Bronwen
“Thank you for coming.” Bronwen stood as Bevyn ushered Margaret, Thomas’s sister, into the solar. Having left immediately after Bronwen’s discussion with Lili and Bevyn, the rider had made good time to the holy well—and clearly Margaret had accepted the urgency of their request since she’d traveled the same distance in time for breakfast today.
“I’m sorry for the circumstances.” Margaret caught Bronwen’s hands and looked her up and down. “You look well.”
“Well enough for a woman whose king has been betrayed again.”
Margaret took in a breath. “I can only apologize, over and over if I must. I’m sorry for the role my family has played in these troubles.”
Bronwen let out a quick breath of her own. “It’s hardly your fault that your brothers chose the paths they did. Have. Did the messenger tell you why I asked you to come?”
“Thomas attempted to assassinate the king.” Margaret’s expression was genuinely horrified, and her eyes swam with tears for a moment before she blinked them back. “Is it—” she swallowed hard before continuing, “—does the king blame my husband somehow?”
“No.” Bronwen kicked herself for not realizing that Margaret would immediately make that leap. Kings had been known to condemn an entire family because one of its members was a traitor, and here the Clares had produced two in as many years. “David didn’t punish you or your husband for what Gilbert did. He isn’t going to blame you for Thomas’s actions either.”
A lone tear streaked down Margaret’s cheek. “We will never recover from what they’ve wrought, however.”
Bronwen squeezed her hand. “You never know. Just look at the Bohuns.”
“I try not to,” Margaret said, recovering something of her normally dry wit.
Bronwen grinned for a second and then sobered. “David is alive, so the attempt failed.”
“And my brother?”
“He is well too, relatively speaking. In his attempt to escape the castle, he was shot in the backside and leg, but we patched him up.” She looked at Margaret a bit harder. “He is in a cell. That won’t be easy to see.”
Margaret nodded. “It is no more or less than I expected.”
“Would you be willing to talk to him?”
“Of course. I would have come at your summons regardless, but I assumed that’s what you wanted. I don’t know what good it will do, though. You already know he is allied with Balliol, and I don’t know that he will be willing to tell me anything more.”
“We thought it worth asking, since he won’t speak to us. Worst case, he tells us nothing more. But the way this plot fell out makes us feel as if there’s still another shoe to drop. Roger Mortimer remains defiant, despite David’s successful return from Ireland, not to mention his crowning as High King there. Balliol too. They’ve been far more confident, in fact, than it feels they have any right to be, considering who they’re going up against and how their plans have so far gone awry.”
“It is true that the king has proved himself time and again against what appeared at the outset to be incredible odds. He is blessed by God, as Gilbert—and now Thomas—learned too late.” Margaret sighed. “I am ready. Please take me to him, and I will see what I can do.”
Lili and Bevyn had agreed to allow Bronwen to handle Margaret, since she was Bronwen’s friend, and Bronwen was sorry she couldn’t watch the subsequent proceedings through two-way glass like in a police station, but it was worth the possibility of Thomas confiding in his sister to leave the two of them alone together. Bronwen didn’t have much in the way of experience with interrogation either—beyond scolding her children—but she hoped that even if Thomas started out antagonistic towards his sister, their familiarity with each other would eventually devolve into a genuine exchange.
Thus, when they reached the cell, the guard ushered only Margaret inside. But he didn’t close the door behind her all the way, and Bronwen pulled up a stool and sat near the gap between the frame and the door to listen. Bevyn had followed them into the prison, and he leaned against the wall beside Bronwen, his shoulder to the stones.
“So they dragged you into this too?” Thomas was all disdain. It wasn’t exactly the loving greeting Bronwen—or Margaret—might have hoped for.
But Margaret scoffed, and her words dripped with acid. “I’ve been in it, as you say, a long time. I’m lucky to have survived what Gilbert did. Now I have to negotiate your treachery too? It’s incredibly selfish of you to put me in this position.”
Bronwen looked up at Bevyn, whose eyes were wide. They had assumed Margaret would be the comforting sister. Instead, she’d gone on the attack.
And put Thomas on the defensive. “It should have worked.” He sounded like a sulky six-year-old, defending his actions to a wiser sibling.
“You mean you should have killed the king? How did you think that was going to end?”
“With my death,” Thomas said. “I knew it, and it would have been worth it.”
