IN THE DEPTHS of the midwinter holidays, Noble made the decision he’d grimly anticipated for a month.
Immediately after the war council, Llewelyn had agreed—in theory—to go with him to confront Mortimer. Unsurprisingly, the other Welsh princes all demurred, with the promise that if it turned into a military engagement they might reconsider.
The mild weather had brought no snow, but they went three weeks without an hour of clear sunshine and Isabel thought she would soon go mad. Throughout December Noble was rarely at Cymaron and hardly ever off his horse, riding hard from one section of his kingdom to another, checking the state of the reserve host being trained, conferring with the border troops, meeting with Llewelyn to get a measure of the man, and vainly seeking council with Roger Mortimer himself. The single time Mortimer agreed to meet, exactly on the legal border at the windy crest of what the English called Stone Wall Hill, he sent an envoy in his place. Noble recognized the man and was convinced he had been part of the ambush twenty years ago; that struck him as something Mortimer might do, but he held his tongue and his temper for the sake of diplomacy. The envoy claimed that there was nothing to discuss. There were no hostilities planned; the troops massing on Thomas’s estates were simply training for a possible Crusade—Noble was even chastised for reneging on his own pledge to take the cross years earlier. Thomas, it was finally claimed, was his uncle’s honored guest at Wigmore Castle, remaining entirely at his own pleasure.
Llewelyn offered more satisfying audience. Noble was impressed with him at once, finding himself for the first time in his life in the company of a true peer. He was a great strategist and had a zeal, a focused ferocity for a united Wales that made it necessary to take him seriously. As adversary or comrade-in-arms, he was clearly a force to be reckoned with. It was almost enough to make Noble reconsider the idea of marrying their families somehow. But the price of his assistance would not be cheap: Noble would not only back him in his claims to the throne of Gwynedd, he would lend material aid for Llewelyn to achieve it. Noble demanded a written oath that the younger prince’s sovereign ambition would find saturation at Gwynedd’s borders, then clasped hands with him on the agreement and hurried home to Cymaron to arrive on Christmas Eve.
Christmas, beginning with the solemn predawn caroling in chapel, was understated and grim. Rituals both familiar and exotic to the queen’s sensibilities were observed with lackluster obedience. Even the much heralded passing on of linen, which she had wondered about since her blunder with Enid and the kerchief, was anticlimactic. It was exactly as in her own home: She gave the court officials linen underclothes and the king gave them woolen dress livery, red emblazoned with his golden lion rampant regardant. The upset over the kerchief remained inscrutably stupid to her. The teulu were given their yearly gift of a pound each in coin, and every family in the village was sent a Christmas hen. All other Yuletide rituals were ignored; there was no impetus for cheer.
IT was Thomas’s letter to the queen that tipped the scales toward action. Noble had been willing to keep a minimal force at the border, to train reserve troops without conscripting them to duty—until a letter arrived in Thomas’s hand, addressed with sensational rudeness to Isabel Mortimer of Cymaron Castle, affectionately begging her to “join the family” at Wigmore Castle for a New Year’s visit. It was neutrally worded, too neutrally worded, and obviously dictated. Her husband was not included in the invitation.
“That’s not even subtle,” Noble complained with a harsh laugh when she brought it to him. He had not seen her so upset since Adèle’s death.
Once it was clear that hostilities were imminent, most of the penteulus in the kingdom begged permission to pillage Mortimer’s villages on day raids and snipe his armies as they camped. The king appreciated the impulse, but refused it. His people had reacted that way for centuries and had little to show for it now. The Welsh had never been partial to diplomacy, and with Richard on the English throne the Marcher lords weren’t either. Noble was determined to change that: For the first time since King Henry’s reign, a territorial issue would be resolved by parley.
But parley only worked when one did not seem desperate for it, so he summoned the largest host the kingdom had ever seen, intending to bring them to the border, ideally to do nothing but sit there for weeks and look fierce. There were desperate outcries against this unorthodoxy, of course: A winter campaign was a death wish. Yes, said the envoys from the lords who protested, it had been a mild winter so far and yes, all signs suggested it would continue to be so until Lent, but winter was winter—they would all be hard-pressed for food and fodder. Noble listened and nodded and continued to prepare. Mortimer was collecting a massive army on Thomas’s land and he had to be blocked from using it. Nothing else mattered.
When Llewelyn of Gwynedd agreed to join the Maelienydd host at the border, with his own men, the protestations instantly and reverently subsided.
