“My Lady de Montfort.” The man had come in a side door, which he was now holding open. Ellen rose, shadowed by the faithful de Seyton. Following him down a dark passage, she discovered it led into another large chamber, no less luxurious than Edward’s. Servants were moving about, unpacking open coffers. They all turned to stare as Ellen entered. Raising her chin, she crossed the chamber and curtsied to her cousin’s Queen.
The last time they’d met, Ellen had been a lively ten-year-old, Eleanora a young wife of nineteen, shyly stubborn, desperately in love with her handsome husband. She’d always been kind to Ellen, who remembered her fondly in consequence. But as they looked at each other now, it was uncomfortably obvious that there lay between them far more than the passage of thirteen years. Eleanora’s dark gaze was coolly appraising; Ellen sensed at once that she’d been measured and found wanting. She’d had no illusions about Eleanora’s influence. No matter how much Edward cherished his wife—and by all accounts he did—her sway did not extend beyond the boundaries of the marriage bed. Yet even if Eleanora did not possess the key to her prison, Ellen had hoped for sympathy, woman to woman. It was not to be, though. Even before a word was uttered, she saw that she had no friend in Edward’s elegant Spanish Queen.
“Well, you’ve grown up, for certes,” Eleanora said at last.
“Yes, Madame, I suppose I have,” was all Ellen could think to say, for she was beginning to understand. There were wives who disliked on instinct alone any woman who happened to be young and pretty. But there’d be little consolation in knowing that Eleanora’s hostility was not personal, not when she had Edward’s ear at night.
No sooner had Ellen drawn this dismal conclusion, though, than Eleanora seemed to thaw a bit. At the least, she remembered her manners, gesturing toward a chair. “You may sit whilst we wait for Eduardo.”
Ellen sat as directed, and an awkward silence fell. Ellen would normally have felt obligated to keep the conversation going; she’d been taught that it was a woman’s duty to smooth away rough edges, to put others at ease. Now, though, she rebelled, sat mutinous and still until Eleanora could stand the silence no longer, and began to talk grudgingly of that most innocuous and dependable of topics, the vile winter weather. Murmuring the appropriate replies, Ellen felt a perverse sense of pleasure. However petty her victory, it was a victory, nonetheless, the discovery that passive resistance could be a weapon in and of itself.
She had an instant or two of warning, alerted by the radiance of Eleanora’s sudden smile, as if a candle had flared in the dark. Getting to her feet, she watched as her cousin strode into the chamber, and time seemed to fragment, all the way back to March of God’s Year, 1265. Harry had brought Edward, a hostage for his father’s good faith, to their castle at Odiham. A fortnight later, he’d ridden west with her father and brothers, but he’d soon contrived to escape, set out upon the road that was to lead them all to Evesham. Edward bore the intervening eleven years lightly, looked no different as England’s King than he had as her father’s prisoner of state, vibrant, lordly, a fire at full blaze. As he reached her, Ellen sank down in a deep curtsy. Almost at once, though, he caught her hand in his, drawing her to her feet.
“Glory be, lass, look at you!” The laugh, too, was just as she remembered, loud, cocky, dangerously disarming. “When I saw Aunt Nell at Melun, she said you’d blossomed, but I put it down to a mother’s fond doting. What do you think, Eleanora? Has my little cousin not grown into quite a beauty?”
“Yes,” Eleanora said, “she has,” glazing the compliment in ice.
Edward was still holding Ellen’s hand. “I am truly sorry you had to go through such an ordeal,” he said, so sincerely that Ellen stared at him in amazement. What was her abduction—an act of God?
“I was terrified,” she said simply, for it seemed safer to keep to the truth as much as possible.
His grip tightened. “I know, lass. I would to God there had been another way. But there was not, for Llewelyn ap Gruffydd and your brother Amaury saw to that.”
“Ned, no! Amaury had nothing to do with it. This was my doing, not his. I wanted the marriage!”
In her agitation, she’d reverted without thinking to a childhood intimacy, to “Ned.” But he seemed pleased rather than offended by the familiarity. “Of course you did,” he said indulgently. “What lass would not be bedazzled by a crown? You could not be expected, though, to be aware of all the implications of such a union. I do not blame you, Cousin Ellen. There is a debt due, but you owe not a penny of it.”
