FOR WEEKS the royal couple, a few immediate attendants, and the teulu were out of the castle. As usually happened when Noble was away, Gwirion became lackadaisical, doing always what was asked of him and absolutely nothing more. Gwilym often asked him to play for the household after supper but quickly despaired of any other satisfaction from him—as always, his wit went into hibernation in the king’s absence.
But unlike other periods of ennui, he had a new preoccupation. In a castle not much given to higher learning, he had found a book. It had been at the bottom of a chest in the storage room beneath the great hall, where he with his uncanny memory recalled its being tossed fifteen years earlier. He spent every free moment wrapped in a velvet mantle he’d inherited from Noble, his nose to the brittle pages of the codex, muttering to himself, but he was possessive and secretive about it. Nobody ever managed to get a clear look at it, and from what Marged’s workers could glean from a quick glance at the cover, the letters were put together in odd, insensible ways. The rumor quickly spread among the servants that he was studying sorcery. Because it was Gwirion, this did not bother them much—if anything, they were looking forward to seeing how he would supplement his pranks with a bit of magic. Each night after their dull Lenten supper of salted trout, oat bread, and ale, the castle workers would beg him to practice spells for them. He would intone strange-sounding words and phrases with intricate arm gestures, and then inform them all that somewhere in Scotland a pig had spontaneously combusted, or that he had prevented a boat from capsizing off the Isle of Mon. Nobody was sure whether he was serious or mocking, but they would always ooh and ahh respectfully. He would swap wry glances with Gwilym or the other officers, barely keeping a straight face as he resumed his seat and returned his attention to the book, which had been written for Prince Maelgwyn when he was eight years old. It was a primer of the French language.
A week into the circuit, after damp but gleeful spring equinox rituals that he could barely rouse himself to join, Gwirion was summoned to play for the royal party at Owain’s manor. It was to celebrate the king’s birthday—which, Gwirion’s own birth date being a mystery, was always celebrated as his own as well. He was not in a celebratory mood and a trip away from Cymaron generally made his stomach sour with tension. It was a long day’s journey, a dreary exodus on a muddy road between clouds so low they seemed within reach, and treeless hilltops carpeted red with last year’s dead bracken. The air was wet and chilling and they had nothing to eat along the way but salted trout. Everyone was sick of trout.
Owain’s manor was a hillside, wood-framed compound in an inhospitable part of the kingdom. The soil was poor, but the manor was ingeniously built so that a small tributary of the extreme upper Wye River, almost at the Severn, meandered through the courtyard, and there was a plentiful supply of trout. Gwirion and his escort of teulu arrived during supper and took their meal, mostly trout, in the kitchen.
Noble and Efan were dining in private conference with their host to discuss the ruins of a Roman hill fort on Owain’s land. This fort overlooked a difficult pass into Maelienydd from the northwest. The king and his chief soldier wanted it refurbished and garrisoned with his own men—but at Owain’s expense, on the grounds that Owain would be the first to be affected by a “visit” from Llewelyn. Gwirion pressed his ear to the door in time to hear Owain’s polite rebuttal, which brought nothing but derisive rebuke from his sovereign. The hill fort was centuries abandoned because the pass was extremely challenging to cross, Owain explained, but more important, the land was simply too impoverished to support a garrison without imposing beyond reason upon his shepherds and farmers.
“I don’t want to challenge my sovereign,” Owain ventured, “but it really should at least be my own teulu up there, they’re my kin and all sons of the local freemen. At least there would be ties of blood and affection to mitigate the burden.” This was met with equal contempt. Gwirion grimaced and walked away. He did not hear the rest of Owain’s quiet reasoning: “If Your Majesty forces troops onto my lands, just to scare off someone who may not even be an enemy, Huw and all the others in the area will be up in arms—they’ll call you a tyrant, and they’ll use it as an excuse to go over to Llewelyn.”
Coming from anyone else, it would have been a threat; from Owain it was merely a regrettable description. But Noble’s expression darkened and stayed that way through supper. By the time he rose from the table he knew, annoyed, that he would have to force the issue.
