AFTER COUNCIL the next day, the king summoned his wife to meet with him alone in the receiving room, a strangely formal request. When she entered, he was so drawn and somber he was almost grey. For one fleeting, irrational moment she was afraid this was about Gwirion’s refusal to take a mistress.
“Are you indeed the Lady of Maelienydd?” he asked quietly, not looking at her, staring into the flames of the fire.
“Please don’t start that again,” she said.
“I have my reasons.”
“Tell me what you suspect me of, Noble, I haven’t the energy for games.”
He looked deeply troubled. “I understand the world, but I resist it,” he whispered bitterly. “Is it possible, do you think, to betray a loyalty that is deeper than blood, and not burn in hell for it?”
She swallowed, trying to breathe calmly. “What loyalty is that, sire?”
“Sire?” he snapped, and looked up at her, enraged. She took a step away from him, paling, and almost fell onto the settle. “I call you in here as my wife, my consort, my confidante, and you treat me with obsequiousness? Is that how you show me I can put my faith in you?” He turned back to the fire, disgusted.
“Noble, please, speak plainly,” she begged. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
He sighed, then looked back up at her, more civil this time but still dour. His mouth had the grim, firm set to it that she had only ever seen in sleep before. “This is about Llewelyn.”
She relaxed a little. “How can your loyalty to Llewelyn be deeper than blood?” she asked.
He shook his head slowly. “I don’t care about Llewelyn. I care about my kingdom. My. Kingdom.” He whispered both words as if they were a foreign phrase he was trying to recall. “I need you to support me if I sin against my fathers in order that my sons might prosper.”
Still not understanding him, she rested her hand tentatively on his arm. “You need my support as the Lady of Maelienydd?” she asked.
Even his blue eyes had lost their spark. “I need your support as a Mortimer,” he whispered at last. Then he told her what he meant to do, and would not be talked out of it.
THAT evening, Gwilym the steward and Hafaidd the usher requested Gwirion to perform for them privately in their shared chamber when he was finished playing for the king. He was fond of them both, and indebted to them for enduring decades of his rascal wit, so he cheerfully agreed. He finished his ale, offered Noble a parting good-night witticism concerning leeks and bodily orifices, wrapped a wool mantle around himself, and headed toward the door of the great hall, his harp in its sheath tucked under his arm. The queen had been crossing the hall not quite toward him through the smoky amber light. She paused to speak with Elen, the marshal’s wife. As Gwirion passed nearby, she excused herself, smoothly intercepted him and murmured, “Go up the stairs, not down, when you’ve finished,” then returned her attention to the other woman.
He could barely focus as he played for them, at once hoping and dreading that she had arranged a tryst where they might have the luxury of real privacy. The two older men murmured unhappily together, in phrases rife with “Roger” and “Llewelyn,” and sometimes “Anarawd.” Gwirion’s gaze drifted to the planked ceiling of their room, wondering whether she was even now waiting in the chamber above, and he was so flushed throughout his performance that they offered to damp the fire if he was too warm. Gwirion refused, with many awkward thanks, and declined to share a horn of ale before departing. The harp he left with them, on the flimsy excuse of not wanting to expose it to the cold.
Outside, the black night was thickly smudged with clouds. The mantle wrapped around him, he hesitated on the stairs before taking a step up. But the commitment of that one step seemed magically to catapult him to the floor above. He stopped at the door of the guest chamber and carefully pushed it open.
The room was sealed with wax parchments at the window, frigid, and completely black. It was too silent for her to have been here, but then he heard her voice calling quietly from what he guessed was near the fireplace, “Come here.”
“They’re not asleep downstairs yet,” he warned, everything in his body quickening at once. He dropped his wrap by the doorway. “They’ll get suspicious if they hear noise up here.”
“It can’t possibly be as bad as it is in my room,” she replied. “It’s safe to make a little noise—Madrun trysts with her lover here, I’ve heard her tell the other girls. I said come here. It’s straight across, I moved everything that was in the way.”
When he was beside her, he sank down onto a soft nest of blankets she had laid out that afternoon before the sun went down. “How did you know I’d be in their room?” he asked.
“I suggested it.” She laughed a little, pleased with herself. “My women think I’m with Noble for the night, and Noble thinks I’m tucked into my own bed with a sour stomach. I could get quite good at this.”
He smiled despite his nervousness, and let her undress him. Naked, jaw clenched from the cold, he loosed the side ties of her kirtle and ran his chilly hands under it, along her body, and she shivered. He helped her wriggle out of the kirtle, and after she laid it carefully aside, he grabbed her gently by the hips and pulled her toward him, drawing the blankets over them into a cocoon. His mouth found her breasts and his hands lost themselves in the satin hair he so adored.
They were quiet, but quiet felt raucous compared to the silence they’d been constrained to in her room for weeks. Hearing each other’s voices as they touched and pressed themselves together drove them nearly into seizures of affection and they found themselves almost laughing—quietly—at the intensity of their desire. She marveled as always at the difference in the two men. Noble treated their coupling, both in his satisfaction and hers, as further evidence of his sovereignty—it was another thing she was pleasantly useful for, both to his senses and to his pride. To Gwirion, physical pleasure seemed to be eternally miraculous, and she was credited for all of it. That had been strange to her at first; it lacked the manly arrogance that was part of Noble’s sexual charisma, but now she cherished it.
