle hovered in the kitchen by the screens to the hall, watching the bustle of servants going in and out, waiting for one of the sewing bevy to pass through. Fortune favored her and Madrun, the most trusting and naive of the trio, entered through the screens, carrying an empty pitcher. She deposited it on the central table and was headed back toward the hall when Adèle called out to her and she turned back.
“Run an errand for me, the cook’s instructions,” she ordered the girl with brusque offhandedness. She held out a wooden cup.
AS Isabel sat envying a silken-voiced songstress with a harp, she felt a tug on her sleeve and glanced back. Madrun stood in the shadow behind the throne, her wild red hair a demure auburn in the low light. With an innocent smile, she presented a wooden chalice. “Your Majesty’s medicine?” she offered.
The queen looked at it in confusion, then rose and slipped back with Madrun to the shadows behind her throne. She reached for the cup and glanced at the contents, no more than a mouthful. “What is this?” she asked.
“From the kitchen,” Madrun said, as she had been instructed to. “To settle your stomach.”
Isabel sniffed it. Adèle had exhausted her own knowledge of the herbs but Marged was still gamely experimenting, and sometimes something helped a little. The oily liquid smelled like ginger and nutmeg, but there was a hint of other things she could not recognize. Ginger sometimes helped the nausea, so, desperate for relief and suspecting it would taste foul, she brought it to her lips and downed it in a single swallow.
It choked her. Juice of raw ginger made her eyes and nose smart fiercely and her throat constricted in pain—but it was only masking some other taste, something oily, alien and bitter. It burned her all the way down to the lining of her stomach. She grabbed the girl’s arm in alarm, gasping for breath. “What was that?” she demanded, not quite in a whisper. “What did I just drink?”
“It’s fine, milady, please don’t distress yourself,” Madrun said assuagingly. “The cook said it would go down very harshly, but it does marvels when it starts to work.” Noble was glancing back over his shoulder at them, frowning and looking concerned. Isabel raised a hand dismissively to tell him not to worry himself. Madrun, her task not quite completed, returned to the kitchen.
Noble gave his wife a passing smile as she rejoined him, then returned his attention to the female musician who was performing. She was not a pretty woman to his eyes—too small in build, too placid in demeanor—but she sang like an angel, and played a better harp even than Gwirion. Her master was staying overnight as a guest, so a proposition would be easy. He glanced at his wife, glad for both their sakes she couldn’t read his mind.
Something about her complexion made him look again. She was very pale and a fine sweat had broken out over her face. “Isabel,” he whispered, frowning, “are you unwell? Should you be lying down?”
“No, no, I’m fine,” she said hoarsely, and reached out to touch his hand. He was surprised and pleased by the gesture, and held her hand in his, stroking it. She smiled gratefully, which was the best moment of the night for him. He smiled back.
“Do you need anything?” he pressed. The song had ended; the herald introduced another singer into the performing space.
“No, I’m all right, really. It’s only that the mead tastes off to me.”
“Gwilym tested it. That’s the best in the kingdom, it’s been waiting some eight years for a celebration like tonight. And so have I.” He lowered his head toward her, pressed his lips against her fingers, and then, more intimately, against her palm. The throng, watching them, cheered. King and queen smiled tentatively at each other.
“When they do that, it almost feels as if they’re our children,” she whispered.
He nodded, and then winked at her. “If this one goes well enough, we might start work on a brood that size.”
She blushed despite herself. “Noble,” she murmured, confused by her own pleasure at these words, “that’s hubris.”
“A king should be allowed a little hubris,” he said, and then shifted his attention to the crowd. “We thank you for your spirit, people. The singer may begin now.”
Half an hour later they were nearing the end of the night’s entertainment, and Isabel felt far worse than she had before she had drunk Madrun’s offering. It was not nausea now; it was something more acute, as if a hole had been drilled through her stomach and her muscles were clenching around it. Concerned, she was about to excuse herself to the kitchen to ask Marged about the concoction, when she found Madrun standing demurely at her elbow again, trying to stay hidden behind the thrones. “Excuse me, milady,” she whispered in the queen’s ear. She spoke hesitantly, bemused by the instructions that this message required delivery at just this moment and no sooner. “But now I am to tell you it was not Marged who made up the potion you drank earlier. It was Adèle.”
ADÈLE in her grey wimple, ignoring and ignored by the harried workers cleaning in the kitchen, had moved nearer the doorway leading out into the courtyard, fidgeting with a piece of paper and awaiting the familiar footsteps. She looked up calmly when she heard them.
Isabel stopped beside her, pale, frightened—and furious. In a slow, threatening whisper she demanded, “What have you done?”
“Come with me,” Adèle said quietly, and went outside. She closed the door behind the queen and stayed on the steps overlooking the yard, their privacy assured and the torch offering the fire she needed.
“Adèle, you must tell me what you’ve done.”