THE collected host, all under the charge of the king’s ecstatic penteulu, was organized into five small armies. Those from the center of the country would convene outside the castle the night before setting off to the border, bivouacking on the tourney field while their commanders slept in the castle hall. The western, southern, and northern forces would join them at the eastern border, where troops had been since right after the war council. For a week before they set off, the castle was a maelstrom of preparation as rations for both the men and those who stayed behind were assigned, measured, packed, and stored or carted eastward. The baker took over the village oven to make sure there would be enough bread the first few days at camp, and brought huge stores of oats plus dozens of hens for the eggs. He left his son behind to bake for the castle household, which would have to survive on barley and rye. The butler took his wife, and three kitchen girls in training under Marged went as well. The blacksmith closed his forge and fit what he could into half a large cart; the other half was piled with tents for Noble and the other commanders. The beds the queen had brought from England were not collapsible, but the king did not even seek one that was, choosing instead to sleep like his men, on a brychan stretched over straw. Most of the castle officers went along, leaving only Marged the cook, Gwilym the steward, Hafaidd the usher, and Goronwy the judge to command a sea of pages, chambermaids, aging attendants, and villagers under temporary hire. Ordinarily in war, the queen would go on circuit for safety, but there was no precedence for a winter campaign and anyway, Noble had insisted again, it was not yet a war and hopefully never would be.
The night before the host left for the Marches, a supper of roast geese was prepared for the commanders and the teulu in the hall, and double rations of ale were given to the men bivouacked outside. This could hardly make up for the near scandalous disruption of calling people to arms during the Christmas holidays and squelching riotous evenings of songs and caroling, but it would have to suffice. At evening mass the chapel was lit brilliantly with hundreds of candles; after the ceremony, Noble offered a week’s leisure for all when they returned.
“Unless you lose,” Gwirion commented later, during a quick moment alone with the king before the audience-chamber hearth.
“I’ve never lost to Roger Mortimer,” Noble said.
“You’ve never faced Mortimer without Lord Rhys beside you,” Gwirion said, speaking the thought Noble had been trying to will out of his mind. “But he is dead this time, you know.”
“Well, now I have Llewelyn beside me, and judging by popular gossip that’s even better,” the king said with minor irritation. “And I truly hope it never comes to fighting.”
“That’s blasphemy! Aren’t we supposed to be bloodthirsty?”
Noble closed his eyes, looking exhausted. “Even I have sickened of the battle.”
Later in the evening, Hywel, almost doddering now, attempted to fill the hall with his shaking voice while Gwirion was called down to the field to entertain. A cozy, dull cloud cover masked the waning moonlight and made the evening mild. It was Twelfth Night, and a farmer-soldier from Llanbister had brought to camp a decorated horse’s skull, a Mari Lwyd, so Gwirion traded in his harp for a pipe to lead a cheery, drunken procession around the camp. But out here there were no women to tease and no feast to sit down to—the main reasons to ramble about with a skeletal horse, after all—and when the paraders were drunk enough to fall over, he returned to the castle. It was an early night. There had been a short round of carols inside, but the usual merrymaking was canceled.
Before Gwilym the steward retired for the evening, he went into Noble’s audience room to receive the great seal for safekeeping from Gwirion’s mischief in the king’s absence. Before he left, he made an offer—looking slightly self-conscious but, as ever, dignified—that would once have been unimaginable.
“My duties will be doubled in your absence, sire.”
“You always handle it with grace.” Noble managed to smile, although he looked very stressed and tired. “As you did for my father before me.”
Gwilym grimaced. “Thank you. It has always been my honor to be your deputy.” He paused. “Considering the circumstances, Her Majesty will have a hard time of it here. There’s little to occupy her attention—I understand construction has stopped at the abbey for the winter.”
Noble gave him a disbelieving, conspiratorial look. “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”
“If it would assist to…maintain her current desirable demeanor, I will yield some of my castellan privileges to her. I must admit she has more than proven her potential.”
It took Noble less than a second to decide what he wanted to do with this opportunity. “That’s very generous of you, Gwilym. She may well take you up on that.”
SHE was already pacing around his torchlit chamber when he arrived, even tenser than she had been for weeks now. He understood, more than he could afford to let her know, how difficult all this was for her. When he returned, when it was over, he would tell her how genuinely he admired her reserve, but the comment given now would likely, under pressure, somehow lead to argument. She was wearing only her silk shift and Noble’s large woolen chamber robe, her braids hanging down to her waist, and as always in this outfit she looked like a child playing dress up. When Isabel heard him entering, she stopped her pacing and took a deep, nervous breath. “I want to go with you,” she blurted out.
He stared at her and then laughed gently. “That’s not even open for discussion, madam.”
“If I stay here with so little to do, I’ll go mad.”
He couldn’t help smiling at how neatly she’d walked into the game. “I seem to recall your poring over law books last summer with Goronwy. Would it help distract you if you stood in for me at court?”
She frowned. “But that’s the steward’s privilege.”
“It could be yours,” he said. “And so could many other things.”
“Gwilym would be outraged. Goronwy would throw a fit!”
“I don’t make offers I can’t honor, Isabel.” He raised one brow at her. “Let’s play a little tit for tat. One castellan duty for every novelty you agree to try tonight.”
She almost laughed, but duly made a disgusted face instead. “That’s perverse.”
“I need some perverse distraction and so do you, I think. Take off your things and lie down on the bed.” She realized he was serious and stared at him in silence, unmoving. “Excuse me,” he said in a sterner voice. “I am leaving here in ten hours to put my life at risk for your idiot brother—because of a marriage contract that has yielded me nothing that it should have. Take off your things and lie down now.”