But what she cherished most of all was that in the aftermath of conquering each other, it was finally safe for them to speak. They lay with arms and legs entwined and bodies pressed together, her hand draped over him, brushing against the scar on his back.
“Say my name,” she whispered, but he shook his head. “Please.” He wouldn’t. “Then call me some pet name. I want to hear an endearment from your lips.”
“There is no endearment that suffices,” he whispered. “Words pale.” He sounded almost bashful.
“You always have a word at your disposal.”
“Not for you. You defeat me.”
“Aha! The Normans win a round!” She grinned.
“You’re Welsh to me,” he said, with a simple sincerity that touched her until he added snidely, “Except for that ridiculous accent.”
She began murmuring incomprehensible things with her lips brushing his. He smiled, but shook his head. “I have no idea what you’re saying.”
“It’s shockingly filthy,” she promised. “Worse than pagan. Something that would leave even that heathen August war god of yours speechless.”
He gave her a condescending smile. “Do you mean Llew? He’s not a war god, first of all, and he’s Welsh, which means that nothing leaves him speechless.”
“Of course he’s a war god, all Welsh heroes are war gods.”
“And I really can’t imagine why we should feel the need for that,” Gwirion muttered dryly, then went on to correct her, as if it were something any child would know. “But Llew is the god of harvest and the sun. I pity your people having a history that’s limited to human mortals, how very dull for you. No wonder you were such a witless prune when you arrived.” He quickly kissed her to stave off her protestations and kept his tongue pressed against hers until her muffled indignant growl had given way to giggles.
“Is he the one who—” She tried to remember what he’d been blathering about in the courtyard last summer. “The one who puts…a divine spark, isn’t it, into every oat stalk?”
“He puts a divine spark into everything,” Gwirion said, running his hand across her nude belly. “Except the English. He tried, but they’re allergic to divine sparks.”
“You!” Laughing, she tried to hit him but he used it as an excuse to grab her hands above her head and rolled on top of her again.
“Tell me what the shockingly filthy French meant,” he ordered, the tip of his nose resting gently on the tip of hers.
“Would you like me to demonstrate?” she offered.
They came together again, but for most of the night they simply talked, teasing and laughing softly, saturating themselves with the intimacy they’d reached in their imprisonment under Cynan. Something within Isabel quivered nervously on behalf of her eternal soul, but she could not abide the thought that something so joyful could be wrong. Anyhow, it was a joy she could not bear to live without now. Such genuine, immediate companionship was more seductive to her than an eternity of angels.
Before it was light enough to see, they folded the blankets up and she slipped them into chests whose locations she had memorized by feel the day before. They helped each other to dress. This took a long time, as it required stroking and tickling and hands slipping into places where they did not really belong, but eventually they were both presentable, in ragged linen and fine silk, respectively. The slightest grey glow had begun to illuminate the far horizon, but not yet the air, as they stepped together out of the room, she in her purple mantle and he in the dull grey woolen one, his arm still fastened around her waist, not wanting to relinquish her back to reality. They should have disciplined themselves, he thought, they should not have lingered until nearly dawn. By day they belonged to Noble, not to each other. And the days were growing longer.
“One more kiss,” he begged, and a smile lit her face: He never asked for kisses, never bothered with parting terms of endearment. They pressed their lips together for a long moment that wasn’t nearly long enough, then he squeezed her once more tight against him, whispering, “I hope you have insomnia tonight.” She laughed softly, and they began to separate, she to the left and Gwirion to the right.
Gwirion turned smack into the teulu’s stiffened leather breastplate, hurting his nose and jumping back in protest. She heard the noise and spun fully around, then froze. There was an awkward, horrible moment of silence as the guard stared at the two of them, eyes narrowed in his young pockmarked face, trying to imagine some acceptable explanation for what he was seeing. Gwirion recognized him with a silent groan: It was Caradoc, the catalyst for his misadventures last summer on the road with Enid.
“What’s going on here?” he demanded angrily, sparing no niceties for the queen. She opened her mouth to speak but nothing came out. Caradoc took a menacing step toward them and began to draw his sword. “Answer me!” he growled.
Before the sword was out of its sheath, Gwirion darted back and snatched the queen’s eating knife from her belt, threw his arm around her and held the knife to her throat. “What’s going on is I’ve taken the queen hostage,” he said fiercely. “Back off or I’ll make mincemeat of her.” She stiffened but said nothing as Caradoc gave him an incredulous grunt. “Endear yourself to the king,” Gwirion urged. “Tell him to come out here and negotiate with me for her release. Go on—” He poked the eating knife against her neck and she had the sense to cry out in a terrified voice. “I’m a bit mad you know, you don’t want to fool with me. Go on, Caradoc!” The young soldier, confused and disturbed by this bizarre turn, started down the steps as other teulu and guards around the bailey, hearing her cry and sensing the commotion in the predawn darkness, headed toward them. “Quick,” Gwirion whispered urgently. “Up to the top of the tower, but make it look like I’m dragging you.”