“You know what I’ve done,” Adèle said. “And you know why.” She hoped she had timed this to accommodate her mistress’s wrath.
Isabel slammed the back of her hand to her mouth to stifle a horrified cry. “I’ll vomit it out,” she announced, furious.
“It’s already in your blood,” said Adèle complacently. “But go on, feel free to try if it will ease your conscience.” She gestured to the far side of the stairs, where it was dark enough that nobody in the yard could see anything. Immediately Isabel crouched in the shadows and frantically took herself to a state of pained gagging that brought nothing up. After a long, shuddering dry heave, she gave up and collapsed, gripping the cold stone steps for balance. Adèle waited.
At last the queen rose and returned to her, lashes wet, contained but more enraged than Adèle had ever seen her. “I won’t do this, Adèle!” she whispered, fuming. “Give me an antidote.”
“There is none.”
Isabel spun away and slammed her foot hard on the stone step in a childish, impotent explosion of rage. She took a few ragged breaths and then turned back to Adèle, demanding, “Was it oil of pennyroyal?”
“And other things. If you’re thinking of asking Marged for help, don’t bother. There’s a lot of ginger in it and Marged never saw ginger before this week, she knows nothing about its properties and won’t dare interfere with a mix she doesn’t know, for fear of complications. And it’s too late now anyhow.”
“Dammit!” Isabel hissed, her throat constricting again, barely controlling the urge to throttle Adèle. I should have seen such madness coming, she thought with a wave of panic. “I’m telling Noble this minute—” She began to push past her for the door. Adèle stopped her by holding out the paper.
“Read this first.”
“Later—”
“Now,” Adèle said in a voice from Isabel’s childhood, and Isabel stopped at once.
But she didn’t take the scroll. “This is treason,” she whispered, glaring at the old woman and starting to tremble. “And anyhow, how could you do this? It’s my child, Adèle, you had no right—”
“It’s not your child, it’s his heir,” Adèle said harshly.
“That makes it worse!” she insisted. “I’ll tell Noble, perhaps I can convince him it was a mistake and—”
“You can always make another one. I’m doing this for you, don’t muck it up.”
She shook her head, incredulous, and stared at Adèle as if she’d never seen her before. “I don’t want this! Have you lost your senses?”
“Don’t become hysterical,” Adèle said without quite meeting her eyes. “You’re a practical girl and you’ll see in time the value of this action. There’s nothing you can do to prevent it now, so your choices are to tell the king at once and gain nothing by it but my execution, or to help me use this to the best advantage.” She waved the scroll. Isabel shook her head, hugging herself and shaking from the cold and the drug, her face starting to crumple into tears. She released one arm and began to cross herself repeatedly. “Be despondent later,” Adèle ordered fiercely. “Pay attention now or this really will be for nothing.”
The queen blinked back the tears and stopped crossing herself. Feeling ill, she slowly took the scroll and hesitantly unrolled it. “‘To my revered correspondent’—Who is this intended for?”
“Does it matter?” Adèle replied serenely. “I intercepted it. Read what it says and then tell me if you’ll work with me.”
Isabel looked down and squinted to read it in the torchlight. She was trembling so badly now that Adèle had to hold the paper for her. “The queen is suddenly no longer allowed to ride out to the abbey. No one is saying why, but I’m sure she’s with child.” She looked up. “Who wrote this?” Adèle gestured for her to keep reading. “Why must they all be so precious about it? Why can’t someone just say, ‘Ah, he finally ploughed her deep enough,’ or words to that effect, and be done with it?” She closed her eyes a moment, knowing who the author had to be, then resumed reading in silence. She grew paler as she read and chewed her lip ferociously to keep her bitterness in check.
“‘She’s such a frail little thing,’” Adèle recited with righteous disgust when she saw Isabel reach the words, “‘she’ll probably die in childbirth, and then we won’t have her to deal with anymore. Then he can find himself a nice Welsh wife and restore Cymaron’s dignity. We all pray for such a time—and if he has any sense, he prays so too.’”
Isabel closed her eyes again when she had finished, light-headed now, and Adèle reached up and fed the scroll into the torch fire. “An unborn child is easily replaced. That villain, thank God, is not. Will you work with me?” she asked.
WHEN the final guest performer had graciously dipped his head to acknowledge the applause, Gwirion stepped out away from the shadow of the dais and moved into the empty space. Noble, after playfully grilling Isabel on the finer points of continental foolery, had ordered him to change his outfit to a deliberately clownish one for the evening, with ass’s ears attached to a cap on his head, and the audience hooted at him now. He tried to ignore them and begin his dancing prattle, but he couldn’t. “So you think this is ridiculous?” he demanded.
“Hell, yes!” several drunken voices chorused in reply, accompanied by muted chuckles. He glanced down at himself.
“Well,” he said. “You’re right. I look absurd. Of course, many say I am absurd, so that’s all well and good. But I worry about those who look absurd when they’re not supposed to. The king, for instance,” he offered, and headed up the steps of the dais. Noble theatrically rolled his eyes, and people in the front laughed.