With a loud sigh of annoyance she obeyed him, pulling off her shift as he unlaced his boots and stripped off his own tunic, hose, and drawers. He sat over her on the bed, unceremoniously pushed her legs apart, wet his fingers with his tongue, and lubricated her. She made a constricted sound in her throat and growled at him, but he only gave her a mischievous smile and shook his head.
“I’m seeing you beg me to bind your wrists to the bedposts.”
“I’m seeing you being mistaken,” she retorted. She crossed her arms across her bare chest and glowered up at the bed canopy.
“If you’d like to be my deputy in court,” he said, grinning, “you will beg me to bind your wrists to the bedposts. To start with. I promise you’ll enjoy this game more if you play it with enthusiasm.” He ran his tongue across her lower belly and she gasped, then broke into frustrated, angry laughter from the sheer tension of the night.
HIS final farewell was to Gwirion, whom he scared by awakening, personally, two hours before dawn.
“Sire?” Gwirion whispered when he sensed rather than saw the familiar presence kneeling in the entrance to his closet. “What are you doing here?”
“If these are my last two hours alive at Cymaron,” Noble whispered in response, “I shouldn’t be sleeping through them.”
“Molest your wife, then,” Gwirion said, flattered by the visit.
“I already did that. She surprised me tonight, but she hasn’t Enid’s staying power.”
“Neither have I,” muttered Gwirion, but trundled the covers away. “Well then, are you coming in or am I going out? It’s warm in here at least, and I don’t think there’s much privacy anywhere else.”
The king ducked his head down and crawled into the space. Gwirion lit a candle and the two of them glanced briefly at each other in the dim light. “This is homey but it’s rather tight. How did you and Corr both fit?”
“We were very close,” Gwirion lisped precociously.
Noble cleared his throat. “I have something to say to you,” he whispered, suddenly serious. Gwirion considered him for a moment, guessed what it was, and made a face of mock amazement.
“Don’t tell me His Royal Highness is about to apologize,” he said. “Not now! We have no witnesses, no artists to immortalize the moment, no bard to compose flowery monotony about your spiritual transformation.”
“Be quiet or I’ll cut your tongue out,” Noble said impatiently. “I don’t have much experience with this and I don’t want you misunderstanding.”
“My ears are yours.”
Noble grimaced. “I don’t care that Huw prefers partners that are half the size of his wife. And I don’t care if he prefers it when they’re not very eager about it.”
“You don’t even do that,” Gwirion protested.
“Gwirion,” the king said bluntly, “there is absolutely no difference between Huw and myself.”
Gwirion gave him a disbelieving look. “There’s a huge difference. Huw is bad to his partners, you’re good to yours.”
Noble gave his friend a didactic smile. “Only because I enjoy it. That’s not a difference in morality, Gwirion, it’s only a difference in taste.”
“You give them a choice, he forces them.”
Noble laughed comfortably. “And what sort of choice does a woman have when she’s invited to go to the king, when she knows the king can take her anyhow?”
“Noble, you don’t touch them if they’re even just a little bashful. I’ve been there, I’ve seen you.”
“That’s a choice I’m entitled to make because I am the one with all the power.”
“It’s a choice you make because you’re a good man,” Gwirion declared firmly. “I wouldn’t pander for you otherwise.”
“You’re confusing goodness with preference,” Noble corrected him. “I take no pleasure in a woman’s indifference, and certainly not in her resistance. I wrestle with enough recalcitrance in council—and with you, for that matter, although at least with you it’s occasionally entertaining. I like the flattery of ready enthusiasm in some facet of existence. That’s the premise of my gallantry—I’m simply taking what I want in the manner that I want it.” He gave his friend a droll look. “That’s sensual gratification, Gwirion, not goodness. In that way I’m no different from Huw.” Gwirion looked stricken, almost nauseated, and said nothing. After a moment Noble, his expression softening, pressed on. “You were right, though, there’s an apology in here.” He paused, took a breath to collect his words. “It was not wrong of me to offer Huw those children. It was a kind of quid pro quo—and not for Branwyn, by the way, she was just a rather marvelous perquisite.”
Gwirion looked at him uncomprehendingly. “What did you get out of it but Branwyn?”
“The security of Huw’s allegiance.”
Gwirion blinked. “You’re not telling me he swore loyalty to you because you let him sodomize your stable boy.”
“He swore loyalty because we have an understanding now, that we will look out for each other’s interests. That there are checks and balances, but I am the dispenser of favors, and he must be deserving of such favors if he wishes to receive them. He’s seen that I will dispense with my subjects as I see fit, but he knows that applies to him as well as to a stable boy. What happened that week was a necessary transaction, and in itself it was entirely unobjectionable. My failing was in my obligation to you. You were distressed about the children and I know why.”
Gwirion looked away awkwardly. “My distress has nothing to do with…that.” He tugged at a fraying thread on the cuffs of his breeches.
“I thought they were killing you too,” Noble said. “I thought I’d lost both—”
“We agreed not to talk about it,” Gwirion insisted sharply, looking up.
