AT THE DEADEST hour of the night before the dawn of May Day, Gwirion was summoned to the king.
Since Cynan’s departure two days earlier, nothing had felt right. Noble hardly spoke to either of them, had not called Gwirion to play for him or make him laugh, never once expressed affection in public, or private, toward his wife. There was an oppressive, airless cloud around the king. Gwirion had been trying not to panic, trying to convince himself that this was the passing mood of a beleaguered monarch.
Marged’s grandson, almost sleepwalking, stuck his head through the hole in the wall to wake Gwirion on behalf of the king, who sat writing by the hearth in the great hall.
“Sire?” Gwirion whispered as he stumbled out, cautious and befuddled. “What’s wrong?”
Noble was reclining in his cushioned, high-backed wooden chair, across his lap a broad oak board that he was leaning on to write. “Nothing’s wrong,” he said. He carefully underlined something he’d just written. He was already dressed for May Day, elegant in the long green-and-gold tunic he’d worn a year ago to celebrate his wedding. He’d thrown a light green cloak around his shoulders for warmth, and as if color had a spiritual dimension, the brightness seemed to have affected him: He looked more relaxed than he had for days, perhaps for weeks.
“Shall I do that for you, sire?” Gwirion asked. Noble hated writing.
“No,” Noble said offhandedly.
“Sire, I don’t mean to pry but it’s the dark of the morning and you rarely write your own correspondence and when you do, you do it in decent light in your audience chamber. What’s wrong? Is this about Llewelyn?”
Noble looked up and smiled at him casually. “No. Nothing’s wrong,” he said. “These are just instructions for Gwilym about some minor changes in the May Day celebrations. Christ in heaven, I’m looking forward to an occasion free of politics.” He returned his attention to his work. “Play for me while I finish, won’t you?”
Some two dozen servants were trying to sleep, either beside them or in curtained cubicles, exhausted from the wild romps of May Eve around bonfires enormous enough to blaze despite the intermittent spring showers. Gwirion chose quiet melodies. He tried to convince himself that this was like any of the ten thousand evenings he had passed with Noble; the king seemed utterly oblivious of the tension of the past few days. A small part of Gwirion hovered upstairs, wondering which room the queen was in and wishing there were a way to escape Noble’s attention just to be alone with her for a moment.
The queen’s doorkeeper Llwyd descended into the hall, the man who for months had escorted him to her side believing that he was merely fetching her a lullaby. When he saw that Gwirion was already engaged, he crossed to them and bowed. “Excuse me, sire,” he said woodenly, “but the queen has requested the harp. Perhaps when you are finished with him, he might go to her chamber?”
“I’m never finished with him,” the king said. “But if I feel like sharing she’ll be the first to know.”
“Her Majesty is not in your room?” Gwirion asked, hoping he sounded disinterested. “I thought she wanted to stay with you because of her nightmares.”
“She hasn’t had them for some time now and she wanted to see how she might sleep alone.” He elaborately added his signature to the letter, laid the quill aside, and blew on the ink to dry it.
Gwirion picked up his tuning key and slipped it over one of the pegs, hoping he did not look too blatantly delighted with the news. He sounded the string very lightly as he lowered it half a tone, and dissembled, saying, “I’m concerned about Her Majesty. If the nightmares prove to continue, I’m honored to be of service to her but I believe she’ll need more than I provide.”
Noble smiled a lazy, leering smile. “I think you’re right about that.” He folded the note over without sealing it. “To start with, tonight she needs a final good rutting to tire her out. So come along,” he said, rising from his chair and gesturing to Gwirion to follow him.
“Sire?” the harpist croaked, staring, his stomach in his throat.
“Between the two of us, let’s see if we might help her sleep.”
“Sire?”
Noble gave him a puzzled expression as if he couldn’t imagine what Gwirion was protesting. Then he grinned. “You filthy-minded little swine,” he said approvingly. “I meant you be her bard, I’ll be her lover.”
“At the same time?” Gwirion asked feebly.
“Of course, like the old days.”
“Those women were different. I don’t think the queen would welcome—”
“Really, Gwirion, you must give her a little credit!” Noble laughed. He signaled toward the lower hall, and Gwirion was surprised to see tall, quiet Gwilym, who never showed himself in hall before mass in the morning. He too was already dressed in his bright May Day outfit, but he was hardly in the spirit of revels; in fact, he seemed quite wretched about the early hour. When he approached them, Noble handed him the note. “As we discussed,” the king said lightly. “Ignore it otherwise.” Gwilym took the note, wordlessly, and bowed. He did not acknowledge Gwirion; Gwirion thought he was too tired to even see him.
Noble nodded toward the stairs. “Come along,” he said to Gwirion with a smile of anticipation. He hoisted a rush light out of a wall brace near the bottom of the stairs and began to ascend. Gwirion followed miserably, willing himself to faint if not expire. For nearly a month, he’d dreaded what was about to happen.
But then the king paused. He mused on something for a moment, and finally handed the torch down to Gwirion. “Go up without me, there are some more logistics I must see to here. Send her women down to Gwilym, would you? I’ll be up in an hour or so.”
Gwirion shook his head, confused. “You want her women down here? Now? It’s hours until dawn, sire, why must they rise so early?”
“And when did you become the guardian of their best interests?” Noble retorted. “The steward has years of organizing May Day rituals. You do not. Please send them down, and tell my wife to be awake for me when I come up in an hour.”
WHEN the grumpy, sleep-fogged sewing bevy had been dismissed to hall, Gwirion and Isabel looked at each other in silent amazement, thrilled and yet afraid to act on the opportunity. Finally she held out a hand, smiling in the torchlight, and he nearly threw himself on her. He straddled her, bent over her, covered her face with kisses, and nuzzled his nose into her hair as she squeezed him to her. Nothing in his life had ever felt so good to him. “An hour alone in a room with you and a bed,” he whispered ecstatically into her ear. “I’m the most blessed man alive.”
“Why just an hour? It’s ages until dawn.”
He tugged at her shift while she wriggled under his weight; she grinned and ran her hands through his hair, trying vainly to tame the cowlick. “He’s coming up here in an hour,” he murmured, and kissed her earlobe.
She froze, then with genuine terror pushed him up and away from her. “What?” she demanded.
“I was just downstairs with him, he said he’d be up in an hour.”
“Are you daft?” she cried, pushing him away with something approaching sudden hysteria. “It’s a trap! Get off the bed—get out of here, leave the room! It’s a trap! You idiot—get off the bed!”
Gwirion stared at her, confused. She pushed her shift back down around her legs and sat up in the bed, straightening the blankets, trembling. “It’s not a trap,” he said at last. “Noble’s traps are subtle. That would be too obvious.”
“He’s counting on us to think that,” she insisted, slapping frantically at his legs to make him back away. “He sent me to my own bed tonight. He sent you up here alone, and he called my women away. And he let you know we’d have an hour. It won’t be an hour, it will be any moment now, as soon as he hears incriminating noises.”