The queen shrank back as Gwirion approached them. The moment she’d seen him as she was returning to her seat, sanity returned and she’d determined to sabotage Adèle’s ludicrous, murderous scheme, but by now she was having a hard time thinking clearly. Still she managed to keep a small smile plastered to her lips.
“Stand up, sire,” Gwirion was saying loudly. “I want to show the crowd that your attire is also absurd.”
Misreading his wife’s discomfort, Noble reluctantly shook his head. “No, Gwirion, none of that tonight.”
“It’s fortunate you never say that to the queen or we might not be celebrating this happy occasion,” Gwirion chortled. He turned his face but not his attention toward her, not noticing her jaundiced flush. “Now here’s another absurdity,” he announced to the crowd, gesturing to her silk kirtle and pelisse. “Here we have the expectant mother dressed in silver and the palest of flowery hues. She looks veritably virginal. But we’re here tonight in testimony that she’s certainly no virgin!”
The room was spinning; she was about to lose consciousness. This was the moment Adèle had told her to act but she was sickened with guilt for even considering it. Confused, fighting an encroaching fog, she could remember only that his proximity was what endangered him, that she was to get as near to him as possible, so that Adèle, stationed in the crowd, could convince the drunken revelers that they had seen him lay hands upon the queen. She cowered away from him, and disoriented by the drug that was making her belly clench, shouted what she meant to whisper, desperate and unhinged: “Move away, for God’s sake, Gwirion, move away from me!” She flailed her arms at him and he worriedly shot a look at Noble. Noble made a gesture to carry on as he leaned in toward his wife and put a reassuring arm around her, gently hushing her and checking her forehead for a fever. As if it were a delirious litany, she continued pleading for Gwirion to keep away from her.
Unnerved, Gwirion jumped down to the open space on the floor and tried to continue his patter. “Is this some peculiar Norman custom? If anyone can explain to me why we should celebrate proof of her fecundity by dressing her as if she were a little girl—”
He was interrupted by a scream of pain. He spun around to look, and fell victim to the general panic that swept the hall.
There was a growing streak of blood across the skirt he’d just mocked, and the queen, vomiting blood onto the dais, had turned a disturbing yellow. For one shocked moment, nobody was capable of movement but the queen herself, as she stood then convulsed violently and doubled over, clutching her abdomen. The last word from her mouth, still pleading and barely audible, was “Gwirion.” She began to tumble down the dais steps, but Noble leapt from his seat and caught her. He lifted her in his arms as she fainted, her body still convulsing, blood seeping from her nostrils and the corners of her mouth. Women screamed as the blood continued to splatter the steps, some people pressing forward, others frantic to back away.
Gwirion tried to run back up to the dais, but the guards had stepped in to push the mob back, and within seconds many people—starting with a woman’s voice that was distinctly accented—began to cry out his name accusingly and claw at him, murder in their eyes. Suddenly terrified, he changed direction and began struggling to get away from the guards and out of the hall, but his costume made him easy to identify. He felt a tug on his leg, and as he pulled away his cap was torn off. People grabbed at him from all sides as he ducked, pushed, scrambled, and climbed out of the crowd, his heart rippling in his throat.
NOBLE refused to leave her side. Too distracted to heed Adèle’s hints that she needed to be alone with Isabel, he sat by her bed and would not release her hand. Finally Adèle gave him a damp rag and told him to make himself useful by keeping his wife’s brow cool. Her priest hovered near her other shoulder muttering something ominous in Latin, the sewing bevy rushed to fetch rags and poultices to stem the flow of blood; Angharad asked to drape a cord of sheep gut on her as a talisman but the priest shrilly denounced the idea. With his approval, though, Adèle placed the hand-made rosary housing the relic of St. Milburga around her neck. There was much more blood than Adèle had expected, and she was frightened for a while. Isabel was pale and sickly yellow and unconscious for over an hour. By that time, the women had cut her out of her bloodied silks, sponged her clean, wrapped her in a warm mantle, and placed her under the blankets.
Noble, hovering anxiously by her head, was the first to hear her speak. He couldn’t make out what she was saying over the priest’s endless intonations and the women’s talking, and he held up his hand. At once there was silence and all attention in the room was on the bed.
“Adèle,” she moaned softly, her eyes still closed. “Adèle, what’s happening?” She spoke in French.
Adèle sat across from the king, on the bed. She placed her cool, weathered hand on Isabel’s damp cheek, kissed her forehead, and answered in their mother tongue.
“You’re safe now, child, you’re safe and back with us. You’re beyond harm.”
She opened her eyes, and blinked in the muted candlelight. Her eyes glanced at Adèle, at Noble, and quickly back at Adèle.