WHEN Gwirion arrived, Isabel was closed up with Owain’s mother and sister, who wanted to practice their atrocious French. He wanted desperately to catch a glimpse of her but didn’t dare try too hard for fear of seeming suspicious, especially when he heard that Noble had himself left his supper conference in search of her. Gwirion retreated and spent a little time peering about the homey wooden manor house, imagining the life he would be having here if he had taken Owain’s offer at the December war council. He could not, even now, make himself regret his choice, although the young man had not exaggerated: He could easily live out his years anonymously in this godforsaken corner of the kingdom. It was the first time in twenty years the royal circuit had even bothered stopping here.
Owain’s hall was stuffy and Gwirion, seeking fresh air, eventually slipped out into the central yard. The moon was a night short of full, and with the slight cloud cover the sky had a silver-midnight haze bright enough to cast vague, unnatural shadows across the wet grass. To Gwirion’s surprise, Owain had come out here too, leaning heavily on the railing of a bridge that crossed the stream, fidgeting with a small, dense fishnet that he’d pulled up out of the water to repair.
“Good evening,” Gwirion said.
Owain spun around. “Oh, it’s you,” he said, relaxing. “I thought it was His Majesty come to torment me some more.”
“Is he still on you for what happened during the war council?” It was unlike Noble to waste effort on a grudge.
“No, he’s after the hill fort,” Owain said in a tired voice. “He doesn’t understand his own people. They can barely survive the winter but they’re peaceable, they help each other out. They haven’t the time or the inclination for any sort of skirmish. What I’ll have to ask of them to maintain a garrison will push them beyond the edge—they’ll end up desperate and resentful and they’ll be a bigger problem than the supposed enemy the soldiers are being sent here to watch for in the first place.”
“‘Supposed’?” Gwirion frowned. “Llewelyn’s not the enemy?”
The two dark-haired, slender figures considered each other for a moment in the half-light, and then Owain looked away. “That depends on who you are,” he said uncomfortably.
“If you’re the king, Llewelyn is the enemy,” Gwirion said, and added bluntly, “which means if you’re the king’s subject, Llewelyn must also be the enemy.”
Owain made an evasive gesture and tried to smile. “Come inside with me. I have a flagon of brandy wine, if you care to share it. Then we’ll get the harp out for you. It was my father’s, it hasn’t been played since his funeral, six months ago.”
They crossed the damp lawn toward the cellar where Owain kept his butlery, but as they passed a side gate that opened into the stable yard, they saw and heard something that brought them to an instant freeze.
The sound that made them turn was Isabel’s voice, and the scene that brought them to a stop made Gwirion shudder and Owain gape. Noble had brought his wife outside into the night and had her pinned between a barrel and the side of the stable. Beneath his red woolen cloak he wore only his tunic; beneath her lighter linen one she was naked, and he was possessing her. Her face was unreadable in the muted moonlight, but every movement he made against her stood out in sharp relief, lit by the flames of a freestanding stable-yard brazier.
In unison, the two men automatically turned away and then immediately looked back again. Owain made an embarrassed sound and dropped the fishnet without noticing. Gwirion thought for a moment that his knees would give out, and instinctively he grabbed at Owain’s sleeve.
“Yes, I see it,” Owain whispered, misunderstanding the tug on his arm. He blinked and shook his head slightly, as if he could not make himself believe what he was seeing. “Why—”
“I don’t know, but look away,” Gwirion said in his ear. “We’re just playing into his hands if we stand here.”
Owain nodded and walked away. Gwirion started to follow, but his eyes, against his will, strayed back to the stable.
Noble had pulled her away from the wall and laid her on her back across the barrel, her mantle in a heap on the ground by her head. As he began to climb on top of her, he murmured something too quietly for Gwirion to hear, and she made a feeble cry of protest in response. Gwirion stiffened. You have to go away, he told himself furiously. Leave. There is nothing you can do. He managed to lower his eyes from the scene, and saw the little fishnet Owain had dropped. He felt himself bend over to pick it up. Don’t, he ordered silently. You’re not going to do it. But then on the other side of the gate, she cried out again, louder this time, and Gwirion saw red.
HIS wife cried out as he had told her to, as if she were in pain, and then a second time, but the bait was obviously not luring. Seeing her shivering and tensed against the late March air, Noble was about to offer her a hand up and his own mantle for warmth. He ran a finger down her trembling abdomen—when he heard her gasp in surprise and then the world went black.
