Fair, Bright, and Terrible

by Kingston, Elizabeth

  All through the rest of the meal, he reveled in the memory of that moment. He told her of his estate in France, how he had assumed its management and led the seemingly endless efforts to keep King Edward’s French lands safe from Spanish aggression. She had great interest in it and asked many questions, as he expected she would. There was still such confidence and competence in her, magnified and polished by the years.

  She was changed; she was wary. But she was still Eluned, curious and discerning, and to talk to her like this again gave him hope as nothing else had.

  A troupe of acrobats tumbled through the hall to the great delight of the guests, and she allowed a polite smile at their antics. He thought of telling her how Kit’s son had been taken as surety against an imagined aggression and what might be done about it. But this was the wonder that he still could not comprehend – that he need not hurry to tell her everything now. They would have tomorrow, and the next day and the next. He would not have to surrender her after an hour and wonder when he might see her again. Now the dessert came, and they would soon end the feasting and be alone together, to talk and lie together all the night through. It seemed an impossible wealth.

  “My son will go to Edward’s court, and I would have us follow him there,” she said as she was served a dish of spiced pears, painted in gold leaf and set in almond cream. “There we may hope the king remembers you if he truly will make a new lordship in the marches.”

  “Christmas with the king, then? We will meet with many others who think that prize should be theirs.”

  Her lips pursed. “None have done such a great service for Edward as you have, in preserving his duchy. You will remind him of this, and I will add our petition for Dinwen which lies close to the lands which are my marriage portion. I have experience of ruling in the marches, you have experience of maintaining his power in border lands. He is beholden to you, and will be happy for such an obvious choice. He values expediency, this king.”

  As she methodically laid out the points in their favor, she cut the gold skin away from the pear to get at the flesh. Careful and exact movements, careful and exact plans. There was no hint of a woman who was given to passionate outbursts. There was no relish in her voice, nor even interest as she spoke words that in another age would have been imbued with fire.

  “If it pleases you,” he said.

  “If my lord has no care for the lands or title, or if there be other plans for achieving this ambition, I am content to do as I am bidden.”

  He stared at the discarded golden peel beside her plate, glittering and empty, and thought he had not felt such despair since the moment she had said he must never see her again.

  “I would speak of anything else now, Eluned. There is time enough to plan such things.” He took care to say it without rebuke. Then he lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper, desperate to see that hint of a real smile in her face again. “Instead let me entertain you with tales of my father’s visit to me at Christmas four years ago, when he thought to gift me with a bride from Scotland. She was so amusing and he was so appalled at her brashness that I admit I was almost tempted.”

  She gave a delicate snort. “Not Atholl’s youngest girl?”

  “That was her,” he replied. “She was barely out of swaddling and her first words to me were to ask how much older than Methuselah I was.”

  He was gratified to see her pause in bringing the spoon full of almond cream to her smiling lips. “And how did you reward this impudence?”

  “With laughter, of course. She looked conscious of the insult and then assured my father he looked quite hale for all that he’d fathered a son so old.”

  She did not laugh, but he could tell by the way she pressed her lips together that she very much wanted to. It heartened him. It was enough, for now.

  When it was time to withdraw to their bedchamber, the ceremony was less boisterous and more private than it might have been if they had been young. This was the first thing about the day to make Robert glad he was not in fact twenty years younger. Before leaving the celebration in the hall he danced with Eluned. It overwhelmed him. It brought up vivid memories of how they had danced so long ago, all the effort they had put into hiding their feelings in public, the many furtive and freighted glances exchanged, and the thrill they had taken in every slight but sanctioned touch. For all he could see, though, it was only a dance to her. She looked as if it held no meaning for her at all.

  He was still reeling from both the memories and her detached demeanor, when his brother and Kit brought him to where she waited in the room they would share. She had gone ahead of him by only a few minutes, and stood waiting for him in her full dress. The priest spent an inordinate amount of time blessing the marriage bed, a sure sign of his father’s influence. Eluned was unnaturally still throughout the prayers, a resplendent statue in the shadows of the room.

  The small party of well-wishers took their leave, with only Kit and one of her ladies lingering behind the rest. Kit gave him a look that was commiseration and encouragement before clapping a hand to his shoulder and quitting the room.

  “I need no more help, Joan.” Eluned was removing pins from her hair and waving the girl away. “Go you and find Sir Heward. Better you learn now what he is like in his cups, before you are wed.”

  The girl blushed a little, made her courtesy to them both, and was gone. The embers glowed in the hearth and the music of the minstrels could be heard faintly, drifting from the hall. Her cloth-of-gold sleeves flashed dimly as she moved her hands over her hair, and the laces at the sides of her bliaut had been loosened. It was such a perfect picture of intimacy, this quiet moment in this room with her as she prepared for bed, that he could almost believe they had never lived apart.

  “Let me,” he said, and came forward to where she struggled to free the pin that held her golden veil.