“If he knows,” Gwirion insisted, “he wouldn’t bother staging something like this.”
“Of course he would, it’s more distressing for us that way. Leave, Gwirion, that’s an order.”
Instead of leaving he took a step closer to her and she tried to draw away, but he snatched her hands in his and sat on the bed beside her. “I gave you the wrong impression,” he said in a soothing voice. “He was coming up here with me—he stayed downstairs at the last moment.”
“That was staged,” she said firmly.
He gazed at her pale face in the candlelight and sighed. “If his goal is to distress you, he’s succeeding. And if his goal is to distress you by keeping you eternally on edge, do you think he’d ever actually confront you?” She rolled her eyes in agitation, but when he reached out to brush his thumb against her lips, she let him. He kissed her cheek. “We haven’t been alone together for a month and you’re still terrified every day, I see it in your face. I swear to you I would never do anything to give you more cause for that fear.” She looked down and shrugged, a little reassured by his calm, trying to control her breathing. Tentatively, he perched on the edge of the bed and put an arm around her, rocking her against him. Her little body was warm and familiar in his arms, and he felt too glad to speak. She closed her eyes and let herself collapse against him.
He smiled down at her. After a moment, he reached under the blankets with his free hand and began to lift the hem of her shift, his pulse and breathing quickening. She stiffened and pushed the hand away, but he threw his arm around her, trapping her in his embrace, and rolled over until she was beneath him. Her face flashed fear again.
“Get off of me! You fool, it’s a trap.”
“We just had this conversation,” Gwirion whispered, and kissed her on the lips. Isabel uttered a smothered sound of despair and yielded. His kiss, after weeks of missing it, erased the world. She reached for his bed tunic and he at once tore it off, while she fumbled with the string to his breeches belt and pushed the blankets away. They made love silently but frantically, an almost violent act unlike any coupling of theirs had ever been, his slender body driving against her bare legs and silk shift.
Afterward, at her insistence, Gwirion immediately drew away to dress, but safely clothed again he returned to her side and held her, rocking her. For a very long time, they sat in silence.
Then abruptly, whether it was nerves or gladness, Isabel began to giggle and Gwirion, because it soothed his soul to hear it, joined her.
They settled back into a comfortable silence.
He nuzzled her cheek with his nose and whispered affectionate obscenities in an exaggeration of her accent. She tried to teach him the French erotic phrases Adèle had never wanted her to know. He invented elaborate stories about all the livestock he claimed to have seduced since they’d last been together, and she laughed again. She rubbed her head against his chest and reached up to stroke his hair. “You should take a lover,” she said. “I feel childish for resisting the idea of Nest.”
“It’s too late. You’ve spoiled me, I can’t settle for anything less now.”
“I’m serious, Gwirion. You need more than this, and it will throw him off the scent.”
“Oh, yes? And he’s ardently on the scent now, is he?” Gwirion asked.
“I’m telling you, this is intended to be a trap.”
“How original,” Gwirion mused archly. “To make us think we’d have an hour, and then giving us nearly two. That cunning lad. Whatever is he up to, do you think?”
“It hasn’t been two hours.”
“It’s been at least an hour and a half. If the plan was to surprise us before we were expecting him, he’s slightly tardy. And that, madam,” he added, imitating Noble’s affectionately condescending tone for the epithet, “is not the sort of error he would ever make.”
Isabel sat up a little straighter. “I was wrong?” she breathed, relieved but incredulous.
A few moments later, they heard Noble’s voice outside the door cheerfully bidding an early good morning to her doorkeeper. In one move, Gwirion slipped to the floor grabbing for his harp while Isabel pulled the blankets back over herself. They were a picture of innocence when Noble entered, carrying a second torch and smiling.
“Did you keep her awake for me?” he asked, closing the door. He rested the torch in a sconce near a window. “What a nuisance all these ritual details are. I couldn’t wait to be up here at last.”
Gwirion braced himself as Noble tossed down his cloak and moved to the bed. But he remained fully clothed as he slid casually under the blankets to lie beside his wife. “Ah,” he sighed contentedly, warming his hands against her upper arms. She shuddered from the cold touch. “That’s much better. Play us something, Gwirion. Play ‘Below the Ford.’”
“Below the Ford” was the tune Gwirion had always used after supper to signal to Isabel that he would be available if she called him.
“I’m in the wrong tuning for that,” he said quickly.
“We’ll wait.”
As Gwirion retightened the string he had lowered downstairs, Noble reached under the sheets and then up under Isabel’s silk shift to stroke her hip, moving his fingers toward her groin. She stiffened and he stopped, looking mildly disappointed. But he wrapped an arm around her outside the sheet, spooning her to him in a half-reclining position, and she nestled in against him, reached down to kiss his hand. When “Below the Ford” was over, Noble called for “Rhiannon’s Tears” and then two other tunes. Gwirion, to avoid looking at them caressing, played with his face bent so close to the harp that his hair nearly brushed the upper strings. Noble nuzzled his wife’s ear. There was such a sweetness to the moment: the mildness of the damp spring night, the warm flickering of the torchlight, the dancing cadence of the harp, the silent presence of his dearest friend, and the soft, yielding, milk-smooth body of his wife beside him. And best of all, Llewelyn, Mortimer, and the rest of his concerns locked outside the door.
There was a comfortable silence when Gwirion finished the final song.
Then Noble ruined the mood.
“Gwirion,” he announced genially, “I’ve decided you’ll lead the Spring Rites this year.”
His wife had no idea what this meant, but after a glance at Gwirion she knew it wasn’t good. He had said it in an affectionate, indulgent tone, so she guessed it was something disgusting and perverse that Gwirion would once have leapt at.
“Why?” he asked, when he could finally find his voice.
“What are the Spring Rites?” she asked, looking back and forth between them. She had heard the term several times before, especially recently, and surmised it was some spring folk festival, probably involving large-scale, drunken debauchery, but the speakers—even Gwirion—always seemed sheepishly determined to avoid details.
“Don’t be dim, Gwirion. Because of your derring-do with Cynan in January. You’ve earned it.”
Gwirion looked completely at a loss. He moved his harp from one spot to another on the floor, fidgeting with it, trying to balance it upright and taking particular interest in the grain of the wood where it rested on the floor. “I don’t think I deserve that honor, sire,” he finally said with a nervous, self-effacing laugh.
“I make that decision, Gwirion, not you. You can’t be telling me you don’t want it.”
“What are the Spring Rites?” she asked again.
“It just seems unfair to the girl,” Gwirion stammered. “After all—who am I? She’s expecting the king.”
Isabel sat bolt upright, the blankets almost falling away from her. “One of you tell me what you’re talking about,” she demanded.
“Gwirion, you explain,” Noble said, easing her back down against him.
