ENID HAD BEEN given a rare privilege when the king left her: He’d invited her to sleep through the chill remainder of the night in the audience chamber, wrapped in the feather quilt from the chest, provided she was up and out before the household stirred. Gwirion did not see her in the kitchen when he returned to his warren, and guessed where she was. Knowing the castle would soon awaken, and not wanting to miss a chance to tease her, he sneaked into the darkened receiving chamber draped in a wool blanket, hovering over her dozing form with a candle. She lay in the same place and position Isabel had that fateful afternoon, more obviously sensuous, her hair dark and loose, her lips much fuller than the queen’s, her complexion more hale—but it had no effect on him. He almost wished it would; he was still trying to depersonalize the attraction, convince himself it was just about a woman’s body and not about her.
He tapped his finger on Enid’s nose until she awoke with a start. She blinked in the candlelight, laughed languidly, and relaxed back into the sinfully comfortable bedding.
“Good morning, little slut, I’m here to collect my commission.”
She shook her head. “Anyone but you and I’d get angry.”
He gave her a suggestive smile. “Did you enjoy yourself?”
She mirrored the smile back at him, her nose crinkling as it always did when she was especially amused. “Did you?”
His smile faded. “What are you talking about?” he asked, an edge in his voice to hide his nervousness.
“Gwirion, I know,” she whispered.
“Know what?” He frowned at her with what he hoped passed for bored impatience and stood up, heading for the door. “Let’s pester Marged for some breakfast.”
“Don’t play coy with me,” Enid said, grinning. “She would have gone to her own room if she hadn’t seen me coming here. If you had a good time, you should thank me for it.”
Gwirion stumbled and fell into the king’s chair. He stared at her with such abject fear that she made herself relinquish the warmth of the blankets to go and steady him. “He doesn’t know,” she said, taking the candle from him so he wouldn’t drop it. She had on only her shift, so she set down the candle and picked up the quilt to wrap around herself, and they faced each other like two swaddled infants.
“I don’t—” he began to protest innocence. “But how did you find out?” he asked, sheepish but alarmed.
“Ha! After your peculiar behavior, hers was easy to interpret.” He looked up at her, horrified, and she patted his arm. “For me, I mean. He doesn’t suspect. Trust me, I just spent the night with him, he doesn’t suspect.” He made a face and shook his head, refusing to be reassured.
“I can’t believe this is happening,” he whispered bleakly, frightened.
“I’m stunned myself,” she admitted. “And I’m worried about you.”
“Why?” he said defensively, looking away. A witness cemented the reality. It no longer existed in their shared desire—a disinterested third party had called him to account. It was a fact now, a part of objective reality. If Enid could see it, then others could too.
“Because what’s next?”
“We have to stop it,” he said nervously.
She shook her head with a sympathetic smile. “I don’t know that you have a choice.”
“I can’t do that to Noble,” he insisted. The answer was instinctual, and reassured him. Less instinctual was the assertion: “I’ll just find someone else.”
She sighed, ignoring this final comment, which she knew was meaningless. “It’s like one of those long, tortured love ballads Brychan the bard likes so much.”
“Those ballads always made me sick,” Gwirion said angrily.
LATER that morning, despite the snow flurries speckling the air, the pilgrims continued on their way toward St. David’s, embroidered daffodils wafting on skirts and veils in defiance of the weather.
Gwirion and the queen managed to avoid each other through the morning, terrified of giving anything away in their behavior, but each fell prey to that most common weakness of new lovers: stealing furtive glances, even if the other was oblivious, just for the thrilling reassurance of the other’s continued and astonishing existence. Gwirion caught himself at it finally, ogling the slight curve of her hips from across the hall and remembering what it felt like to push himself against them. He realized what a danger it was and scowled at her the next time he felt her eyes on him, but she didn’t understand him. More than a risk of discovery, it seemed to him an invitation to self-torture, for however resigned they were to a mutual lust, there would be no easy way to indulge it again. That frustration at least offered him one reassurance: Since they most likely could not act again, at least they could not be caught.
Isabel herself felt almost impervious to danger now. Between the public’s romantic affection for her and the secret thrill of adultery accomplished, she was no longer just the brood mare who had failed to deliver. She glowed all day, even when spasms of panic overwhelmed her each time she thought her husband was looking at her strangely. Caught between fearful guilt and the pleasant fluster of proximity, both she and Gwirion tried hard to dwell on neither their desire to grope each other nor their inability to do so.
The king held council after dinner, fretting over first Llewelyn and then Mortimer. He forced himself to listen to his men’s cautious suggestion that he stabilize the situation with Llewelyn by joining their courts in a confederacy, ideally by marriage. These officers, the highest in the kingdom, humbly offered their offspring or even themselves to such a union, but the king considered it a useless project. “My marrying a Mortimer profited us nothing,” he pointed out. “Who among you can offer a more profitable hand than mine?”
The shine of his victory was beginning to subside and he debated with his huddled officers how best to chastise Roger for his sluggishness. He invited his wife to sit in for this part of the council, and marveled silently that the entire table—most of whom had been at the front with him and had not actually seen her in her castellan duties—naturally accepted her as one of them. This was unheard of; not even his mother Efa, when widowed by Cadwallon and with a young son to prepare for kingship, had been so accepted in the court. He studied how offhand she seemed about this extraordinary status, how levelheaded about pressuring her uncle.
He also brought Gwirion to council, to play softly in the background, and he kept the harp within hearing wherever he was for the rest of the day, shooting his friend occasional warm smiles for his efforts. Gwirion was grateful for a chance to serve his monarch and his friend; in his tormented imagination, each new tune exonerated the sin of each new indecent thought he had about the queen. He had to play a lot of tunes.