Somebody shoved him hard from the side and threw a foul-smelling rag over his head, twisting it tight around his neck and knocking him off her. He stumbled away from the barrel, reaching for his throat as his assailant shoved him again, knocking him to his knees. He leapt up at once and tore off the sack—it was actually a net—but the attacker was already fleeing. Following Isabel’s astonished face and the sounds of speeding footsteps toward the inner yard, he rushed to the gate and saw the slender dark-haired figure as it disappeared into the great hall. He uttered an oath of infuriated triumph, then turned back to the queen as she scrambled to wrap her mantle around her. Confused and traumatized by the charade, she braced herself, afraid he might strike her, but he followed Gwirion. She sank to the ground, too exhausted to be frightened, almost relieved that the end had come.
YOUR Majesty?” Owain cried incredulously, confused. He had been brought under guard before Noble at the hall hearth, and he stared stupidly at the net. “Yes, that’s from my stream, and I had it out there with me, I was about to repair it, but I didn’t…I would never assault—”
“Did you see me with my wife?” Noble demanded, his eyes an intense unnatural blue. He was standing near his captive in only his tunic, his hair in wild disarray. The queen was seated behind him, looking down. She had retreated long enough to don a long wool kirtle and surcoat. Her braids were disheveled and she was shivering from cold; at Noble’s order Generys was fetching her mulled cider.
“Yes, sire, I saw you. I…went inside afterward.” He cleared his throat awkwardly.
“Do you have any witnesses?”
“I was with Gwirion. He can back me up. I invited him in for a drink.”
Noble made a dismissive face, but he signaled one of the teulu to summon Gwirion. His wife remained exactly as she was, her face grim but otherwise unreadable, her posture stiff. She did not glance up as Gwirion walked past her to stand before the king, and he made no attempt to communicate with her.
Noble stared at Gwirion. He stared back, his face the epitome of innocent curiosity. “Sire?” he asked. “I was just searching for the moon, they seem to have misplaced it. Is it time for the birthday celebrations?”
“I was assaulted,” Noble said. “Tonight. I was by the stables—”
“I know where you were, I saw you,” Gwirion said in a quick, tight voice, so cold Isabel thought Noble must realize at once who his attacker really was. Gwirion nodded with his head toward the shackled young man. “And you think Owain did it?”
“We are already aware of his extreme partiality toward my wife. And I was nearly strangled by that,” Noble said, pointing to the netting on the floor. “He admits he had it out there. And I saw him flee.”
After a flicker of hesitation, Gwirion said calmly, “No, you didn’t. You saw me.”
“You?” Noble smiled as though this was the beginning of some new game.
“What’s amusing about that? You don’t think I’m capable of assaulting you?”
“Of course not,” Noble said with maddening affection. “But I’ll indulge you. How did you get the netting?”
“He dropped it,” Gwirion said promptly. “Ogling you. He left it behind when he went into the house.”
Noble glanced at Owain. “How much did you bribe him to cover for you?”
Owain looked affronted. “I didn’t, sire,” he protested. “I don’t know if Gwirion attacked you, but I swear it wasn’t me.”
“Well, it certainly wasn’t Gwirion, so if it wasn’t you, who else could it have been?” Noble demanded. He gestured, elegantly and vaguely, around the hall. “Who else in your household has your general build and coloring?”
“I would have to think about that, sire.”
“Yes, do that. You’ll think more clearly if you’re not distracted, so to keep you from distractions you’ll be put in prison overnight. You have one here, I presume?”
Owain’s face contorted with disbelief. “Sire?”
“Your Majesty, may I speak with you alone?” Gwirion said through clenched teeth, taking a step closer to him.
Noble signaled Efan to bind Owain’s hands. “Find out where the cellar is and take him down. Goronwy and I will decide on his punishment in the morning.”
“Sire,” Gwirion growled urgently.
“In a moment, Gwirion. Efan, see to the watch yourself. Bring the prisoner to us after breakfast.”
“What are you going to do to him?” the queen’s voice said suddenly in the dark hall. She had risen stiffly to her feet but was still staring at the floor.
“I’m not a tyrant, Isabel, I do observe the rule of law. He’ll have a fair trial in the morning, with the judge presiding.” Noble glanced around at the random manor servants, guards, and teulu who had collected nearby to watch the drama unfold. “You are all dismissed. Our birthday observations are canceled.” Efan, towering over Owain, began to lead him from the hall. “Gwirion, we will not be using you tonight after all. I regret you troubled yourself with the journey for nothing.” He turned to leave.
“Sire,” Gwirion said again, barely getting his voice above a whisper. “I require an audience in private.”