Gwirion used his finger in a futile pretense of dusting out the lion’s tiny ears at the top of the harp’s forepillar. “We have a…tradition of sorts here.”
“Don’t tell me there’s a ritual deflowering of a virgin,” Isabel said.
“No, no,” Gwirion said hastily—then hesitated. He continued swabbing the lion, trying to sound casual. He really did not want her to associate him with this story. “Well, that is, it doesn’t have to be. What’s important is that she seems…appropriately…fulsome. Fecund. For her night. With the king.”
“What?” she said sharply, and pulled the sheet up to her neck, breaking out of Noble’s embrace.
“Perhaps that sounds worse than it is,” Gwirion said. He couldn’t bring himself to look at her. “The girl is always willing—in fact, everyone makes a big fuss over her. She’s chosen. No one’s ever forced to it. It’s just…something that’s always been done.”
“They say it guarantees a better harvest,” Noble said, conspiratorially playful.
“That is the most superstitious, backward barbarism I’ve ever heard of!” Isabel declared. “That’s absolutely cretinous!”
“What do you think you were?” Gwirion said impatiently, trying not to snap from the tension.
She gave him a look. “I was the king’s bride.”
Noble laughed. “What was the date of our wedding, madam?”
Her eyes widened and she turned to stare over her shoulder at him.
“Not a coincidence.” He smiled.
She was disgusted. “But it’s not the same at all!”
“Oh, of course not,” Noble said lazily. “You came here willingly to partake in an ancient ritual that would culminate in our bedding together for the good of the kingdom, but it’s not at all the same.”
For a moment she couldn’t even speak.
“It’s considered a huge honor for the girl,” Gwirion said, trying to be helpful.
“Oh, yes, I’m sure it is!” she sneered, and elbowed her husband away as he tried to nestle up closer to her.
“Tell her the rest, Gwirion,” he ordered, smiling.
“There’s more?” she said, appalled.
Gwirion desperately wanted this conversation to be over. He was actually blushing. After an awkward pause, he explained, “Um. Yes. Afterward. There’s a bit of a free-for-all.”
“Oh, is that all?” she said with sarcastic offhandedness. “I had pretty much expected that.” But she sobered. “And you participate?” she asked Gwirion, then added hurriedly, to cover, “All of you, I mean—everybody?”
Noble laughed beside her in a tone that made both of them wince. “There have been years at a time when May Day has provided Gwirion his only stab, so to speak, at female flesh.”
She looked away. There was nothing she could say in front of Noble, but Gwirion read her silence and it made him heartsick. He rested his head on the shoulder of the harp as if it were a person who might comfort him.
“However, this year,” Noble continued grandly, “he takes the honors.” He leaned down over her and murmured in her ear, “King’s prerogative, to appoint a proxy for the main event, when there’s a deserving champion.”
Gwirion immediately protested, “Sire, I told you that I don’t want—”
“I visited the girl tonight,” Noble went on, as if Gwirion hadn’t spoken. “She’s staying with Cadwgan’s family. She’s very pretty, a little like that hall servant who took a fancy to you, but more flirtatious. I’ll—”
“Thank you, sire, but I am respectfully declining the honor,” Gwirion said, and lifted his tuning peg from his belt again to fiddle with the harp pegs.
“No you’re not,” Noble informed him, his cheeriness abating slightly. “This isn’t a dinner invitation, it’s a sacred tradition.”
“It’s not sacred,” Gwirion said. “It’s actually profane.”
“That makes you the perfect acolyte,” Noble retorted. “You’re profane.”
“I’m working on that,” Gwirion muttered under his breath, fidgeting with the peg of the lowest string.
“Yes, I’ve noticed, and I wish you wouldn’t, it makes you a dreadful bore,” Noble said. “But you see, I mustn’t do it anymore.” He looked down at Isabel with a sly expression. “My wife resents it when I stray.”
“I would make an exception if you strayed for the proper reasons,” she said with forced levity.
Noble pushed her shoulder down, twisting her supine onto the bed. He hovered over her with an intrigued expression. “Would you?” he said, imitating her tone. “And what would you consider a proper reason to stray from the royal marriage bed?”
She blanched and stammered up at him, “Whatever is in service to the throne, sire. We know I’m damaged and you need a son. Don’t let my harping on monogamy come between you and our people’s expectations.” He looked impressed by the response, and she continued, a little more confidently, “If you really consider it imperative that Gwirion stand in for you, I’ve no objection and I can’t fathom why he would, but I would think the need to get a royal heir comes before offering Gwirion an hour of pleasure he seems too squeamish to accept.”
He gave her a searching look, seeking something beyond her words. Finally he released her and smiled, patiently. “Well spoken. Gwirion, you will simply participate as you always have in the bacchanalia.”
The chance to be alone with her again—while the entire castle was distracted—was too tempting. “I don’t want to do that either, sire,” he said cautiously. Noble started.
“No, Gwirion, that is going too far! It would hardly be worth it without you there.” Almost out of the side of his mouth he told his wife confidingly, “Gwirion at such a gathering is a thing of wonder.”
“I’m sure I’d like to see that, sire,” she said with a wan attempt at humor.
Gwirion hesitated. “You must excuse me, sire, I’ve no desire to participate at all.”
The king stared at him. “Yes you do,” he said sternly.
“No, I don’t.” He tried to meet Noble’s eyes as they bored into his but he couldn’t, and turned his attention again to fidgeting with the harp pegs. Somehow, he had to pass this off as his usual contrariness.
Noble suddenly sat up and threw the sheets off himself with such vehemence that he almost uncovered his wife as well. She scrambled to reclaim a blanket, passably pretending to be shy of Gwirion’s eyes upon her. Noble leapt up from the bed, and with quick, controlled steps swung down around the foot of it to stand over Gwirion. “Listen to me,” he said in a threatening voice. “You will attend tomorrow. Of your own volition. You will enjoy it.”
“Is that an order?” Gwirion asked with an edgy laugh, still pretending to tune.
“It shouldn’t have to be—don’t make me order you,” Noble said. “You ass. Do you know what thin ice you stand on right now?”
“No, but I’ll retreat at once to solid ground,” Gwirion offered with nervous pleasantness. “And pen myself up in the kitchen tomorrow night.”
“Why are you being so contrary, Gwirion?” Isabel asked in the most offhand tone she could affect. She risked a pleading glance at him but he didn’t see it.
Noble’s expression darkened, but she saw a flash of desperation behind the anger; then it was brushed away. “Aren’t you man enough to handle it?” he taunted.
“Aren’t you man enough to handle it without me?” Gwirion taunted back as if they were playing at bickering. “Why are you so desperate for my presence?” He fluttered his lashes at the king. “I’m hardly equipped to receive your particular attentions for the evening.”
“That is not the point!” Noble thundered. He snatched the tuning key from Gwirion’s fingers and hurled it furiously across the room. “You don’t know what you’re meddling with! For the love of the saints, behave yourself!”