That evening after supper the royal couple sat near the fire and Gwirion again unwrapped his harp to play. Because of the chill weather, most of the castle was gathered here until bedtime. It was a welcome change from the unbroken hours of political ruminations, and there was a cozy familiarity to it—it was the first time since the king’s return that there had been an informal evening party. Noble asked for many old favorites until people started nodding off. Gwirion was taking a final request from Cadwgan’s daughter Gwladys when the queen abruptly brought both hands to her face to cover an enormous yawn.
“Don’t become sleepy on me now,” her husband said. With a private, roguish smile, he added something in a lowered voice that made her blush. The harp sounded a sour note, and the king turned to Gwirion with a droll expression. “I’ve never heard you miss a note before, Gwirion,” he scolded. “Was it something I said? Do you still disapprove of my honoring my marriage vows?”
“It’s just that you’ll break my poor mare’s heart, sire,” Gwirion replied, picking up the melody again. “You said she was the only girl for you and she’s been waiting all evening for you in your room.”
“Excellent, a threesome!” He winked at his wife—who almost jumped—and then turned back to Gwirion. “Come up and serenade us.”
“Only if I can mount the pretty one,” Gwirion leered, his eyes on the strings.
“Gwirion!” the queen cried.
“What? She’s my pony, I can do what I please with her,” he shot back, and Noble laughed. With pursed lips, Isabel settled nervously back into her chair.
“Of course, if you’d rather a more conventional treatment to put you to sleep,” the king suggested, “just call Gwirion up to play for you.”
He nearly missed another string. “Damn harp’s out of alignment again,” he muttered loudly, inventing a complaint. He picked up his tuning key from the string on his belt and poured his attention into the imaginary problem.
She looked at her husband as if she couldn’t quite understand his meaning. “In the middle of the night?” she said. “In my room? A man?”
“It’s just Gwirion,” he said breezily. “The worst he can do is pun you to death.”
“But…he needs to sleep, surely, I can’t wake—”
“Gwirion exists without sleep,” Noble assured her. “Don’t you?”
The harpist looked up innocently from the harp. “Pardon? I was distracted.”
“I was telling my wife you wouldn’t mind going to her room at night to play for her if she’s restless. Provided of course that I don’t need you.”
Gwirion’s eyes involuntarily flashed to the queen and away again, and he paled. He could not square this with what he was certain was in Noble’s heart and mind. “Good God, sire, I can’t do that,” he said.
“Why not?”
Isabel tried to breathe calmly and look unconcerned, but her fingers were clenched around the arms of her chair. “Well, sire…” Gwirion glanced around the hall and lowered his voice confidingly. “It’s her women. They’re all desperate for me—I’m constantly beating them away and I just don’t think I’m strong enough to fend off all three at once.”
Noble gave him a sly look. “I’d think you’d want that, the way you carry on.”
“I’m waiting for a woman with lots of livestock to keep me satisfied when she’s not in the mood,” Gwirion explained pleasantly. “What tune would you like next?”
The queen made a disgusted sound to cover her nervousness and rose to leave. Gwirion felt his stomach tighten. “I’m sorry, Your Majesty,” he called to her quickly. “I didn’t mean to insult your women. I’d be delighted if they ravished me. And I’m pleased to play for you any evening you require it.” He’d managed to appear offhand.
She did not smile. “Thank you, Gwirion. I’ll keep that in mind.” She sounded totally disinterested.
“Of course, you won’t be needing it so often,” he said. “You’re a Mortimer after all. You can sleep through anything.”
She made a face at him that made her husband chuckle. “I’ll be up as soon as you’ve warmed the sheets,” he crooned, “my little harpy.” Isabel gave him a flustered smile and walked away.
Noble and Gwirion both watched her lithe body in its burgundy silk crossing away from them. Her husband took a breath and rose suddenly. “You’ll excuse me,” he said to Gwirion and the few others who were still awake, “I believe we’ll warm the bed together.” He walked with light, quick steps after her until he was beside her. Gwirion watched as the king put his arm around her slender waist and hugged her slightly to him, gesturing to a hall servant for his mantle.
RETURNING to her own bed hours later, she sent Llwyd her doorkeeper downstairs “to fetch the harpist.” Emerging from the sticky web of sleep, Gwirion was thrown by the man’s inviting him to the queen’s room alone and almost refused the request, but finally allowed himself to be escorted to her chamber, harp in hand, eager and reluctant at once. He desperately wished this rendezvous wasn’t born of Noble’s unthinking trust in both of them.
Perhaps it wasn’t unthinking trust. Perhaps it was a trap.
But once they were closed in together, the great failing of this opportunity, the evidence that it was neither really a gift nor a trap, made itself plain: Her women could hear clearly through the tapestried curtain that offered the only privacy between her sleeping area and theirs. This was no recipe for trysting; they may as well have been in public, and he couldn’t stop playing or he would lose his excuse for being here. So he played.
She reached up through the cold dark air to stroke his face, and the shock of it jolted him so severely that his fingers missed the strings and he smacked his head against the harp’s hollowed sound box. “Please don’t do that,” he whispered. “That’s worse than not being here at all.” She grinned and immediately reached up again, but he pulled his head away. “I’m serious,” he hissed. “I can hardly keep the harp on my lap.” He started to play again, almost desperately.
She kept beaming at him in the darkness, breathless with the dangerous pleasure of their treasonous proximity. “Then we’ll meet elsewhere,” she decided.
“That would be madness.”
She ignored the observation. “The next time there’s outside entertainment and you have the evening free, we’ll spirit ourselves away from the hall and meet in the guest chamber upstairs from Gwilym’s room. If it’s empty, there’ll be no guard on that floor. It will need to be quick but it’s better than nothing.”
He agreed with reluctance, still wanting not to want to be with her.
