The Prisoner Bride

by Susan Spencer Paul

  “M-Master Aonghus awaits you below, sir,” the manservant announced, coughing and waving a hand in front of his face.

  The smoke cleared sufficiently for Kieran to see the tiny steps that led down to the chamber below.

  “Very well,” he said, and taking a deep breath, began the descent. The stairway seemed to have been fashioned for a child, so small and short the steps were. Kieran was obliged to traverse them sideways, else he would have tumbled to the floor below.

  “My lord?” he called as he made his way into the smoke, which grew thicker and more pungent with each step. “Master Aonghus?”

  “Is that you, Master FitzAllen?”

  Kieran began to cough. “Aye!”

  “A moment, lad, and we’ll have this cleared.”

  There was a familiar flash of tiny glittering purple stars, and the red smoke faded almost at once, soon disappearing altogether. Kieran found himself standing in the midst of a strange, cavernous chamber lit by dozens of glowing stones similar to the one he had in his pocket. Master Aonghus Seymour, looking very much like a wizard in his purple robes, stood behind a long wooden table lined with various small, lidded jars fashioned of glass, pewter, stone and brightly colored pottery. Wooden hooks on the wall behind the elderly man held dozens of leather pouches, bulging with what Kieran supposed were powders and other dried elements.

  “You desired to speak to me, Master Aonghus?” Kieran asked, making a slight bow.

  “Indeed,” his host replied. “Come and sit. There’s a table and some chairs here.” He led the way to the chamber’s farthest corner, which was also quite dark. However, as they neared it, glowing stones set on shelves came to life, while those behind them dimmed. Kieran stopped to look back.

  “Does it make you uncomfortable, Master Fitz-Allen?” Master Aonghus asked. “They will be happy to come forth again, if you wish it.”

  “Oh, nay,” Kieran assured him, taking his own stone out of his pocket and setting it on the table. It instantly joined its brothers and sisters in putting off a gentle glow. “I’m used to them. I have one of my own now, you see. A kind of pet.”

  “Ah, very good,” Master Aonghus said with a nod as he turned away to fetch a nearby wine decanter and two goblets. “Mim and Wynne quite love them. And spoil them, as well.”

  Kieran grinned at the other man. “I believe I understand how that comes to be. I find myself rather attached to mine.”

  “Glenys found that most vexing during your journey, I would vow,” said her uncle. “Sit, please. This is very good wine. Glenys has it brought to us from Italy each year, in great quantity. I don’t understand such things,” he admitted, filling each of their goblets, “so ’tis a fine thing that she is so practical and capable in nature. We would be in dire circumstances without her.” He set the stopper on the decanter and looked up at Kieran, who was yet standing. “She makes our lives possible, if you can understand such a thing.”

  “Aye, I understand full well,” Kieran murmured, his heart giving a painful thump. “You need say no more, Master Aonghus.”

  “Oh, but I must, for there is a great deal more. Please, Kieran, sit, so that I may do likewise. My knees are not as strong as they once were.”

  Kieran sat at once, waiting until his host was likewise seated before sipping from his wine goblet. The wine was, indeed, quite good, just as promised, but it tasted like sand in Kieran’s mouth. He almost wished he were back at Newgate, awaiting death. What would his life be like when he was sent out of this place, away from Glenys forever? He supposed he could seek out Jean-Marc and they could take up as they had done before—but nay. That was a time already done with. Jean-Marc wouldn’t need his thieving former master as a shadow to dim his new life with Dina.

  “Do you love Glenys?” Master Aonghus asked suddenly, watching Kieran.

  “Aye,” he replied without hesitation. “Very much so. At least, I believe ’tis love. If not, it is some kind of maddening sickness that seems to have robbed me of sense and reason. A torment beyond all others.”

  Master Aonghus laughed. “I have never heard love better described. But how is it that this has happened? Glenys is not a great beauty, and you, I think, must be far more used to having the loveliest women upon your arm. Helen told me the sort of man you are.”

