Conqueror (41 page)

Ralph pulled a document from the leather pouch at his hip. “The fitzEmpress is coming to Everoot.”

“I know.” Griffyn scanned the scrolled document. “A few weeks. Right after the treaty.”

“No. Now. He’ll be here in a day.”

Griffyn looked up swiftly. “What? Why?”

Ralph’s eyes met his. “He saw fit to come here first.”

“Ahh.” Griffyn nodded, utterly perplexed. He scanned the parchment again, then looked between the parchment and the scene outside of the window. It had grown colder. Billowing clouds were piling up on the horizon.

“Why?”

“Our lord Henri has ever done what he wanted to do.”

“Indeed. But Ralph,” Griffyn said quietly,
“why?”

The messenger’s eyes shifted away. “Henri’s always been fond of you.”

“Not that fond,” Griffyn said grimly. “Not enough to postpone a treaty that hands him the country.” He glanced at the paper again.

“A messenger from fitzMiles did arrive two days ago,” Ralph admitted reluctantly.

Griffyn nodded slowly, thoughtfully. “But what has that to do with me?”

“Fulk, what do you know of Eustace?” Gwyn asked as casually as possible. The world was a blanket of grey, pearly mist this morning, bouncing their voices back like they were in a cave.

Fulk looked over in confusion. “Eustace?”

“The prince. As a man, I mean. His behaviours and such.”

She stood next to her marshal, anxiety working to tighten her stomach into a churning, knotted mess below her hard, thundering heart. Ever since she’d risen this morning, there’d been the feel of impending doom. Perhaps it was simply the nightmares: they always made her feel sick to her stomach and bristly the following day.

But in her heart, she knew this was different. It
was
impending doom.

They stood near the tilting yards where the squires and knights trained. It was too early for many to be out at their jobs yet. Even Fulk, taskmaster that he was, did not require his men to train before they’d had a crust of bread and a mug of ale, so it was just Fulk and her, and one lone fourteen-year-old, desperate to be knighted, who whooped and hollered around the quintain, then spurred towards it with his lance. He speared the proper end, then got knocked violently in the back of the skull as it swung around before he’d galloped away. This was the third time that had happened in the five minutes Gwyn had been standing here.

Fulk, almost religiously dedicated to the meal she’d carried out for him, groaned and set the plate down on a round of wood.

“Excuse me, milady,” he muttered, then turned and shouted, “Faster, Peter! Move yer weary self faster or ye’ll be dumber than a stump by Yule. And ye’ve not so very many brains to give all away to a quintain,” he added ominously.

Peter saluted. Fulk sighed and turned back. “Where did ye find this one, milady?”

“Where I found all the rest,” she replied dully. “Dying somewhere.”

Fulk grunted. “Well, that makes it worth somethin’. I’ll give him this; he works harder than all the rest put together.” He punched his knife tip through another hunk of meat. “Milady? Ye asked me a question.”

Mist saturated everything. She brushed her wet hair back with a cold, damp fingertip. “Eustace. The prince. What kind of man is he?”

He considered her. “Ye mean, what kind of man
was
he?”

“Indeed. Was. What kind of man was he?”

Fulk’s keen gaze scanned her face. “Ye’ve been in a war yer whole life, milady. What do ye think it does to men? Princes all the way down. It’s got a
ruinin’
effect, it does.”

“Not everyone. Not everyone gets ruined.”

Fulk met her eye. “Ye’re thinking of your Papa.”

But she wasn’t. She’d been thinking of Griffyn. Now, though, she was thinking of her father, thinking hard.

“He was no saint, Gwynnie. Ye’ve got to know that, after all this time. He was no better’n the rest in some ways.”

“Was he worse?”

The question popped out before she could stop it, puffed up like a small white cloud in front of her lips. Fulk stopped chewing. His cropped head swiveled around.

“I suppose it’s in how ye look at it, milady. Which side ye’re on.”

“And what if,” she began. Her stomach churned sickeningly, as if she’d just ridden over a wave. “What if I were someone who already lived here at the Nest, when Papa came and captured it?”

Fulk looked away. “There was a fire.”

Something sharp and wicked rose up in her throat. “What fire?” Fulk didn’t answer. “What fire? Did Papa—”

She stopped short.
Leave it unfinished.
Her head floated light, dizzy. The mists kept bouncing their words back, cloaking them, so it felt like they were under a dock, whispering about piracy and shipwrecks and other, awful things.