AFTER just two days and nights of fickle snowfall, two days of Gwirion devoting himself with doglike fidelity to the king’s ebbing humor and two nights of Isabel being an obedient, ardent wife, they had an opportunity. The bard from Abbey Cwm-hir came to play for the king. He was fed before supper, accepting only bread and water, and performed throughout the meal and afterward. In honor of Lent he played nothing that was even remotely enjoyable, and in the ensuing torpor that overtook the hall it was easy for both Gwirion and Isabel to slip away.
But when they met in the empty tower, they were once again slapped by disappointment. The room was clammy and dark, and they dared not light a fire or even a candle, lest the sergeant, on the lookout for unexplained fires, notice something through the sealed parchment over the windows and decide to explore. The moon was not yet a quarter full and anyway was blotted out by clouds. Unfamiliar with the room and unable to see anything, they could not navigate to retrieve a blanket or cushion from a storage chest. They were both distressed about time, fearful of being missed in hall and then of being seen returning, and the bed, when they finally found it, was missing its blanket—there was only a dense pile of dried heather, flattened slightly from Humffri’s visit.
Her teeth chattering in the cold, Isabel still let out a sigh of imperial annoyance. Gwirion took it personally, thinking of the feather mattress and warm woven blankets and billowing canopied curtains Noble offered her each night.
“This wasn’t my idea,” he said unhappily, rubbing his arms for warmth in the dark. “I had no way of—”
“I know that,” she cut him off impatiently.
He was almost glad this was going afoul. As desperate as he was to feel her against him again, he was equally desperate to be free of that desire, and two frustrated assignations in a row was an excellent way of souring it. Noble had offered him a mistress and there was a new hall servant whom he found his gaze drifting to at meals; maybe he would ask for her. To be respectful to Her Majesty, he would wait until she herself declared their liaison over, which would certainly be soon if these frustrations kept arising. Then he would take a lover, she would return her full attention to her marriage and all would be well; perhaps they could be proper friends again. He missed those hours of conversation, locked up together in the audience room.
Defeated and unsatisfied, they left separately and took different paths back to the hall. Gwirion braved more of the cold and slush by descending and walking the long way around the inner curtain wall; the queen took the icy wall walk over the barbican across to her own room, and descended back into the hall from there. Neither of them had been missed, and they avoided addressing each other directly for the rest of the evening, but Gwirion was immensely attentive to the king.
She tried to convince herself that his behavior was prompted by either fear or guilt, but she could not deny the genuine affection that he exuded, almost despite himself, toward Noble. It galled her on two fronts. First because, despite his sexual attentiveness, Noble had never extended to her whatever it was that made Gwirion cleave to him so; second—and worse—because Gwirion gave so freely to the king that part of him, the hidden human part, which had first drawn her to him when they were locked up alone together, and she ached for it.
GWIRION feared and hoped that the fiasco in the tower was the end of it, especially when Noble sent the queen ahead to his bed to warm it for him. So he was confused when the same sleepily whispering doorkeeper came for him in the midnight hours, requesting his presence, with his harp, in the queen’s chamber.
He closed her door behind him with a soft sigh, wondering why she was subjecting both of them to this torture a second time. He would have to invent a gentle refusal if she tried it again.
The room was unexpectedly warm, the fire recently stoked and brighter than a torch. “Good evening,” she greeted him with polite formality. “My ladies have asked that you play as quietly as possible, so you will continue to sit beside my bed.” She gestured for him. “And you will play for as long as I require it.”
He acknowledged this with a feeble smile and took his position near her head. “Why am I here?” he whispered, grateful the sewing bevy was hidden by the tapestry.
“To play the harp. For now,” she whispered back. “Until they’ve fallen asleep.”
He was astonished. “You’re not thinking—”
She put her finger to his lips. “A lullaby, please.”
His heart pounding, Gwirion performed every soft song he knew, every gentle song, even every drinking song slowed to a lull. He tried playing the melody with only his left hand, while droning gently on the lower strings with the right, and the effect was something stuporous. His fingers wanted to rush through all the tunes, as if the faster they were completed the faster those women would succumb to slumber. He almost couldn’t keep the rhythm of anything he played, all of it moved so much more slowly than his own heartbeat in fearful anticipation. Every few minutes he looked anxiously toward the door, expecting interruption. “I can always hear him approaching,” she whispered reassuringly, but he wasn’t reassured.
After almost an hour, when even he was having trouble staying focused and the fire was dying down to embers, she nodded to him to stop, and drew the curtains closed all around the bed. Except for one small opening, through which she beckoned him to enter.
He mouthed the words “Are you mad?” to her, but she only smiled.
“They sleep through it when Noble comes, they’ll sleep through it now.”
“How can you possibly—”
“Even if they hear something, they’ll think it’s him come during the night. They can’t see anything.”
He glanced at the tapestry that hid the women, his heartbeat quickening. To help him make a well-reasoned choice, she slid her hand along his lap toward his groin. He spun around to look at her, a wild, pleading look in his eyes.
“Why do I have to start everything?” she asked in a coy whisper. “Couldn’t you just once pretend I’m irresistible?”
He blushed, and after a hesitation, he laid the harp on the floor and crawled in through the curtains. “Do you prefer hanging or dismemberment?” he asked as he straddled her.
As she undressed him, they were nearly as aware of the sleeping attendants as they were of each other, but for her it only fueled the excitement. She almost wished one of the women would call out in her sleep, just to add an adrenaline rush to her own already soaring state. Gwirion would have given anything for the surety of privacy, but her enthusiasm was contagious and he managed to put the images of hanging and dismemberment out of his mind for a while. She radiated heat from the blankets and the pleasure of sliding against an entire female body of such warmth was nearly as intoxicating as the consummation.
“We can’t do this very often,” he whispered afterward.
“Of course we can!” she whispered back, absently fingering the scar on his back.