His well-intentioned attempt to reassure her fell far short of the mark, for he had just confirmed all her fears for Amaury. But he had given her the cue she needed. She knew now what role to play for him, and she could only wonder why she had not seen it sooner.
“I am sorry,” she said softly, “that my marriage plans have stirred up so much trouble. It was never my intent to offend you, Cousin Ned. But it is already done. Llewelyn and I were wed in Paris by proxy last November.”
She saw at once that Thomas the Archdeacon had already broken the news, for he showed no surprise. “Very foresighted of Llewelyn,” he said caustically. “But sometimes a man can be too clever by half, as your husband is about to learn.”
His smile was mockingly familiar, transporting Ellen back onto the Holy Cross, playing cat and mouse with her cousin’s pirate. And she found that she could endure no more of it. No more suspense. No more cryptic threats. No more cruel games. “Your men would tell me nothing. I implore you to be more merciful. For God’s sake, Ned, tell me the truth. If Windsor is to be my Bristol Castle, let me know and know now!”
“Bristol?” he echoed, genuinely puzzled. “You mean… Eleanor of Brittany? Jesus wept, is that what you feared, that I would imprison you for the rest of your days? Ah, Ellen, lass, no! You are my kinswoman and dear to me. Surely you must know that I never bore you or your mother any ill will. I argued against your mother’s exile, did I not?”
That she knew to be true. He had spoken up on their behalf, had never understood that they could not forgive him.
Reaching out, Edward slid his fingers under her chin, tilted it up so that she had to meet his eyes. “I watched you grow up, teased you, brought you trinkets and sweets. And do you think I’ve forgotten your letters?”
He glanced then toward his wife. “When I was being held at Kenilworth Castle, Ellen wrote to me often, trying to cheer me with Harry’s worst jests and daft rhymes, whatever foolishness she thought might take my mind off my troubles.” Turning back to Ellen, he said quietly, compellingly, “I hated your father, I’ll not deny it. But I loved Harry. Christ, we were companions from the cradle. I could never hurt his little sister.”
But you could let his brother rot at Corfe Castle. Ellen swallowed with difficulty. “What do you mean to do with me, Ned?”
He smiled. “I mean,” he said, “to restore you to your husband.”
She did not believe him; she dared not. “When?”
“Well…that will be up to Llewelyn.”
Beckoning a cup bearer into earshot, he ordered wine, waited until they’d all been served before continuing. “I will admit that I was set against this marriage. And I was wroth when I learned that you’d been wed in Paris. But once I thought about it, I began to see the advantages. Llewelyn has been a thorn in my side for some time. It has been eighteen months since I returned from the Holy Land, and he is still balking at doing homage to me. Such a brazen breach of a vassal’s duty could not be tolerated, and a day of reckoning was coming. It was just a question of when—and how bloody. But now you’ve changed the equation, Ellen. Now I have something Llewelyn very much wants—you.”
“I see,” she said faintly, for she did, God help her, she saw all too well.
“Ah, lass, do not look so distressed. You’ll have your happy ending, you’ll see, for I’ll hold no grudges. As soon as Llewelyn repents his past folly, formally recognizes me as his sovereign and liege lord, I’ll hand you over to him with my
blessings.” Edward grinned suddenly. “Hell-fire, sweetheart, I’ll even give you a royal wedding, paid out of my own coffers!”
Ellen could not help herself. As much as it shamed her, she felt dizzy with, the intensity of her relief, with the sudden resurgence of hope. He was offering her so much more than her freedom. He was offering to give her back her life with Llewelyn. But, Blessed Lady, at what cost?
Making an enormous effort, she smiled at them both, sought to look shy and submissive and grateful, while almost choking on the bile of her pent-up rage. But she would not make the mistakes her parents had. She would not give in to the compulsive Devil-be-damned candor that they’d so prided themselves upon, fuel for the fire that had eventually engulfed their world.
“Cousin Ned, what of Amaury?”