“Is that an order too?” Gwirion prayed for any graceful way out of this standoff. He hoped his frantic pulse was not actually audible.
The king stared at him for a moment, looking troubled. Then: “I am leaving now,” he announced with deliberation, his voice trembling with tension. “You will remain here and play for Her Majesty. Later today, you will attend the Spring Rites with me.”
“And if I don’t?” Gwirion asked, desperately clinging to the pretense of banter.
Seeing Noble’s eyes widen with annoyance and frustration, Isabel immediately announced, “You will attend, Gwirion,” but the king turned on her, outraged.
“Be quiet!” he ordered. “Ignore her, Gwirion! You will not choose to go because she told you to. Do you understand? You are not to do her bidding. This is your own free decision and your own free decision is to attend.”
Despite the strain, Gwirion laughed nervously at the absurdity of this. The laughter snapped some final string holding Noble’s fury in check; he lunged at the harpist and snatched the harp from his hands. He clutched it high over his head and for a moment seemed about to smash it down on Gwirion. Gwirion stopped laughing at once and cowered.
Noble turned and in three long, sure strides had crossed to the window—and hurled the harp out into the grey dawn air.
Gwirion leapt to his feet in disbelief and cringed as the sound of splintering wood and snapping strings echoed faintly up to them from the bottom of the castle mound. He raced toward the window but Noble stepped in his way and caught him, an outstretched hand grasping each arm. “Now,” the king said, devoid of all expression. “I am leaving. You will remain here and play for the queen and later today you will attend the Spring Rites with me. Do you understand?”
Isabel did, and shuddered, drawing the sheet up around her as if it could somehow give protection, but Gwirion just looked confused. “How can I play?” he cried plaintively. “You just destroyed my harp!”
“My harp,” Noble corrected at once, and pushed him back toward the bed, shoving him down so that he nearly fell on Isabel.
Gwirion sprang back scowling. “Bastard!” he spat. “That was your father’s harp, Noble! Bastard.”
“Come with me to the Rites and I’ll give you a new harp.”
Again Isabel thought she saw desperation behind the firm expression in her husband’s eyes. “That sounds like a fair exchange,” she said in a cajoling tone to Gwirion.
“That harp was irreplaceable!” he protested furiously.
“Dammit, you idiot!” Noble shouted, and grabbed him by the high collar of his tunic, shaking him. He jerked the fool toward him so their faces were very close; they could feel each other’s breath. “I don’t care if you sit in a corner and sulk the whole time, you must attend!”
Gwirion twisted away from him, shrugging and shuddering as if his touch were repellant. “Why?” he demanded.
Noble abruptly slammed the back of his hand against Gwirion’s mouth. Isabel cried out as Gwirion collapsed to the floor, both hands cupped around his jaw. Noble grabbed him like a shepherd would a wayward sheep and hauled him impatiently onto the bed. “Because,” the king hissed through clenched teeth, inches from his face, “you are expected. If you do not attend, people will talk. If you do not attend because you are in this room, people will do more than talk—people will know, and, Gwirion, I am trying very hard to keep people from knowing. Do not further rob me of incentive.” Then, very softly, almost a whisper: “And damn you, Gwirion, for bringing me to this.”
They both stared at him in horrified silence, Gwirion dumbfounded, Isabel resigned and pale. Noble sighed, looking both exhausted and annoyed. He released his captive and took a heavy step away from the bed.
Gwirion cradled the side of his face, his tongue feeling thick in his mouth. He swallowed and made the mistake of playing innocent. “What do you mean, sire?” he asked timorously.
Instantly ignited again, Noble whirled around, grabbed the front of Gwirion’s tunic and hoisted him up until he teetered on his toes for balance. “You have one opportunity to cease insulting me.”
“But how am I insulting you?” Gwirion babbled, tasting blood behind his teeth. Isabel closed her eyes in defeat.
The king’s jaw clenched. “You have now wasted the opportunity,” Noble informed him. “You stupid wretch.” He shoved Gwirion hard onto the bed, glaring at him, then pulled his dagger from his belt and smacked it against Gwirion’s chest, pressed the point hard against his heart. Gwirion stared down at it, stunned, not quite believing this moment had arrived. Noble looked at him furiously—but far more than that, with sorrow, and for a moment Isabel, watching them, thought she was looking at the face of amnesty. Then, too fast for her to see it happen, the blade flashed up and cut into the skin of Gwirion’s temple, exactly where the childhood scar was, the scar she’d noticed the first time she’d watched his sleeping face. As badly shocked as pained, Gwirion clamped one hand to the wound, cursing. He stared in disgusted terror at the king.
“Is that not both poetic and economical of me?” Noble demanded with satisfaction. “The first wound you survived and the last wound you’ll survive, on the same small patch of flesh? You will not survive another wound from me.”
Isabel tore at her shift, ripped away a piece of silk from the skirt and pressed it hard against Gwirion’s bleeding forehead. Noble slapped her harshly and she recoiled. Gwirion, dazed, tried to move between them to protect her, but the king pushed him aside. “You are a very foolish child,” he told his wife angrily. He settled on the foot of the bed, facing them, and sheathed the dagger. His taut face transformed immediately, unnervingly, into a personable, almost chatty aspect. “Shall we begin negotiations for surrender? There’s so much to consider and dawn will be here soon.” Only his breathing, shallow and quick, betrayed his real mood now.
For a long moment there was silence. She gave Gwirion the piece of silk to press against the wound himself. “Move away from him,” Noble suggested in a conversational voice, which under the circumstances was more distressing than an outright threat. She retreated several feet, still under the blankets.
“How long have you known?” she asked at last.
Gwirion could not speak. His distress, Noble noted with grateful satisfaction, was much more complicated than hers was. He, at least, still loved the man they’d wronged.
“A long time,” Noble answered. “But you knew that, of course, I made it very clear to you.” He gave her a chill smile. “And then, sometimes, I didn’t.”
“What gave it away?”
“I suppose Gwirion telling me the moment I returned from the front raised my suspicions—”
“You didn’t believe me,” he objected in a reedy voice.
“True,” Noble said. “It took at least three minutes of watching you both gawk stupidly at me to wonder if there might be something to it.” He saw the expression on his wife’s face, outraged castigation aimed at Gwirion. Noble smiled at her. “But, my dear,” he went on, “the honors for giving it away go all to you. I offered you a cure for an insomnia you’d never had—and suddenly you had it nearly every night.”
She pursed her lips. “Why did you do that?”
He shrugged. “I was curious to see what would happen—you cannot deny the inherent fascination of the situation for me. I was sure the whole thing would explode in your faces, and once it was safely behind us I could tease you about it. But it didn’t explode. And then I realized it was more than merely lust. Which is when it all became so interesting. You’re each in your way the two most honest people I know—Gwirion to the point of cruelty and you to the point of boredom. Two honest people being dishonest is a fascinating thing to watch. Most of the time, I was impressed, and I was almost always entertained. I had some brilliant moments along the way myself, driving you to distraction.”