The two of them scrambled up the dark tower stairwell, Gwirion cursing quietly when he stumbled on his blanket. They burst out under the leaden sky, onto the pitched-round roof of the tower as shouts and calls began to echo around the walls of the bailey and from the lookout of the keep. Gwirion, eyes wild, sat her down on the conical crown of the roof and desperately tried to figure out what to do next.
“Is this a prank or the end of our lives?” she asked, pulling the mantle tighter around her and trying to stay calm as voices of angry, anxious protest came closer from below.
“I don’t know yet,” Gwirion said shortly. The tower rose a floor above the wall walk, and the only way to reach this roof directly was by the one stairway, a weakness in the design that he was acutely grateful for. There was a wooden cover for the stairwell hatch to keep the rain out. It lay on the sloped roof, and he struggled to move it into place. She slithered down the incline to help him.
“Don’t,” he grunted between labored breaths. “You’re my captive, remember? They’re watching from the keep, the light’s rising and they mustn’t see you help me.” The cover was in place now but wouldn’t keep anyone out long—it could easily be pushed up from below. He had to secure it. To start with he picked up Isabel herself and placed her on top of it to give it a little bit of extra weight. There was nothing else up here. “That will have to do for now,” he said. “Don’t move, don’t get off that. If they see you on it they’ll be reluctant to muck with it much for fear of hurting you.”
“What now?” she asked, alert but unafraid, and distractedly fingered an abandoned bird’s nest wattled into a gap in the stone.
“I don’t know,” he snapped, almost annoyed with her for not being more distressed. He thought of sending her down on her own and barricading himself up here on some pranklike pretext, which would no doubt sound as feeble as what he’d pulled with Caradoc. That would at least separate them and possibly remove suspicion from her. But if they had, indeed, just irreversibly revealed themselves, sending her down to Noble might literally be fatal.
He sat beside her, and the scent of her softened his edge at once. “I want to take your hand right now,” he whispered. “I don’t dare because of the men in the keep. I think there’s enough light now that they can see right down here.”
She shrugged her mantle off one shoulder so that it covered both their hands, and ran her fingers over his. He took a quick breath, startled. “What else do you want to do to me?” she asked in a playful voice.
“It’s not the time for levity,” he insisted. “I don’t know how to save you from this, Isabel.”
He’d said her name without thinking and it startled both of them.
“The crazy fool is scolding the rigid Saxoness for levity?” She seemed delighted, and he decided it must be a peculiar kind of nervous attack.
“I am truly sorry about this,” he said. “I wish to God there was some way I could shoulder all responsibility.”
“Taking me captive is effective,” she said. “Should I struggle? Do you want me to bite you?” She leaned in toward him. “I’d love to bite you.”
He laughed. Then he stopped himself and shook his head to clear it. “I’m floating right now,” he said, perplexed. “I’ve been caught in treasonous adultery, and we’re probably both about to be killed, and I’m…I think this is joy.” She squeezed his hand under the mantle, smiling so prettily it made his eyes smart. “You don’t know how desperately I want to kiss you right now,” he whispered.
“Yes I do,” she whispered back. “But tell me what else you would do to me if you could. If it were ever safe.”
“I…” He winced. “I’d make an ass of myself.”
“Really?” She looked gleeful at the declaration. “How?”
He blushed. “I’d make up dreadful poems about you, about your hair and your nipples and your kneecaps. I’d stare at you in silence for hours wondering what I did to deserve all the good and bad of this, and being grateful for all of both.” He plucked a denuded oat stalk from the abandoned bird’s nest and said softly, “I’d ask the great god Llew to fill this humble stalk with the divine spark of all my good regard for you. He would endow each straw in all of Wales with the power to bestow my love upon you.”
“Good heavens,” she said in a choked voice. “Is there a bad poet hidden under all of that?”
“And then of course,” he went on in his normal voice, tossing the oat straw away, “I would summon the spirit of King Arthur to wrench your wretched Norman throat while I ravished your horse.”
She grinned, nodding. “That’s more like it,” she said heartily. “That’s the charming lad I lost my heart to.” They laughed together. Nervously. Terrified, in fact.
HEARING from Caradoc only that the queen had been taken hostage by “the villain,” who had possibly already forced himself on her, Noble had leapt out of bed and frantically thrown a woolen robe over his tunic and drawers before running down the steps and into the still-slushy yard.
Around the wall walk and the towers, fifty teulu archers stood ready with arrows on the string, waiting for the king’s word. Hafaidd and Gwilym were standing with a small crowd of servants staring up at the northwest tower. “Where are they?” Noble demanded anxiously.
Gwilym looked uncomfortable. “Up there, sire.” The steward gestured with a nod of his head.
“And he’ll parley?”
Gwilym and Hafaidd exchanged bemused glances: Apparently the king did not realize who the villain was. The steward cleared his throat. “Only with you, sire.”
“Get his attention, then.”
