“I suppose he might, if you were to make it worth his time. Your father spent his share of time ferreting out details on the isle. Phillip wouldn’t hesitate to use you if you were willing.”
He shook his head. “I haven’t the temperament for deception.”
“So one sees by the lack of glee you take in disguising yourself when you come to visit me,” his mother said dryly.
“Spying for the French king is something I cannot do, Mother,” Rhys said with a sigh. “My lady has her feet firmly planted on English soil. Her land is there. Her mother is there.”
“Her son is there,” his mother murmured. “I envy her.”
Rhys took his mother’s hand and raised it to his lips. “At least I am free to see you when I will it, Mother. And I am still alive to do so. I cannot say what would happen should I follow in Father’s footsteps.”
She squeezed his hand. “True enough, my love. Very well, continue in your quest and may your efforts bear much fruit. I will keep your winnings safe, as always.”
“The saints be praised for the crypt beneath your altar,” he said with a smile. “I will appreciate it greatly.”
“I am always happy to do what I can for the cause of love.” She rose gracefully. “I will call for a bit of refreshment, then you will tell me of your journey here. I suppose the crossing was perilous, as always.”
Rhys smiled to himself. If there was one thing his mother did not care for, it was setting foot on any kind of seagoing vessel. He half suspected that was why she found herself still in France after all these years.
Or perhaps it was because her vocation suited her. She had ample time to pray, to contemplate life’s mysteries in her garden, and to offer succor to passing travelers. Phillip had seen to it all after Rhys’s father’s death, and Mary had accepted it willingly.
Who would have thought she would have become just as fine a spy as her husband?
Or was it that her husband was still spying and Mary only provided a convenient shield for his activities?
“Oh, by the saints,” Rhys muttered in disgust. His lady’s overly active imagination had had a ruinous effect on his common sense. His father was dead. His mother was devious, but not so devious as all that.
Rhys watched his mother as she ordered her novices about and wondered, not for the first time, just where it was his mother had been born. She had told him “England, and leave it there, my love” more times than he could begin to count. His father had divulged no more, and his grandsire had been even more tight-lipped than either of them. Had her life been so terrible, then, that the mere mention of it was enough to grieve her so?
Or did she have kin who would likely want her back should they know where to find her?
“Sweet wine from the south,” his mother announced, handing him a silver goblet. “Chilled, just as you like it, son.”
Rhys almost asked for the entire bottle to silence his questions. His mother had her reasons for secrecy, and they were likely none of his business. That was enough for him. Besides, it wasn’t as if he didn’t have enough to occupy his mind at present. There was much to be done in preparation for the frequenting of tourneys. He would need to keep his eyes open for possible additions to his as-yet nonexistent army. If that hadn’t been enough to keep him occupied, seeing that John remained unscathed would be. Rhys drank deeply of his wine. The saints preserve him from a squire’s arrogance.
“Mother, I need to have a message sent,” he said. It was past time he wrote Gwen to assure her he’d reached France safely. “You have someone trustworthy?”
“Of course.”
“Then might we retire to your chambers? They are, as I remember, much more comfortable than this.”
His mother wrinkled her nose. “I believe first of all, my son, that you’ll have a bath. While you’re about that, I’ll fetch the sister’s habit you’re accustomed to wearing.”
Rhys scowled. “I have the feeling you only do this to see me in skirts.”
She patted his cheek. “You would have made such a lovely girl.”
“But such a tall one,” he said.
“The sisters are more likely to look at the length of your feet than your height.”
Rhys sighed. The indignities he suffered for a soft bed. But he would suffer them willingly, for he suspected it would be the last time he would feel goosefeathers beneath his back for some time to come. His mother, at least in her private chambers, was not one given to deprivation. The king had been most generous in his gratitude for Mary’s continued service to his cause. Rhys had no qualms about enjoying the luxuries himself while he could.