“You lost the child,” Adèle whispered in Welsh. No one had actually said the words aloud and when he heard it, Noble grunted and gripped his wife’s hand harder. Isabel erupted into furious, impotent tears. “The parasite had just come up uninvited onto the dais and was very close to you, in fact I think he was touching you—”
“That’s enough,” Noble interrupted in a low, threatening voice.
“Sire, you can’t deny—”
“I can and I do,” he said, keeping his voice quiet for his wife’s sake. “She was feeling ill well before that. If you try to turn this against Gwirion, Adèle, I warn you, you’ll regret it.”
“Where is he, then, Your Majesty?” Adèle asked, defiantly. “If he were innocent, you’d think he’d make some gesture of sympathy toward his sovereign lady.”
Noble let go of Isabel’s hand and turned his full attention on Adèle, his blue eyes blazing angrily but his voice controlled. “Gwirion is hiding somewhere right now because you convinced four hundred superstitious people that Isabel was accusing him.”
“I?” the old woman said, defiant and incredulous.
He gave her a knowing look. “However backward you think my people are, none of them would have made that inane association on their own. I heard your voice, Adèle.”
“You’re mistaken, sire, but he’s certainly an evil influence in this court, and this was a sign from God that he should no longer blight these walls.”
“That’s nonsense.”
“With all respect, sire—” the priest began from the across the room.
“This is beginning to sound like a conspiracy,” the king said, in a warning tone that silenced them. Now the only sound was Isabel’s bitter weeping. Noble stood up. “Look to my wife; I’m going to find Gwirion.”
GWIRION was not to be found. Anywhere. The castle denizens had gone through the bailey and keep several times throughout the night, finding nothing even with the help of sunrise. A hue and cry was raised, and by early morning scouting parties formed and were sweeping the countryside, beating through heather, gorse, and bracken, hacking through the dense undergrowth of the valley floors. Noble had immediately sent messengers conveying his proclamation that he, the king, personally guaranteed Gwirion’s innocence, but it had little effect. Seeing the royal scouts work their way across the hills only incited rural imagination, and soon illicit well-armed posses were also beating through the bracken. It made the people feel important to think they were on a holy crusade against the demon who had robbed them of their baby prince.
Noble was finishing a belated hasty breakfast before returning to his wife when Gwilym approached him hesitantly, his calm demeanor shaken. “Sire.” It took him a moment to continue. “There’s a rumor of a reward for bringing Gwirion’s head into court.”
Noble sighed heavily. “As if there weren’t enough nonsense to deal with. Do what you can to dampen it. Cadwgan, Goronwy, get their help.” He began walking toward the stairs to the queen’s solar.
Gwilym looked pained. “Someone is here to claim the reward, sire.”
Noble froze. He jerked around and stared at the steward, wide-eyed. “No,” he said quietly, and for a flash Gwilym remembered the child Maelgwyn after his father’s murder. The two men turned together to march quickly in long, matching strides to the door toward the barbican.
From the hall steps, the barbican was within spitting distance, and Noble, blinking fast in the sudden brightness, saw a man with a peculiar package, standing at the open gate arguing with Einion the porter. A step closer and the thing became identifiable: It was a dark-haired human head stained with fresh blood, and the man grasped it by a set of ass’s ears sewn into a cap tied under the chin. The king stopped in midstride and blanched. He closed his eyes briefly to collect himself, then nodded curtly to Gwilym and they continued to the gate.
“This man is a criminal,” the porter growled to the steward. Then he saw who Gwilym’s companion was and quickly bowed. “Sire. He’s committed butchery—”
“Let me see it,” Noble commanded sternly, pushing past him. He braced himself and examined the monstrosity.
Blood had seeped everywhere from the ass’s ears; they were from a donkey that must have been alive an hour earlier. The head itself was from a half-rotting corpse, unearthed for the occasion. Noble let out a breath, almost laughed. He turned to the perpetrator, who did not realize the game was over and grinned at the king expectantly as he bowed.
Noble replied to the grin with a look of contemptuous disgust and tersely ordered Gwilym to have the man publicly flogged. “And make sure people hear about it,” he growled before walking away.
MIDMORNING, despite the priest’s insistence that the queen was still too weak for conversation, Noble pushed his way past the sewing bevy and into her chamber. She was sitting up in bed; her women had bathed her, clothed her, braided and coiled her hair. Adèle had nursed her with nettle juice to cleanse her blood, and some color had returned to her face, but she was still exhausted and unnaturally yellow. The look she gave him—grief and apology and tentative affection all mixed together—wrenched his heart. “Isabel,” he said gently, sitting beside her pillow. “Tell me how you are.”
She leaned her head against his arm. “I’m alive and grateful for it.”
“The physician saw you?”
“Your physician said he knows nothing of women’s ailments, Noble. There were only my ladies and my priest to attend to me.”
“They don’t know the cause?”
She hesitated and lowered her eyes, suddenly transfixed by the embroidered stitching on the border of her blanket. “You heard what Adèle—”
“Don’t,” he said in an iron voice. He looked around the room. Adèle was asleep on a cushion by the hearth. She awoke at once when he called her name, and didn’t want to leave the room, but the king gave her one of his stares and she finally obeyed.