Gwilym nodded to the herald, who put his horn to his lips and blasted a long, steady note that silenced the yard. Immediately, a head crowned by a mop of dark hair popped up over the edge of the parapet and gazed down at them.
“Good morning!” Gwirion called out.
Noble relaxed. “For the love of the saints!” he scolded. “What are you doing? Where is my wife?”
At a gesture from Gwirion, Isabel rose and showed herself. “I’m safe, Noble,” she called down reassuringly. “It was one of his less-inspired pranks. He told me you were up here waiting to show me something.”
“I thought Your Majesties might like to view the sunrise with me,” Gwirion overlapped, loudly, and scowled. “I was on my way to fetch Your Majesty when that idiot soldier ran into me and went quite mad—does that amuse you?” he interrupted himself, when he saw the expression on Noble’s face.
The king was looking up at them with a knowing smile, his hands clasped behind him. “I was merely appreciating your most extraordinary gift for timing.” As he said these words, he gestured to the door of the great hall as Thomas, Walter, and Ralf emerged from it out into the yard, in expensive but ill-insulating mantles. They followed everyone’s upturned gazes to the top of the tower.
“What the devil are you doing to her this time?” Ralf demanded, instantly enraged.
GWIRION accepted a hand slap—a real one, in the presence of the uncles—when he had brought the queen back down into the yard. He sat quietly through Ralf’s berating him in the council chamber, in front of Noble, while Isabel watched mutely; Gwirion had insisted she play the innocent. When the old man was finally out of breath, Gwirion gave him a pleading look. “Does this mean you won’t be wanting me to play for you at supper? I had something special planned.” But the glow Isabel had seen in his eyes when they were alone on the tower roof was gone. Just when she knew he was truly with her, he disappeared again.
This time it was for her sake, not his own. When they came downstairs into the courtyard, she had been glowing with the particular light of a woman rapturously in love, and to Gwirion’s cautious eyes Noble seemed attentive, and curious about it. Their night-long tryst had been too easy and seductive; they were both dangerously close to tripping into a fantasia of something that could never be, and he would blame himself if she slammed into reality too hard too late. He could not let her fall; he would remind her, with her family’s unwitting assistance, of their very narrow limits. If he had to he would make himself despicable.
GENERYS was fastening the underpinnings of the queen’s wine-red wimple as Gwallter rearranged the drape of Noble’s mantle over his red silk tunic. It was evening. The visitors had been sequestered all day, nursing a severe chill born of unexpected troubles on their travels. “Still they arrived a day sooner than I expected, which is excellent, it means I can begin the spring circuit earlier,” Noble said.
“What happened to them? It’s a day’s ride from Wigmore, why did they arrive here in the morning?”
He tipped his head to the side as Gwallter fastened the draping with a brooch. “They lost their way and got in very late last night. I don’t know how your entire race has managed to avoid self-destruction. The moon is not half full and it was clouded over completely, but they just kept going. They were halfway to the Severn when some scouts found them and brought them back south. Thank God they had my writ of safe conduct or they might have had their throats slit.”
She pulled away from Generys and sat down hard on the bed, alarmed but not about that. “Last night?” She tried to sound casual. “Where did they sleep?”
Noble bent over a little so Gwallter could place the circlet on his head. “I had Gwilym put them in my audience chamber.” He straightened, nodded toward the door, and waited for Gwallter to open it. “I was going to put them in the guest chamber above Gwilym’s room but thought better of it. Illicit couples use it sometimes to rendezvous and I didn’t want your uncles embarrassing anyone. I’ll see you at supper.” He left.
She reached out to grab the bedpost as the room wobbled.
“Milady?” Generys said tentatively, and reached toward the queen’s half-assembled headdress. Isabel held up her hand to stop her. She desperately needed an hour alone to think; there were too many complications begging for resolution. “No wimple this evening,” she said at last, pulling the barbet off. “Tonight I wear a Welsh veil.”
THE family would be dining privately in Noble’s receiving chamber, with a proper table set up and chairs brought in especially for all of them. This was an uncommon way to entertain visitors, but the visitors noticed nothing uncommon about it. To them one’s exclusion from the populace, not one’s adoration by it, defined rulership.
The queen went down from Noble’s room to the hall, where the rest of the castle population was assembling for their supper. The first servants who saw her murmured little sounds of surprise at the white veil, and their murmurs caught the attention of the entire room. As she crossed toward the receiving chamber, she basked in the fascinated attention of many dozen pairs of eyes. When she was near the door, she finally looked up and acknowledged the glances. There was silence for a moment, and a strangely intimate sensation between the people and their queen. Then one pair of hands in the back of the hall began to clap, and almost instantly the entire hall burst into applause. She flushed with pleasure and nodded acknowledgment with a humble smile. She knew where the applause had begun.
When she entered the audience room, her kinsmen eyed the veil, looking confused. Noble himself blinked once in surprise, then flashed her a private smile of appreciation, and her pulse, still racing from his parting comment in the bedroom, calmed a little.
