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Nan stood in the door of the manor kitchen, watching a boy sweep ashes from the hearth. It was a small kitchen, but as warm and welcoming as any other. The bustle of the evening meal was long finished, the cleaning done and the servants scattered, and now the sun had set.
She knew, long before he appeared beside her, that Robin had found her. He had probably searched for her all day, but she had discovered a secret stair that took her to the top of the tower where she looked out across the fields for hours and hours. For the first time in their friendship, she had avoided him, because to share this moment with him or even to look at him would make it real.
When he came to her, he stood close and gathered a fold of her dress in his fist. He had done that when he was a child, when he felt especially protective of her, or very lonely or scared for himself. It had been years. Now the fold he gathered was nearer to her hip than her knee, because he had grown so tall.
“Do you remember,” she asked him, “the mice when we slept in the kitchen at Dinwen?”
He leaned against her a little, warm pressure at her shoulder. “And Hawys snoring, and the smell of dried fish when the wind blew southerly.”
The boy at the hearth had banked the fire, leaving the embers faintly glowing. He nodded to them and stepped out of his wooden clogs as he left the kitchen, walking with bare feet toward the hall. Now he would go to his own bed, wherever it was, prepared to wake early to start the day’s long labor. Stoke the fire, turn the spit, grind the spice. All of it was as familiar to her as breathing.
A prince. Not a falconer. Not even just a lord. A prince.
“Will you sleep with me by the fire?” she asked Robin.
“Nan –”
“Say you will.” She was the one who used to say it wasn’t right for him to sleep by her side in the kitchen, for all that he was a page at the time. “I want to be just Nan, with her Robin at her side. Just for a little while.”
They made a place in the corner by the hearth, his cloak spread below them and hers over them. He grumbled a little about the hard floor and she teased him for growing soft. When they laid down, he did not curl his back against hers as he used to. Or maybe he did, and it felt different. Everything was changed. Everything.
Fuss settled at her feet and they all lay in the dark for hours, not sleeping. She thought of the steward at Morency, and how she had once considered becoming his wife because he was a good man and wanted her. She had let go of the idea easily, because she could not fathom marrying so high above her.
A prince. The last living prince of Aderinyth.
Deep in the night, she turned onto her back. Robin turned too, like he’d been waiting for it. He took her hand in his, and they stared up at the blackness above them a long time before he whispered to her.
“Do you love him, Nan?”
She tried to remember words. She seemed to have lost them. There were sounds that meant something, that would say what was trapped inside her. Breath and tongue and teeth and lips. Simple sounds. They would make it real.
“How can I love a prince?”
It was so plain, when she said it out loud. Princes were not there to be loved. It was as senseless as loving a barrel or a trout or the pope. She could still hear Lady Eluned reciting his string of names and title, word after word after word. Then her own name next to it, one little sound anchored to nowhere and nothing. How could she love a prince.
“You like him more than pork pie,” said Robin quite reasonably. “That is no small thing.”
Nan turned her face to him. She could barely make out the outline of his profile.
“Do you still love Ansel?” she asked, and felt his fingers twitch against hers.
Robin had loved him from their boyhood, though none but Nan knew it. He had gone to the tourney knowing Ansel would be there, and they would see each other for the first time in many years. Last night he had whispered to Nan that Ansel was cordial and warm, with all the same passionate interests as when they were boys, and their meeting was joyful – until it was not. Ansel did not want him. Not that way. Robin did not say it outright, but he did not have to. She knew the sound of a broken heart.
“I know not,” he answered at last. “I think me I know naught of love.” He squeezed her hand, and twined his fingers with hers. “Nay, I know the hurt of it. But that is all.”
She turned her face back to the ceiling. There were tears that spilled over and trickled their way to her hair. She could weep for Robin. It must be for Robin. If she were to weep for herself, she might never stop. Her brother, her mother, Oliver, Bea. The Welshman. There would be no end to her weeping, so she must not let there be a start.
“Only a fool could not want you,” she whispered. “And he’s worse than a fool, to hurt you.”
She listened to the steady rise and fall of Robin’s breath, and felt his hand tighten gently on hers.
“He cannot change what he is, Nan. Though it brings pain to one who loves him, he cannot change what God and his birth have made him.”
The words were meant for both of them, a bitter truth. Her life had been spent in accepting injustice and sorrow, knowing from birth that to rail against it was wasted energy. But now there was something in her that seemed to beat against the bars of a cage, howling that it was not fair, it was not fair.
A prince. God save her, a prince.
“Make haste, girl, she waits!”
