Then the message from Will came, a whisper from a courtier as he passed in the hall that very afternoon. “Be on your guard. Your bastard brother thinks the time is ripe to make himself the only living heir.”
The man was gone before Gryff could ask if this meant his trueborn brothers were dead.
In the hawk-house he told Moris that perhaps there was naught to be lost if he fled for his life. If Rhodri did not kill him, the king was like to throw him in a tower.
Moris nodded somberly and said he knew a place. It was not as far as France, but in time Gryff might be able to make his way out of England to certain safety. Until then, it was simple enough to smuggle him out hidden beneath the empty barrels that would be delivered to Monmouth tomorrow. And there, said Moris, was a friend who would lead Gryff in secret away from this place he had come to think of as a home.
He was to go to a Brother Clement, who tended the hawks at an abbey deep in the wilds. It was far from Wales and Windsor and anywhere kings or murder-minded bastard brothers might find him.
Chapter Nine
1288
“By the saints, look at her. She is a beauty.”
They had progressed as far as the mews, where Gryff took Tiffin from her cage. Hal looked the falcon over while Gryff breathed in the smell of the place, awash in memories. He had not felt so content since he had left Lancaster’s household.
“You have not known her weight at all since the Epiphany?”
“Nay, we have been forced to live wild and her diet has been whatever could be hunted in the winter woods. It has been a little easier these last weeks, now spring is come, God be praised.”
“She seems in perfect health.” Hal kept his eyes on the bird but put a hand to Gryff’s shoulder again, squeezing. “It’s in his blood, little Tiffany,” he said with a confidential air. “There are few who could care for you so well.”
Gryff tensed, suddenly remembering they were not alone. He caught Hal’s eye and gave a meaningful glance in Nan’s direction, muttering, “There are fewer still who know aught of my blood.”
Seeing Hal was the only thing that could have made him forget Nan for whole minutes. His friend had as yet taken no notice of her at all. She hung back, watching them silently from the doorway as though hesitant to come inside.
Hal only gave the barest nod of understanding to Gryff, his brows flicked upward in curiosity. He turned to see Nan framed in the doorway and his brows rose further. Even with the late afternoon light behind her and her face shadowed, she was so comely that a man could do little more than stare.
Gryff introduced her as a servant of Morency, and said only that they had met on the road and were recently come from Wragby. Let the full story be told later, when he had time to explain all of his strange journey over these last five years.
When Hal said he was pleased to offer her his hospitality, Nan shook her head and spoke.
“I will leave you now, but first I would ask if you know the woman I seek. She is...” Nan faltered for only an instant. Her eyes had been lowered in an unusually deferential manner, but now she met Hal’s gaze. “I am told she is a common whore, mayhap a bawd, and lives just outside the walls of Lincoln. Her name was once Beatrice, though she may be called different now, and her hair is like mine.”
In spite of the distance between them, Gryff could feel her tension. It radiated off her, her jaw clenched tight as she blinked at Hal, expectant. He did not know what she imagined the answer might be, but he saw she was bracing herself for it.
“Her hair?” echoed Hal, politely confused.
She had put up her hood when they had entered the church, and now she pushed it back from her face. Beneath it, the plain blue kerchief only showed her hair at the edges, so she reached over her shoulder to untuck the cloth and pull a sheaf forward. It fell shining to her waist, little ripples of golden silk that flowed over her breast to her belt. Gryff could still feel it between his fingers, cool and soft, the first touch he had stolen from her.
“Bettie,” said Hal immediately. “She is called Bargate Bettie.” He was looking at Nan a little doubtfully, a little curiously. “She is a bawd, aye, and her place is south of Bargate bridge.”
She nodded and tucked her hair behind her, pulling the hood back up. None of the tension had left her. Gryff saw her snap her fingers for Fuss before she remembered that the dog, still wary of birds, had not followed her inside the mews. In the moment that she paused, it struck him that she would leave now. Without a word, she would leave him.