He shook his head. “My nerves would be ruined by the end of a week and I’d have a stomach ulcer the size of Wigmore.”
She grinned. “It’s always funny to hear a Norman word said with a Welsh accent. Do it again.” She whispered even more quietly, “Say my name.”
He stared at her, shook his head nervously. “That’s dangerous. I might get used to saying it, I’d get sloppy—”
“We’ve already been sloppy,” she said, sobering. He guessed that she meant Enid, and nodded. He ran the side of his thumb across her lips. Already he couldn’t remember how he had ever looked at that mouth without wanting to taste it. Seeing that he was getting distracted, she frowned at him in the darkness and pushed his hand away. “What do you suggest, then?” she asked.
“I suggest losing interest in each other. But I don’t imagine that will happen for a while.” He glanced at her for confirmation and she pressed her nose against his cheek. “All right, then. Random encounters. When it’s safe. No more than once a week.” By his standards, that was decadently frequent.
“No!” she begged. “More than that!”
“Twice, then,” he relented as she slid her leg over his thigh. She wiggled up against him, grinning. “Oh, Christ, as often as you want. But only when it’s safe. Not near the full moon, people don’t sleep as deeply, there’ll be more open eyes around. Not if Noble’s in a mood—”
“If Roger doesn’t start honoring the treaty, Noble will be in a permanent mood,” she sighed.
“If you don’t like it, then help him out of it,” Gwirion said, almost chiding her.
“That’s your responsibility, fool,” she retorted. “Keep him pleased so that it will be safe for you to come to my bed.”
He sat up and pulled away from her. “That will never be the reason I please him,” he said sternly.
NOT every night throughout the next three weeks, but often, the restless queen would excuse herself from the king’s bed to her own, and send for the harp. Once her women were asleep, Gwirion would slink through the curtains and warm himself against her, amazed each time that she wanted to give herself to him after being with her husband. It was almost enough to make him religious. The need for silence forced them to find other ways to express desire and satisfaction. They learned to read each other’s subtle shifts of weight and movement, the scents of the other’s body changing with excitement. It was reckless of her but she actually enjoyed knowing they were never safe. It added romance and intensity to their lovemaking. Because they were unable to converse freely, they focused all their energy on physical intimacies, and he would leave almost immediately afterward, as if neither of them knew what to do with each other when they weren’t actually making love.
Strangely, once they had established that they could have each other almost as often as they wanted to, the dynamics of their daily routines were undisturbed by their affair, and they were able to treat each other with friendly indifference in all but the most awkward circumstances. Perhaps this was because he never stayed with her beyond the lovemaking, and so there were two parallel worlds between them whose rules of conduct never overlapped. In one they were unspeaking carnal partners; in the other they were the king’s two devoted dependents, still adored, as he was, by the populace. But there was a jealous tension between the two worlds, and both lovers noticed, with more attention than either would ever have confessed to, whom the other one spoke with and for how long. There was no opportunity to complain in daylight hours, and the night was too precious to waste in words. So she bit her lip when he ogled the new buxom black-haired hall maid or flirted, however innocently, with Marged’s workers, and he looked away whenever the king’s hand casually touched her sleeve, her cheek, her knee, and most of all when Noble sent her to his bed each night, smiling with royal anticipation at the thought of warming his own limbs against hers in his comfortable feather bed. That moment was always the hardest for Gwirion. Despite the quiet drone of guilt that filled his head, sometimes he had the sense that he was being robbed.
There were of course the deprivations that late winter wrought, the tensions at the court from Mortimer delaying reparations, from rumors that Llewelyn’s ambition was on the rise again. Gwirion dutifully applied himself to offering distraction, although his genius for clever mischief had gone into hibernation. A routine of sexual intimacy caused unforeseen distractions and he now found himself more aware of women’s bodies at the most inopportune of times. Not only breasts and hips and lips and eyes, but the collarbones, elbows, jawlines, knuckles of all his female acquaintances and friends seemed suddenly rife with potential sensuality and he blushed more often than he had since puberty.
For relief he would escape outside, to snow forts and vicious snowball fights organized by Efan to train (or so went his excuse) the next generation of potential teulu. It was a matter of debate whether Efan or Gwirion offered more rigorous training in winter sports. Gwirion’s exercises were the more unorthodox, of course: snow sculptures of half-size troops, dubbed as either Mortimer’s or Llewelyn’s, would be overwhelmed by means of bodily fluids, leaving melting, golden lumps of snow in the corner of the courtyard for Elen, the marshal’s wife, to grouse about to Noble.
Noble had far more pressing issues to attend to, and took to keeping Gwirion with him almost every waking moment—sometimes to listen to him play the harp, sometimes to listen to him ramble comically, sometimes to try to interest him in statecraft or war sports on the grounds that he was, after all, the new hero of Maelienydd and could surely find a better way to manifest it than pissing on snowy effigies of his enemies.
He kept his wife near him frequently as well, for different reasons. He continued to invite her into council, but her suggestions for strong-arming her uncle hadn’t been successful, and as Roger’s stonewalling increased, Isabel’s value in the officers’ eyes threatened to diminish. Begetting an heir was still a constant goal—and generally more pleasurable than it had once been—but until he had her with child, he could not rest easy that he had a useful marriage. Then cousin Anarawd wrote, asking after Her Majesty’s health and wondering when he might have the pleasure of attending a christening. Noble frowned and burned the letter without showing it to anyone.
ONE day in early March, when the snow had receded to a negligible six inches, news arrived that Humffri’s party, returning at last from their early pilgrimage to St. David’s, had begged the honor of stopping at Cymaron for the midday meal before the final leg of their journey home. Noble had been cooped up in the council room all morning and was glad of an excuse to take the air: He stood waiting to receive his baron, quite informally, with his wife beside him on the hall steps, both of them in winter reds and golden circlets. Humffri’s retinue was small, but he was escorted to the gate by a most peculiar and unnerving entourage, consisting of the entire village of Cymaron—carvers, weavers, wrights, carpenters, tanners, smiths, bakers, and dozens of others with their wives and children and aging parents, and finally, one skinny long-legged breathless boy in Noble’s livery.