It was several hours later that he sat at his mother’s writing table, begarbed in a sister’s habit, working industriously on the first of what he hoped were very few letters to his love. With any luck at all, it would take him half a year to earn the gold he needed and only a few weeks to acquire his army. He was counting on his reputation serving him well.
My love, he began, then shook his head and scratched it out. It wouldn’t do to reveal too much of his heart. His mother’s messengers were trustworthy, true, but one could not always count on a safe journey for any messenger. Better that he confine himself to less emotional matters.
My lady Gwennelyn, he began, I am safely arrived here in France to find that the skies are passing gray and a continual drizzle falls wherever I go. Rhys looked at his words with satisfaction. Should his missive be intercepted, no one would be the wiser as to where he currently loitered. There was drizzle aplenty this time of year. My accoutrements, including my squire, seem to have survived the journey thus far fairly well. My horse only threw one shoe, which caused me grief, but that was remedied soon enough.
Rhys paused, then sniffed. His mother’s cook had obviously been at her work again. After the slop he’d eaten at Ayre for the past two years, almost anything would be an improvement.
He looked down at his letter and considered, then rose abruptly. He would eat first. It would give him something else safe to relate to his lady.
He left his mother’s chamber, his mouth watering already. He walked down the passageway, ducking his head to appear less tall, and praying his mother’s women wouldn’t notice him. He would have to moderate his eating habits as well. It wasn’t as if a traveling sister would devour her meal with the gusto of a starving mercenary.
One of his mother’s more substantial sisters stood guard near the entrance to the dining hall. Rhys had seen the woman before and marveled not only at her stature, but her height. The woman looked at him, then quickly looked away.
Rhys sighed as he entered the dining hall. Regardless of what his mother said, he knew he did not make an attractive sister of the cloth. He couldn’t blame the woman for not having wanted to look at him. Hopefully the rest of his mother’s followers would feel the same way and he would pass his visit peacefully.
It would likely be the last time he had such luxury for some time to come.
24
Ayre
December 1202
“Damnation, not another child! How could I have let this happen?”
Gwen listened to the words in astonishment, as they were ones she had been thinking not a handful of moments before. These words, however, were coming out of a mouth she wouldn’t have suspected. She pressed herself back into the shadows and looked at the man leaning down to suck a great mouthful of ale straight from the spigot.
“Bloody babe,” Rollan snarled, spitting out the ale. “Bloody ale! Will nothing go aright for me this year? One heir was one thing.” He took another large slurp of ale, swished it around in his mouth, and spat it out with a passion. “Now another one? I had planned that he should leave her be!”
So, Gwen thought to herself with a silent snort, had she. She’d managed to avoid encountering Alain and his bed at the same time for several months at a stretch, but unfortunately she hadn’t been completely successful at it.
Now she had at least another four months of puking to l
ook forward to, which was why she found herself currently loitering near Master Socrates’s cell, seeking something without specks to ingest. Perhaps this was a happy chance, for how else would she have been nearby to eavesdrop on Rollan’s private conversations with himself?
Rollan seemed to be finding the ale more palatable all the time. In between great gulps he spewed forth more of his innermost thoughts.
“Now there’s another one who stands in the way of my prize.”
Gwen raised one eyebrow.
“I’ll rid myself of the both of them. Nay, the three of them. Alain and both his babes. I could push Gwen down the stairs—nay, then I lose her as well, and that is not in my plans.”
The saints be praised for that, Gwen thought, with a fair bit of alarm.
“I’ll wait until she’s birthed the babe, then I’ll deal with the three of them. And then I’ll be known as lord of Ayre,” Rollan said, bending for another drink. He straightened, dragged his sleeve across his mouth, and turned himself toward the stairs. “I’ll see Alain sent to Canfield this afternoon, then be about my plans. Perhaps that little brat Robin can take a tumble down the stairs. That would see to one of them . . .”