  She went still as a statue again, unmoving beneath his hands while he worked at the cloth pinned behind her ear. For a moment he thought he could smell fresh grass and wild primroses, so vivid was the memory of their first time together. He was as uncertain as that now, as tentative – while she stood calm and expressionless. He thought of her few scant smiles, and of her eyes meeting his over the cup. How she had flushed so prettily a few hours ago, this woman who pretended to be made of cool marble.

  He finally freed the veil at one side. Then he brushed his fingers along the shadowed place beneath her jaw, and felt the frantic beat of her pulse. He bent and kissed her there, where the state of her heart was not hidden from him.

  “Eluned,” he said, and took her lips. She was not a cold statue anymore, but a soft and fragile thing. He felt her trembling, felt her warm lips open beneath his, and it was like no time had passed at all. It felt so comfortable and so very right that he could almost believe it was just another dream of her, even down to the taste of anticipation, the promise of deeper passion.

  He rested his forehead against hers, heard her quick breathing, felt her hand touching his. It was just like before, like all the countless reunions they had had in their secret place. A kiss in greeting, the relief in finding her there, then the little stone given from his hand to hers before they would lie down together under the shade of the trees.

  He did not have that little stone, now. It was long lost. But in the silence he reached into his pocket to close his fingers around a familiar shape, and slipped it into her waiting hand. He opened his eyes to watch her pull slightly away from him, open her hand, and stare down at it. She wore a look of wonder.

  “I found it.” He spoke just above a whisper, fearful of breaking the spell. “I searched until I found it. I kept it to give to you on our next meeting.”

  Her fingertips traced over the silver button as his had done for years, following the design of a griffin under a band of lent-lilies. These were symbols from the arms of Ruardean, and he had hated the design even as he had loved it, all these years, because it had been hers.

  “You thought…” Her voice traile
d off as she looked at it. The wonder in her face was gradually replaced with something else, something between disbelief and confusion. And then her voice changed, too. “You thought we would meet again?”

  She moved a step away from him, and it broke the perfect, still circle of enchantment that had held them. The little distance suited the coolness in her tone. Still she gazed down at the button that had held her shoe – that had failed to hold it closed – all those years ago when they had believed they would only be separated for a few weeks.

  “I hoped. I never stopped hoping for it.” He admitted it easily, so sure was he that it would reach into her and find the woman who had been his lover. “I never stopped loving you.”

  Her body moved in shadows beneath her loosened gown as she lowered herself onto a bench near the fire. She held her hand open, palm flat, the button staring up at her. He waited in the silence that stretched between them, as he had waited for years and years.

  “I told you to stop. I told you not to hope.”

  “You did.” He smiled. “I have defied you.”

  She turned her face up at last and looked full at him, stern gray eyes in a pale face. There was no answering fondness there, no happiness. It dispelled whatever was left of warmth in the room.

  “You have loved a dead memory,” she said, not unkindly. “I am no longer that girl.”

  He shook his head even as a feeling of dread began to grow in him. “You are Eluned, who I loved. Naught can change that.”

  But there was something in the way she held herself, or the tilt of her head – something was not right. His Eluned was there, he was sure of it. He had tasted it in her kiss. But there was something in her that told him he was wrong in some essential way.

  “We think memories are truth,” she went on, calm and relentless, “but they deceive us even as we cherish them. The truth is that many years ago, we were foolish and arrogant. We lusted and we sinned. We called it love. But that summer ended long ago.”

  “Do you tell me your love ended with it?”

  “Love,” she said, and moved her head in a little gesture of dismissal. The golden veil still hung at one side of her face, because he had only freed one pin. It shimmered with her movement, trailing down the side of her neck to her shoulder, reflecting the little light from the fire.

  That was when he saw what was wrong. The birthmark on her throat was there. It was everything he remembered – the size and color, the height from her collar bone, the teardrop shape – except that it was on the right side of her throat. Not the left. Yet he remembered it vividly, exactly. He closed his eyes and saw it, a bright image preserved over the years. In his memories he ran his finger across that mark and opened his mouth over it and looked for it every time she threw her head back to laugh as they sat in dappled sunlight. He had thought of it a thousand times over the years. He remembered that mark on the left side of her throat as well as he remembered her saying I will love you until I die.

  He opened his eyes and looked at her, his breath coming too fast. He had remembered it wrong. It was as simple as that. As damning, as awful as that: he had remembered it wrong.

  His Eluned burned hot and bright as the sun. She was the cleverest person he had ever known. She loved him and called him her Robin. She had a mark on her throat just to the left of center.

  This empty woman before him now was made of cold stone and spoke to him in a reasoned voice about the deceptiveness of memory. She waved away the notion of love, and called it the dead past.

  “You have held that summer as a treasure,” she said, her gray eyes fixed on the hearth and the button forgotten in her open palm. “You have hidden it away for safekeeping, to be taken out only rarely, to savor or to venerate. But I have laid the days of it before me like playing cards upon a table, one after the other. I took them out and examined them over and over again, until there was no mystery to them. Until the shine wore off them and I could see them clearly.”