The runner, not the baron, was the focus of the mob’s attention when two hundred soggy brogues, buskins, and boots stopped obediently at the gates. The crowd was well behaved and courteous of convention; they made no move to enter. Einion came out of the porthouse, gaping. The king, startled but affecting indifference, sent Gwilym to the gate to glean the cause of this spontaneous congress. The steward brought back with him not only Humffri, his lady, and their riding party, but also the gasping courier and an explanation. It was mere chance that baron and boy had arrived at the village at the same moment. A pretty village gossip, flirting with the gate watch, had seen the boy arrive from the northwest—the northwest—and within ten minutes the whole of the village knew there was news of the feared, distrusted, and despised Llewelyn. They wanted to know what it was.
Noble climbed the steps to the top of the barbican, looked down on the silent, anxious crowd, back toward the runner who was too exhausted to reveal much emotion, and finally informed Einion and Gwilym that if the villagers truly had nothing better to do with their dinner hour than hear trifling tales of a petty prince, they were welcome to enter the bailey.
INSIDE the hall, king and queen took their seats at the high table with their aristocratic visitors to their right and Gwirion, as ever, behind the king’s left shoulder. The villagers, obedient but dogged, had poured quietly through the castle gate, and with the collective focus of a school of fish had gone straight to the hall steps. Both doors had been opened, and the human mass split itself spontaneously in two, each half crowding around a broad threshold, eyes on the high table, waiting to hear what new pillaging of trust the powerful, dreaded Llewelyn had accomplished. Noble and his officers paid them no attention. The rest of the diners squirmed under their scrutiny.
The first course of dinner was already laid out but Noble ignored it, which required everyone else to ignore it as well. The king turned his attention to the boy and the boy handed him the scroll. He looked at the seal on it and raised his eyebrows. “Your lover, madam,” he said to his wife in an arch tone, and showed it to her. The seal was Owain’s.
She said nothing, content now to let him say that, even think it. Gwirion feigned indifference as Noble signaled the hall to begin eating, but he himself began to read the missive, and nobody so much as picked up a knife. He read in silence, his face growing somber. The court officers had watched him break the seal, anticipating a call to council. He felt the collected eyes upon him and looked up from reading. “Hubris,” he spat with sudden venom. “Llewelyn is creeping ever outward in his quest to conquer—pardon, unify—Wales. He’s appropriated yet another county in Gwynedd.” He threw the scroll down onto the table with a sharp, angry gesture.
There was an uneasy exchange of looks around the upper end of the hall and the crowd huddling at the door murmured as if they were watching a performance. Isabel’s guard went up at once. This was hardly damning news to her ears, and had nothing to do with Maelienydd. Noble was genuinely angry and dismayed about it, but she wondered if he was not, in fact, performing.
“It may have been under Norman control,” Father Idnerth observed.
Noble shook his head. “Welsh.”
“He does have birthright over certain areas,” Goronwy said. “Perhaps he was reclaiming—”
“No.”
There was another awkward silence.
“Perhaps he seized it from a rival,” said the queen.
“Owain seems to think he convinced the baron to yield to him. I find that more alarming than if he’d taken it by force.” He got to his feet so abruptly he almost knocked his chair over, and Gwirion, who recognized the mood, asked, “Harp?” at once. Noble jerked his head once in response, and distractedly signaled ease to the other diners, who had all in turn nearly knocked their benches over in a rush to stand. His Majesty walked around the high table and into the central area of the hall, where he began a round of long-legged pacing, deep in thought, his jaw hanging slightly slack, brow furrowed, blue eyes pensively downcast. The whole room and the entire population of Cymaron village hung in suspension, waiting on him, privileged to see the king in a moment of such vulnerable introspection. As Gwirion moved to the hearth he unintentionally swapped glances with the queen and saw plainly on her face the wariness already in his mind. It was unlikely that Maelgwyn ap Cadwallon had ever in his life suffered a bout of vulnerable introspection, and he most certainly would never suffer it in public. Unless, that is, something was very wrong. Gwirion, trying not to feel spooked, settled with his harp and began to play, not an actual melody but a series of simple descending arpeggios.
After a moment, without pausing in his movement, Noble made a sharp gesture toward his audience chamber. “Senior council,” he said tersely, and turning toward Humffri, announced, “I’m appropriating your bard for the while.” He nodded in response to Gwirion’s questioning expression, and harpist followed steward, penteulu, chaplain, and judge into the audience room. “No, madam, don’t even ask,” Noble said, anticipating his wife. “How could we be so rude as to leave our guests unattended? Pardon me, Humffri, this will be short. Continue your meal. My wife will provide company until I return.”
Brychan, Humffri’s recently appointed bard, could not have looked less bardlike. He was short, compact, thick-necked, and red-haired, his face constructed so that he looked permanently alarmed at the prospect of public speaking, and he was barely seasoned enough to be a bard of his own standing. But bard he was, and obedient. He followed Noble’s flourishing gesture with his eyes, then belatedly rushed into the receiving room after the castle officers.
Noble looked at the bizarre collection of faces stuffing the doorways, pink and splotchy from the cold. “We are going to close the doors now. Your presence is not required at this moment,” he informed them, but none of them moved. He reviewed them a moment longer and then groaned theatrically. “You may as well come in, then,” he declared, ironical, long-suffering. “We’ve lost enough of you to war, let’s not have winter claim the rest. But I’m not feeding you today.” He disappeared into his receiving room as the village—voiceless, spooked, polite—flowed into the hall.