“Of course you do,” the king sighed. “Come along, then.” He gestured for his wife to follow them out into the misty yard. She stayed as far from Gwirion as she could without it seeming obvious, and resolutely avoided looking at him. He obeyed the unspoken edict.
Noble nodded toward the door to their room. “Go in, my dear, I’ll be right along.” Still without a word or look for Gwirion, she turned awkwardly away and went inside. The king glanced at him. “Yes?”
He hated that his breath was visible in the diffused moonlight, it would reveal his anxiety. “I did it and I know you know I did it,” he said, his eyes feeling glued open. “I don’t know why you’re doing this but please don’t bring that boy into it, he’s innocent.”
“Nobody is innocent,” Noble said with a soft, bitter laugh.
“He didn’t do it, Noble, I did.”
“What you must understand, my perennial crusader against sexual predation, is that I don’t need you to have done it. I need Owain to have done it. Therefore, Owain did it. You will not confess to it. Do you understand me?” Gwirion stared at him, shocked. The king frowned as if he was hurt by the look. “I’m not a monster, Gwirion, I am a monarch. I think you afford yourself the luxury of forgetting that sometimes.” He patted his friend on the arm. “Get some sleep now. I think they’ve made a bed for you in hall.” He walked through the dewy grass after his wife.
GWIRION found his ability to meddle suddenly stymied. He wrapped a brychan around himself and squatted in the moon-illuminated yard outside the king and queen’s ground-floor sleeping chambers, as close to their small shuttered window as he dared, to eavesdrop. He heard Isabel insist Owain was innocent, but she would not name another culprit in his place, and anyway, the king seemed entirely uninterested in her protestations. Then Gwirion, slipping inside and down a staircase, tried to speak alone with Owain in the cellar—a room far larger, drier, and more habitable than the cell at Cymaron—but Efan the penteulu refused to cede them any privacy.
Gwirion tried, quietly, to share his wisdom with the imprisoned young baron despite this: He did not know what Noble’s plan was, but he was certain that the way to foil it was for Owain to do the one thing Noble would never expect him to do: make a false confession. “Say it was a mistake, that you thought it was a vagrant harassing one of your servants, and when you realized whom you’d attacked, you panicked and fled. That makes it an accident, not treason.”
“That’s a stupid risk,” Owain whispered, nervously, through the iron bars.
“He knows it wasn’t really you,” Gwirion whispered back. “His scheme, I think, depends upon your claiming it wasn’t you. So if you admit it was you, somehow you will undermine his scheme.”
“If I admit it was me, I will be hanged,” Owain insisted. “If I claim innocence, there will be a trial and I’ll be acquitted.”
“That might be true if you weren’t dealing with a tyrant,” Gwirion muttered despairingly. Efan heard him use the word “tyrant,” and with glowering eyes chased Gwirion from the cellar.
THE following morning after breakfast, Noble ordered one of the trestle tables left up, and he sat behind it, with porcine Goronwy to one side and Owain’s own chaplain holding a quill to the other. Across from them stood the prisoner, hands bound, unshaven, unwashed, and generally the worse for his night in the cellar. Gwirion perched near Owain’s household workers and the rest of the retinue. The queen was placed directly behind Noble, so that she and Owain could not see each other. She folded her hands in her lap and kept her head bowed, barely hiding how furious she was.
The simple questioning of the evening before was repeated for Goronwy. Owain quietly maintained his innocence, and Gwirion testified that he’d seen the baron leave the yard without touching the king. The warning look Noble shot him kept him from making an actual confession again. But then, it hardly seemed necessary: Within ten minutes the judge had acquitted Owain, who smiled with relief. “Now, Gwirion,” Goronwy continued, “as you’re our only witness—”
“Just a moment,” Noble said, stretching and yawning in his chair with a deliberate informality. “We’re not quite done with Owain.”
“He’s been acquitted, sire,” Goronwy said.
“As the plaintiff, I’m questioning your judgment,” Noble announced. “And so in keeping with the custom and the rule of law, it shall be decided on appeal.” He swung his smiling face directly front toward Owain. “By your king.”
Owain gaped at him in disbelief.
“That’s outrageous,” the judge announced, slamming the table with one stubby hand before he could stop himself.
“I’m certainly outraged,” Noble said agreeably. “People shouldn’t wander about attacking their sovereigns with fishnets. Owain, on appeal, based on the information available to us, I find—”
“I did it!” Gwirion said desperately. “Stop it, Noble!”