Edward’s mouth hardened, almost imperceptibly, and she put a placating hand upon his arm. “I understand why you feel you must hold me as a hostage. But Amaury had naught to do with my marriage. He was simply acting as any brother would, seeing to my safety on a perilous journey. Ned, you would have done no less for your own sisters, I know you would! He’s done nothing to deserve your hatred, bears no guilt for that killing at Viterbo. I swear it, Ned, swear—”
“Ellen, there is no need—”
“But he is innocent! If you would only talk to him, I know he could make you see that.”
“We’ll discuss this later,” he said, giving her a smile that never reached his eyes, and her hand slid from his arm.
“Will you at least agree to that?” she pleaded, although she already knew the answer. “Will you talk to him?”
“We’ll see, lass,” he said. “We’ll see.”
Juliana’s nerves were shredded by the time Ellen was escorted back to their chamber. She managed to hold her tongue until de Seyton withdrew, but not a moment longer. “Sit here by the fire whilst I fetch some wine. You have no color in your face at all. Was it as bad as that? Were you able to hide your true feelings from him?”
“Yes.”
“Ellen, you are frightening me, for you look so… My God, Ellen, what does he mean to do?”
“He means,” Ellen said, “to set me free,” and Juliana put the wine flagon down with a thud.
“I do not understand. Is it that…that you do not believe him, then?”
“Oh, I do believe him, Juliana. He intends, you see, to use me as bait, luring Llewelyn into a war he cannot hope to win. Is that not a marvelous marriage portion to bring to my husband?”
Juliana came hastily toward the hearth, thrust a dripping wine cup into Ellen’s hand. “Mayhap it will not come to war. Mayhap they can settle their differences without bloodshed. Drink this, and move closer to the fire; you are trembling.”
“I know. I feel so cold, Juliana, so very cold…”
“Ellen…did you talk to the King about Amaury?”
“Yes,” Ellen said, her voice still sounding flat and far away. But her eyes had begun to brim with tears. “I pleaded with him. I begged, and Amaury would have hated that. He listened, my cousin the King. But he never heard me.” Her tears had broken free, were streaking her face, but she made no attempt to wipe them away. When she finally spoke again, her voice was little more than a whisper.
“I do not think that he will ever let Amaury go.”
14
Bristol, England
January 1276
Although the crew of the cog Holy Cross had been dumped, penniless, on the Bristol docks, their plight was not as bleak as it might seem, for sailors the world over tended to their own. Many of the crewman had formed friendships on past voyages to this busy English port, and up and down the waterfront houses were opened to them. A few of the men took berths on out-going vessels, but so many ale-houses had extended credit that most of them elected to remain in Bristol until their cog could be ransomed.
Bristol was a thriving, brawling riverport, so prosperous that its citizens had been able to afford a remarkably ambitious and costly undertaking; they’d diverted the natural flow of the River Frome, dug a new channel to intersect with the River Avon. With so many seagoing ships anchoring at the new quays, ale-houses, inns, and brothels soon sprang up to accommodate them. To sailors like Brian, these river wharves and waterfront alleys were the heart and soul of Bristol, and most of them never even ventured as far as the marketplace, for their every need could be met within sight and sound and smell of the harbor.
At mid-morning on this last Wednesday in January, Brian was sitting down to an enormous dinner in his favorite riverside tavern, the Lusty Goat. His trencher was heaped with sausages and poached eggs and hot bread, for there were less than three weeks until Lent, and Brian was set upon indulging his appetite while he still could. Every now and then he tossed a scrap of sausage to the huge grey cat curled up at his feet. It would not deign to beg, but accepted his offerings as loftily as any lord, at the same time keeping a daunting eye upon the tavern keeper’s shaggy mongrel dog.
“Brian!” A hand slammed into his shoulder in so boisterous a greeting that Brian nearly choked on a mouthful of sausage. But the face grinning down at him was a familiar one, and he swallowed his irritation with the sausage.
“Where did you come from, Abel? I heard you were in Spain!”
“I was. We dropped off a boatload of seasick pilgrims at Santiago de Compostela, then caught a fair wind for home. I got back yesterday, had heard the whole story by duskfall. Thomas the Archdeacon is a Bristol lad, so it’s no surprise his latest outrage made such grist for our gossip mills. Hellfire, I’d not even kissed my own wife ere she was telling me about the Holy Cross!” Pulling a bench toward the table, he stopped at sight of the grey cat. “You even ransomed Hotspur?”