“Thomas … why?” Now Margaret’s tone changed to one that was both loving and despairing. “You think you owe Roger Mortimer—or John Balliol—that much?”
“You don’t understand.”
“Obviously.” The starch had returned.
Thomas sighed loudly enough for Bronwen to hear through the doorway. “When I lost Thomond ten years ago, it became clear to me that the only way to get it back was to enlist the aid of someone more powerful than myself. It was a humbling realization, as you can probably imagine, but I felt I needed to be realistic. Gilbert, of course, turned me down.”
Margaret gave a mocking laugh. “As he would.”
Thomas actually laughed too. “Indeed.”
Though she wouldn’t have gone about it the way Margaret had, and Bronwen herself had no siblings, she recognized the familiar banter as one rooted in family.
Thomas continued, “Then Gilbert made his ill-advised bid for the throne, and I knew that if I was ever going to achieve my aims, I needed to find help sooner rather than later, before David gave away Ireland entirely. John Balliol gave me that chance.” He cursed under his breath. “My mistake was in relying on others instead of finding a way to do the job myself.”
“You mean murder the king? You tried yesterday and failed.”
He made a derisive tsk. “My mistake. I didn’t know he couldn’t be killed.”
“If you had bothered to consult with me, I would have told you to capture him instead. You could have held him for ransom.”
At that, Bevyn’s head jerked a little, and his and Bronwen’s eyes met again. She held up her hand to stop him from saying anything. Margaret was playing along—or so she hoped.
“Don’t I know it! He’s gone to Avalon, hasn’t he?”
“So I understand.”
Thomas cursed again, and he began to pace. Or at least, Bronwen could hear boots thudding on the stones.
“You know why I’m here?” Margaret asked after a moment.
“To get me to talk.” The thudding stopped. “I wasn’t going to, but now—” Thomas raised his voice. “I’m ready to bargain!”
Bevyn straightened, stepped around Bronwen, and opened the door. Bronwen stood too, though she made sure to keep well back. She wasn’t afraid of Thomas attacking her, but he might find off-putting the fact that she was the one who’d orchestrated this meeting. Some men had a problem with a woman who knew her own mind. Though, of course, his sister certainly had no trouble managing hers.
Bevyn came to a halt beside Margaret. “I’m listening.”
“My wife and children are not to suffer for my crimes.”
“Done.”
“They must be allowed to stay with her parents, and my son allowed to inherit the lands his grandfather designated for him before he died.”
Thomas and Gilbert’s father had been Richard de Clare. The vast majority of his holdings and titles had gone to Gilbert, as the firstborn son, but he’d had some discretion in distributing a handful of his minor estates. David had decided he wouldn’t punish Gilbert’s two daughters for their father’s sins, and they each had inherited a few of the over two hundred estates Gilbert had forfeited when he died. The earldom of Gloucester remained vacant, having been returned to the crown upon Gilbert’s death.
“Is that why you agreed to try to murder David, despite the poor odds?” This time there was pity in Margaret’s voice. “Balliol promised to safeguard your family?”
Thomas gave her a single nod. “With the failure in Ireland, I lost everything I had to lose except my life.”
“So you thought to throw that away too?” Margaret said.
For the first time, Thomas’s voice held a measure of humbleness. “For my son, I would do anything.”
Bevyn wasn’t interested in Thomas’s regrets. “What do you have for me in return?”
“The threat you don’t know about.”
“From where?” Bronwen took another step into the room, unable to remain silent.
“Norway.”
“Erik invades again?” Bevyn was disbelieving.
Thomas shook his head. “The threat comes from Hakkon, Erik’s younger brother. He has promised Balliol an army equal to the one his brother brought to Scotland four years ago.”
“Does Erik know?” Bronwen knew all about Erik from Callum and Cassie. Like Philip of France, he was the same age as David and very ambitious, as well as protective of his rights as King of Norway. She knew nothing, by comparison, about Hakkon.
Thomas laughed derisively. “No. He wouldn’t be supportive, seeing as how he married the Bruce girl last year.”
Thomas meant Isabel Bruce, sister to Robbie.
Then he shrugged. “By the time Erik finds out what his brother has done, it will be too late.” He eyed Bevyn and then Bronwen. “If you don’t move quickly, it will soon be too late for you as well.”