Do not ask again
.

The stiff, unwanted silence continued until Gwyn asked in crisp voice, “What about Eustace, Fulk? I asked about Eustace, the king’s son.”

Fulk cleared his throat, planted one beefy palm on the hilt of his knife, and cast a squinted eye at the ground. “Well, milady, he’s meaner’n they come.”

“What?”

“He’d a mind of his own, and not so’s you’d respect it, but more like be disgusted by it.”

“Well,” she exclaimed, flabbergasted.

“And don’t think yer brother thought any different, milady.”

Her jaw fell open. “But they were friends.”

Fulk shook his head. “None o’ that. Eustace was goin’ to be his king one day, that was all.” He shoved a wedge of meat onto his knife tip. “Eustace was nothing but trouble, and bett’r for all of us that he’s dead, forgive me Jésu,” he finished, tossing a glance of half-hearted penance skyward.

“But Fulk?” she said in confusion. “Why did you support King Stephen, then, knowing Eustace would follow him to the throne?”

He gave her a surprised look, hunk of meat skewered and dangling, dripping, before his mouth. “Why, I wasn’t supportin’ him, milady. I was supportin’ you.”

And now it
was
piracy and shipwrecks and every other, awful thing.

Griffyn was sitting in the hall, alone, with a cup of ale, leaning over a sheaf of parchment, when Guinevere entered the room. He looked up and waved her closer.

“Gwyn. Good. I’ve just received word: Henri fitzEmpress is coming to the Nest sooner than expected. Should be here by the morrow. He’ll be here for the wedding…”

His voice trailed off when he saw the way she stood in the archway. Dark, staring eyes under a halo of wild, spinning hair. Her cheeks were wet from tears, her fingers twisted in a tight ball in front of her stomach. He pushed to his feet. The chair toppled to the ground behind him.

“What is it?”

“When did your horse die, Griffyn?” she asked in a flat voice.

“What?”

“Your Rebel. The stables. When did they burn down?”

He paused. “When I was eight.”

“I know. But when was that?”

“When we left England. When the wars began. When Stephen took the throne.”

“When my father took Everoot?”

He was quiet a moment. “He burned it to the ground.”

A single sob wracked her body. “That’s what I thought.” She swallowed. “I have done something.”

He went still. “What?”

“I did it before I knew you.”

He watched her silently, coldness pouring through his limbs.

“But I kept doing it after, too, God save me.”

“What?”

Her body seemed to suddenly wash away. She leaned her shoulder against the stone archway. “I have the king’s son in the cellars.”

His face screwed up in confusion. “Henri? He doesn’t have a son.”

“Stephen does.”

Gwyn watched as he stared, the implications settling like bricks on mortar. Blazing eyes bored into hers, then he was up, away from the table, striding to the door without another glance.

She called out after him with what breath was left in her lungs. “There’s another way.”

He froze.

“There’s a secret passageway to the cellars,” she whispered to his back. “In our chambers. Behind the tapestry.”

His dark head swung back around with an animal fury, slate grey eyes washed of colour.

“Did you think I didn’t know?” he rasped, his voice harsh like fire had scalded it. “Good God, Gwyn,
what were you thinking?
All this time, you thought I didn’t know, and you let it be. With treason down below.”

“I never meant it to be so,” she whispered wretchedly, tears streaming down her face.

“It is now.”

He reached out, wrapped his fingers around her wrist, and dragged her behind him up the stairs. She staggered as she went, her heart hammering and breaking all at once.

“Alexander!” he shouted as they circled wildly up the stairs. “Alexander! Jerv—” He spun around so fast she slammed into his chest. “Who else knows?”

His gaze lanced into her with a quiet ferocity that washed her knees clean of power. She touched the cold stony wall of the circular tower for support.

“Myself. Only myself. And Jerv—”

“Goddamn you,” he whispered in a hoarse growl. “Goddamn you.”

“Jerv doesn’t know! Not about Eustace. He suspected something. And he,” she gulped, “he told me to tell you, whatever it was. He told me to tell you.”

His hand closed around her throat. His face was bare inches from hers. “He told you to tell me?”

A frantic nod.

“And you didn’t?”