Noble retreated. “Fine. That is the apology. I am genuinely grieved that what happened disturbed you. You must understand something, however, Gwirion: I’m grieved but I will not modify my behavior for it. Not because I’m a monster, but because I’m a king. I may wish to spare a child from trauma, I may wish to spare your being distressed about it, but I need to protect my kingdom’s northwest border.”
“But you do wish you could have spared him, don’t you?” Gwirion demanded, sounding almost plaintive.
“My wishing something that I can’t act on contributes nothing to the well-being of the kingdom, so it doesn’t matter whether I wish it or not.”
“Drop the king-talk,” Gwirion said irritably.
“For important matters, I have no other language,” said Noble quietly. “That’s why your nonsense is always such welcome relief.”
Gwirion said nothing for a long time. Although their faces were only inches apart, the king could not read his eyes in the dimly lit space. Finally, Gwirion looked up and met his gaze. “I accept the apology,” he said aloud. To himself he kept the thought, unspoken, You are becoming a horrible man and I must escape you. But the native affection he had for that face, more familiar than his own, and the eyes more attentive than any mother’s gaze he had ever known, made such a choice, however necessary, ultimately impossible, and he knew it.
LISTLESSNESS settled over the castle when the king and his men had gone. The exception was the queen, who (indifferent to the indignant mutterings around her) reveled in the castellan duties she had earned. There were many: Each morning after attending chapel and breaking her fast, she met with Gwilym and Marged to go over the day’s schedule. Every few days she met with the almoner, the laundress, the seamstress, the interim captain of the shriveled castle garrison, the mayor of the village, and the marshal’s son Ednyfed, standing in for his father, who was with the king. After the morning meeting, once a week she would sit with Goronwy the judge to listen to civil matters from villagers and other subjects who had traveled sometimes days on foot. When there were no complications, the judge would simply rule on cases; when his judgment was challenged, the matter was normally turned over on appeal to the king or his deputy to consider with the council. But it was wartime and most of the council was at the front, so the queen found herself in the extraordinary position of being a one-woman, foreign-born appellate court. Goronwy was furious at first, but Gwilym calmly backed her claim that she was replacing him as the king’s deputy—and further pointed out that there was no actual law forbidding such a thing; it had simply never been the custom. Once the judge accepted that they were not breaking any law, he rescinded his objection with almost comical speed, although most castle workers continued to cast a disapproving eye on the queen’s mysterious and shocking assumption of authority. The first day of court trials, supplicants did not hide their unwillingness to receive judgment from a woman and a foreigner. She was gracious with them, offering them the opportunity to return when the king was back from the border. Most took her up on this but a few, in the end, did not, and by chance or fancy those appealing liked her judgment—the peasant who cut down a sacred oak grove; the penniless young freeman who’d just inherited his father’s lands but not his title and his brother who’d inherited the title but no land; a woman accused of killing her husband’s concubine. With no bias, conditioning, or instinct to control the population, she was truer to the letter of the law than Noble ever could have been and word quickly spread that the queen was a prudent, fair adjudicator. Already by the second week, people had begun to argue with the judge’s sentences simply for the novelty of her attention. Native law was meticulous and complicated, and she found her eyes glazing over trying to understand all the taxation schemes for the various uses of land. For a people more pastoral than agricultural, they had rules about land use and distribution that outgarbled Norman feudalism.
She also assumed the financial burden of the housekeeping, setting the budget and keeping track of who spent how much for what. There were no fees to the crown for months to come now, which spared her from the awkward situation of accepting capital from people she knew lacked enough to spare. She had never been comfortable doing this for her brother’s manors, and was glad to avoid it here. On a couple of occasions she found herself awkwardly accepting minor fees for things she could not believe Noble ought to benefit from: the loss of every maiden’s virginity, for example, enriched the king’s coffers even more handsomely than it did each ex-maiden’s. She wondered sardonically how the math worked out when Noble himself was the responsible party.
But more than the mental gymnastics of a day in court, what left her most uncertain was what to do with Gwirion. Normally he was forever busy at errands, performing, rehearsing, or pursuing other vague activities she had never bothered to look in to. But with the king gone, he sank into almost immediate lethargy. He would do anything that was asked of him, quickly and efficiently, from performing acrobatics for the village children to helping prepare grain for the mill, but left to himself he was like a puppet without a puppeteer.
COURIERS, running in relay along preestablished routes, came to and from the eastern border regularly. The temperature held mild, but with the mountainous terrain and unpredictable weather, it took at least a day for the fastest of them to reach the front, and much longer when there was mud or driving rain.
The only thing that put Isabel on edge were Noble’s reports. They had arrived without incident, he wrote, stopping only at Pilleth’s holy well for a blessing from the statue of the Virgin there. But once they were encamped near Llanandras, Mortimer had mocked them and told them to go home. They had demanded Thomas’s free presence in person, and Mortimer stalled for days. The next report told her that Mortimer had ambushed and imprisoned her old coot uncles, Walter and Ralf, while they were on their way to petition Prince John for Thomas’s release. Finally, Noble wrote, Mortimer had come to parley at the River Lugg, but he was cagey and indirect and at the end of the discussion, nothing at all had been justified or promised. There was no further parley.