  “Did she?” Kieran said, with immediate affront directed toward Mistress Helen, which faded when he realized that he had taken her measure, as well, upon their first meeting. Aye, he and Helen understood each other. They were very like. “I’faith, I do not know how my love for Glenys came about. I only know that ’tis there and cannot be changed. I’ve tried, please believe that I speak the truth, knowing full well that we cannot be together under the law. And I would not ask her to be with me otherwise.”

  “Can you not explain even a little better than that?” Master Aonghus prodded gently.

  Kieran drank deeply from his wine goblet, then set it aside, wiped his mouth with his fingers and for a long moment was silent and thoughtful. At last, it came to him.

  “You say that Glenys is not beautiful, and this is, in certain senses, true. But neither is she foolish or vain or…like so many other women. She is a rare gem set among so many more common jewels. Like the Greth Stone, I suppose.” He smiled, feeling foolish. Master Aonghus looked at him encouragingly, and Kieran went on. “I have lived a poor life, my lord. I’m probably the worst man living on God’s earth. Bad through and through. But women like me because of my face and form and charming manner. I have taken whatever I pleased because I could have it almost without effort, and have been taken in like manner because I was a man to be enjoyed and then sent away. No woman wished to keep me forever. Only for a time, for being a bastard and a thief do little to recommend me as a husband, despite the nobility of my parents. Only as a lover have I been sought, and in that regard I was held as valuable. A man to be desired. But it was not so with Glenys.” He uttered a laugh. “She saw nothing in me to like, no matter how I tried to please. Indeed, she despised me at first, which I admit I deserved, taking her so against her will and for my own purpose. Oh, aye, she hated me then.” He gave a sorrowful shake of his head.

  “But in time she liked you better?” her uncle pressed, filling Kieran’s wine goblet anew.

  “Somewhat. I had already fallen in love with her by then. Her face—those lovely angles—I found entrancing. I could read all her thoughts just by looking at her,” he admitted with a grin, which Uncle Aonghus returned with a nod. “I told her what a wicked man I was—though God above knows she’d already discerned the truth of that—and yet she cared for me despite it all. She came to love me,” he said, with all the wonder that he ever felt upon thinking of it. “And then I found that I could not keep myself from her.” He looked away, frowning. “But I should have. My only comfort is that I brought her no shame. I beg that you will believe me, Master Aonghus. Her husband will find nothing lacking in her.” The words were painful to speak, for he could not bear to think of her with another.

  “Of that I’m certain,” said Master Aonghus. “Tell me, please, Kieran…do you speak any Welsh?”

  Kieran shook his head. “Nay. I wish I did. Glenys speaks it so well. I found it most…” Sensual, he almost said, but refrained, finishing the sentence instead with, “lyrical.”

  “Do you believe in the old ways?” asked Uncle Aonghus.

  “Do you mean magic?”

  The older man shrugged. “’Tis a way of saying what we hold as being most natural, but I will agree to the word.”

  Kieran had to think upon that for a moment. “Aye,” he answered at last. “I think I do. When we were at Pentre Ifan, I saw an elf…or some such creature. He tried to steal the queen piece, and then bit me when I fought to regain it. I yet bear the scar.” Kieran held his hand up to show his host. “He called me by a strange name.”

  “Aye,” Master Aonghus said. “Lord Eneinoig. Did Glenys tell you what it means to our family?”

  “I do not even know what i
t means to anyone,” Kieran confessed apologetically.

  Master Aonghus sighed. “You will be obliged to learn Cymreag, Master Kieran, before long, I vow. ’Tis your fate. Will you not have more wine?” He moved to pour the red liquid into Kieran’s half-empty goblet. Then he sat back and sipped from his own glass. “Eneinoig means ‘promise’,” he said presently. “There has been a legend in our family for centuries past, telling that a ‘promised lord’ would come from outside the Seymours to give guidance and power to future generations. He would be named by those creatures whom we yet believe in—the faeries at Pentre Ifan, among them. This man would be called Lord Eneinoig, christened thus by those who would choose him.”

  Kieran straightened in his chair. “My lord, I fear that you are mistaken. I’m not this man you speak of.”