IN the receiving room, they stood. The little round chamber was always lit and heated, but there was not enough seating for the seven of them. Noble nodded respectfully to Brychan. “We lost Hywel in the Mortimer campaign, as you know. We’ve managed to stumble along, but what I need to know now is distinctly a bard’s area of expertise.” Noble looked grim. “You are, I believe, versed in all the genealogies of the royal families of Wales?”
“Yes, sire,” Brychan answered, wide-eyed.
“Can you tell me if there are any marriageable women in Llewelyn’s close family?” To his startled men he said, heavily, “Perhaps all of you are right, and that’s the best way to control him.”
“If I may, sire,” Brychan stammered, bowing. “I require a meditation alone someplace to review within my mind’s eye the tributaries of that family river.” Gwirion almost shouted with laughter at his language but Noble, anticipating that, preempted him with a stern look.
“You may be hard put to find privacy with that silent mob outside,” the king said. “The chapel is empty, but it’s frigid in there now.”
When Brychan was gone, swallowed at once in the eerily quiet throng of onlookers in hall, the council members exchanged solemn glances. Young Efan and old Gwilym, the two highest-ranking members of the court, shifted self-consciously. “We are all your servants, sire,” Gwilym said. “But which of us do you consider weighty enough to give to such a union?”
“None of you,” the king said, and turned briskly to Idnerth. “The second thing I need to know is in your jurisdiction, Father. How may a king sue for divorce under canon law?”
SHE sat down hard on the settle, holding out her hand for balance.
“Am I that disposable?” she breathed. “I thought we’d finally…” She had to take another breath. Gwirion continued to play the same soft chords, sitting backlit by the hearth. Noble had dismissed the council. “I thought you and I had finally come to a genuine—”
“We had,” he said, gently, and sat in his chair across from her, reaching for her hand. “That’s the sad irony here—you truly have become a consort worthy of Maelienydd. But your family is treacherous. Your uncle is treacherous. Our union buys me nothing that way, and the victory I just won over Roger was completely hollow. He’s not going to honor the treaty, we both know that. Besides, Mortimer is not the nemesis to fear. Llewelyn is. Mortimer is just another foreign headache; Llewelyn is a native danger.” That observation genuinely pained him. She wavered in her suspicion that this was just a trick. “And Llewelyn is encroaching,” he went on heavily. “Roger killed off so many of my menfolk, there’s nobody else to seek a marriage with but cousin Anarawd and I would never trust him to be closer knit to Llewelyn than I am.” He released her hand and waited for her to speak. She still said nothing. “As I said, this will happen only if there’s a match to be made that would be more useful than ours. If there is, and we divorce, I’ll have no hold on you. But if your heart is truly in Maelienydd—and I believe it is now—I have a proposition that will serve us both extremely well. This is personal, would you have Gwirion leave?”
“I don’t care either way,” Isabel said with perfect offhandedness, her pale brown eyes artless. She was telling the truth, both grateful and resentful that Gwirion was responding so indifferently.
Noble said nothing to their musician, whose fingers moved automatically over the horsehair strings while his attention was bent entirely on keeping his own breath steady. He had no idea how plausible or possible this scheme of Noble’s was; his old fears were reignited and he was half convinced Noble had rigged the entire scenario just to test them both. Why else would he subject her to hearing such a cruel plan before it was even a reality?
But now Noble was giving her a look that Gwirion recognized for its sincerity. The blue eyes beamed beneficently; the king considered whatever he was about to propose a boon bestowed, proof that he was the most indulgent of sovereigns. “I want you,” he informed her, “to marry Owain.”
“What?”
“It’s a happy solution for both of us. Even if I marry into Llewelyn’s line, that corner of the kingdom is not secure. Owain is alarmingly naive, Huw has far too much sway over him and Huw has ambitious kin in Powys. I require an intelligent, loyal soul minding that border and you’ve proven you are that; you want a partner who reveres you for more than your political worth, and our little Owain has more than proven himself in that regard.”
Gwirion sneezed. “Excuse me,” he said gruffly, when both of them snapped their heads to stare at him.
“Our sage Gwirion sneezes at this idea,” Noble said with lofty mockery. “Perhaps he will be so good as to tell us why?”
He wasn’t sure yet, Gwirion decided—he only suspected. They could disarm his suspicion if they handled it adroitly; he had probably even invented this outrageous scenario as a test to let them prove their innocence. “I think after the king’s bed, she’ll find herself bored to tears to lie with him,” he answered in a leering tone. “You’ve ruined her for anyone else.”
Noble laughed lightly and turned back to his wife, who dutifully made a little sound of annoyed disgust. “We may always rely on Gwirion to remind us of what matters most in life,” he said. “What do you say to the proposition, madam?”
She lowered her eyes. “I’d consider it if it would help you, sire, but I think I would lose my mind with boredom to spend the rest of my years in that dull corner of the world.”
Noble looked as if he was about to make a sarcastic remark in response, then controlled the urge and said instead, “Your alternative would be a nunnery. Or, I suppose, you would be free to return to your beloved Wigmore.”
“I have no longing to return to Wigmore.”
“Well, you can’t stay here, that would be rather awkward for my bride,” he said wryly, then sobered. “You will not contest a divorce? I’ll make it clear to everyone it has nothing to do with my regard for you. I won’t let you be insulted by the process.”
“The process itself is an insult,” she said tightly.
“But you won’t contest it?” he repeated, biting back his impatience. She said nothing, just stared into the fire. He grimaced. “Madam, here we have an excellent example of abusing power, which you’ve accused me of doing more than once. You have the power to contest this. Exercising that power suits your whim, it does not suit your people.”
“Grand words if your plan were necessary for the people,” she said, still staring at the fire. “I don’t think it is.”