When he was alone with his wife, he took her hands in his and kissed them. “I don’t mean to scare you,” he said. “But Gwirion’s life hangs on this issue now. Wherever he is, he won’t be safe until his name is cleared.”
“I almost died last night. You lost your child. But what matters to you most is clearing a parasite’s good name?” Her tone was tired but not peevish.
Reflexively furious, he pulled away from her for a moment, but then with a resigned sigh moved back and took her hand again. “Of course I’m grieved for our loss. And concerned for your health too. But there will be more loss to mourn if I don’t get this situation under control.”
“I don’t feel well, Noble, I need to sleep.”
“I’ll let you sleep in a moment, as soon as you tell me what happened.”
She pretended again to be absorbed in the bedding’s embroidered edge. “I’ve already told Adèle everything, why don’t you ask her.”
“I want to hear it from you, I don’t trust her,” he replied. “Please.” He waited for her to make brief eye contact, then pushed on. “You were unwell while the woman was singing, weren’t you? I noticed you were in a sweat while she was still singing. When did you first feel ill?”
She couldn’t look at him. “It’s hard to say, I have morning sickness so often—”
“This was different. You turned a strange color and seemed to have trouble breathing. When did that start?”
“I don’t remember, Noble, I’m sorry.”
He pressed her. “Your redhead gave you something to drink. Could that have done it? What’s her family background—might her people be in with Anarawd?”
Horrified that she had put the girl in danger, she looked up and said with absolute sincerity, “It wasn’t Madrun’s fault, Noble, don’t suspect her.” Then she looked harder at his eyes and realized she’d given too much away.
“I didn’t suspect her, actually,” he said, his tone triumphantly flinty. “But if that is your reaction to mistaken accusations, I am intrigued by some of your other responses.” He kept staring at her and she looked down, fidgeting with the blanket. “Adèle prepared that draught for you, didn’t she?”
“Noble, please, I’m dizzy, I need to rest—”
“This is important,” he insisted, taking her little chin in his broad hand and forcing her to look into his face. “Did Adèle mix that potion?”
She nodded reluctantly. “But I was already feeling ill when Madrun gave it to me.”
“It clearly didn’t help. It might have made it worse. What was it?”
She couldn’t move her head from his grip, but she lowered her eyes again. “I don’t know. You might ask Adèle.”
“She said it was ginger water, but I don’t know what that is. Why did she have Madrun give you the drink? I don’t remember you asking for anything.”
She knew she should look up at him to seem sufficiently defiant, but she couldn’t. “Are you suggesting Adèle would try to harm me?” she asked, willing her lips not to quiver.
He let go of her head, his attitude softening. “Look at me, Isabel,” he whispered, very gently, his baritone voice fatherly and soft as velvet. “Please look at me.”
It was Adèle’s undoing: Isabel met his gaze and started sobbing. “I didn’t know what it was,” she blurted out. “I didn’t know, and then there was nothing I could do.”
He swallowed a wave of nausea, stunned by the revelation although he had suspected it, and clutched her tightly, rocking her against his chest. He would have held her that way for hours, even days, but she forced herself to almost instant recovery, angry at her own lapse as her mind raced in fruitless panic trying to concoct anything to save Adèle.
He helped her lie back against the mound of felt cushions and they looked at each other for a moment in pained silence. “This makes her a criminal,” Noble finally said.
“I don’t think she meant for it to happen—”
“Of course she did. She planned it exactly.” Suddenly it was so obvious, he was angry for not realizing right away. “Is she mad to think such a thing would work? She drugged you. She timed it to affect you at the end of the evening, when Gwirion would be performing and you—” He cut himself off and sharply pulled away from her, eyeing her as if she were something poisonous. She chose to become fascinated once again with the embroidered border of the sheet, picking at the stitches. After a moment, forcing himself to calm, he continued. “Was she the one who told you to wear light colors? It wouldn’t have been nearly so dramatic if you’d been wearing your usual colors, your reds and maroons. You trust her like a mother—she knew you would drink whatever she gave you.” He stood, agitated. “That’s what happened. She killed my child for the sake of trying to kill him.” He ran to the door, hurled it wide, grabbed Adèle by the arm from out of the small waiting huddle on the balcony, and pulled her roughly into the room, slamming the door closed again. He pushed her down to the wooden floor hard enough to knock the wind out of her.
“Noble!” Isabel begged.
“Be quiet,” he snapped, and turned all his fury on Adèle. He hauled her up, smashed her hard across the face, punched her furiously in the ribs. Something cracked and she gasped, clutching her torso and convulsing in pain. He shoved her to the floor again and slammed his boot into her over and over, forcing her slowly across the floor with the impact of each blow.
“Stop, sire, please, sire, I’ll explain,” she begged between kicks, grabbing her ribs and shuddering.