  It was like standing on the sand as the tide came in, sure footing lost in a swirl of water that threatened to pull him under. It was all the more terrible because she was entirely right. He had held those memories as his greatest treasure. He had built his life around them, protected them, believed they were the most real and important part of himself.

  Yet the mark was on the wrong side of her throat. Her voice held no fire; it was only a little sad.

  “What was it to you?” He asked it though he feared the answer. He had always feared it. A dalliance, a distraction, an amusement for a bored lady.

  “It was a dream,” she said.

  She had said it before, in the dark and with the smell of rosemary all around. It was a dream, and now we must wake. But he had not woken. His waking was eighteen years late. You are a great fool, my Robin, said the Eluned of his memory, and he knew he must leave this room now, immediately.

  But he paused as he passed her where she still sat unmoving, looking at the glowing embers. The silver button he had thought to carry to his grave sat in the palm of her hand. He stepped toward her to take it back, but her fingers curled over it in the same instant. He was sure it was a reflex, an impulse. She did not look to him, nor even did she seem to blink.

  He looked for a moment at where his token was hidden in her hand, the white beneath her nails where her fingertips pressed her fist closed. Her expression was not changed. She did not even glance at him as he left her alone and walked out into the bright colors and gay music he had arranged to celebrate their joyous reunion.

  Chapter 5

  The Work to be Done

  Christopher Manton seemed to her to be entirely too observant. It was an intelligent attentiveness, one in which he often noticed important things that others missed entirely. While virtually every member of their party stole quick, assessing glances at her as they traveled, Manton had saved his scrutiny for his friend, her husband. He was ever at Robert’s side, whispering in his ear, watching him carefully, showing a concern so discreet that Eluned thought she was the only one who saw the extent of it. She did not have much personal experience of friends – none at all of deep friendship over many years – so she reserved her judgment of this behavior, of this friend.

  “Kit,” Robert said to him now as they all sat together in a private room just a day before they would reach Edward’s court at Rhuddlan. “My lady wife would ask for Dinwen from the king.”

  He went on, naming the other lands that could be added to theirs if the king would grant them, but Eluned heard only the echo of him saying my lady wife. There was a hint of gravel in his voice that had not been in his younger self. It was not the voice that had lived in her memory, but it was a perfect accompaniment to the twist of irony in his words. He named her his lady wife as though it were a trick played on him, and he invited his friend to share in the humor.

  Lands and wealth and worldly aspirations, on and on he spoke. She let his words float past, utterly uninterested in these things that had dictated her whole life. Instead she thought of the contents of her baggage, items packed with care and forethought of the task ahead. Her finest gowns, the gifts for Edward and his queen, bundles of medicinal herbs from Master Edmund; and alongside these necessities were her uncle’s psalter, Madog’s knife, a silver button from a forgotten shoe.

  In her mind’s eye she saw those objects, the metallic glint of them in the dark corners of her baggage, their real worth known only to her. How long does love live on, Madog, starving in the dark.

  “Mortimer.”

  The name woke her, pulled her out of her reverie with a jerk that drew Kit Manton’s eye. Robert was speaking now of the Mortimers, which pieces of Wales might be claimed by that family and how likely was Edward to favor the younger brother.

  “I will wager the lady of Ruardean can tell us many things about the Mortimers,” said Robert, who raised expectant brows at her. It put crooked furrows in his forehead, which mesmerized her for a moment. She had never thought of how his face might age. If she had, she wo
uld not have guessed at these rumpled good looks, this appealing ruggedness.

  “If my lady Eluned has any insight, I will be grateful for it,” said Kit. His look was just as expectant as Robert’s, but without the edge of hostility lurking at the back of his eyes. She was fully awake to the conversation now.

  “Insight?” she asked in a mild tone, watching him closely. “Into the Mortimers?”

  Kit nodded. “The new Lord Mortimer, or his younger brother Roger who will be at Edward’s court.”

  “But do you not have long acquaintance of them both? Can you not see their stronghold from your own estate?”

  He blinked in obvious surprise, as though he had never expected her to know such a thing. And indeed she had not known, until she had decided she should learn something about this friend to her husband. Manton was a minor lord, his father granted the small estate by old King Henry, only a speck on the map next to such a vast and mighty force as Mortimer. He had been at Kenilworth, where he had probably met Robert. He had returned from France two years ago with a wife and some number of children. And he was like a brother to Robert de Lascaux.

  “You see?” Robert reached for his cup with a sidelong glance at his friend. “I told you.”

  “Told him what?” she asked.

  Kit Manton looked back and forth between Robert and Eluned for a moment before answering her himself. “That you believe there is no such thing as a small detail, nor is any person unimportant.”

  A small silence settled over them and she looked down at the table. It held a plate heaped with a variety of wastel bread, some stuffed with dried berries and some with bits of apple. Of course Robert would remember more than just the words of love they had exchanged. Of course he would. Just as she remembered which of these breads he would prefer, how he would tear the small loaf in half and then half again, before biting into it.