He sat back and waved his hand impatiently. “Go ahead, then, make your case.”
“If there is a useful match to be made between Llewelyn’s court and yours, make it with someone else. Your court is full of bachelors and widowers.”
“I’ve already considered that. Llewelyn won’t waste a marriage opportunity on a mere officer. It would have to be my near kin to be of value. Thanks to your uncle, the only near kin I have left is Anarawd and I refuse to give Anarawd that kind of power, I may as well abdicate.”
She suddenly knew how to pass this test. She was certain it was not about the prince of Gwynedd. “Llewelyn knows from experience who’s of real value to you. Should he have a bride to offer, marry her to Gwirion.”
The two men started at the same moment, and Gwirion, picking up her lead, cried, “Oh, please do, sire! I’ve heard about those girls of Gwynedd, they entertain themselves with stallions when their men are away fighting. And sometimes, they say,” he added, lowering his voice and speaking with a thrilled and knowing tone, “the stallions don’t survive the night.”
Noble laughed suddenly and hard at this, his face crinkling with genuine levity for the first time all day. The queen and Gwirion did not exchange looks this time but both of them relaxed: The test was over.
But then Noble, quieting, shook his head and the heaviness settled back upon him. “We don’t even know if Gwirion is freeborn or not. He’s politically unmarriageable. Otherwise, I applaud your suggestion. But I’m afraid I have only myself to sacrifice in this. And by extension, you.” He stood up. “We’ve left our visitors too long and the stew is getting cold. Come to board with me, Gwirion. Madam, you will not contest this?”
He really meant to do it. Flummoxed, she looked down into her lap, nodding weakly, and he seemed satisfied.
“Your people thank you. Would you like a moment alone?”
She nodded again.
Gwirion followed Noble out, trying not to stagger.
Nobody was seated anymore. The meal and the day’s tasks were forgotten. The news had exploded as soon as the council had adjourned and people were swarming, buzzing about it—villagers, castle workers, officers, Humffri’s retinue. Again Llewelyn posed a threat to their beloved queen. That their own king’s decision was to blame this time meant nothing to them—he was, after all, being forced into this sacrifice by Llewelyn’s hubris. Already a crowd of those in warmer layers and slush-proof brogues had formed around the chapel door, waiting for Brychan the bard to emerge into the grey afternoon to tell them if this shocking insult to their queen was in fact to pass. A few earnest adolescents even knelt on the chapel steps praying aloud for God to smite dead every female in Llewelyn’s line.
Noble took a speechless Gwirion with him through the ripple of bowing peasant heads in the hall and out to the buzzing courtyard, ignoring the murmurings—but hearing them all the same. His subjects noticed him, of course, and besides bowing hurriedly and giving him a wide path to walk through, they were as blunt as decorum would allow. Nobody petitioned him directly and nobody spoke rudely in his hearing, but however demure they were in their language, it was clear that the castle and the village wanted to hold on to their lady. Now and then the king would raise one astonished brow at something that was said. “Can you imagine this reception last spring?” he whispered to Gwirion. “What wretched timing that they’ve come to love her only when I must be rid of her.” Gwirion smiled politely, still trying to recover from the shock that Noble was entirely serious about divorce.
They made a beeline for the chapel. By the time they got there, the murmurings proved that not one of these xenophobic peasants would willingly trade Isabel Mortimer for some native princess. When they reached the chapel steps, the curious villagers moved to give way to them. Noble nodded a dismissal to Gwirion, and after the slightest hesitation, pushed open the chapel door to join the bard inside.
Perplexed and disoriented, Gwirion stood alone on the stone steps. He wanted to run back across the yard and into the great hall, to throw his arms around the queen to comfort her. His muscles tensed to hold himself in check. Suddenly a pair of arms had grabbed him from behind around the waist, a woman’s arms but very strong.
“Gwirion,” said Enid’s voice softly from behind his left shoulder.
He turned fast, and embraced her hard in return without speaking. People excitedly crossed below them in the slush, gathering at the chapel steps to wait for the bard, back to the hall to see if the queen had emerged to face the news yet, gossiping and conjecturing self-righteously.
When they disengaged, Enid took a moment to peruse his face. Self-conscious, he began to speak, but she quickly held up her hand.
“Don’t tell me anything,” she commanded quietly. “Unless you can tell me that there is nothing to tell.”
He looked down, his forehead wrinkling with distress. He’d followed the king out here without bothering to get a wrap, and he shivered now, rubbing his knuckles up and down his arms for warmth.
“I can’t say that,” he whispered.
Enid reflexively reached up to touch the amulet around her neck. She gave him a look of maternal worry. “Gwirion, Christ, you’re such a fool.”
He grimaced. “Yes, that’s what Noble likes about me.”
ISABEL was terrified of stepping out into the hall, terrified of how she’d be received. If any of them still housed some secret hatred of “the Saxoness,” this would be the time to gloat, although she feared indifference more. How naive to think Noble’s decision was anything personal toward either of them. She wondered if Gwirion had also realized how entirely political the situation really was. She doubted it.
She straightened the gold circlet crowning her wimple, smoothed her skirt, adjusted the silver brooch on her breast and the rosary hanging from her belt, pinched her pale cheeks to bring some color to them, and pulled open the door.
She strode through the hall briskly toward the side exit, the crowd parting for her like the Red Sea. She knew so many of these faces from the passing patterns of daily life. The same wash of gazes that had once been cool to her now looked sympathetic, even troubled. She had earned their attachment, and she was about to be deprived of it. She wanted that to be the thought that most upset her. It would have been a month ago. It wasn’t now.