“Noble, stop!” the queen screamed, sitting up in bed, but he didn’t stop. She cried out wildly for help, and two of the teulu came through the door at once, bearing knives. When they saw that the king was the attacker, they hesitated.
“Stop him!” she yelled at them. “He’s killing her! Stop him, stop him!”
The two of them, barely more than boys, looked at each other in confusion. No one had told them what to do in such a situation, and they were too stunned to try anything on their own. “Stop it, Noble!” Isabel screamed again, and pulled herself out of bed. She could barely stand, but she stumbled toward her husband, collapsed against him, and tried to pound against his back. He shoved her away with a wave of his arm and continued his attack on Adèle.
She landed on the floor with a cry, and the cry won his attention. He left Adèle in a trembling heap, and turned at once, breathing hard, to pick up his wife and place her back on the bed. He handled her gently—but he glowered at her.
In the sudden quiet, the door opened again and the priest stumbled in, followed cautiously by the others. Noble followed their gaze to the old woman’s softly moaning form. “She did it,” he said, sounding disgusted and exhausted. “Adèle did it. Someone fetch the physician.”
“He’s in the village,” one of the teulu said, heading back out the door. “I’ll go.”
“Who else can heal?” Noble asked.
“Adèle,” said the priest. “Marged.”
“You”—this was to the other of the teulu—“take her down to the kitchens and see what Marged can do for her. But stay with her—she’s a condemned woman, I don’t want her trying to escape.”
Isabel made a wordless sound of protest from the bed. The priest begged for an explanation but Noble impatiently sent everyone back out of the room, Adèle voicing agony with each forced, assisted movement. Alone with his wife, the king crossed his arms; unspeaking, he pierced her with a scrutinizing stare that made her skin crawl. He leaned back against the wall as if waiting for something.
“Noble, she’s very old,” she said nervously, to fill the icy silence. “I think she’s senile. I can’t believe she set out to endanger me or the child.”
“Then what was she up to?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps she just wanted me to faint.”
“Why?”
She had no answer.
“She has to hang.”
“What?”
“Public hanging. She brought it on herself.”
“Noble—”
“It’s treason. I have to obey the rule of law.”
“But you can’t prove it!” she said desperately. “Even I couldn’t swear that she did it—I really don’t know what was in the drink.”
“That can be traced. Goronwy will have no choice in the matter.”
“You can pardon her—you’re the king, for the love of God, you can pardon anyone for anything,” she implored.
“I will not exercise the privilege of pardon unless you can explain to me how that benefits Maelienydd. And even if I were to pardon her killing my child and nearly killing my wife—which I’m not inclined to do—there is still the other matter to consider.” His voice was suddenly harder, flatter.
She shuddered without knowing why. “What other matter?”
“The matter of your singling out Gwirion before you fainted,” he said coldly. “I’ll pose the question that I hope to God you have an answer for, but to be honest I can’t imagine what it is. Can you explain your behavior in a way that does not implicate you in this catastrophe?”
She took a breath, silently exhorting herself to face the moment calmly.
But another voice preempted her reply. “I certainly can’t!” It was anxious, muffled. The king jumped and put his hand to his belt, forgetting he had no sword. They both looked around in alarm, but there was no one else there. Then Noble’s eyes widened. He dropped to his knees and reached deep under the bed. With no resistance, he pulled out a very dirty creature wearing the tattered remains of a jester’s costume. He hoisted him to his feet and looked him over: Only once before could he remember Gwirion ever looking so pathetic. “I commend your choice of hideout,” he finally said with a small smile, feeling far more than he was willing to show either of them. Isabel sighed hugely with relief.
Gwirion backed away against the wall farthest from the door, looking leery of the queen. His face and arms were stained from the dust under the bed that had caked itself to his sweat. He had soiled himself and one cheek had three small parallel scabs across it, the scratches of a sharp-nailed hand reaching out to grab at him.
“Have you been here the whole time?” asked Noble.
“I’d just slipped under the bed when you brought her in last night,” he stammered. “I didn’t think anyone would look for me here, and here I’d know when it was safe to come out.”
“You look dreadful.”
“I feel dreadful.” He jutted his sharp chin toward the queen. “She didn’t answer you.”
Noble sighed. “No, she didn’t.” He turned back to her. “I believe we were on the threshold of confession.”
She grimaced nervously. “By then, yes, by then I knew. I was actually trying to protect him, though, not accuse him. I was trying to put distance between us, I wasn’t thinking clearly—and I swear I didn’t know what was in that cup when I drank it.”
“But you drank it knowing what it would do?” He sat by her again with a dangerous heat in his eyes.
“No!” she insisted.
“Prove it,” he demanded, grabbing her wrist hard. “Now.”
“Ask Madrun,” she gasped. “Madrun will tell you I was unaware, I thought Marged had mixed it up for my nausea.”
“Why did you do nothing when you realized?”