But after five tense days, a band of teulu, going stir-crazy camped out through endless winter nights, stupidly crossed the border to raid the English village of Lingen, which belonged to Mortimer—and every day since then had seen a retaliatory counterstrike from each side in turn, skirmish after skirmish that were almost as difficult to quell as a full-out battle would have been to prosecute. The messengers came less frequently, and the queen’s brow was permanently creased. When news finally arrived again from the east, it came in a coffin. Hywel the bard had fallen early on, sword in hand, during the largest engagement so far: a brief battle in which Mortimer had almost effortlessly annexed the Maelienydd valley that had been the no-man’s-land between the armies. He moved the whole of his force onto the richest soil in Noble’s kingdom and settled them there: squatters, invaders, victors. He did not press his advantage, he did not attack the native host. He simply stayed.
When this news reached Cymaron, Hafaidd and Gwilym spent a fretful day calculating what smallest possible company could defend the castle in a siege. With the queen’s sanction, they chose from among the guards those least likely to contribute much in battle. They kept these men at Cymaron to form a skeleton garrison; all the rest, they sent to the front. Years later, two old men in an altered world, they would trace the events of that winter and spring backward through time and agree that the folly of their decision was to blame for all that followed, although they could not possibly have foreseen the worst of it.
THE morning after the bard’s burial, on the first day it was truly winter cold, Castell Cymaron was alerted to a sound no one had heard in years: five urgent staccato notes sounded on a trumpet, repeated many times. People looked up from their work—plucking geese, laying down new strewing herbs, fixing ploughs, balancing books, feeding horses, tending fires, hearing confession, letting blood—wondering what it meant. Then, almost as a single unit, the castle population realized they were under attack.
Panic swept the bailey and everybody instinctively scuttled into the hall, where the queen and the judge had been holding court. Gwilym, with the prescience Isabel had grown to admire, was already standing at her side. She turned to him, grim but unshaken. “The keep?” she asked.
The keep tower was intended for protection in an attack, but the castle’s design required crossing over a trench to reach it from the courtyard. Since marauders were usually sighted from a distance on these high broad hills, there would normally be time to get up into the keep, but the trumpeter’s signal was the code for an imminent siege; she was concerned that there would be no time to get people safely across. “I’ll learn more,” the steward offered, and went out to the courtyard.
Gwirion wandered in as Isabel was trying to soothe the visiting women petitioners. He had heard the alarm and imagined the queen would be hysterical, so he chose to appear with an insouciant attitude to accentuate her fear. He entered eating a heel of barley bread Marged had told him he couldn’t have, chewing slowly and loudly to demonstrate how unconcerned he was about the chaos.
“Gwirion,” said the queen’s voice beside him, with a calm authority he had never heard and could hardly believe. “We may be moving to the keep and we’ll need your assistance.” She pointed to an elderly couple from another valley, at court on petition. “Help those two.” Without waiting for an answer, she efficiently shifted her attention to a large man, a villager, and told him to carry a woman who was blind. Gwirion was floored by her levelheadedness; he wasn’t sure whether he was disappointed or impressed.
Gwilym returned looking confused. “There’s been some mistake, milady,” he said. “It’s nothing but a small company outside the barbican. The guards at the village gate let them in and they made their way up to the castle without incident. They’re not even on horseback. I would recommend you come speak to them, Your Majesty.”
“Why did our man sound the alarm?”
“We’re so lightly garrisoned right now, all of the guards have been on edge.” He did not add his personal opinion: Feeling insulted for being kept behind, these men were hoping for a crisis so they could prove themselves, and they were only too eager to read drama into any unexpected circumstance.
She called for a mantle and tied it closed, then stepped out of the side door with him into the cold, grey morning air, descending the steps to the main gate. She nodded to the deputy porter, a gaunt tanner from the village who bowed nervously, flustered by her proximity. He opened the small eye-level panel in the gate to reveal an enormous jowl and moustache. “Identify yourself to Her Majesty,” he ordered the moustache.
Its owner descended enough to show his face in the opening. He was about Noble’s age and coloring but much rougher looking, and reddened from the cold. “Good morning!” he said to the porter as if they were old friends. “Let us in, would you? We’re freezing.”
“Identify yourself,” the porter repeated.
The man proclaimed himself Cynan ap Dafydd, baron from Gwynedd and kinsman to Prince Llewelyn.
“Why aren’t you fighting with him if you’re kin?” Gwilym asked, moving closer to the gate.
“I’ve been keeping an eye on things at home. We’re on our way to the Marches now to join my prince and his men, but we needed to warm ourselves and possibly restore provisions. We’d pay for that, of course.”
“And why did my man sound an alarm?” the steward persisted quietly.
“Well, there’s a lot of us,” Cynan said. “The whole of my company stands outside the gates. He might have been a bit overwhelmed. It’s a misunderstanding. I’m not asking you to shelter all of them, just my teulu, and there’s not many of them. We need a day to regroup, then we’ll be on our way again. I’ve got Llewelyn’s seal with me if you’re seeking proof.”
Satisfied, Gwilym looked to the queen for instructions. “We need a moment to discuss this,” she said politely, and to the porter added, “Close the panel.”