When she reached the threshold, she looked out over the courtyard, aware that eyes out there were also turning to stare at her, that the bailey was falling silent at her appearance. Angharad appeared behind her with a red wool cloak and she nodded, allowing her attendant to tie it on her as she scanned the yard. Generys appeared on the other side and gave her a cup of warmed metheglin, which she took with a grateful nod.
She recognized Enid by her billowing dark hair, before she even realized whom the girl was talking to. Then she saw Gwirion’s face in the hazy light and felt her heart thud. Oh, God, she wanted him to come to her. She watched as he slipped his arm around Enid’s shoulders to give her a gruffly affectionate squeeze, perhaps the resolution of some friendly spat between them. With no rancor toward Enid she envied the girl, that she was allowed to receive such easy, innocent affection from him publicly. More than any other upset of the past half hour, that moment made her want to weep. Even if Brychan brought a reprieve, even if he miraculously announced that there was no one in Gwynedd for Noble to propose to, she would never be allowed that casual embrace with Gwirion in the courtyard.
Around her, behind her, before her, the people waited, their attention torn between the hall entrance and the chapel. Their peerless monarch was victorious against the Mortimers; his queen had proven herself his worthy consort; together they had foiled even Llewelyn’s craftiness. They were the stuff of bardic ballads. Why, went the unspoken but universal cry, should they be deprived of such magnificence?
THE king pulled closed the chapel door behind him. It was warmer here than out of doors, but not by much; the utter stillness of the air felt icier than wind. “Brychan,” he said softly. The bard was kneeling before the altar, eyes half closed, his lips moving a little as he wandered through internal corridors of sacred memorization. Noble watched him for a moment, troubled.
The divorce itself did not disturb him; it was plain to all that the marriage had accomplished, and would accomplish, nothing. Isabel had turned out to be an interesting woman, but that was not the value or purpose of a royal match. Her removal would not be a significant loss, and in some important ways would be a boon. What he did resent was having to contemplate mutual reliance on Llewelyn to ensure his own kingdom’s independence. Turning to the man he knew hoped to rob him of his sovereignty, as a means to keep his sovereignty—it was the sort of thing that Gwirion, in an exercise of witty nonsense, might try ironically to justify. But he could not continue without allies, and allies these days did not come easily. At least a tie of marriage was not as onerous as an outright pledge of subjugation. It was, in the larger picture, the closest thing he could imagine to a panacea.
Brychan opened his eyes. Noble took a deep breath, found that he had clenched his fists.
“Tell me my future,” he said quietly. Brychan opened his mouth to speak and Noble held up a warning hand. “Quickly and simply,” he ordered. “I do not need a litany of the house of Gwynedd, I want only to know if there are potential brides within two degrees of Llewelyn himself.”
Brychan nervously shook his head. “Not within even four degrees, Your Majesty,” he said apologetically.
“Damn it!” Noble hissed, and struck out furiously at the wall he stood beside. The wall shuddered and a small wooden statue of St. Cynllo tumbled off a shelf nearby. He forced himself to calm with a long, slow exhale. “You did not see that,” he informed the bard. Cowed, Brychan nodded.
Noble stared across the room at nothing for a long moment, an unreadable expression on his face.
When he turned back to the bard, he was entirely transformed: smiling, poised. “This is excellent news,” he announced in his convincing, reassuring baritone, as if to an awaiting throng. “Now we are entirely free to pursue what has clearly been our intention all along, to rely entirely on our own particular strengths in ruling our own particular people.” Brychan regarded him wide-eyed, and with an indulgent smile Noble continued, polishing his act with this captive audience, “You are wondering, perhaps, what those strengths are?”
“I would never question—” Brychan stammered, but Noble silenced him with a grand flourish of his hand.
“Come and see for yourself.”
He threw open the door and left the chapel, as the bard scrambled to his feet to follow him out into the courtyard. Scores of onlookers, shivering and stamping the slush from their boots, had gathered round the steps, and withdrew slightly at His Majesty’s apparently ebullient appearance. The yard felt silent, uncertain how to decipher the unexpected flush of triumph on his face. Every single pair of feet shifted an inch or two closer to the steps where Isabel stood. Gwirion, with Enid beside him, risked a glance up at Isabel. Her strained expression made his heart hurt.
Without a word, Noble walked briskly down the steps and across the courtyard, the crowd parting all around him, giving him beseeching looks that he ignored. He headed toward his wife in the hall doorway, her red wool mantle wrapped around her, proud and pale, not certain where to put her eyes as the king approached her. She felt Gwirion looking at her but she did not dare look back.
When her husband reached her, he pivoted to face out over the yard, and without looking at her he took the cup of spiced metheglin from her hands. He raised the cup high and finally spoke. “A toast to your eternal queen!” he called out, as if he were proclaiming the start of a festival.
The courtyard burst into explosive cheers and Isabel nearly fainted with relief. Feeling her falter, Noble handed the cup to Angharad, and wrapped both arms around his wife, then pulled her toward him and kissed her hard and long on the mouth. The cheering grew louder.
As he pulled away from her, he kept his mouth near the side of her head. “An hour ago we were a people in crisis,” he whispered, “and now we’re joyfully celebrating our blessings.”
“Was this just a charade, then?” Isabel asked, not believing it.
“You know it wasn’t,” Noble said warningly, his voice still low. He kissed her forehead, softening. “You are content with this?”
She averted her eyes. “Beyond content, sire. Grateful and obediently yours.”
He looked pleased with the description. Still he asked, whispering, as the courtyard began to quiet down, “You don’t regret the freedom you might have known had I divorced you?”
“I hardly consider the status of a divorced woman very free,” she answered, forcing a smile.
“But, madam, then you would be free to take a lover,” he said in a meaningful voice, “without it impinging on your precious popularity.”
Appearing not to notice how she started at this, he laughed and nudged her affectionately with his shoulder, then took the cup from Angharad’s waiting grasp to publicly salute his wife again.