Fair, Bright, and Terrible Page 4

  There was a shyness in her, a hesitation, as though she had not until this moment considered the gravity of her actions. He too was paralyzed with uncertainty. That she had come, that she was here alone with him, that she could want him at all – it so overwhelmed him that he did not know what to do. It was as if he’d never been with a woman before.

  Finally, in desperation, he said, “Will you kiss me, Eluned?”

  And she did. It was a careful flutter at the corner of his mouth, and then her hands were on him, and they could not stop. They established the pattern that would repeat every day that they could manage it throughout that spring and summer: his cloak spread on the ground, her limbs white in the sun, her dark hair unbound and spilling around him as they pleasured each other and he fell deeper and deeper into love. Afterwards, he would rest his head on her bare breast and look up into the sky with her as they talked, and never let himself think of how it could not last.

  More than her body, more than her kisses and her sighs, it was the talking that stayed with him in the years to come. She asked him about everything he had ever thought, every place he had ever been, all his loves and hates. He asked her questions until he had a picture of her life outside the patch of grass they shared in those stolen moments. She was raised in a family of Welsh nobility and her marriage to the Norman lord of Ruardean was an alliance to keep peace between their families. She had been thirteen when she went to him as a bride, and had her daughter before she was fourteen. Three years ago she had borne a son but the boy died in his first year, she told him. She said it to the sky and did not turn to him when he asked if it weighed heavy on her heart.

  “I give thanks for my daughter every day,” was her answer. “She is healthy and strong, and she is mine in a way a son cannot be. But it is a hard thing.” She cleared her throat, and he felt the heat that rose up in her chest, her neck. He saw the tear that stood in her eye but did not fall. “When I dwell overmuch on the sadness of it, I pray for those women who have lost many children, and I thank God I have a child who yet lives, and that I live too.”

  Then she took a deep breath and stuck her chin up at the sky and said, “But I do not wish to be sad with you.” She turned her face to him, her hair a heavy fall around her face, a smile touching her lips. “Nor do I wish to talk of God, or sin, or prayers. I would have you kiss me once more before we must go, my Robin.”

  The lightness in her, the joy, warmed him in the moments they were together and haunted him in their hours apart. Every morning he went to the chapel to look for the carefully placed stone that was her signal she could meet him, and his whole happiness depended on seeing that rough and rose-colored pebble. When it was not there, he lived in fear he would never see it again. He thought he must be nothing more to her than a dalliance, a summer’s distraction, while he burned for her, body and soul. She was above him, and though his family’s lands in France were not insignificant, it was nothing to the great estate of Ruardean. And in England his family’s holdings were even less, a single manor house and a paltry bit of land. He tried to tell her more than once, how the disparity between them troubled him, but she seemed only to hear that he wished to increase his holdings.

  “Tell me,” she said one day as they huddled together under the extra cloak he had brought to guard against the light drizzle. Rain did not deter them, but only caused them to retreat to a spot where the branches were thick above them. “Have you ready funds enough to purchase a small estate not far from your current lands? It can be had for a good bargain, I think.”

  Then she told him of Whittington’s debts, how he had put this small estate up as collateral on a loan from a Jew who lived in Lincoln. “By law, Aaron cannot own land, but he can sell the debt to you. The interest has grown until Whittington owes so much that he is more like to kill Aaron than to pay it. So Aaron will gladly sell the debt for much less than its full worth, only to be rid of it.”

  When asked how she knew of all this, she gave an impish smile and would not answer until he had played his fingers along her ribs, tickling her mercilessly. She shouted with laughter and cried mercy. She lay next to him, girlish giggles fading as she regained her breath, pushing her hair from her smiling face – a sight that he kept in his memory and hoarded like a precious jewel. Then she said that months ago, when a betrothal had been proposed for her daughter with Whittington, she had made some inquiries among the moneylenders. Thus had she met Aaron and learned a great deal about the finances of many local lords. “I learned also how foully the Jews are used, and that they justly live in fear of all debts to them being declared null. So he will sell most gladly, to be rid of that risk.”

  “And I shall risk Whittington’s anger, when I demand repayment.”

  “Which he cannot repay, for he has not the means, and so you will gladly take possession of the holdings. What is his petty anger to that fine prize, hm?”

  Her eyes sparkled with amusement, but there was a satisfaction in her voice too. “And why would you, my sweetest Eluned, wish to see this man so neatly tricked out of his land?”

  She scoffed. “Tricked! It is Aaron who is misused, forced into usury because by law he may not earn any other living, and then unable to demand repayment nor take possession of the lands given as collateral. Whittington knew the terms of his loan, and he is a fool did he not see the risk of this.”

  He watched how her eyes flashed with indignation, and decided to ask her later how exactly she reconciled her admiration for Montfort with that man’s poor treatment of these Jews she defended. He did not think she wanted him to buy this debt to aid Aaron, but rather to thwart Whittington.

  He said so, and her expression changed subtly. A faint pinch came to her lips, and she said, “I like Aaron very well. And mayhap I have heard that Whittington called my daughter homely, and said he would rather find a bride with more beauty and less Welsh blood.”