They held conference as they supped. It was Noble’s only chance to speak to the visitors entirely in private without rousing the worry and suspicion of his council, which he was beginning to suspect of housing secret Llewelyn sympathizers. Since Gwirion’s presence would have been inflammatory, Angharad had been called in to play softly for them by the hearth; she was the quietest and most circumspect of the sewing bevy and above all did not know French.
Thomas seemed much older, only in part for the trauma of the past few months. He was taller by an inch or more since last autumn and he looked gaunt; he had outgrown the doughy, pallid look that made it impossible to take him seriously. And he had sprouted a real beard at last. He was still young, but he was a Norman gentleman now. The uncles seemed slightly lost, as if they had no identity or reason for being without overseeing his interests.
Of Mortimer, they had little news but many rumors. They’d heard he was negotiating with William deBraose, whose lands bordered the southeastern expanse of Maelienydd, and that the two of them were corresponding with King Richard’s brother John, now the likeliest contender for the throne. They were leery of delivering what they assumed to be unwelcome news, but Noble seemed untroubled. “John coming to the throne will be a boon for Wales,” he insisted. “He understands the barons better than Richard does. He wouldn’t see Mortimer overrunning us as a victory for England, he’d see it as a victory for Mortimer, and it would make Roger more powerful than John wants any one baron to be. He’ll control Roger. I thank you for the news, but actually I want to discuss another matter.” He paused, looking pained for a moment, and glanced again at his wife’s Welsh veil. She knew what he was about to ask, knew how hard it was for him and why. She herself had tried to talk him out of it the day before, but having failed, had resigned herself to playing her role of consort and supporting him without comment. “I need your help,” he said at last. “Against a fellow Welshman.”
“Family problems?” Walter asked wryly. The Welsh propensity for fighting one’s own was well-known to the Normans, who had exploited it for decades.
Noble shook his head. “A would-be empire builder. A man I would embrace as my brother if I didn’t think him capable of fratricide.”
“Llewelyn,” Thomas said stiffly, and the king nodded. “I don’t see how he’s a threat to me.”
“He’s a threat to your sister,” Noble said meaningfully.
Thomas flushed. “My sister? We thought…you…” He glanced at his uncles, who looked equally awkward. “We thought you wanted a divorce. We thought you were summoning us here to…” He hesitated. “To take Isabel back to England.”
The royal couple stared at him, stunned. “What?” Noble demanded. “How could you presume—”
“We heard a rumor and it sounded plausible,” Ralf interrupted bluntly. “This marriage affords you nothing, especially as your cousin Anarawd inherits if Isabel does not conceive. It makes sense that you would try to wed into Llewelyn’s family.”
Noble gave a short, harsh laugh of exasperation. “Where did you hear that?” he demanded. “It was never more than an idea and as an idea its life span was perhaps an hour!” They said nothing and he looked accusingly at his wife, but saw that she was as shocked as he was. “The rumor is unfounded,” he said flatly, and rested his hand on the queen’s. “I’m cleaving to your sister and she is cleaving to me. She is in fact part of the bedrock of my sovereignty now. Will you help her?”
Thomas was not prepared for this. “I don’t have an army.”
“Your uncle does.”
Thomas blinked. “You want me…to negotiate on your behalf with Roger Mortimer…for him to fight with you against another Welshman?”
“The boy matures,” Noble said with approving bitterness.
“Why would he—”
“Because it will endear him to John.”
Thomas shook his head. “You’ve lost me.”
“John will be king soon.”
“Why do you say that? Richard is invincible—”
“So was my father,” Noble said. “It only takes one arrow. John will be king soon. I predict within a year, two at most. Richard is about force, John will be about politics—I’m sure we’re all aware of that. He won’t want anyone in his realm having too much power, or in any way challenging the crown’s absolute authority. Roger already has a strike against him there—he disregarded King Henry’s writ of safe passage when he attacked us and killed my father twenty years ago. He’ll need to endear himself to John. Llewelyn has it in him to become far more powerful than John will be comfortable with. Someone needs to stop Llewelyn before he gets too powerful, and that person will endear himself to John.”
The uncles exchanged glances but Thomas’s gaze never left the king’s face. “That is the tortuous thinking of a man who is running out of options,” he announced.
“Thomas!” his sister gasped, but Noble put a hand on her arm to quiet her.
“Yes,” he said simply. “It is. I congratulate you on the exquisite education these last few months have clearly visited upon you. It may be tortuous but it’s accurate. The question remains: Will you help your sister?”
“I need to consider the situation,” Thomas said evenly. “I’ll write you when I feel ready.” King and queen exchanged glances. She still did not like this scheme, but she knew better now than to speak out against him.
“That’s fine,” Noble said. He was thrown, but pleased, by Thomas’s transformation. If nothing else, it rendered Ralf and Walter obsolete. The king smiled politely. “Then the discussion is closed and we may enjoy the rest of our meal.”