“I did! I tried to vomit it up, but it had already started working. Adèle claimed there was no antidote and that if I asked Marged to help she must refuse for not knowing the properties of an ingredient.”
“This was certainly staged to assure you could exonerate yourself,” Noble said sarcastically. He released her wrist and stood again, looking agitated.
“I’m not pretending I deserve an unconditional pardon,” she admitted, rubbing the freed wrist nervously. “I was drugged, I was confused, and I changed my mind at once, but I had one moment of intending to act against him, and that robs me of true innocence, I confess that.” She took another breath to calm herself. “But, Noble, guilt rests in the act, not in the impulse, and my actions on the dais were a confused attempt to protect him.”
“If in the span of half an hour your impulse and then your actions both endangered him, it’s mere semantics to suggest the two have no connection.” He looked at her with disgust. “I should charge you with conspiracy to murder.”
“Sire,” Gwirion interjected quietly. “I believe her.”
“Thank you,” Isabel whispered.
“It doesn’t matter what you believe, Gwirion, only what I know,” the king announced flatly. He took a step toward the bed and looked down at her threateningly. “I hold her accountable for a long chain of events, and justice will be served accordingly—as it just was to Adèle.”
Isabel stifled a squeal of fear and curled up defensively under the blankets. But his expression changed, and he flashed a peculiar, brittle smile. “Indeed,” he said tightly. “And considering the net effect you’ve had on Gwirion’s well-being, I have no choice but to exonerate you.”
They both stared at him. The queen cautiously half uncurled.
“Sire?” Gwirion questioned. “I am not asking you to punish the queen, but what inspires you to say that?”
Noble looked between them for a moment, weighing something. Abruptly, he turned his gaze to the window and the hills beyond, and after a silence said, “She saved your life.” There was pained amusement in his voice.
They exchanged bewildered looks. “How?” Gwirion finally demanded.
“By being born.”
Gwirion at once felt as if he was both airborne and under water. He staggered to his knees near the fire, holding out his hand to grasp at a tapestry for balance. “The hunting horns?” he asked faintly. “The horns and the bells?”
“Announced her birth, yes. I sat in the bushes with a naked blade, and I could do nothing—because I was the king, I could do nothing,” he emphasized bitterly. “Mortimer wanted to go back to Wigmore to see if the child had come. You don’t understand French, so you couldn’t have known that. But that was the reason he let you go. Bask a moment,” he suggested, finally looking back into the room, “in the poignant irony of that thought.”
“What are you talking about?” Isabel asked.
Noble turned to his wife. “You haven’t heard the famous tale of Gwirion saving my life? He was with us when your uncle ambushed us, and Roger was about to kill him. These past two decades would have been unbearable without…” He looked at Gwirion, who appeared the least likely of worthies in his torn and dirtied clothes. Noble made a sound that was both mocking and affectionate, and gestured grandly toward his friend. “Without that,” he said, laughing. Gwirion was dazed, still in the past. “He manages both to distract me from reality and to make me face it clearly without the warping camouflage of court etiquette. He is the only luxury I am allowed in life, and he would be dead nineteen years by now if you had not been born. The bargaining chit that saves you today is that you were the agent by which he was restored to me. I thank you for that.”
He gave her a small smile and the tension in the room relaxed. For a moment there was peaceful silence.
Then his smile devolved into a severe look of warning. “But Isabel, that chit is spent now. If you ever again become the agent by which I might lose him, I will make an example of you as I just did of Adèle.”
Gwirion, recovering, saw alarm on the queen’s face and protested with a nervous, forced laugh, “You’ve already beaten one defenseless Saxoness to death this lifetime, isn’t that enough?”
“Don’t speak that way,” Isabel said crossly. “She didn’t die, she didn’t even swoon.”
He shook his head. “I’m sorry, Your Majesty. I saw the light go out of her eyes.”
“She was still breathing when they carried her out of here,” the queen corrected him.
Gwirion shook his head. “She was letting go. She’s gone by now. I’m sorry.”
“Noble,” she said firmly. “He’s wrong. Tell him he’s wrong.”
The king held up his hand for quiet and went to the door to ask after Adèle.
The priest was already waiting on the balcony with a leaden face, and stepped into the room at once. “We did not even get her to the kitchen, sire.” Isabel gave a cry of shock and buried her face in the embroidered sheet. “I just gave her last rites, and called some men up from the yard, but I don’t know where you want us to place her.”
Noble sank heavily on the bed. “Oh, Christ,” he said slowly. “Father, I don’t know where she should be. Leave her where she is—”
“She’s lying at the foot of the stairs.”
“Take her to the chapel,” the queen said in a broken voice, without looking up.
“I’m sorry, Your Majesty, I can’t allow that,” said her priest awkwardly. “She’s accused of a mortal sin.”