The lady frowned at her amid the bustle of the kitchen, the morning light so bright that it blinded. Nan fumbled as she washed her face and hands. It seemed impossible to braid her hair neatly, and she wished her kerchief was cleaner. The knot in her stomach did not abate when she sipped the watered beer on offer.
Robin had left before the kitchen stirred, whispering to her that he was not a child anymore, and he would not have anyone think her lewd. He was ever chivalrous, even to a nobody like her.
“Honeyed water, not plain,” Nan said to the servant assembling the tray. “And cheese. He won’t ask for it, but he always likes a bit of cheese.”
Both the lady and the servant scowled at her when she did it herself, but she did not care. This was something she knew, and she could not let it be done incorrectly. Her lady preferred honeyed water in the morning, and Lord Robert loved cheese. She chose the most pungent, then set a milder one next to it. And a pile of wastel bread for him, too, with bits of apple in. She looked for anything else to add, but the tray was already laden with a variety of food, more than two people could ever eat.
Her hands were empty as she followed the scornful lady, because they would not let Nan carry the tray or the jug. They treated her as guest and not servant – a guest who had slept on the kitchen floor but was summoned to a private audience. It was not the solar they took her to, but a smaller room next to it. There was a large window, beautiful tapestries, and two chairs at a table set by the hearth.
Her lady waited for her there, alone. Lord Robert would not come. It was not to be that kind of meeting.
Nan made her courtesy, troubled by her stained kerchief, the coarseness of her dress, and most of all that Lady Eluned stood at the window and did not look out at the sky, but at Nan. When the refreshment was set out and the others left them alone, she felt her lady’s eyes on her. She could not seem to meet them.
“Sit, Nan, and eat.”
Lady Eluned filled two cups with honeyed water and added a touch of the wine. It was the good kind, the best their French vineyards had to offer. Nan knew it by the color and the scent.
It should not be so difficult. She had done this before. But it always took every ounce of boldness she had, to sit down with a great lady and take a cup that had been poured by her hand. Now she clutched the cup and stared at the food until Lady Eluned tipped the jug of wine again, adding a bit more to Nan’s cup.
“Drink, Nan.” And because even her most gentle voice was bred to command, Nan obeyed.
When Lady Eluned had first given her a coin all those years ago, neither of them could have thought it would turn out like this. It started as a simple request, a moment’s transaction that tangled the life of a serving girl with that of a great lady, whose rival was a monstrous and lustful lord. It ended with Oliver dead, and Nan scarred but saved – and with this undying gratitude, these deep bonds. There was no such thing as silence between them, not truly. Still, she braced herself for the words that must be spoken.
“Your sister,” said Lady Eluned. Not a question or a command. Just an offering, an opening. Just a word, with a wealth of understanding behind it.
“She is a whore and a bawd, outside the walls of Lincoln.” Nan watched shadows drift across the floor before the window, clouds moving across the sky. “You warned me, my lady. You said there are things worse than death that might befall her.”
She had also warned of hurts from which Nan could not protect herself, because there was no defense against them. Sometimes she thought Lady Eluned saw everything, even before it happened.
“Is it worse than death, to be a whore and a bawd?” Lady Eluned asked, her voice mild. “If she lives that way unwilling, I know well you would bring her out of it, no matter the cost.”
Nan fixed her eyes on the rich golden yellow of Lady Eluned’s gown, a heavy silk velvet. Just one sleeve of it was worth more than the purse of coins given to Bargate Bettie, and that had been two years of Nan’s own wages.
“She’s not forced to be what she is, my lady. She likes it very well. And it’s not that she’s a bawd, but that she was intent on whoring a child.”
She watched Lady Eluned’s face harden, the familiar pinch that formed in her lips. It made tears press behind Nan’s eyes. It was such welcome solace to see the instant disapproval, the outrage even to think of a girl treated so foully. The words poured forth then, and she told of how she had taken the girls from the brothel and found places for them, how she had crippled the tanner, how her sister had seen no wrong in what she did.
It was like it always was, when she put the worst into words and said them to Lady Eluned. It made her feel stronger, like telling it staunched the flow of blood from a mortal wound. When she said that Bargate Bettie had lied to the constable about the tanner’s wound, Lady Eluned made a sound of disdain, but there was sadness written across her face.
“A checkmate wrapped in a sister’s affection,” she observed, an elegant way to state what Nan already knew. “You cannot speak out against her lest she recant her tale to the constable.”
Nan nodded. “I can’t know if she did it for that reason, or for love of me. It don’t matter which, though. It all hurts the same.”
Lady Eluned looked down at her hands folded before her on the table. The lines in her face were more defined now than when Nan had first met her years ago. The sprinkling of gray in her hair had become streaks of silver.