“And what did it serve to do that to me?” she demanded.
He gave her a smile of private meaning. “It was a whim.”
“You said you never indulge whims.”
“Usually I wouldn’t. Usually I wouldn’t indulge cuckoldry either. Obviously I made exceptions. I did what I required to keep myself sane—I’ve had a kingdom to tend, you know, we haven’t all had the luxury of making this adultery the center of our lives. But generally, I’ve been having a grand time with it. I could have kept it going for years, maybe forever.”
“Then why this now?” she asked.
“To begin with, you’re both becoming sloppy, and I can’t risk that any further. You might at least have practiced enough discretion so as not to insult my office—if I may paraphrase you, my dear. But far more urgent, to be honest, is how you’re ruining him. I can’t condone that any longer. The Spring Rites were suddenly upon us and I realized that would be the touchstone, so I had to act.” He made a gesture that was at once self-deprecating and self-satisfied. “I believe His Majesty has been a paragon of thoughtfulness. I deliberately gave you a final hour alone together tonight—I do hope you took advantage of my generosity. And I never once succumbed to the obvious temptation of making him watch us, I never once summoned him to serenade our mating—although believe me, I have considered it almost every evening.” He turned his complacency on Gwirion. “This is hardly a significant detail, but my male pride compels me to inform you that nothing matches the ardor of an unfaithful woman trying to distract her husband from her unfaithfulness. I’ve been very satisfied by her this month and I have satisfied her greatly in return.” He smiled at Gwirion and concluded, “While you have not.”
“What are you going to do with us?” Isabel asked before he could prolong the taunting.
“With us?” he echoed, amused. “Are you under the delusion that the two of you are a unit? I shall do something with you and something with him, but there is no more us between you as of this moment. Is that understood?” He took Gwirion’s face in one hand and lifted it toward him. “You understand that, don’t you?” Gwirion stared at him, still too distressed to speak. After a moment, satisfied, Noble nodded.
With a small flourish, he again unsheathed the dagger and displayed it to them like a child revealing a personal treasure. “This small piece of metal,” he informed them, “goes by many names: dagger, stiletto, dirk, dudgeon. It’s intended to rend flesh. Human flesh. It is not a hunting knife, nor is it used to slaughter livestock.”
“We know what it’s used for,” Isabel said impatiently. She pressed the torn bit of silk more firmly to Gwirion’s bleeding forehead; he had forgotten it entirely.
“This particular dagger,” Noble went on, gazing at it fondly and ignoring her, “was given to me by my father a week before he was cut down by your despicable uncle. I held it sitting in the bushes nearly twenty years ago wishing I could slit Roger’s throat. It was forged by the grandfather of our current smith, and despite its simplicity there is a genuine grace and elegance—”
“For the love of God!” she snapped. “If you’re going to kill us with it, just—”
“Not us again,” Noble said with a chastising smile. “I told you, no more us. You may say, ‘If you’re going to kill me with it—”
“If you’re going to kill me with it, just get on with it,” she said between clenched teeth. Angrily, she slipped her shift off, pushed the sheets away, and kneeled upright beside him, nude, her arms at her sides, her hair cascading heavily behind her and her head held back slightly. “Here’s my heart and here’s my throat. I’m sick of your Celtic verbosity.”
Noble laughed with genuine affection and glanced at Gwirion, who was still staring at them both slack jawed. “She’s quite marvelous, isn’t she?” He looked back at her. “Since you offered, you may assist my presentation. If I were to use it this morning, I would have a variety of options. Sit.”
He pulled her down so that they all faced each other in a triangle, but he kept his free hand cupped hard around her arm. “The uses of a dagger,” he intoned didactically, regarding with dreamy reverence the one he held. “First, of course, there is the resource of the cutting blade. This would most commonly take the form of slitting the throat.” He whipped the dagger up toward her bare white neck and Gwirion impulsively grabbed at it. Noble pushed him away without effort, elbowing him in the stomach so that he staggered back against the edge of the bed trying to breathe. “It’s just a demonstration,” Noble said. “Don’t become hysterical.” He turned back to her and lightly drew the blade across her throat where a lethal slice would be made. She took a sudden breath when she felt the metal cold against her, but did not flinch. “There is also the tip, which offers us a number of options. First, the straightforward piercing of the heart, which might have a certain poetic appropriateness here.” He rested the tip of the blade against the meat of her left breast and pressed it just enough to dimple the flesh. Gwirion sat staring, worried that any gesture at all from him would push the king too far. Isabel didn’t move. She did not look at the blade, just gazed at Noble with a look that was both calm and vulnerable.
“Of course,” Noble went on, removing the dagger and turning her to sit with her profile to them, “an approach with greater resonance would be the stab in the back.” He pointed the blade just to the left of her spine, and pushed a little harder this time so that blood rushed to the skin. She winced slightly, which made Gwirion sit up in alarm. Noble lowered the dagger. “You handled that very well,” he announced as she turned back to face them. “I was quite tempted to go ahead with it.”
“I know,” she replied. “But since you didn’t, would you please tell me what you are going to do instead?”
“But you are hard!” he said with feigned dismay. “When did you come to be so hard?” She waited, unspeaking, and he nudged her. “Tell me your preference.” She said nothing. “Let me guess, then. You with your dreary English artlessness—you would just want a straightforward direct hit, wouldn’t you? Obvious and efficient.”
“I doubt you’re capable of straightforwardness,” she replied. “I am still waiting for an answer.”
“Answer?” Noble frowned. “Ah, yes—what am I going to do with you? Let me ask you the same question: What were you planning to do with yourselves if I hadn’t interfered?” Neither of them spoke, and after a moment he sighed with apparent satisfaction. “Well, at least there was no full-scale conspiracy going on. That puts you on a slightly higher plane than those whose betrayals are merely political. I must admit that’s reassuring.” Without relinquishing his flip exterior, he sobered a little. “I, on the other hand, am somewhat organized. We must consider the situation in a larger context, beginning with an enumeration of each sinner’s sins. Not that you are devout, Gwirion, but the commandments are not to be broken lightly. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife. Have you heard that one? Thou shalt not bear false witness?”
“Thou shalt have no other gods before me,” Isabel interrupted. “Which is really the only sin he can commit against you.”
“Tut, my darling, you verge on sacrilege,” Noble said mildly. “But certainly, an examination of your sins gives us more cud to chew. You’ve taken a lover out of wedlock. You’ve compromised the sanctity of the womb that is supposed to conceive my heir. You’ve stolen the affection of my closest friend. But really, at the end of it all,” he concluded, a little smile creating the passing deception that he might forgive her, “your worst offense, madam, has been your womanly effect on him. I warned you last September not to become the agent through which I could ever lose him. As I said, I might have been willing to endure the infidelity if you hadn’t ruined him in the process.”