GWIRION, after spending the day penned up under guard in his closet, alternating between dozing and chastising himself for adolescent daydreams, performed that night in hall for the other diners. The visiting servants spoke no Welsh, which meant he was performing solely for the castle, and this crowd was so lenient that impropriety was never an issue. He improvised some debauched songs making fun of the king and the queen—as people, as partners, as rulers, and as would-be parents. It was a safe and harmless way to let out some of his own frustration. And he decided on a brazen experiment to determine if anyone suspected the affair: After one particularly bawdy verse concerning the many positions the king used to try to get the queen with child, he went on to sing,
“At long, long last His Majesty
Saw what had to be seen
He said, Gwirion, you mocker,
Exercise your cocker
And dick the devil out of the queen.”
He felt a thrill of fear as he actually sang the words, but the response reassured him: It was such a ludicrous proposition to all of them that they roared with mirth. He could see no looks exchanged or elbows nudged; there was only tremendous, good-natured guffawing and Gwirion decided to end the song with this. Young Ednyfed the marshal’s son offered him a cup of mead, and he was reaching out to take it when a hand gloved in fine leather grabbed the cup and doused the contents roughly in his eyes. The room uttered a brief collective gasp and fell silent, and Gwirion, blinking in surprise through stinging drops of alcohol, found himself looking at Ralf’s enraged face.
“Oh, damn,” he said loudly, without thinking, and Ralf slapped him with the back of his hand. Gwirion had been slapped too often—usually much harder than that—to flinch. He wiped the mead away with a bored, annoyed look.
“What are you doing?” the queen’s voice cried out. All eyes turned to see the entire dining party crowded in the doorway to the audience chamber.
“This animal has been—”
“That animal saved my life,” she said with some heat. She switched to French. “It’s disgraceful enough he wasn’t welcome to sup with us at table—”
“Sup with us!” Walter snorted from the doorway, beside her. “Independent of the fact that he took you hostage this morning—”
“That was a prank,” Noble said mildly, “although I do think, my dear, there should be limits to how you reward him for his nobility.” He did not look at either of them, but a shiver so intense rattled Isabel’s spine that she had to grab her brother for balance. He misread the gesture as a request for support.
“I have no objection to his joining us,” Thomas said.
“You did not hear what I just heard,” Ralf seethed from across the hall.
“Why don’t you tell us, then?” Noble called out, smiling. The crowd stared at them, unused to hearing Noble speak what was, to most of them, simply the queen’s native gibberish.
“It does not bear repeating,” Ralf said, looking sickened. “Come, return to the room.” He headed back toward his family.
“Gwirion,” the queen said in her strongest voice, and went back to Welsh. “We would be honored to set a place at table for you.”
This was exactly what he’d feared—that one of them would start to lose perspective of what was rational behavior. He made a sneering face. “No, Your Majesty, I don’t belong there.”
“I say that you do.”
“Then Your Majesty has a mistaken notion of my place in the world. I would offend your venerable uncles with my manners. Like this,” he explained, and belched into a sound hole in the harp, which made it echo resonantly. “Or this,” he added ferociously, rising briefly to fart. The crowd in the hall cheered him on as the pleasure drained from Isabel’s face. “That is my personal method for responding to English windbags. In the presence of ladies I do try to mend my ways, but this tends to be the result.” He belched into the harp’s sound box again, this time somehow in falsetto, which set the room to laughter again. The queen, her face stony, turned without a word and retreated into the audience room, as Walter harrumphed, “I told you he was a villain.” Only Thomas appeared serenely indifferent to the insult.
When he knew his guests were safely back in the audience chamber and could not see him, Noble grinned and saluted Gwirion, who made himself grin and salute back, and the room again erupted with merriment.
LATER that evening, after the chandler had lit the way to the guest quarters for the righteously indignant visitors and the queen had retired in silence to her own chamber, Noble called Gwirion to his room. He dismissed Gwallter after the chamberlain had neatly laid out piles of traveling clothes for him; he announced that he would condescend to sort through them on his own, but while doing so he wanted only entertainment and distraction.
For a month he would tour the kingdom on circuit, spending most of his time in the northwest, a night or two at the larger castles and fortresses, watching the muster of troops, stopping by the smaller landowners along the way, and checking the border in certain key defensive areas, especially the area closest to Llewelyn. He had a three-pronged challenge facing him: first to convince barons who were weary of fighting and already well-disposed toward Llewelyn to consider a military stand against the prince of Gwynedd if he moved closer to Maelienydd; second and much harder, to consider doing it in concert with, of all people, Roger Mortimer. Finally, should this idea be utterly rejected, he had to at least press them to agree to resist Llewelyn’s crusade.
He was leaving at dawn, avoiding the company of Thomas and the uncles on their homeward trip by setting off at once northward. For logistical reasons, he was not taking the usual full-circuit retinue, which included all his officers. So far he had mentioned bringing neither Gwirion nor Isabel and they had both been hoping with nervous delight that they might have the whole month together.
When Gwirion was alone with Noble, he felt so comfortable and normal that he could almost believe there was no secret, no betrayal, nothing outside this room. It always startled him when the queen interrupted them, a rude reminder that the rest of their shared life was getting very complicated.
Tonight, her presence more than startled. It provoked.