She shook her head, black hair tumbling. “I made a vow,” she whispered in misery.

His face disfigured into a harsh, awful twisting of smile and grimace. “So? What good is your word, anything you say?”

He was gone, taking the stairs two at a time, disappearing up into the dim shadows of the stairwell. Gwyn stumbled behind, washed of tears, dying inside.

He kicked open the door to their bedchamber. Striding across the room, he ripped the tapestry from its mooring. It fluttered to the ground, a heap of bright dyes and tangled thread, revealing the oak door.

He yanked it open and bolted down the stairs into the darkness, bellowing as he went, “
Alexander!
”

A moment later, Alex appeared. His blond hair was rumpled, his eyes wild, one hand fumbling furiously to fasten his breeches. In the other, he held his sword belt. Gwyn pointed mutely to the wide-flung door.

Tossing her a confused, worried glance, Alex ran down into the darkness too, descending into the bowels of the castle. Gwyn followed, tripping over each step, her skin hot and cold all at once.

By the time her foot hit the bottom step, Griffyn and Alex were standing in front of the door. The huge dragon’s-head padlock hung like a sullen guard, casting dour steel glints off the torchlight.

“You know about the door,” she said in dull amazement.

“I don’t have the key,” he replied just as tonelessly.

Wordless, Gwyn stepped forward and, plucking the golden key from its pouch, shoved it into the dragon’s mouth. It clicked, the mouth opened as if in a roar, and the lock sprang free. She stepped back. Griffyn stepped forward.

He pushed on the door and it swung open. He and Alex stood in front of her, huge hulking figures cast in sharp silhouettes by the single torch that burned inside.

Duncan leapt to his feet and blocked their path, his small sword drawn. Neither knight had eyes for him. They were staring into the cell, immobile.

“Down, Duncan,” she ordered gently.

Griffyn and Alex disappeared into the chamber. She heard Alex say in a low voice, “Do you know what will happen if Henri fitzEmpress ever finds out about this?”

She fell back on the bottom step of the stairwell, her buttocks against the freezing stone, and stared numbly ahead.

Griffyn appeared in the doorway a moment later, his towering figure blocking all the light behind. But his eyes glittered with an illumination all their own, filled with quiet fury.

“He’s dead.”

Duncan appeared at Griffyn’s side. “He went dead on his own some five minutes ago, milady. I kept him warm though. Just like you said to.”

Her voice could barely reach a whisper. “I am sure you did, Duncan.” She wrapped her arms around her sides and began to rock slowly. Nothing mattered anymore. She only had to do what needed to be done in the moment, and carry on to the next meaningless moment.

Griffyn put the heel of his hand on the side of his head and wiped upwards. “What have you done to us, Gwyn?” he said quietly.

His words brought the tears again. They swept in rivers down her face.

“What would you have had me do, Griffyn? You, who esteem oaths and vows so dearly they fairly
breathe
in the room with us, what would
you
have done? If your king, whom you love so well, gave you the most important thing he had, to keep safe? If you’d done so much damage to so many people, and had a chance to make it right?
If you’d given your word?
”

She looked away, unable to watch the anguish in his eyes. He was such a good man, and all he’d ever known was hurt, and betrayal, and loss. Good and awful God, she hadn’t wanted to be one of them. She bent over as she continued speaking, tears streaming down her face.

“And then came the only man I could ever love, and to honour my vow meant I had to go against everything he’d been fighting for. Tell me, Griffyn, what would you have done?”

“I would have done what I wanted to,” he said, his voice as cold and distant as a mountaintop. “That’s what we all of us do.”

A guard clattered down the main stairway at the other end of the hallway. He raced through the clammy stone corridor, shouting. “My lord! Praise God, I’ve found you. An army comes, riding hard and straight for the Nest.”

Gwyn shot to her feet. “God save us all.
Marcus
.”

Griffyn gave her one long awful look. Then he and Alex and the soldier bolted back down the corridor, leaving a wake in the air that bobbed around Gwyn like a rising tide.

Griffyn stared over the battlements at the stream of soldiers washing down the hills. God Almighty, where had they all come from?

“Are the men ready?” He turned to Alex, whose squire was hurrying behind him, still buckling on his armour. Edmund was kneeling at Griffyn’s feet, lashing his greaves into place over his shins.