“I haven’t ruined him,” she argued. “He’s a man, Noble. He used to be your puerile little shadow and now he is his own man.”
“What good is that?” Noble demanded. “My court is full of men, why couldn’t you have taken one of them? Did you ever consider that I might need him as a puerile little shadow? Why did you have to mature him?”
“I matured myself,” Gwirion protested, finally finding his voice.
“Ha!” Noble said with amused disbelief. “The maturity of dumping meat slops on oneself to defend the honor of one’s mistress.” He turned his full attention, his glittering blue eyes, back to Isabel. “So, madam, those are your sins. As I still have some regard for you, I would prefer to find a way to absolve you of them, and with that in mind, it seems to me that it is in your best interests—and mine too, perhaps—for me to free you of the bonds of matrimony.”
She gaped at him, and even Gwirion drew in a breath. “Free me?” she asked.
“If you were not my wife, then most of those offenses would fall away.”
“But can you…do that?” she asked. “The church won’t grant a divorce.”
“Welsh law would. What a pity you insisted we be married under canon law.” He shrugged. “We must try a different course.”
“Annulment?” she ventured, trying to understand his meaning.
“Do you desire that?” he responded.
“Annulment?” she repeated. What had once terrified her was suddenly a panacea. “How? Will the church agree?”
“If you and I both desire it, as royal citizens of a true state of Britain, there are steps we may take together to enact our own annulment, so that the church will have to acknowledge our uncoupling. But I need your full willingness.”
“We would be annulled?” she said, as if she could not get the idea to stay in her mind. “You would agree to it?”
“I certainly agree to take steps toward it,” he answered. “We began this in good faith, but it seems to have brought nothing but trouble for everyone.” He smiled gently at her and brushed the back of his hand against her cheek. The gesture was so uncharacteristic, so intimate, so simple and sincere, that Gwirion looked awkwardly away, feeling like an intruder. “And I’ll make sure you’re taken care of. You will never go hungry or homeless, you have my word.”
“What are the conditions?” she asked, as a year of seasoning prodded her to be skeptical.
Noble shook his head. “No conditions. I want Gwirion to stay with me, not go with you, but that is his choice too.”
Gwirion was stunned. “If I chose—” he began, but hesitated. Noble nodded, grimly.
“I have little experience in granting you freedom, but I want to redress the failing. So it will be your choice.”
Gwirion blinked in amazement, but Isabel warily pressed on. “And how do we go about initiating this annulment?” she demanded. She tried not to sound too eager. It could not possibly be this simple.
“We don’t petition the church,” Noble answered. “We go directly to the source.” She frowned at him, uncomprehending, until he said: “God loves beauty, and I doubt He can resist a pretty face. So you are going to petition him directly.” He smiled at her with a sudden intensity that unnerved her. “And you are going to do it now.”
“No!” Gwirion screamed, understanding, but she frowned in confusion even as Noble rushed her with the dagger and sank it through her breastbone. As she realized what was happening, it was shock more than pain that washed over her face. The king made a strange sound between a cry and a laugh and kissed her hard on the lips.
Gwirion, after a moment of horrified inertness, leapt at Noble to pull him away. Like an enraptured acolyte in some arcane religious ritual, Noble pushed the sagging body against Gwirion’s chest and intertwined their arms, propping her up as Gwirion frantically embraced her. He pulled the dagger out of her and hurled it away; as the wound began to spurt he tried, uselessly, to stop it with his hands. Sobbing, screaming, he kissed her, then pulled away again to see her face, trying desperately to make eye contact, trying to pull her away from death with his look. She couldn’t focus on him but she knew he was there, and a sad smile tickled her lips as her head lolled forward onto his shoulder and she was still.
“Apparently God said yes,” Noble said, wrestling with hysterical, triumphal laughter. “Would you rather join her or stay here with me?”
Gwirion thought he screamed and threw himself at Noble in a blind rage—but when he came to himself he realized he had not moved. He was holding her body. Her head was still resting on his shoulder, tucked against his neck. The blood had seeped from her and soaked the sheets; it was all over him, he was lying in it, slipping farther into it. With a cry he leapt away and fell off the bed and onto the wood floor, his tunic heavy with her blood.
Noble had calmed completely, retrieved his dagger, and crossed to the window, staring out over the hills. Gwirion’s commotion in ripping his blood-sodden tunic and drawers off, wiping the blood from his naked limbs in a frenzy with the bed curtains, made the king look over toward the bed, serene and expressionless.
“Please dress yourself properly,” he said. “I am not through with you.” He looked back out the window.
“Sire,” Gwirion said in a small, horrified voice. “Noble. Look what you’ve done.”
Noble, without looking, nodded, facing out. “It’s very final, isn’t it?” he said pensively. “In the field, you have so many opponents, you have more than one chance to get it just right. In politics, the dance can last for years as you refine it. This is different.” His eyes still gazing in abstraction out the window, he held his hand up and away from him to reenact the movement. “One jerk of the wrist and it’s over.”
Gwirion stared at him aghast. “Is that all this means to you? You’ve just murdered your wife.” And as if speaking it finally made it real to him, he caught back a cry and scrambled around the bed to cradle her body from the far side. He avoided her open, sightless eyes, but he touched her skin, still soft and pliant but unnaturally still, and his breath caught raggedly.
“If you must continue to paw her, at least put on some decent clothes,” the king insisted. Gwirion looked about unsurely, and Noble pointed across the room. “If I’m not mistaken, you’ll find some just inside the door.” Gwirion took a hesitant step toward the threshold. Lying there neatly folded was the black silk outfit Noble had worn the day before. Beside it was a large basin of lukewarm water and a pile of washrags.
“The note to Gwilym,” Gwirion said quietly, understanding, feeling his body turn to lead.
Noble nodded.
With one traumatized eye on the king, Gwirion sponged the blood off himself and then began to dress. He realized as he pulled on the long-sleeved tunic that somebody had taken the seams in; it fit him almost perfectly. Just like the last time he had faced his execution. The king had seen to every detail of this production.
“When you’ve finished dressing, open the door,” Noble said calmly. “We shall continue this in a slightly less intimate setting.”
“May I have a moment with her?”
Noble shrugged. “Very well.”
“Alone?”
“No,” the king said immediately, and settled into the tapestried cushions of the window seat. He looked untroubled, exquisitely regal, in the sunrise.
Gwirion put on the rest of the clothes, pressed the bandage from her torn shift to his wound again, and returned to the side of the bed. She was paler and already cold. The blood had long stopped. With a knot in his throat, he reached out and gently pressed her eyelids down so that they covered her unseeing tawny eyes. He stroked her cheek and the seductive silky hair, said her name, and sobbed.