  Master Aonghus looked at him with full sympathy. “I’m sorry if you don’t like it,” he said, “but you are. The Seymours do not question the determination of those who know better.”

  “Glenys told you of it?” Kieran demanded. “She wrote you?”

  “Nay, she did not,” Master Aonghus told him. “I learned of it in quite a different manner, before you left Wales, I believe. That you have been chosen is most clear, the evidence strong. You may reject it, but in doing so, you will reject much.”

  Kieran tried not to laugh, but couldn’t help himself. He set a hand to his chest and said, “But I’m a thief, a knave. You cannot know how so, my lord. If I have been chosen, then ’tis a mistake. It must be.”

  “This is what you thought when you knew that Glenys loved you?” Uncle Aonghus asked.

  “Aye, of a certainty.”

  “Then I think,” his host said gently, “that you are quite wrong, about both Glenys and your choice as the promised lord. Tell me, did you find Glain Tarran pleasing?”

  “I never set sight upon it.”

  Master Aonghus sat upright. “Never set sight upon it! Glenys did not take you there?”

  “She said it was not always evident,” Kieran explained. “I did not take it amiss, I promise you.”

  “But you should have seen it!” Master Aonghus insisted with some indignity. “’Tis your own estate now, your seat of power. You are the head of the family, being deigned thus by the powers. ’Tis your right to see your own estate. And all the rest.”

  Kieran stared at the elderly man, wondering if he had perhaps suffered a mental illness, and thinking of how greatly that would distress Glenys and add to all her burdens.

  “Master Aonghus,” he said in his most careful, soothing voice, “you must be very calm. I will be perfectly glad to do as you say, whatever you say, but you must remain quite easy.”

  “My lad,” Uncle Aonghus said, “you do desire to have Glenys as a wife?”

  “More than I wish to save my own life,” Kieran told him. “But you know as well as I that ’tis impossible.”

  “’Tis not, my lord Eneinoig. All you must do is accept what you have been claimed as. ’Tis as simple as that. You assuredly have charm and skill enough. That is the most required of a lord. Glenys,” said her uncle, “will take care of the rest.”

  Chapter Twenty

  How could he say no? Even if he knew full well that he wasn’t a proper man to be lord over anything, the temptation to gain Glenys was far too overwhelming for a man such as he was—weak, desperate and needing her so badly.

  And so he agreed to be the Seymours’ Lord Eneinoig—their promised lord—and even went so far as to agree to giving his and Glenys’s future children the Seymour name, rather than his own, though he would continue to use it out of respect for his father. Privately, Kieran determined that he would do his utmost to be the best lord he could be. And also to pray mightily that God would keep him from mucking it up. The rest, as Uncle Aonghus had advised, he would leave in Glenys’s capable hands.

  As far as Kieran could tell, Glenys’s aunts and uncles only seemed to want him to be charming and entertaining—or that was what pleased them all just now, anywise. Since he happened to be skilled at these things, ’twas an easy matter to please them. He only had to be himself, and they loved him, especially Aunts Mim and Wynne. He spent much of his time in their company, escorting them about Metolius, one elderly lady on each arm—through the gardens, to the great room, to the dining chamber, and even, twice, outside of Metolius to attend Mass at St. Paul’s.

  They had introduced him to their special box, which both intrigued and alarmed Kieran. Seeing the various objects it offered up at each opening, he understood just why Glenys wished to keep her family as far from prying eyes as possible. Anyone seeing the box and the joy it gave the elderly aunts would conclude that it was the work of sorcery, and off they’d be dragged to the nearest stake.

  With much encouragement from the ladies, Kieran took a turn at opening the box. A very old, odd-looking key came up, the sight of which made Aunt Mim gasp and Aunt Wynne faint dead away. As it had quite obviously distressed them both, he put the key back into the box at once and closed the lid. This, unfortunately, made Aunt Mim faint, too, and Kieran found himself, along with Uncle Culain and most of the household servants, on the floor, striving mightily to revive them.