Gwen felt a cold chill go down her spine. Never mind that her fondest wish was to go back to bed and remain there for several more days. She would have to leave the keep. Perhaps Alain could be persuaded to escort her to Segrave on his way to Canfield. If he thought she would be conveniently tucked away with her mother where she could not trouble him, he might think more kindly about it.
Gwen waited until she was certain Rollan had made his way up the stairs before she followed. Her first task would be to seek out Sir Montgomery and tell him of what she’d overheard. Then she would brave Ayre’s kitchens to prepare her husband something to sweeten his humor. Though his palate was not overly discriminating—he never seemed certain when something was tastier than something else except to remark that there was something odd about the fare—food was food when such a man’s gullet was to be considered.
And then she would soon find herself ensconced in her mother’s solar before Rollan could wreak any havoc.
Or so she hoped.
A fortnight later she found herself safely installed in her mother’s solar at Segrave with a missive in her hands. It was a missive she had been waiting for nigh on to two months. She’d counted the days since Rhys had departed, allowing amply for the difficulties a messenger might encounter. She had received the anticipated epistle with joy and great relief.
And then she had begun to read it.
She currently reread the blighted scrap of parchment by light of her mother’s finest tallow candles, and wished Robin were more deeply asleep that she might vent her frustration with a few words she had learned by frequenting the lists in her youth.
“ ‘A roasted goose with a savoury sauce of quince and onions’?” she quoted with disgust. “This is the drivel he chooses to write to me!”
Her mother only continued to stitch placidly. “What else is Rhys to say, my sweet?”
“He could say that he loves me! Or that he thinks of me morn and eve.”
“Which he likely does—”
“Instead, I am forced to read in great detail about the mishaps which have befallen his gear, the dishes presented at his mother’s supper table, and exactly what the elements are producing this time of year in France.”
“Well—”
“These are things I do not care about!”
Joanna smiled. “Gwen, these are perilous times we live in. Messengers are untrustworthy. He has no way of telling who might read his words.”
Gwen cursed under her breath. What she had wanted was a letter full of love. What she had received was a letter full of unimportant details. If she hadn’t known better, she might have suspected Rhys’s feelings had changed.
“He isn’t exactly wooing me with his words,” Gwen grumbled. “Perhaps he thinks I am already won.”
“Perhaps he is trying to save your reputation, Gwen.”
“And a simple word or two of love would ruin me?”
“He only thinks on your future, Gwen—”
“Nay, Mother, he’s only thinking on his stomach! ‘A sweet pudding accompanied by a delicate wine from the south.’ ” Gwen snorted in disgust. “Would that he were drinking the swill Alain’s alemaster produces. I might have a decent bit of sentiment if that were the case.”
Joanna shook her head with a smile. “Gwen, love, it would not serve you if the king thought you had committed adultery with Sir Rhys.”
“I have been true to Alain, pox rot the man. Not that he has accorded me the same courtesy. And what do I care what the king hears? He doesn’t think past the gold in his coffers.”
Joanna set aside her stitchery with a heavy sigh. “Gwen, you accomplish nothing by pacing in my solar and complaining.”
“I am not—”
“Aye, you are, and if I must listen to you go on thusly for another ten months, you will drive me mad.” Her mother, however, smiled as she said as much. “And for all you know, it may take Rhys longer than that to complete his business, and then where will you be?”
“Hoarse,” Gwen said shortly. She sat down across from her mother and tried to compose herself. “I am but restless.”
“Then find something to do.”
“What am I to do, Mother? Scurry off to the king and tell him my tale? Ask him to grant me an annulment?”
“’Tis a bit late for that,” Joanna said, looking fondly at Robin, who lay sprawled on the bed, sound asleep.
“I cannot choose divorce, either. I would lose Robin in the bargain. And all my lands.” She looked at her mother. “You would lose your home.”
Joanna shrugged. “’Tis only by the good grace of Alain that I live here as it is. I can easily take my cook and go elsewhere.” She seemed to brush aside any more thought about it. “Just how is it your young Rhys intends to see you become his?”