Noble waited, basking in the early light at the window, marking time patiently by the shifting shadows of a cloudless morning. He was willing to go slowly now. Despite the game with the dagger, his fury had barely found relief in her quick dispatch, but he was weary and there was still so much he would have to wring from Gwirion to be satisfied. He could wait.
After what felt to Gwirion like weeks, his tears dried and he settled from a rage of grief to the exhausted numbness of resignation and mourning. “Now,” Noble said gently. “Open the door.”
One hand still pressing the fabric to his temple, Gwirion nodded dully and obeyed.
He was shocked to find a small crowd clustered on the landing, waiting for the door to open. Beside the usual morning doorkeeper there was the sewing bevy, the physician, the queen’s priest, and Efan, shadowed by another soldier from the teulu. The women’s eyes were red from crying; the men were somber and would not look Gwirion in the face.
He stumbled back in surprise and spun around to Noble. “What is this?” he demanded. “This isn’t anybody else’s business!”
“This is everybody’s business, Gwirion,” said the king, rising from the window seat and nonchalantly retrieving his cloak. “These good people are here to take care of her. It’s time for you and me to quit her.”
“No!” Gwirion yelled automatically.
Noble raised the dagger. “Yes,” he countered placidly. “Downstairs. We’ll conclude this where I’m almost certain it began.”
Efan stepped into the room, avoiding Gwirion’s gaze. He had the doleful awkwardness of one who had intended to gloat over a fallen adversary but found he couldn’t. The same was true of his fellow soldier, who—on Noble’s orders—happened to be Caradoc.
Gwirion, staring at Caradoc, muttered to the king, “Your sense of spectacle is relentlessly perverse.”
“I consider it poetic,” Noble said with serenity. The guards each clapped a hand on one of Gwirion’s shoulders. They pushed him gently out of the room, onto the darkened balcony and toward the stairs.
As they descended to the hall, Gwirion grew more and more astonished: Most of the castle had gathered near for the shameful promenade. Everyone looked stunned—and yet no one looked surprised. They all know, he realized, feeling sick, and once again he remembered the note to Gwilym. Even plump, protective Marged, standing discreetly near the kitchen screens, obviously knew now. He gave her a distressed stare across the hall and her response was to shake her grey head helplessly and shrug. She had not known for long enough to warn him.
He looked down, but some of the eyes upon him were so intense he felt their attention as physical slaps. He never knew their actual expressions, only that they stared. Marged’s grandson Dafydd. Madrun’s beloved Ednyfed, his mother Elen, his father Cadwgan the marshal. The butcher and his son. Nest, and all the other hall servants, all the kitchen workers, all the teulu. Einion the porter. Father Idnerth. Gwilym. Hafaidd the usher. Goronwy the judge. All the other officers. The stable boy whom Gwirion had saved from Huw. And there were dozens more.
The silence, in such a crowd, was unbearable. As Gwirion reached the bottom step and pivoted toward the round white audience chamber, he glanced at the collection of faces and announced, loudly, “Thank you all for your petitions, but we’ve already selected our chief fool.”
It wasn’t witty but it broke the awkward silence, and they released their collective breath. Nobody—except Gwirion, who wasn’t looking—could fail to see the king’s affectionate expression. Surely, the castle denizens thought as one, surely the king would punish him but then forgive him. She had come to them as an outsider, and however worthy she had grown in their eyes, she’d lived among them only a year—but Gwirion was nearly the only constant in the king’s life since infancy. He could not be so rudely dispatched.
WHEN they were inside and the door had been shut and locked from without, Noble tossed down his cloak against the wall and casually settled, lolling, into his comfortable leather chair. All the sconces were blazing brightly; the room looked far too cheery. “May Day is not off to a promising start,” said the king.
“She didn’t wrong you,” Gwirion said mournfully. “I did.”
“I know you wronged me,” he answered calmly. “But so did she.”
“I wish you had punished me for both our sins,” Gwirion said.
Noble looked up near the ceiling, an unreadable expression on his face. “The irony here is that your only sin is saying that.”
“I don’t understand you.”
“Gwirion. Anything I have is yours. If you wanted her, you had only to ask me for her. I would have found that rather titillating, in fact.”
“You’re disgusting. That’s not what I wanted.”
“Yes, it took me a bit to realize that. I threw far more tempting morsels in your direction and encouraged you to nibble, and you never did. That was the real problem.”
“The sin wasn’t sleeping with your wife, it was falling in love with her?”
“It was falling in love with anyone!” Noble shouted. He leapt at Gwirion and grabbed him round the neck, hurling him to the ground and bashing his head against the wood floor. “How could you do that? Traitor!”
Gwirion grabbed at the king’s fists trying to get them off his windpipe, hearing his own breath rattle in his ears. He forced himself against instinct to let go of his clutch on Noble’s hand to swipe at the king’s face. Noble pulled away for a moment with a curse, taking one hand from Gwirion’s throat, but before Gwirion could twist away Noble was clutching him again, now really clutching, hard, and shouting. Gwirion’s legs flailed the air, trying to find something to kick, striking nothing. He saw blood snap across his vision every time Noble struck his head to the floor, and imagined that the gurgles of his constricted breathing were bubbles of blood seeping into his throat to drown him. He couldn’t hear what Noble was saying anymore, couldn’t even see the frenzied face and contorted mouth. A metallic taste in the back of his mouth calmed him, and although he knew it was the first taste of death, he relaxed with it, grateful to escape.
Almost too late, Noble realized what he was doing and released him. There was a horrible silence and the body lay inert. Then Gwirion convulsed and began gasping for air.
When he came to, he found himself lying on the settle, the king regarding him intensely from his chair.
Gwirion took a moment to regain his senses, and struggled slowly to his feet. He stood, dazed, trying to remember where they had come from, why they were here, where the queen was—and then he had to face it all over again. “What have you done?” he shrieked, and hurled himself at Noble.
Noble was ready for him with quicker reflexes than Gwirion’s, and they were snarled up together tearing at each other—for a few seconds only, until Noble pulled the dagger from his boot and had it at Gwirion’s throat. Gwirion stopped, tried to leap back, and smacked into the chest. Noble moved forward just enough to keep the blade at his throat.
For a long moment they stared at each other, breathing hard, the knife hanging between them. “Why don’t you just do it,” Gwirion spat.
“I’ve always believed in delaying satisfaction.”
“That’s not what your wife told me.”
Noble smacked him hard across the face even as he burst out laughing. “That’s the lad I miss!”
“You won’t get him back by slitting my throat.”
“I know,” said Noble. “That’s why you’re alive right now. You have a chance to save yourself, if you choose to take it.”
Gwirion’s laugh was brittle and sarcastic. “I won’t like it, will I?”
“No, it’s simple,” Noble assured him with vicious cheerfulness. “Just give me what I want.”
Gwirion fluttered his lashes at the king and lisped, “But, Noble, you know I’m not a loose woman.”