“It is often the way of family, that love and discord must live side by side, and so rend our hearts. But I did wish... I prayed for you, Nan, that you would find a sister worthy of you, and of all your earnest hopes.”
“Nay, not sister. There is no more Bea, that’s how I see it. There’s only Bargate Bettie, and I’ll never call her sister again. And what sorrow I feel for it is gone when I remember I have me such a one as Gwenllian.” Nan had never said it, but if she could say nothing else of what was in her heart, she must say this. “It’s you I have to thank for that, my lady. As if it weren’t enough to give me my life and my strength, you gave me your daughter. I know I cannot call her family in truth, but in my heart she is my sister, and I want no other.”
Lady Eluned nodded to acknowledge it, and her lips pressed together. No one else would know it from looking at her, but Nan knew she was biting back a rush of tears. As it receded there was something else, something that reminded her too much of how her own mother had looked at her at the end, and it made her turn her eyes away from Lady Eluned. It was worry, or fear – something that told her now they would speak of things she would not like.
“My daughter has taught you many things.” Her voice was soft as a morning mist. “I must ask you, Nan, what she has taught you of herbs, those as might stop a child from growing in a woman.”
Nan stared at the table before her. She wondered how it could be so quiet and still in this household full of people. She wondered where the Welshman was. The prince.
“I learned it,” she said, and felt the warmth flood her face. “I put the knowledge to use as best I could.”
Nothing was sure, they both knew that. Every woman knew that. She watched Lady Eluned’s hands begin to move restlessly until they remembered the cup. Her fingers curled tight around it, a hard grip.
“Prince Gruffydd has put your life at risk, for if you bear his child there are some who will not abide it. They would see you dead first.”
Nan almost said she knew no Prince Gruffydd. She only knew her Welshman, who would never put her in danger.
“And I would see them dead before their breath fell on me,” she answered simply.
Lady Eluned inclined her head. “I do not doubt it.”
She drank, then set a piece of bread before Nan and took one up for herself. Neither of them ate. The sun had dimmed, and the sound of a soft rain reached them as Nan looked at the bread and remembered his face when she had first set a loaf in his hands.
“I should have known he were a prince,” she said.
He had been nothing but bones and beard. What meat the thieves had let him have, he had given to the hunting birds so that they would stay in perfect health. Nan knew starvation, how it drove pity from a man’s heart and sense from his head. Most anyone starving would eat whatever they could, no matter the consequence. But he had seen past his own suffering and kept the birds alive. Not only because he knew if they died, he would die too, but because his duty to protect them was more important. That was what the truly great lords did, at least in all the tales she had heard: in times of crisis, they could see what sacrifices must be made, and took the cost on themselves.
“No matter who he is, if you have sworn vows to each other – even if they were spoken in secret with no witness – I will see that he holds to them, if you wish it.” Lady Eluned’s voice was gentle, her face stony. “And if you would deny those same vows, I will hold him to that as well. It is for you to say what the truth of it is, or what it will be.”
Nan blinked at this offer to shape reality to her preference. But the truth was sufficient.
“We said no vows. He made me no promises.”
A wellspring of misery and remembered joy sprang up in her. The way his face had filled with happiness when she said they would go to Aderinyth together – it would be in her mind forever. Now he would go alone. Or the king would kill him, or chain him up. She did not know what would happen to him, because these were the matters of great people who built castles and led armies, and what did she know but how to stir a soup and throw a knife?
“Why did you make me this, lady?” A sob wrenched from her, one she had not known was waiting at the back of her throat. She pressed her fist to her mouth to stop it. “Not a kitchen girl, but no more am I a lady.”
Lady Eluned’s face had gone pale. “It would be naught but vanity and pride, for me to take credit for any part of you,” she said softly. “I but made it possible for you to choose better for yourself.”
“Better? I go to my aunt and she thinks me above her.” She could not stop the resentment that poured into the words. “I lay with a man who – I thought him a falconer to a great house and that were bad enough, because I dare not want someone so far above me.” She leaned forward into her hands, her fingernails digging at her scalp. “I am trapped between, too good for one place and not good enough for the other. I know not where I belong, lady. Will you not tell me where I belong?”
“It is yours to choose,” came the answer, calm and quiet.
A sudden fury lashed out from some hidden place within her. “Tell me!” Her hands came down, slapped hard on the table. “I cannot go back to the kitchens and I have no sister to save and I cannot have him.”
It was impossible that she was shouting at her lady. Unthinkable. And she only sat there looking old and ashen-faced, bearing it. It was infuriating.
Nan stood suddenly, the heavy chair scraping backward. She leaned forward to strike the table again just under her lady’s chin, making her flinch. Satisfaction and horror shot through Nan at the sight, because Lady Eluned did not flinch. Ever. “Tell me what I can have, lady!” she shouted. “Tell me what I should be.”