The elation of finding Hal was swept aside, replaced by a formless fear. No more would he find her by his side when the memories froze him, or stole his sleep. Tomorrow he would wake to the dangerous world again – and she would not be there to steady him with her quiet acceptance of that danger, her acceptance of him. He might never hear her silence again.
He tried to move his tongue to thank her, but the words would not come. Mere thanks were inadequate. You saved me, he wanted to say. So much had she done for him – and what had he done for her in return, but steal touches and cause her to shrink from him?
“It is unwise to go there now.” Hal spoke emphatically, stopping her just as she was turning to go. “It is no place for decent women to wander, if they would be safe from lecherous rogues.”
“That’s no concern to me,” she assured him.
Hal scoffed at this, incredulous, and Nan looked to Gryff, her eyes meeting his directly for the first time since he had kissed her. It startled him, but he did not shy from it. His friend looked at her and saw only her slight stature, her youth and her beauty. Hal did not know how much more there was to her.
“She will be safe,” said Gryff, holding her steady blue gaze. He wanted to put everything into his look, all the things he did not know how to say – apologies and thanks and hopes that they would meet again – but he was not as eloquent with his silence as she was. He only looked for as long as he could into the blue that burned him.
“It will be full dark soon, and it is far,” Hal protested. He was adamant. “Nor will Bettie have time to greet you at the hour when her trade is most brisk. Come, I beg you will have sense. In the morning I will take you to her. Never will my wife forgive me, do I let you go to such a place alone.”
A hint of doubt came into Nan’s face. She glanced over her shoulder to see the setting sun – and then down to find her dog sprawled in the dirt outside, chin on his paws, perfectly content. She seemed to consider for a long time before giving a reluctant nod.
Hal beamed. Gryff tried not to, and then turned to ask his friend when he had acquired a wife.
“Monks!” Hal had shouted with laughter at first, but by now he had settled into intermittent bursts of chuckling. If it weren’t for the child sprawled on his chest, almost asleep at last, he probably would still be howling. “Five years with monks – and you tell me they were the kind who stayed true to their vows! I am full amazed you have lived through it.”
Gryff couldn’t help laughing a little himself, largely because of the sleepy child whose face pulled into a reflexive grin, eyes still closed, in response to her father’s humor. She was barely a year old, and her brother born only two months ago. Hal had lived a very different life for these last five years than had Gryff.
“The vow of chastity they kept, it’s true, but had they kept a perfect poverty I think me I would have perished long ago. The abbot loved his hawking too well, and I thank God for it. It is how your father knew Brother Clement, and why I was taken in.”
“He never spoke of it.” Hal’s hand covered the little girl’s back, gently patting, urging her to sleep. “Never did he breathe a word of your flight, nor did he betray that he knew aught of where you had gone. Not even when Lancaster questioned him. In his last hour he whispered to me that you were safe, but no more than that.”
Moris had died a year ago, a fact that came out as they had sat down for a meal with Hal’s wife and children. The rare letters sent to Brother Clement were the
source of the few precious scraps of information that had come to Gryff over the years in hiding, and the last had said that Hal’s father was ailing. It struck him that the letter was turned to ashes now. So was the one that had informed him that Hal had gone to Lincoln, and the one that announced his own father was dead, and his brothers. The letter that described the execution of the last Welsh rebel Dafydd and the imprisonment of his sons – that too had been eaten by flame.
Hal glanced toward the stairs. His wife had disappeared there with the baby, saying she would return to see to their comfort as soon as the boy was fed and sleeping. But Hal said she was like to fall asleep herself, tired and overworked since they had found no replacement for the maidservant who had recently left them. Nan was upstairs too, obviously astounded she would be given a bed and an entire room all to herself for the night.
Now that he and Hal were alone, they could speak more freely.