  He laughed and called her fierce, and Whittington an unfortunate fool to have crossed her. She kissed him and with a playful rise of her brows said, “Ah yes, beware to my enemies, who shall be forced to pay their lawful debts. How very vicious I am.”

  So he sent word to Aaron, who by chance would be in Blackpool on business within the month. Robert met him there and, after agreeing that Eluned of Ruardean was a marvel, they negotiated the sale. It would double the Lascaux English holdings and though it pained Robert to do something that would no doubt bring his father great joy and pride, well – it was a small price to pay to give Eluned her little revenge.

  But all the long ride back from Blackpool, he could only think of how it bought him no more than that. It did not make him her equal and even if it had, still she could not be his. She belonged to another man, and Robert was but a diversion, a lady’s brief amour. Then all thought was gone when he saw her again. He had been away for almost two weeks, and half-expected her to have come to her senses in his absence. But when he came to the stables she was nearby, as though she waited for him. She lingered at the edges of the courtyard with a restless and fretful countenance.

  He saw the moment when she caught sight of him. Her face became like the sunrise.

  Later in their hidden place among the hills, he told her what he had heard on his travels, of the war. Montfort and the king’s forces were like to meet in decisive battle any day now. Montfort was the better commander, but would welcome more trained men with mounts.

  “I think to fight for him,” he said as his fingers stroked over the dark birthmark on her throat, set to the left of center over her pulse and shaped like a teardrop. He loved that mark. He put his lips to it to keep himself from saying that he would enter the fight only for her, because she believed in the ideals for which Montfort fought. Because it might make her love him. It might make her look at him that way again, all of her lighting up at the sight of him, if he went off to war and came riding back to her.

  She pulled away to look him in the face, confusion furrowing her brow before it was replaced by something he had no
t dared to hope for. “You will not,” she said fiercely. Her lips began to tremble, tears edging into her voice. “Please, cariad. Say you will not.”

  She gripped him as though she could keep him there by force, and he stared in wonderment as she pleaded with him to stay far from any battles. He stammered in the face of this outpouring, trying to explain his wish to be worthy of her, to win her respect and love. “Fool,” she said softly to him. “Fool. Do not risk death to win a heart that is yours already.”

  Then she whispered her love between kisses, and he could only bury his face in her hair and hold her hard against him, marveling that they had found each other and were given this time together.

  But it must end. Of course it had to end.

  In August Montfort was killed in battle, and the royalists were confident in their victory. When next he stole away to meet her, Eluned had a letter from her husband that gave details of the battle and commanded her to come home to Ruardean.

  “It is infamous,” she said, stunned. “They did not spare any of the barons who fought with Montfort, not even for ransom. They tore their bodies apart. Mortimer sent Montfort’s head to his wife as trophy.”

  “You will go to your husband now?”

  “And they call us savages.” She did not seem to hear him. “Now his cause is collapsed. They all lose heart without him to lead.”

  That was when he asked her to come away with him. Leave her husband, bring her child. Come to France. She waved off the words. He thought she did not even hear them. She took his hand, pulled him to her, and told him he must come to her at Ruardean. Her husband would be there and then away – he was ever off on either the king’s business or else a pilgrimage. Rarely did he stay for more than a month or two. “I will send word,” she said, laying her head on his chest. “You will come to me. I will find a way.”

  He stopped thinking of the future then and kissed her, freed her hair from its golden net, lost himself in her body and her sweet ecstatic sighs. But after, as they held each other and looked up at a perfectly blue sky, he thought of being apart from her for weeks and weeks. He thought of her at Ruardean, and could not hide his outrage that she would lie with her husband.

  Of course she must, she said. And of course she was right. He did not want to think of these ugly practicalities, though, and so they argued. He said he could not bear to share her with another man; she said that he had always shared her. He shouted that she was clever enough to devise some reason to stay from her husband’s bed, but chose not to. She shouted back that he had less wit than a peahen, if he truly thought she could simply choose to shun her husband’s bed for the rest of her life.

  A great many things they shouted at one another, none of which he remembered well years later. He only remembered that they argued, and she was breathtaking in her anger, until she said she must get back before she was missed. She would start the journey to Ruardean immediately, she told him, as she twisted her hair and stuffed it back into the golden net. Still he protested that she would make such haste to be with her husband, as she dressed herself and snapped her impatience at him. She searched the grass for a button that had come off her shoe and in the end left without it.

  She grasped his face, placed a firm and definitive kiss on his mouth. She said, “You are a great fool, my Robin. But I love you still. I will love you until I die.” Then she clambered down the path to where her horse waited, her shoe flapping loose around her foot.

  Three weeks later he went to Ruardean, because her husband had come and gone. But when he arrived, he learned that Walter had unexpectedly returned again. So Robert played the part of a nameless wandering knight begging shelter for an evening. Through his servant, she bade him stay out of sight in the room that was his in the knights’ quarters, and she would send word. In the black before dawn, a young boy came and told him, in a voice so thick with Welsh accent that Robert barely understood, that Eluned waited for him in the garden by the kitchen.