She sat still, her eyes downcast and her voice steady. “I will not.”
“You have cursed me, then.” She spat the words, shaking her head in disgust when Lady Eluned finally looked up at her. “You should have left me to die all them years ago. Better you let me die than to make me this.”
Such a look came into Lady Eluned’s face as she rose that Nan forgot, for a moment, how to breathe. There was disdain and benevolence in her, both at the same time. She was an icy fire. She was the great lady who had saved her.
“Watch your tongue, child, and the things you think to demand of me. I do not apologize for the lives I save, nor those I risk – not to kitchen girls or gentle ladies or vile brutes who would have you worse than dead. You dare call yourself cursed!” She scoffed. “What you are, you have made yourself. Do you forget the only command I have ever given you, from the day I took you from that place, the only one?”
Nan stood still, caught between anger and fear, her tongue frozen in her mouth. She forced it free and said between gritted teeth, “I remember.”
“Say it,” she demanded. “Come, speak it if you remember so well.”
“You commanded me never to swear fealty to you.” Nan said it through stiff lips. “Not even in my secret heart.”
“Aye, and you agreed to it. And I did say then as I say now, that I lay no claim to your life. Yet you beg me tell you what to be?” Her scorn at this was palpable, just short of sneering at such weakness, appalled at the very idea. “Very well, I tell you what I have ever told you: Be selfish. Swear fealty only to yourself.”
Nan wanted to shake her head to deny it, but it was all truth. Her lady’s stern face became a blur. She was only a smudge of yellow velvet amid the gloom of the day. It had been her guiding principle these many years in every moment of uncertainty. Be selfish. Serve no ends but her own, satisfy only her own heart’s desires.
But she could not, this time. She could not change what her Welshman was, or how the world was made.
She blinked, and could not care about the tears that splashed down her cheeks or the sob she must push the words through. “God forgive me what I want, lady. I have no right to it.”
Lady Eluned was there, crossing to her swiftly and standing before her. It was suddenly like it had been long ago, when Nan would weep as she tried to tell her story in those early days. But this time she sank to her knees, and her lady knelt with her and put her arms around her. I am old and strong and weathered as an oak, she had once said when Nan had worried she should not burden her with her own troubles. And the arms that held her as she sobbed felt just that strong and solid.
After an embarrassingly long while, she calmed herself and ended her weeping. She meant to pull away, and lament that Lady Eluned knelt on the floor and let her gown be dirtied and soaked with tears.
But instead, she kept her head on her lady’s shoulder and whispered, “Will the king kill him? Like the...” Her voice trembled and cracked, but she must ask it. The vision had been with her all night. “Like them heads that are stuck up on the great tower in London?”
“Nay,” she soothed, and she sounded so sure of it that Nan felt faint with relief. “Such ignominy is reserved for traitors, and Prince Gruffydd has only ever served the crown of England.”
“He only wanted to go home.” Nan wiped her tears and sat back on her heels. “What will happen?”
“In truth, I cannot say.” Lady Eluned sighed. “I keep myself far from court. Robin has been sent there with a message for my son. William will know best, what the king is like to do. We can only await word.”
Nan nodded, and tried to imagine Lord William fully grown. She had last seen him when she was a serving girl and he was an awkward youth making his oath to the king. She opened her mouth to ask where the king held court now, but she was interrupted by a lady at the door who made a deep courtesy despite the burden in her arms.
“Your pardon, my lady. I have brought the gown as you asked.” She held a stack of folded clothes, snowy white linen and blue silk, with a crespinette set atop it all.
Lady Eluned did not rise, nor look at all as if she meant to be anywhere other than on the floor. “Leave it here.” She waved her hand at the chair, and the woman readily complied. “Have water brought so she might bathe. I will help her to dress and call you to see to her hair.”
Thus dismissed, the woman nodded and left. Nan stared in growing dread at the rich fabric, finer than anything she had ever worn – as fine as anything a real lady might wear.
“Nay, my lady,” she said, looking up as Lady Eluned rose from the floor. “You cannot mean for me to wear it. I may be more than a serving girl, but not so worthy as to be wearing silks and pearls.”
“I think me a better judge of your worth than you are.” Lady Eluned took her hands and pulled her to her feet. She laid a hand on Nan’s shoulder. “No more can you cover yourself in the roughest wool and hide in the kitchen, Nan.”
Nan took a breath, trying to summon the words to protest. But Lady Eluned smiled softly and smoothed a hand over Nan’s hair.
“You have been lover to a prince, and may yet bear his child. Silk and pearls are the least of what is owed to you.”