Again, the king smashed him across the face and laughed.
“Please hit the other side next time,” Gwirion said, forcing his voice to stay calm. “I want to keep the bruises symmetrical.”
“Remember what it was like before we ever knew her,” Noble whispered earnestly. “That’s all I want.”
Gwirion looked from Noble to the blade. He felt the blood trickling again from the cut at his temple. He knew he couldn’t win a physical fight, and he wasn’t even sure he could win a mental one now. He didn’t trust himself to outsmart the king’s fury, and he was too tired in his bones to win back his life with laughter. He thought of the dead woman upstairs and wondered what she would do in his place. She was so direct, so artless. He had never tried artless.
“Would you let me live freely?”
Noble hesitated. “I would let you raise hell. I would let you shock and insult me and everybody around me. I’d let you put my reign in peril with your pranks. I would sooner lose my kingship to your scheming than to Roger’s or Llewelyn’s.”
“That’s not what I asked. I want to know if you’d let me live freely—for myself, and not just for you.”
Noble shook his head. “That’s what you did when you fell in love with her and nothing good came of it for any of us. I’m offering you your life so things can be as they were between us.”
“Then, sire, the answer is no,” Gwirion said softly, meeting Noble’s eyes comfortably for the first time in months.
Noble blinked in disbelief. “What do you mean, no? This is a dagger, Gwirion.” He spoke with slightly exaggerated diction. “I’m holding it at your throat and I’m going to kill you with it unless you say yes. Under the circumstances, one says yes.”
“I am saying no,” Gwirion replied calmly.
“Don’t test me, you whoreson.”
“I’m not. I expect you’ll kill me.” And he slipped under the blade as Noble, with a roar of fury, stabbed at him.
They were wrapped about each other again, Gwirion trying to hold Noble’s right arm back and leaping away as the dagger slashed toward him. Gwirion bit at the knife hand, but Noble shoved him off and tossed him across the room, then threw himself after him. Gwirion scampered from under the assault and was up and around, throwing himself on Noble before Noble realized where he had gone to. Gwirion’s teeth sank into the flesh of the king’s hand, until he felt something grainy give way under his teeth and he tasted blood. Noble cursed and dropped the dagger, pushing Gwirion away from it as it fell to the floor. But Gwirion, smaller and more agile, twisted away from the king and lunged for it. Picking it up, he made an awkward stab at Noble. Noble ducked and tripped on his long tunic, and Gwirion threw himself on top of him, landing astride his chest with the dagger against Noble’s throat.
Noble looked up at him and laughed sarcastically. Gwirion was white and his hands were shaking.
“You’re going to let me live as I want to,” he rasped.
“No I’m not,” Noble taunted. “You’ll have to kill me if that’s what you want.”
“Don’t be stupid,” Gwirion ordered in an unsteady voice. “I have only myself to think about, you have the entire kingdom. You have to save yourself for them, they need you. You must agree with me.”
Noble shook his head. “As much as I resent it there are others who might rule the kingdom, Gwirion. There are no others who might be my fool. Or my friend. If you want the life you spoke of, kill me.”
“Don’t make me do that,” Gwirion begged, losing any pretense of bravado.
“You can do it,” Noble prodded in a seductive whisper. “It’s easy. Just reach under my chin and slit my throat. I’ll go quickly. It will hardly hurt. Llewelyn will be good to my people. And you’ll be free.”
“I can’t do that!” Gwirion screamed, sobbing, trying to hold the point of the knife against the king’s throat.
“I know,” Noble whispered, gently now. “So take the dagger away from my throat and put it in my hand.”
Gwirion closed his eyes with a sob of resignation as he lowered the dagger, slackening his grip.
THE king had told them not to open the door under any circumstances, but the inhuman shriek alarmed even the teulu and brought people running from all over the castle. The sound dissolved into a wailing moan, the voice of a fatally wounded animal abandoned by its pack. As if there were no need to draw breath, the moan went on and on, a furious lamentation from a bellowing set of lungs unused to grief. Like a caterwaul, it grew worse and more frantic rather than dying down, and finally Marged demanded that the door be opened.
Efan threw it ajar and Caradoc thrust a torch into the room, but it wasn’t needed—all the sconces were lit and the whitewashed walls had an almost gaudy brightness to them.
Piled together against the far wall were the king and Gwirion. One of them was screaming. Blood was splattered in a bright, sparkling arc just above them, dripping down on them. Madrun, who had come down to ask about funeral proceedings, fainted at once. Elen gasped and ran out of the room. But the others stayed where they were, staring at the tangled mess of limbs and clothing. Gwilym covered his face with one broad palm.
Oblivious to the intruders, the mourner keened on. He was so animated when he gasped for breath that both bodies seemed to heave for air, and at first they thought and hoped both men were still alive. Finally, he quieted, lay limp for a moment in his friend’s rigid arms, and then began to disentangle himself.
It took a few moments to get free; he was gentle and respectful, moving the royal limbs until Noble sat still and peaceful against the wall. As a final gesture, Gwirion took the king’s green cloak, kissed it in homage, and draped it high across Noble’s shoulders to hide the gaping neck wound. With the wound hidden, the king looked as if he were sleeping. Gwirion pulled himself up to his feet and the onlookers, finally registering what had happened, grasped each other in horrified shock. They stared at Gwirion and Gwirion stared back at them, blinking the last of his tears away, rubbing the blood from his forehead.
“Are you going to kill me?” he asked the steward, in a tired voice.
Gwilym shook his head. He folded and unfolded the letter Noble had written hours earlier. “He said that if he allowed you to survive, we were to do the same.”
“I see,” Gwirion sighed. Hesitantly, he walked toward the door.
“But I must ask for the weapon,” Gwilym said uncomfortably, stepping in his way.
Gwirion looked up at him. “Apparently I am the weapon,” he said quietly. “But the knife is with the king.”
They all turned to see. Noble’s hand clutched the knife in a death grip. Nobody spoke.
Gwirion turned toward the door again and walked out of the room.
HE stumbled through the great hall, where dozens of eyes peeked at him in fear from the corners. He pushed the great double doors open and walked out into the yard. The bells were ringing. The early-morning sky was bluer than he had ever seen it, bluer than the best of their days out riding. He took the few steps to the unattended barbican, walked through the gate and down the castle mound into the village.
People were huddled in small clusters in the open air, staring toward the chapel tower where the bell was ringing, wondering what disaster was unfolding and when the news would reach them, debating if the villain of the hour would be Mortimer, Llewelyn, Anarawd, or Thomas. Many turned to him, expecting him to fill his frequent role of herald, but he walked past them as if he didn’t see them.
When he came to the village gates he paused. He had never passed this spot alone before. The guards, sensing it would not do to question him, moved aside and he walked out, the sun warming his back and the road lying before him, offering him everything and nothing.