“No she’s not,” Gwirion piped up. The priest saw him and did a double take. Gwirion coughed, trying to look dignified in his torn, befouled clothes. “She did nothing wrong. The miscarriage was an act of God. But…” He scrambled mentally. There was no plausible way around this, so with typical Gwirion instinct he simply let each phrase tumble from his mouth without knowing what would follow it. “The queen thought I was responsible—that was a mistake—and God was displeased with the queen for putting my innocent life in danger, and Adèle, Adèle is such a God-fearing woman that when she realized her mistress had erred she asked God if she could take the queen’s sin on herself and God afflicted her for the queen’s failing by sending her into an epileptic fit, and she beat herself to death against the walls in here.” He laughed nervously, patting the curved wall, which was plastered over and padded almost everywhere with tapestries. “So she’s exonerated her mistress’s mistake and proved her own worth, and she should be taken to the, uh, to—” He looked at the queen. “The chapel?”
“Yes,” Isabel said quietly, teary and astonished.
“The chapel. God has forgiven them both—especially our revered queen—and Adèle deserves an honorable burial.”
No one spoke for a long moment.
“I think we can all live with that chronicle of events,” Noble finally said.
“Thank God the rule of law is not for doing people favors—it’s only for justice, n’est-ce pas, Your Majesty?” Gwirion, recovered, muttered quietly—but not very quietly—to the queen. She pressed the fingertips of one hand against her closed eyes, too overwhelmed to manage a response.
“Father, you heard him,” Noble said heavily. “Adèle should rest in the chapel until burial arrangements can be made. I’m going there with you. I need to go to shrift.”
Alone, Isabel and Gwirion looked at each other in self-conscious silence.
“Thank you,” he said tentatively, almost as a question.
“Please,” she said with a teary sigh. “Please, Gwirion, I haven’t the energy for sarcasm.”
“I’m not being sarcastic,” he assured her, awkward. He looked like a wreck, but the dark eyes considered her with a deference she’d never seen before. “I’m forced to contemplate the fact that as well as being the source of all my woes, you’re also the reason I’m alive.”
She shrugged, not knowing how to answer. “I owe you thanks as well,” she said, barely above a whisper. “However absurd that explanation was, she’ll rest in hallowed ground for what you said.”
“I had as much to gain as you did,” he replied.
“No,” she said. “You could have saved yourself without saving her.”
“I didn’t save her, Majesty. She’s dead. I’m alive. For that, you are not actually grateful.” His gaze, cold again, turned away from her, and bowing, he left the room.
THE funeral was modest but respectable, and Isabel went into seclusion for a week, spending her waking hours in chapel. Her rosary was almost always in her hands, her fingers touching the homemade beads as affectionately as if they were Adèle herself. Gwirion, still wary of the general public, was afraid to leave the castle, and spent much of his time in the receiving room failing to distract the abruptly brooding king.
Adèle’s violent dispatch in front of his wife had been unavoidable when he considered it strategically, but he hated having the need for it. Although it had made Isabel understand at once the power and position of the king, it had made her demonize the nature of the man, and Noble couldn’t blame her.
It rained unceasingly for days, the first severe rain of autumn; it added a pallor to the world. Even the sconces that the small audience chamber depended on seemed to shed a watery light. Gwirion played for hours at a stretch without speaking, the harp in its sad tuning, the music melancholy.
“How is she recovering?” he asked after three days.
“She’s a little stronger, and trying to forgive me. We’ve reached certain…understandings.”
“Such as? You’re not being yoked into monogamy again, are you?”
Noble shook his head. “That romantic bubble has burst, thank God, but we have an agreement now that I’ll be more discreet.”
“And which testicle did you have to cut off in exchange for this?”
Noble gently cuffed Gwirion’s head. “Neither. All she wants is dignity, and Lord knows Adèle’s the only one who ever really gave her that. She’ll have a little more say over the household, but you know how Gwilym is, he won’t yield pride of place. And she doesn’t have to sew anymore. Apparently she doesn’t like it.”
“That’s it? And what’s the catch?”
“No catch. No, that’s not quite true.” He gave Gwirion a pained, wry smile. “Anglo-Saxon law has finally insinuated its way into our court. Do you remember we pressed King Henry for the blood fine from Mortimer when he killed my father?”
“Of course.”
“She considers it paid.”
Gwirion frowned. “How? You’ve never received anything from Mortimer.”
“We believe in restitution—the English believe in revenge. As far as she’s concerned, it’s an eye for an eye. Adèle’s life for my father’s, and now the score is settled.”
Gwirion laughed in scorn. “A serving woman’s death avenges a king’s?”
“Adèle was like a mother to her. A mother’s death avenges a father’s.”
Gwirion shook his head. “You can’t expect someone who’s never had parents to begin to understand that.” They sat in silence for another moment and then Gwirion ventured, tentatively, “Of course, there’s a true poetic irony—”
“I know that, Gwirion,” Noble said in a voice that forbade further comment. Adèle had died on her mistress’s birthday, the anniversary of Cadwallon’s murder.