Noble gave him a sardonic look. “Don’t interrupt, Gwirion, it’s rude. Owain, I find you, on appeal, guilty of treason. Assault per se is only punishable by fine, but treason, as I suspect you know, is a capital offense. According to the law I would, ordinarily, have no choice but to hang you. But this being my birthday, I am inclined to indulgence, so I have decided to spare your life.”
“Thank you, sire,” Owain said in a voice choked with relief. Gwirion, although confused, relaxed a little. But Isabel pursed her lips, waiting for the next twist, a twist she suddenly realized she should have seen from the beginning.
“However,” the king continued, sounding very pleased with himself, “there is still the fact that you are capable of performing an act of violence against my royal person, and I must be protected against that. So your life is spared, thanks to my graciousness, but you are hereby banished from Maelienydd.” Owain looked up sharply, horrified, and half the room cried out in shock: Banishment was almost worse than death.
Isabel, hardly knowing she was doing it, leapt to her feet and opened her mouth to protest. Noble glanced over his shoulder at her. “Yes, madam?” he asked in a lazy voice. “Is there something you would like to tell us regarding this travesty?”
She stared back at him, trying to calm herself. Don’t do this, she wanted to beg him. You will turn every baron against you. But she realized with a sick feeling that she was too compromised to say anything at all. She shook her head once, hurriedly, and sat again.
The king nodded with approval and returned his cool smile in Owain’s direction. “As you will be in Ireland—a kinder sentence, you must agree, than sending you to England—there is the matter of your property. As you have no immediate heir, since I doubt you’ve ever had an emission in your life, it will of course come to the crown, and the crown in turn is awarding it to the brotherhood of Abbey Cwm-hir. Seeing as that will make it church land, our friend Llewelyn is less likely to come trooping through it than he would if it were yours. However, against the unfortunate chance that he might stoop to such a sacrilege, we will write at once to the head of the brotherhood in Bordeaux and ask for a church-financed company to refurbish and garrison the old hill fort we spoke of earlier. They at least will certainly not be seduced by Llewelyn’s siren call. Do you have any final words before you go to pack, Owain?”
Owain looked as if he would be permanently speechless. Goronwy was furious but silent; the king had done nothing outside his lawful warrant. Gwirion shuddered and sat down as steadily as he could.
Owain muttered something under his breath.
“What?” Noble asked. “Speak up, man.”
“I said I didn’t recognize you in the torchlight,” Owain said, still mumbling. “I didn’t recognize either of you. I thought you were some vagrants using my stables for unsavory activities. I…I attacked you and then I recognized the queen’s face, and realized I had made a mistake, and I was frightened and confused, so I fled. I apologize for attacking Your Majesty, especially at a…moment of intimacy. I’m prepared to accept whatever punishment you see fit, but I hope you will bear in mind that it was an honest mistake. It was ignorance, not treason.”
Noble rose in annoyance, and above the muttering that whirled round the periphery of the room, Goronwy quickly announced, “There will be a retrial with this new testimony.” He sat up straighter and asked Owain, “Have you been coerced into making this confession?”
The young baron answered with a pained smile, “Only by experience, Your Honor.”
“I hope that is the same experience that has suddenly convinced you to invite a garrison of my men to your hill fort,” Noble growled.
Owain hesitated and glanced at Gwirion, looking torn. Gwirion felt the king’s eyes on him too and his impulse was to turn and leave; the last thing he wanted was to become anybody’s strategist, especially against the king. He knew no details, only that it was Noble’s will against another’s, and his was a conditioned response: He looked at the king for a moment, then glanced back to Owain and nodded.
There was the briefest pause and then: “The garrison will be welcome, sire, whenever they appear.” Owain spoke in a voice of depressed capitulation. “I’ll make sure my fellow barons know that your men are there by my own invitation.”
“Yes, you will, and you will counsel your fellow barons against supporting Llewelyn.”
Owain appeared to physically grow smaller. “Of course, sire.”
“Thank you,” Noble answered, instantly serene again. He resumed his seat. “That is a generous birthday gift. This has been a remarkably productive twelve hours. I’m only sorry,” he added in a quiet aside, over his shoulder to his wife, “that Gwirion came all the way out here for nothing.”
He gave her a knowing smile that froze her blood.