“Wait, wait!” the baron called. “There’s nothing to discuss. I’m kinsman to your lord’s closest ally, on my way to help fight for your border, and we need some shelter because it’s colder than ice balls out here. Open the gate.”
She stared at him through narrowed eyes. “You’ve arrived in the morning. Why does that seem strange to me?”
“We got lost in the hills, lost our bearings. All the valleys look exactly alike around here, don’t they? We didn’t know we were so close until we broke camp at dawn. Please, lady, we have lads out here with frostbite. We’re guests! There’s a code of decency! Haven’t you got that in England?”
“Why didn’t you send a messenger ahead to let us know you were coming?” she pressed, ignoring the insult.
The man cursed. “We did! I guess he’s lost too, then. I hope he didn’t freeze to death, poor lad. As castles go, this one is damn hard to find, you know that, don’t you?”
She couldn’t argue that point; her wedding party had almost gotten lost coming here and she hadn’t had nearly so far to travel. Beginning to shiver a little in the cold, she turned to the steward. “What are your thoughts on this?”
“Saxons,” she heard Cynan mutter in exasperation to someone in his party. She forced herself to ignore it.
Gwilym had a ready answer. “Your Majesty is the king’s deputy in this, but I would admit them. It’s a terrible insult to Llewelyn not to. They’ll leave their weapons with the porter.”
“Of course we will,” Cynan said, impatient at having to even discuss something so obvious.
At last, displeased, she gestured for the gate to be opened. Although a man on the barbican had already vouched that the visitor spoke the truth, she didn’t relax until she saw Cynan’s company for herself: a small teulu of about a dozen men, and their squires who carried satchels. “There’s soldiers out that way,” he said, nodding down the road out of the village. “Watching our mounts. But they’ll stay there unless you have the room and inclination to house them in your bailey. They’re hardy enough.”
She smiled stiffly without responding, and exchanged formal greetings with him as he and his men laid their quivers, bows, and swords in a pile near the gate. To reassure the queen, Gwilym signaled most of the garrison to shadow the visitors into the hall. As they mounted the broad stone stairs, Cynan asked if breakfast was a possibility—again, he said cheerfully, just for these men, not his entire company. Marged grudgingly agreed to scrounge something up.
People began to drift out of the hall and back to their tasks or (after wrapping themselves snugly) down into the village, and even Goronwy excused himself to waddle back to his room, since court was clearly adjourned for the morning. Some folk stayed around, fascinated by the unexpected guests; the guards tried casually to blend in with them. The queen’s focus was so intently on her visitors that she didn’t realize, until the familiar strains of “Rhiannon’s Tears” caught her attention, that Gwirion was in the room, squatting on his stool by the hearth. She had to admit to herself she was glad of his presence.
She had deliberately neglected offering to wash her guests’ feet, and denied Cynan’s request to let his men enjoy free rein of the bailey, but he simply shrugged agreeably. Still there was something about this man she didn’t trust. He was enjoying himself too much for somebody fighting off frostbite. She excused the steward and usher to their chamber, but she did it in a tone of voice that encouraged them to tarry in the courtyard to keep an eye on things.
There was a table by the hearth for the morning audience that had been interrupted, and the baron and his men settled themselves there. She sat near them, partly to be courteous but mostly to keep an eye on them. Marged managed to feed them all cheese, barley cakes, and ale, and everyone who saw it wondered if that would be a meal out of their own mouths before the end of winter. The men ate with gusto, and quickly. Cynan pushed his ale away and rubbed his sleeve across his moustache and lips, which approximated cleaning them. He smiled broadly at the queen.
“You have a good harp there, milady.”
“Thank you,” she and Gwirion said at the same moment. She glanced at the harpist quickly; he did not return the look, just ran his hand with deferential affection over the slightly curved forepillar and the lion head atop it, and began a new piece.
“Excuse me, milady, but did I really hear the steward call you your husband’s deputy?”
“That’s correct,” she answered stiffly, wondering what to say if questioned about how that had come to pass.
“Then if you don’t mind, milady, there is in fact just one quick thing I’d like to speak of with you.”
“It depends upon the substance of it.”
“Is your ladyship aware of my prince’s interest in…unifying Wales under a single banner?”
“A single banner of Gwynedd, do you mean?” she said coldly. “My husband has mentioned it. He’s opposed, of course. I thought the issue had been dropped.”
He shook his head, grimacing. “It hasn’t. My master Llewelyn would like him to reconsider an arrangement.”
“That should be negotiated by the two of them personally after the current crisis is settled. This is hardly the time to resolve it.”
“Well, yes, that’s what I told His Highness myself, but the way he saw it, the current crisis offers an opportunity to demonstrate to your husband the wisdom of cooperating.”
“How?”
“Llewelyn believes it might encourage your husband to cooperate if I brought Your Majesty to Gwynedd for a while.”