“The saints only know. I believe he looks toward bribery.”
“Bribery for what?”
An annulment, Gwen started to say, then she stopped herself. Could an annulment be granted? Gwen supposed it could, though it would certainly turn Robin and her coming babe into bastards. Not a fate she would wish on them if she had any other choice. But to her, bastardy was far more tolerable than being at Alain’s mercy. She shuddered to think the things Robin would learn at his father’s hands.
Gwen glanced at her mother to find her regarding her with a searching look. And not for the first time, Gwen wondered how her mother viewed the situation. She hadn’t had the courage before to even ask her, fearing what she would hear.
“Does it bother you, then?” Gwen asked. No sense in not having the truth.
Joanna returned her look gravely. “Though I cannot agree with divorce, given the Church’s view upon the matter, I cannot deny that Alain was never the choice either your father or I would have made had it not been for his station.”
“And what of turning Robin into a bastard?”
“By an annulment?” Joanna shrugged. “’Tis something that would haunt him, Gwen.”
“Would it be more grievous than what he would suffer being Alain’s son?”
“And in return losing Ayre, Segrave, and everything else he would otherwise inherit? Only he could answer that, and ’tis a question he will not even understand for several years yet.”
“Rhys has Wyckham. He could give that to Robin.”
“If Rhys can liberate it from Alain’s troops, and even then he will still be Alain’s vassal.”
Gwen sighed and buried her face in her hands. “Wyckham is his and the king holds the deed for him. But when you remind me of who his overlord would be, it sounds passing intolerable.”
“’Tis but the truth of the matter, Gwen.”
“Would that I had wed with Rhys from the start.”
“Aye. Both your sire and I wished it as well. But Rhys had no title and no lands.”
/> Gwen looked at her mother. “There is more to life than land, Mother.”
Joanna smiled. “Aye, I have always thought so, my love.”
“Rhys has survived well enough without any.”
“It does leave a man free to go where he wills,” Joanna conceded.
Gwen rose and moved to kneel at her mother’s feet. She took her hands. “Better that my children live with a man who loves them than a man who cares nothing for them, Mother.”
“Or for you,” Joanna agreed.
“Rhys could perhaps claim them as his own.”
“Aye, he could,” Joanna said carefully. “Though who will recognize that I cannot say. The king might choose not to.”
“Then we’ll go to France,” Gwen said grimly. “If King Phillip knighted Rhys, then he must have a use for him somehow. Life might be kinder to us there.”
Gwen’s mother squeezed her hands. “Give your Rhys his year, Gwen, and see how events come to pass. You never know what the future will bring.”
“Aye,” Gwen said, rising, “there is truth in that.” She paced to the window. “But I must do something. I cannot remain here for a year merely waiting.”
“You could improve your stitchery.”
“I could improve my swordplay,” Gwen said, feeling the faintest twinge of excitement.
“Not in your current condition. Stitchery is safer. Or perhaps a few new ballads learned on the lute.”
“The bow would not be too taxing. . .”
“Gwen,” her mother warned. “You carry a babe.”
Gwen sighed and resumed her seat. “My belly reminds me of that more often than I care to think about.”
If not swordplay, then perhaps preparation for the establishment of Rhys’s household at Wyckham. Assuming there would be such a thing.
Nay, she would not doubt. Rhys would manage what her father had not been able to. She and Robin would find safety behind Rhys’s strong arm.
As would the new babe. Gwen put her hand over her belly protectively. Oh, how she wished Rollan had never found her puking into her rosebushes. She likely could have escaped to Segrave and not have had Alain been the wiser about his future second child. She had little doubts Rollan would go to his brother with the tale, if only to lure Alain back to Ayre so he could be pushed down the stairs. Gwen was tempted to entertain that thought a bit longer. If Rollan were left to himself long enough, he just might solve all her problems for her.