There was a knock on the door and Gwirion paused in his playing as Noble called out, “Come.” She entered, still dressed formally from the family dinner, including the stony expression that she’d worn for the last hour. Her husband looked up from the pile of clothes on the bed. “Good evening, my lovely veiled companion. This is a surprise. You didn’t seem in the spirit of visiting. Come to warm my bed, are you?”
“Actually, sire,” she said stiffly, “I’m here to speak with Gwirion.”
“Certainly. Come in.”
She hesitated. After Noble’s loaded comment earlier about the guest room, she was sure that asking to be alone with Gwirion would equal a confession. So she entered the room and closed the door behind her.
“Did you lose your wimple, milady?” Gwirion asked.
She ignored his comment and perched on the end of the bed so that she could face Gwirion with her husband behind her. “Gwirion, I would like to know why you behaved that way tonight.”
“I’d like to know why it matters to you, milady.”
“So would I, for that matter,” Noble said, looking curiously at the back of her head.
“I don’t care that you insulted them,” she lied. “Apparently that’s why Noble feeds and clothes you. But you might have used a little wit to do it. I would like to think our friendship at least entitles me to have my family mocked with a sophistication worthy of our amity.”
“I think, Your Majesty, not.” Gwirion laughed. “You have a rather romanticized notion of this amity we’ve reached. It doesn’t raise me to your level any more than it degrades you to mine. It doesn’t mean that in a few years I may travel with you and your husband to visit your family and sit among you as a peer. If the king’s regard for me doesn’t earn me a place at table, your regard won’t either.” She gave him a hurt expression and he pressed on, feeling desperate. “We are irreconcilably disparate spirits and we’ve only become friends for the convenience of the king, not the exaltation of his fool.”
“You’re a better man than you used to be. I’d simply like them to see that.”
Her sad, affectionate look pierced too acutely for him to continue a campaign of estrangement. The urge to comfort her was overwhelming. He chuckled nervously and insisted, “I’m no better than some old oat straw in an abandoned bird’s nest, milady,” as Noble, laughing behind her, said over him, “A better man? I beg to differ, madam! I was just telling him before you came in how annoyed I was with him for having grown so dull. Until that magnificent exhibition in the courtyard with the effigies, I was convinced we were all lost—don’t you know that the fate and fortune of the country rises and falls on Gwirion’s wit?”
“That’s not the point I was making to Her Majesty,” Gwirion said firmly. “I’m nothing, I’m just Noble’s parasite to them, and they have no interest in a parasite. Why should they?”
“We’re interested in you,” she protested. “We see there’s more than a parasite—why mightn’t they?”
“Listen to that—we.” Noble smiled, shaking his head. “How far she has come! To appreciate Gwirion is the measure of a mind. Your family simply isn’t subtle enough to understand him.”
“That also wasn’t the point I was trying to make, sire,” Gwirion said blandly. “I was speaking not of their limitations, but of my own.” He hesitated, knowing he shouldn’t continue to offer up the image, but unable to stop himself: “I say again, I’m no worthier than an oat stalk.”
She blinked quickly as the meaning of the image became clear to her. Then, her back to her husband, she gave Gwirion a grudging smile. “Yes, in some old bird’s nest,” she said with affectionate sarcasm. Gwirion’s stomach flopped over; he looked away quickly, defeated by the inability to estrange himself from her.
Noble laughed dismissively. “If we are through with the vegetative metaphors, my dear, you’d best go pack.”
She grimaced, grateful her back was to him. “Pack, sire?”
“I’m bringing you with me, didn’t I mention it?” Noble glanced with some disdain over the collection on his bed.
“You didn’t, actually,” she responded, and stood up to face him, inured by now to frustration. Gwirion plunged into a new tune. “My ladies will not be pleased to have such short notice.”
“It doesn’t matter, they won’t be coming with us, they ride too slowly. Except Generys. You may bring Generys.”
“And who else will be coming with us?” She tried to make it sound very offhand, and pointing to a side-slitted tunic on the bed she added in the same voice, “That one sits better on you when you’re on horseback.”
Noble picked up the tunic and tossed it onto a nearby chest where two others already lay. “Thank you. Goronwy has been asked to consult on a case near Llanidloes, so he’ll be coming, but we need to cover a lot of area in a little time so we’re taking the smallest possible entourage. And we’ll be going to Huw’s so Gwirion, for one, is definitely staying here. Huw still wants him dead—with better reason than your charming uncle Ralf ever gave.” He grinned at Gwirion, who was pointedly giving all of his attention to the harp. “I’m sorry about that, Gwirion—I do still owe you a night with Lady Branwyn.”
“I forfeit,” Gwirion said evenly without looking up.
Noble frowned. “If you continue to pass up these delectable morsels I shall begin to suspect you of being a secret Cistercian. Or worse.” Then he smiled. “I suppose I’ll just proxy the night with Branwyn for you. But I’ll tell you all about it if you like.” He continued to sift through the tunics and missed his wife’s shocked indignation, as Gwirion suddenly started playing louder and wilder, hiding behind a shower of notes.
“Must you flaunt that in front of me?” she demanded. “Could you not practice a little discretion in how you speak when I’m present?”