She was on her feet instantly and backing away from him, but eight of the pages, hidden knives drawn from their knee boots, were already in pairs at the exits and the foot of the stairs. They’d moved with arrow-straight choreography: Someone who knew this space had drawn it out for them. Marged shrieked from the kitchen and Gwirion, leaping to his feet, banged his knee on the harp as the few green or aging guards, taken by surprise, took a moment to collect themselves, which cost them. Cynan’s teulu were far better fighters and outmanned them, and had them disarmed in less than a minute as Gwirion and the queen gaped at what was happening. The four remaining pages, with almost mechanical synchronicity, pulled ropes from their satchels and had the men bound before another minute had passed, as Isabel stared helplessly around the hall. It had happened so quickly and with so little struggle that it was hard to believe there was any real menace involved. The baron’s companionable expression did not change. “It’s no use running away, milady, and you won’t be sending anyone for help.” As if on cue, the trumpeter outside began to sound the five-note alarm again, and the church bell joined the noise urgently. The baron smiled. “So your man has finally puzzled it out. My host has the entire village surrounded now. No one will get away but by my permission.”
“If you hold me hostage—”
“Oh, no, milady, it’s nothing like that.” Cynan chuckled reassuringly. “You’ll be a treasured guest of my prince, that’s all, and he’ll be very jealous of your safety. You’ll notice we haven’t hurt your men. This isn’t a siege, we’re simply here to escort you northward. I’ll be bringing you back with me today, and my soldiers will stay outside the village walls a few days more to make sure word doesn’t travel to your king too quickly. He needs to keep his mind on the enemy, you know—wouldn’t want him distracted by domestic troubles.” As she calculated her chances of getting past the boys by the kitchen entrance, the baron’s teulu and the remaining pages dashed through the exits in groups of four to secure the entire bailey. She knew, with a sinking feeling, that they would meet almost no resistance. Even Gwilym, despite his height and general build, was too old now to be strong in arms. “So, milady, thank you for the breakfast, that was a treat, and we’ll be departing at once. If one of you lads would bind Her Majesty’s hands—gently, she’s a delicate thing—and where is that pretty cape you were wearing?” He looked casually around the hall, as if expecting a servant to show up holding it out.
“You’re wasting your time, he won’t give up a thing for that one,” Gwirion said from the hearth. She closed her eyes and breathed a silent prayer of gratitude. He set the harp against the wall and walked up to Cynan. “I’m the one you want.”
The baron looked at him as if he were insane. “And who in hell are you?” he asked.
“I’m a person of importance to the king—isn’t that all that matters? If you’re taking somebody hostage to manipulate His Majesty, you’ll have a lot more leverage if you take me.”
Cynan turned to the queen. “Is the fellow daft?”
“No,” she said, barely able to bring her voice above a whisper. “He’s not. He’s telling you the truth.” It was a truth she never thought she’d be grateful to hear touted.
“What sort of prat is this, then?” the baron demanded. “I don’t believe either of you.”
“The queen’s no use to him. She hasn’t brought him a son, she couldn’t even carry to term. And it was a political marriage designed to help stabilize the area where—in case you hadn’t heard—there is now a battle going on, so obviously that part of the union didn’t work either. You’d be doing him a favor, frankly, taking the thing off his hands. The rest of us wouldn’t mind either, to be honest, she’s an uppity woman who will not keep to her place. He’ll let her wither away in your dungeon or wherever you keep her. She’s not even a native subject! It’ll be a wasted effort.”
“And you? What’s to be gained by you?”
“Noble would raise the heavens to get me back under his roof. Take me, don’t waste your time with the queen.”
Cynan curled his lip at Gwirion. “I hadn’t heard about that particular predilection.”
Gwirion laughed. “It’s not like that, but make of it what you will.”
The baron snorted again. “This is an obvious ploy, I’d have to be an idiot to fall for it.”
Gwirion shrugged. “If you don’t believe me, help yourself to her, but you’re wasting your time and she’ll be another mouth to feed for no benefit at all. She’s small, but trust me, she eats like a starving pig.” He walked back toward his harp. Isabel’s heart thrilled with gratitude at his convincing nonchalance.
“Why are you being so helpful?” Cynan demanded.
Looking down demurely as he settled at the harp, Gwirion said in a conspiratorial tone, “Some people here think Llewelyn would not be such a bad overlord, but nobody’s been able to persuade the king of that. I am happy to offer myself up for the sake of a better future.”
“Is that so?” Cynan asked, with wary sarcasm. “I’m glad there are those here with a little common sense.” He studied the harpist. “If you’re telling me the truth, prove it.”
“You can ask anybody in this room. In the castle. In the village. In the valley,” Gwirion said calmly.
“That’s nothing,” the baron scoffed. “That could be a stratagem you set up weeks ago.”
“Naive as we are, it never occurred to us we’d need a stratagem for protection against our major ally. But if you need proof, just ask the king,” Gwirion said, already sounding bored with the discussion, and picked up his tuning key to fiddle with the harp pegs.
The baron laughed. “Yes, I’ll just trot over to the front lines and say, ‘Excuse me, Your Highness, but I need to take a hostage and I was wondering whose absence you’d be most disturbed by.’”