“Why not? He’s the best mouser we’ve ever had!” Brian flipped a crust of bread into the floor rushes, laughing at the cat’s disdainful disappointment. “In truth, Abel, there was no ransom at all for the crew. Your local lad, the Archdeacon, did not need to bother collecting crumbs, not when he’d come away with the whole blessed bake-house. Rumor has it that he’ll get two hundred marks for de Montfort’s daughter!”
Abel whistled soundlessly, and Brian nodded. “I suspect it is true, too, for I’ve seen him swaggering about the wharves with a whore on each arm, as bold as you please, looking like a man who could buy and sell sheriffs by the baker’s dozen. And most likely he could, for in addition to his royal reward, he has the cargo we were going to unload in Ireland. Not to mention the ransom for the cog itself. The ship’s master sailed last week for Rouen, bearing the bad tidings for the owner. He’ll curse and fume and fret, but he’ll come up with the money; what choice has he? I’d wager we’ll be under sail again by Easter, and in the meantime, there are worse places to be stranded than Bristol.”
“God’s Bones, yes! Remember Tenby?” They both laughed, and Abel helped himself to one of the sausages. “Well, you’d best come home with me. We’ll fix you a bed near the hearth, and my Agneta’s cooking will taste like Heaven’s own fare after all this ale-house slop!”
“I’d like that, Abel. But…well, there’s a lad I’ve taken under my wing.”
“Bring him along, then,” Abel said expansively. “If you vouch for him, that is good enough for me.”
“It is not that simple.” Brian hesitated, then leaned across the table, lowering his voice. “This can go no further. Not even Agneta can know, for if word gets out, Hugh is likely to end up clapped in irons. The truth is, Abel, that Hugh is one of the Lady Eleanor’s knights. But he is a good lad for all that, and so…when those whoreson pirates came down into the hold to get the knights and the Welsh, I heard myself claiming that Hugh was a member of our crew.”
Abel grinned. “You’ve not changed a whit. As hard-baked on the outside as a rye tort, inside as soft as raw dough! So be it; we’ll tell Agneta he’s the Holy Cross boatswain. Now…where is this young lordling of yours?”
He was peering about at the men sitting in the shadows, and Brian shook his head. “He
is not here. Likely as not, he’s lurking outside the castle, for that is where he’s been for the past week, keeping a hopeless vigil for his lady.” Brian sighed, speared a sausage with his knife. “I tried to tell him he’s but wasting his time, for all the good it did me. He even began to frequent one of the Wine Street taverns because he’d heard the castle grooms drink there. He had this idea, you see, that the stablemen would be the first to know if they meant to move the lady from the castle.”
Brian paused to eat another sausage. “It sounded like a weak reed to me, but damned if he did not find a groom who pitied the Lady Eleanor’s plight!”
“You Bretons think history begins and ends on your side of the Channel. As often as you’ve been in port here, you did not know that Bristol held fast for Simon de Montfort?”
Brian shook his head, and Abel snorted good-naturedly. “Hellfire, Brian, we took his reforms so to heart that we even rioted on his behalf, drove no less a lord than Edward himself to seek shelter within the castle! And when Edward burned the bridges across the Severn, trapping Earl Simon in Wales, we sent a fleet of flatboats to ferry his army across the Bristol Channel. But we were ambushed by Edward’s galleys ere we could enter Newport harbor. Eleven ships we lost that day, and after Evesham, Edward bled us white, levied a thousand marks’ fine upon our citizens. Memories like that do not fade, Brian, not in ten years’ time. You were surprised Hugh found a friendly groom? I’d have been surprised if he had not. Half the men in this town would gladly turn a blind eye to help the Earl’s lass.”
“I’ll confess, your English affairs always seem so murky to me that I never even try to make sense of—Ah, Hugh, there you are!”
From the outset, Brian had been impressed by Hugh’s good manners, for experience had taught him that the wellborn rarely squandered courtesy upon people like him. Hugh had been different, though, and it was that difference that had prompted him to speak out on Hugh’s behalf in that dark, foul-smelling hold. When Hugh now acknowledged the introductions with a distracted nod, Abel put it down to the usual high-handed rudeness of the gentry and began to regret offering his hospitality so readily. But Brian knew better.
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