  That was where it ended. He remembered little of it with any clarity, except the smell of rosemary. He remembered the outline of her, just discernable in the dark, and how she did not even touch him in greeting. He remembered his denial when she told him they could meet no more, and that she said, “It has been a dream. And now we must wake.” She did not explain why now, why so suddenly. He said again that she should come away with him, to France. And she asked him what life there would be for her there, a life as nothing but a disgraced and corrupted woman who shared his bed in sin.

  She said my daughter – and he must have said something very foolish in return, for her voice grew hard and warned him that he would not be well pleased by her answer, did he ask her to put her lover above her child. He remembered the feeling of futility, the anguish of comprehending that she had already made up her mind. She made him swear to come nowhere near her ever again, for her sake and his own. It was over. It was dead.

  “It was a stolen season,” she said, and then she startled to hear the hushed voice of the Welsh boy who stood guard just outside the arbor. It was a warning. They had only a moment more.

  Robert had reached out to touch her one last time, knowing that soon she would be lost to him forever. His hand found her face and when he felt it was wet with tears, the first winds of desolation swept through him. For if she wept – if she, so clever and determined, could not think of a way for them to be together – then truly it was over.

  He remembered saying her name, declaring his love, the pain that cut through him at knowing she would pull away soon.

  He remembered that she was utterly composed, completely in command of herself until the very last moment. “Oh God,” she breathed, and a sob burst from her. “I cannot see your face.”

  He remembered the feel of her face turning into his hand, pressing a kiss to his palm. And then she was gone.

  Now he said to his friend, “I prayed for her husband’s death and when he did not die, I prayed for my own.”

  Kit sat slumped against the wall, carefully focusing on Robert’s face. They were well and truly drunk now. Robert did not even know how much of it he had spoken aloud. Enough for Kit to understand the most basic facts, at least.

  “Then…you came to Kenilworth. Just before winter.”

  “Came a week later,” Robert confirmed. “Or more. Or less.” He shrugged. “As soon as my horse could get there. There were a lot of taverns on the way.”

  He had had some idea of dying for her cause still, the kind of morbid fantasy a rejected young lover would have. Montfort’s son was at Kenilworth with the last handful of the anti-royalist forces, so that’s where Robert went. He had liked the idea of a last stand against the king’s men. He did not anticipate that it would last for months. It was December of the next year when they finally gave up, the whole starving and diseased lot of them.

  “Good terms, though, Kenilworth,” he said now, apropos of nothing. “Got to keep everything, almost like it never happened.”

  “That King Henry,” said Kit. He blew a raspberry. “Pushover king. Good thing for us, though.”

  The ale was gone except for a trickle in the bottom of the keg, which Kit poured out. Half went into Robert’s mug, half splashed on the floor between them.

  “Then you went to France,” said Kit.

  “Then I went to France,” he nodded once. “And fought, and Edward holds Gascony because of me. Well,” he waved his hand and swallowed the last of his drink. “More or less. He owes me. Can’t give me any more of France, but he’ll give me a piece of England.”

  “That’s what they say. Your father. Brother.” Kit sat up and clapped a hand on Robert’s shoulder. “If you marry the linnet.”

  It seemed to Robert that it was likely more complicated than that, but he nodded. “The linnet,” he agreed.

  Then he could not stop the smile that spread across his face. “They want me to marry Eluned. They thought they would have to persuade me.”

  He burst into laughter, the sound of it cutting
through the cold night air, bouncing off the stone walls, greeting the rising sun.

  Chapter 3

  The Choice

  Once she had been young, and hope was everywhere. It had lived in every corner of her world. It grew like wildflowers in open meadow and pushed up through rock to reach the sunlight. It was so plentiful and stubborn that it had seemed impossible to kill, once.

  Eluned stared at the cold stars and tried to remember that brief moment in time, so long ago, when her world was a song.

  For six months, she had lived in that song. Six months, two weeks, and two days.

  “And about thirteen hours, I think,” she said to the stars. How amusing, that she could remember such a thing. Even more amusing was how she had once fervently believed she would never forget a single moment of those six months, two weeks, and two days. And thirteen hours.

  Whenever she thought of him over the years (“Eighteen years,” she whispered at the stars), she thought mostly of the end. At first, just after it was over, she could not bear to remember the hours of lying in his arms, knowing he was lost to her forever. Then she spent a fair amount of time forcing herself to remember the bliss, to stare long and hard at every beloved moment until it no longer hurt. After that, she thought of it no more. Except for the end.

  No, not the end. The decision itself, to end it – that was what she most often thought of. She recognized the weakness in herself caused by this oversight, this hole in the fabric of memory. If she was to go forward, no matter the path, she must correct this. It was an essential wisdom, to preserve the ugly facts as well as the pleasant ones, to guard against selecting and discarding details on a whim. Now, with the cold seeping into her and a decision to be made by morning – now she would make herself think of all those things that went into the ending.