  The first thing they did upon being roused was to open the box. Aunt Mim brought up what appeared to be a child’s toy, made of a strange, ironlike substance and tiny soft wheels. It was bright red and had the words Hot Wheels on the side; Mim put it away at once. Aunt Wynne’s effort was likewise disappointing, as she brought up a tiny silver spoon, which she dropped back into the box with a cry of distress.

  “I’m most sorry,” Kieran apologized. “I didn’t know whether you wished to have the key or not, for it seemed to distress you both. Now, I perceive, you are distressed that it’s gone. Let me try the box once more and see if it returns.”

  “Oh, nay, it won’t,” Aunt Mim said sadly. “It appears only once every hundred years and—”

  Kieran flipped the wooden lid open with one hand. The key lay inside. He held it up to show them. “Here it is,” he said with relief, placing it in their waiting hands. “Mayhap it appears several times in one day, every hundred years. This must be the right day. What does it open?”

  Considering the reaction the key’s presence had wrought, it rather amazed Kieran that no one, not even Uncle Aonghus, could remember what, exactly, the key was for. They only knew that generations of Seymours had been searching for it without success, until that day. It was, Kieran concluded, another one of their legends, of which there were many. After a fitful discussion, which ended with them determining that nothing could be done with the key, it was put—somewhat reluctantly—back into the box, where it disappeared. Temporarily. Every time Kieran opened the box, it was there. Day after day. Always there, but only for him. The aunts were overjoyed, but Kieran found it rather dull. He had hoped to bring up something more interesting, like the little red Hot Wheels.

  Mistress Helen put in an appearance late each afternoon, since she always slept late into the morning. She was polite to Kieran and her relatives, always ready to enter into conversation or lend her aid in directing the servants, but otherwise she remained aloof. She had taken over the care of the many Seymour business ventures in Glenys’s absence, and spent most of her waking hours in driving about London, talking to bankers and merchants and the captains of the several Seymour ships. She was always dressed in unrelieved black, always looked somewhat bored, and always disappeared once darkness fell. This seemed not to bother her relatives, but Kieran’s curiosity was roused, especially by the green-eyed, ink-black cat that suddenly appeared at nightfall and roamed the vast dwelling throughout the many dark hours, though it was never to be seen during the day. Kieran had his suspicions, but there were some matters that were so far removed from his experience, and too disturbing, that he simply didn’t let himself dwell upon them. He also stayed as far away from the cat as possible. It make his hair stand on end, just looking at it.

  When not occupied with escorting the e
lderly ladies, Kieran spent several hours over the next few days playing chess with Uncle Culain, with the queen piece, set in a place of honor on the side of the chess table, watching. They took turns talking to her—Kieran was glad that the rest of the family found this to be perfectly normal—and she had never appeared, to Kieran’s eyes, so pleased and content.

  He also tried his hand at helping Uncle Aonghus in his cellar workchamber, an experience he enjoyed thoroughly, especially when he learned how to create interesting explosions. More than once they ascended the cellar stairs covered in powder, grinning happily and very pleased with themselves. Uncle Aonghus declared Kieran a natural with elements, but warned him that Glenys would be displeased if they set anything on fire.

  Kieran, who became increasingly impatient as each day passed, didn’t worry overmuch about whether Glenys would be angry about anything—he simply wished to see her again and be assured that she yet loved him. It was not that he was unhappy at Metolius; far from it. He was cosseted and spoiled and treated like a prince by one and all—even John and Willem, who had kindly forgiven him and Jean-Marc for what they’d done. But, delightful as it all was, there was an incompleteness without Glenys. Kieran worried about whether she was well. Whether Daman had been angry with her when—and if—he’d run her to ground. Whether she, too, wanted to be with Kieran again. Whether she even knew that her missive had arrived in time to keep him from being hanged. He didn’t like the thought of her worrying over that.

  “When will she come?” he asked longingly one afternoon, gazing out one of the tall windows in the great room. “Something must have gone amiss to keep her away so long.”

  Uncle Aonghus set a comforting hand on his shoulder. “Soon, she will come. The longer she is absent, the sweeter your reunion will be.”

  Kieran laughed. “I’d be happy to forgo greater sweetness to simply have it.”