“He feared for you, Hal, else I would have bid you farewell ere I ran away.” He looked at Hal’s thumb brushing against his daughter’s curls. “If I have brought danger to you by coming here, he will haunt me.”
“Nay,” said Hal. “Never would he fault you for coming to me. Nor do I believe you put me in peril.”
“Think you there is no danger to me from the king?” The question came out of him as half-challenge, half-hope.
“I know little of the king except which birds he cares to fly when he comes to Lincoln. But I have heard of no reward offered for you, and that has been some little comfort. You did well to come here now, when the season is done and the birds put up for the moult.”
They both knew Gryff must decide what to do before the season began again. Hal was as excellent a falconer as his father had been, and kept a mews favored by the king himself. But a falconer was a servant, not a confidant, and so Gryff could not expect his friend to know all the tidings of court and king.
“Have you seen aught of Will these five years past?”
“He writes often to ask advice of me for his birds, though his own falconer has skill the equal of mine.” Hal’s face split into a smile. “He is nothing like he was as a boy, except for that.”
Gryff smiled to remember it. “Still looking for a fast friend, you mean?”
“One friend in particular. He hides it well, but from the first he has tried to find you.” Hal’s smile faded into thoughtfulness as he leaned back. “It is slyly done, the way he seeks information of you from me. He came with the king last year on the hunt, and said to me in secret that should you ever need him, you may still count him as friend.”
It should have been a relief to hear, but he knew Will too well – and he knew the king’s court even better. Gone was the guileless boy he had first met all those years ago. In his place was a Marcher lord, and a favorite of the king. Gryff rubbed a hand over his face.
“And do you believe he can be trusted?” he asked.
His friend looked into the embers of the dwindling fire, considering. The child in his arms had fallen to sleep at last.
“You know Will. He is so cunning I cannot say with certainty. But as to my belief – aye, I think he yet loves you like a brother and would not betray you.” He looked up at Gryff. “Never does he miss a chance to speak ill of your bastard brother. I can think of no reason for it, save that Will hates him for your sake.”
This had the effect of a simultaneously causing a wave of affection for Will and a small shock to remember Rhodri, whom he had put out of his mind almost entirely. For five years, life had been simple, the days orderly and free of intrigue. Now everything became complicated again, only because of the blood that ran in his veins. It made his head ache, to consider all of the machinations, the wheels set in motion after he had run away.
He did not want to think of any of it. He only wanted one thing.
“And if I... Think you I can go home?”
He knew it was how he said the word – home – that made his friend’s hand press gently on the sleeping child, holding her closer. Gryff would have said more, but there was a sound from the stair.
It was the dog, and a moment behind it came Nan. Her hair was in its braid again, her rough dress the same she had worn for most of their journey. Still the sight of her made him catch his breath. She was like a flame that had escaped the candle.
Her gaze moved over the scene of the two of them beside the hearth, the child dozing on Hal’s chest. She had said very little all evening, yet her silence never felt rude. Now she murmured good eve to them and inclined her head toward the rear door as though asking where it led and if she might go through it.
“The yard is empty,” said Hal, understanding her easily. “It is only bare dirt, but enough space to train the hawks to lure. You are welcome to exercise your dog there, so long as he leaves no foulness behind as token.”
She nodded, and beckoned the dog to follow her as she walked to the door. She held a lamp, and the light glanced off the blades that were now strapped to her forearm again. Gryff wondered if she did not trust this house, or him, or if it was only that it was a new and strange place and she felt better to be armed.
After she had gone through the door, Hal spoke with a knowing smile in his voice.
“No common lanner, I think.” Hal’s words flooded Gryff with memory, the lost frivolity of their youth. This was how they had used to speak of ladies and maidens, long ago in that other life, comparing their looks and temperaments to birds of prey. “I would say merlin for her size, or haps a hobby for her beauty.”
Gryff looked at the sleeping child in his friend’s arms. It was hard to believe that they had ever been so callous and carefree. “She is neither falcon nor hawk.”