“Send a messenger,” Gwirion suggested casually, apparently more interested in tuning his harp than he was in the conversation. But Isabel saw a look on his face that she suddenly recognized and something inside her relaxed, trusting his instincts and knowing that things might be under control now, as preposterous as that seemed. “Send one of your messengers dressed in our livery, and have him ask the question very neutrally—tell him it’s a bet we’re making here among ourselves, and they need a written answer to who matters more, the queen or Gwirion.”
The baron’s eyes got very wide. “You’re Gwirion!” he said, as if that made everything clear. Gwirion looked up from tuning, then down again in mock consternation at his own hands and arms.
“Good God, man, you’re right! How did that happen?”
“I thought Huw had invented you!”
Gwirion and the queen exchanged looks: Huw ap Maredudd, seducer of stable boys and longtime advocate of Prince Llewelyn. Of course. He turned back to his harp, refusing to grace Cynan with a direct glance. “Will you do that, then? Send one of your boys to the king? If you’ve a good horse and a strong boy, he can be there and back in two days.”
The baron eyed him thoughtfully. Now that he knew who the fellow was, there was actually a remote possibility he was telling the truth. Based on stories of what the king let this man get away with, there was surely some unique bond between them. But still…
“Don’t be daft. The lady is his queen consort and you don’t even exist as a political entity.”
“Noble doesn’t negotiate,” Gwirion lied, apparently speaking to his B-flat string. “He won’t make decisions from political manipulation. He’s completely self-centered, a creature of whims and fancy, and you’ll get far more out of him if you appeal to his emotions than to his political loyalties. He simply has no sense of loyalty.” He finally looked up at Cynan. “Not unlike your own prince.”
The baron ignored the remark. Gwirion’s suggestion sounded appealing. This was a warm castle, and a few days’ rations at somebody else’s expense was always a good idea in wintertime. On the other hand, there was the garrison to deal with. Although it was only a skeleton crew, his men could not hold all of them at bay for more than a few hours. Unless—
“Madoc,” he called out, as one of his men reentered from the yard. “Look at their keep. Could we lock the castle guard into it for a few days?” That might work. It would be easy to control them, they’d be removed from the unarmed civilians, and there would be ample provisions for them there. “Is there a dungeon?” he suddenly asked. He saw Gwirion and Isabel both blanch. “I’m not interested in torturing you, I just need to hole you up somewhere until the messenger returns—What?” he demanded when Gwirion laughed.
“Together? I’d rather have the rack!” the harpist answered, and ran his fingers over the strings to check the tuning. “In any event, the only cell’s not big enough to hold us both, unless you want to breed us—but from an aesthetic perspective, I really wouldn’t advise it. My magnificent profile would be lost to history.”
Cynan ignored the flip comment. “Is there a room we can secure entirely? No windows, one door? Her Majesty is now a guest of ours, I don’t want her put out.”
Nobody offered information.
“Then she shall have to join you in the cellar,” Cynan said with a shrug.
“There’s the king’s private audience chamber,” Gwirion conceded, seeing the look on Isabel’s face. He tightened the third peg slightly and plucked the string, his ear pressed close to it. “That would be acceptable to Her Majesty, I think. It’s snugger than a nun’s loins.”
“Where is it?”
Gwirion gestured toward the door in the corner of the hall before returning to his tuning, and the baron sent one of his men to check the room. A moment later, Madoc returned with the report that the keep would work. The top floor was intentionally empty, to provide refuge in a siege, and the basement held months’ worth of food. The baron agreed to Gwirion’s suggestion, and a courier outfit in the royal livery of red tunic and yellow hose was found to fit one of the baron’s pages. The baron coached him on what to say, and Gwirion put the harp down at last, to point out where the boy’s accent was too obviously of Gwynedd. “If anybody asks, say you’re from the northern border—say Newtown—and you’ve just arrived here as a page. If you use my name, or the queen’s, you should get immediate access to the king, and he’ll probably laugh and write you a response right away.”
“Won’t he think it strange that in the middle of battle he’s getting such a trivial request?” The baron frowned.
“On the contrary,” Gwirion assured him, picking up his harp again. “He’ll assume it’s part of some bigger prank of mine. It will seem so reassuringly normal he’ll forget about it within an hour.” He closed his eyes and began a series of melodious descending arpeggios, smiling contentedly.
“You’re an odd lot in Maelienydd, aren’t you?” Cynan snorted. “Anyway, now, into the chamber with you, boyo.” Isabel started slightly and the arpeggio ended in midnote as Gwirion clapped his hands over the strings, his eyes springing open: Neither of them had realized they were actually going to end up shut in together.
“I thought I was going to the cellar,” Gwirion said.
Cynan gestured vaguely toward the door. “In this cold? If you’re the prize we want, I can’t risk your taking a chill and dying off.”
Gwirion, thrown, affected insouciance and made a great show of laying the harp on its back, bowing, and fluttering an imaginary cloak as he crossed to the door and finally marched in, waving gaily to everybody as he vanished into the shadows of the chamber. Cynan turned to the queen, who had watched his parade with obvious discomfort. Silently, she allowed herself to be escorted in behind her fellow inmate. The door was pulled shut, and she heard the butler’s key turn in the lock.