With a cascade of smothered plunking, the harp music stopped and Gwirion stood up. “This is private,” he said. “I’ll leave.”
“Oh, sit down, Gwirion,” Noble said, impatient but informal, and Gwirion, not sure if it was a request or an order, hesitated. “A sense of propriety in you is ludicrous. There are no secrets here, thank God. Keep playing.” He turned to his wife and said politely, “And you were saying?”
To her, it felt like a dare. She no longer really cared what he did with Branwyn or anyone else, but admitting that now would give him more fuel for suspicion. She waited until Gwirion had reluctantly taken his seat and picked up the instrument again, then said in a low voice, “I take no issue with your life before you were committed to me. But now—”
“Now I’m married to a woman who obviously cannot conceive, and it’s in the interest of my kingdom to sow my seed more widely and in more fertile fields.”
“That’s a feeble excuse,” she retorted. “Branwyn’s free to be with you because her husband knows she can’t conceive.”
“That’s true,” Noble admitted. “In that case, I’ll make sure to have a go with her attendants as well. They all looked fairly fecund.” He smiled pleasantly at her and continued to pick through his clothes, tossing the desired ones onto the chest to be packed by the chamberlain later.
“Could you at least practice enough discretion so as not to insult me?”
He raised one eyebrow. “You are the most privileged woman in the kingdom. Considering the concessions I grant you, you might be the most privileged woman in Wales, perhaps all Britain. If one minor insult is pushed in your direction, I should hope you have the fortitude to survive it with grace.”
“I’m an intruder here,” Gwirion insisted desperately, standing again and fidgeting with the harp’s lion-head finial.
“Why? We’re only discussing unorthodox sexual relations, it’s your favorite topic,” Noble said. He threw a hearty grin at his friend. “In fact, you being an expert in the field, give us your judgment—is it unreasonable for the queen to oppose my intentions toward Branwyn?”
“Your intentions toward Branwyn had better not require taking any children along for her husband,” Gwirion replied, his voice rising.
Noble returned his attention to his wardrobe. “If you insist. Huw’s tastes are dictated by aesthetics, not anatomy. Anything petite appeals to him. I’ll just offer him my wife.”
“You will not!” she snapped. Gwirion stayed quiet, which annoyed her.
“The boy or the queen,” the king mused. “A difficult choice.” He turned to her as if she were not the woman being discussed. “Let’s leave it to Gwirion,” he suggested cheerfully. “Gwirion, whom do you think I should offer?”
“Offer him your own damn buttocks,” Gwirion snarled.
“You weren’t paying attention, Gwirion—the choices are the boy or the queen.” When Gwirion made no move to answer, Noble added with a sigh, his attention on the display of tunics, “It’s not like you to refuse to play a game with me. Tell me what has put you out of humor. Or would you rather that I guess?”
“Of course not, sire, I’m your devoted player,” Gwirion said quickly, fighting not to clench his jaw. Isabel tensed.
Noble gave him an approving smile. “I’m glad to hear that. In that case, whom do you propose I offer up to Huw?”
“It’s detestable to dole out sexual favors as a means of ruling a kingdom,” said the queen in a faint voice, already knowing she would not be listened to.
“Is it?” challenged Noble, archly. “Loyalties are forged by kinship. Huw is not kin to me, Llewelyn seduced him ideologically and although he returned to the fold I need some enterprising way to keep him there, as he is dangerously close to straying once again. So I must offer him power. But what power can I offer him?” He shrugged. “Land? It’s too small a kingdom. Gold? It’s a poor country, I have to keep a tight hand on the coffers. Security against the English? Llewelyn has a better offer. The only other forces that have universal power are sex and death. I can’t free him from death or—for now—kill him, so sex seems the obvious choice. And now Gwirion will tell us precisely how I’ll do that.”
For a moment the two men stared at each other in a way that reminded her, unpleasantly, that they already shared more memories than she could ever have with either of them.
“Obviously,” Gwirion said suddenly, in a strained attempt to sound rascally, “if the purpose is political expediency, you must give him what is of the greater value. I assume that would be your queen and not your stable boy.”
“Gwirion!” Isabel cried out. When both men looked at her curiously, she stammered, “The man who is…who is an oat stalk has no right to say such things about his queen!”
“While the man who is the king’s fool has an obligation to,” Gwirion said, fumbling with his tuning key.
Noble looked satisfied. “Well, that’s settled, then,” he said in a chummy tone. “I’ll just trundle Isabel off to Huw’s bedchamber when we get there.”
“No you won’t! There must be statutes against prostituting one’s own wife!” said Isabel furiously.
The king laughed, lips pulled back coldly at the corners—and when Gwirion realized Noble’s eyes were boring into him, he forced himself to fake a laugh as well. “No statutes that apply to me. But this was just a little pastime—I don’t intend to act on it, Isabel, don’t get hysterical,” Noble said. “However, I must say I’m very glad to see that Gwirion stands ready to play with me.”
“It is the very reason I exist,” Gwirion said wearily, in a voice unctuous with sarcasm.
Noble smiled at him with a paternal warmth. “Yes,” he informed him affectionately. “In fact, it is.”