“Oh?” Hal’s brows shot up, and he looked at Gryff with a new interest. “Nor is my wife, and she was the first woman of whom I ever said that. It is why I made her my wife.”
It took a moment until Gryff could laugh at the words, and the implication. He did not know how to explain to Hal that this opinion was not born of any special feeling for Nan, but the simple fact of her. Any man who thought he could so easily know her was a fool. She was like the falcon who killed with a glancing force, and also like the hawk who clutched the prey close to kill it – and yet she was like neither, for she did not seek out quarry nor come to a master’s call. She was sharp-witted and beautiful and deadly and kind, and there was no other creature like her.
From the yard where she had gone there came a faint sound, a soft thudding that repeated at intervals. Hal heard it too and seemed just as confused by it, so Gryff went to the small window that looked out over the space. He lifted the curtain that kept out the night air and saw only the lamp she had carried. It was set down on the packed earth in a far corner of the yard, and neither she nor the dog were anywhere to been seen.
Then a blade landed at the edge of the circle of light, the tip buried in the dirt. It was one of the short blades she carried on her arm, and now he saw the others that were planted in the ground. Another landed as he watched, and he realized it landed there by design – she was aiming to make a circle, marking the ring of light around the lamp. She was practicing her art.
“What is it?” asked Hal from his place by the hearth, and Gryff did not know how to answer. He simply made a beckoning gesture and Hal slowly raised himself, the child limp against his chest, and came to the window.
Gryff had not yet told him about his time with Baudry and the thieves, nor of Nan’s part in saving him. It had seemed too outlandish a tale to tell, seated at a table with Hal’s family while Nan ate more than he had ever seen her eat. He thought he would be able to speak of it to Hal, and soon – but not quite yet.
Now he moved to make room for his friend to look out the window, and watched the astonishment come into his face as the blades flew out of the darkness. When eight short blades ringed the lamplight, four more were thrown to land within an inch of the lamp itself, on four sides. The plain eating knife that hung at her belt came first, and then the da
gger from the sheath at her back. The long dagger she carried in her boot landed on the far side of the lamp, and on the side nearest to them was a knife he had never seen – silver, small, almost dainty. He wondered if it was the one kept in her bodice.
She came forward out of the darkness and stooped to pull the blades from the ground, intent on her work, never noticing they watched her. Or perhaps she noticed and did not care. She moved the lamp farther back, against the wall that enclosed the yard, laid her kerchief on the ground before it, and walked back into the darkness.
“A sparrowhawk, then.” Hal was grinning, disbelief and delight in his face as the blades began to fly through the air again. And though she was no bird, Gryff could not disagree with the assessment. Sparrowhawks were deadly on any terrain, effective and efficient and full of surprises.
This time she used the kerchief as target, surrounding it on all sides. Hal asked him if she had learned the skill from Morency himself and Gryff answered that he did not know, nor did he care to ask. The lord of Morency was a favorite of the king, and the lady of Morency was Will’s sister. It was easy to say too much to Nan, to reveal enough of himself to her that she might learn who he was, and one day speak of him to those she served. They were members of a world that might yet seek to imprison or kill him, so he did not speak to her of them.
When she emerged from the darkness again to pull her knives from the ground, Hal called out softly to her. She stiffened, but did not startle. She must have known they watched.
“You need not throw only into the dirt. That wooden post there, and the lintel. You may throw where you like.” She looked doubtful, timid, her eyes roaming around the yard. “In faith, there is naught you can damage. Come, I will be glad of the diversion.”
She seemed to take it to heart, and spent the next hour in a display of such skill that it amazed him anew. She threw the knives into the post, a straight line from top to bottom, then a double line along the side, then whatever pattern Hal suggested. She threw the nails, too, from the bag she carried, filling in the spaces between the blades and never striking metal upon metal.
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