By Design (28 page)

He let the memory emerge, but it came slowly, devoid of the shock he had felt, and clearer now than the reality had been.

He realized what he had actually observed there. Joan in her brown gown, pressed against the wall, her face blocked by the shoulders of a man. Her acceptance of caresses and a kiss. But no obvious welcome of those attentions. No returning embrace. She stood rigidly with pride—or maybe fear.

His mind's eye saw her beside him in the wagon and then at the house. Withdrawn, contained, stony with dignity and devoid of regret. Calm. Too calm, considering what she admitted. Face impassive and eyes so opaque that he could not read her thoughts.

He had seen her indifference as a greater repudiation
than her pursuit of a knight, but maybe it had really been a defense.

Had she truly accepted that man's touch? Or had she lied, to keep a mason from fighting with a sword-wielding knight?

He did not want to believe the former possibility, but he did not find the latter any more comforting. He did not welcome the idea that she had destroyed what existed between them because she did not believe that he could protect himself. Or her.

He might swallow the insult if it meant that she cared for him. Maybe she did, but not enough. Not everything that she said in their argument had been uttered with indifference. When she had spoken of her goal sustaining her, and of trusting her hold on nothing else, familiar flames of resolve had lit her eyes.

It was not the beginning of the argument that had sliced the deepest, but the end.

He continued his walk with calmer thoughts. He wondered about that golden-haired knight. Perhaps he really was a great champion. Maybe he had even fallen in love with Joan, and would see it through for her. Then again, he might be a boastful coward who lured women with his beauty and his promises.

Hoping it was the latter, so that he would have an excuse to beat the man bloody, he aimed his steps in the direction of someone who might know about young Sir Guy.

A servant brought Rhys to the garden where Moira sat in the grass, weaving a basket. It had been her craft when she was poor, and she still practiced it for her pleasure.

She looked up and greeted him with a serene smile that
fell a little when he drew closer. The anger still rumbled in him, and he guessed that she could see his mood.

Moira gestured for him to sit beside her on the ground, as he had often done years ago, when he came to this house wooing the good-hearted basket maker. He rarely looked back to those days, or wondered what might have been with her, but he came close to doing so now. Moira was fresh and honest, and as open a person as he had ever known. He found that very appealing at the moment.

“I am glad that you are here,” she said. “I was going to send a servant to you soon. We are leaving the city this afternoon, and I wanted to see you before we left.”

“Are you and the babe able to travel?”

“It has been almost a month. I am not some delicate court lady, and the babe is content to sleep no matter where he is. Addis has decided it is a good time, before the fall rains come.”

She took a reed from a bucket of water and began weaving it along the top of the basket, finishing its edge. “I will give this to you to bring to Joan. I like her, but she is a complex person. I think that she and I could become good friends, but that I will never really believe that I know her.”

His quick reaction was annoyance at this criticism. He reminded himself that this was Moira, who did not idly pick at other women for fun.

She turned her clear blue eyes on him. A little frown puckered her brow. “Do
you
know her?”

A day ago he would have sworn that he did, but now he wondered. “Well enough.”

She smiled. “Well enough is sufficient.”

They talked of simple things, of her children and his craft. Sitting with her in the grass soothed him. He had sought her out as a courtesy, but now he took his time. If she was leaving the city they might not speak again for a long while.

She guessed that he had not come just to see her. “Addis is in the solar,” she said when the basket was finished. She handed it to him. “Tell Joan it must dry a few days. And you must try to visit us at Barrowburgh. Bring Joan if you can. I will enjoy her company.” She fixed him with an open, sincere gaze. “You know, I trust, that our home is always open to you and yours.”

He saw more meaning in her eyes than she would ever put into words. The instincts of nature beat in her serf-born blood. She could smell the danger on the breeze, and knew the risks that her husband would be taking soon. She assumed that the man facing her would share those risks.

Maybe he would. He suddenly had nothing to lose again.

He lifted her hand and kissed it. “And my home is always open to you and yours, Moira.”

He found Addis in the solar, packing rolled parchments into a wooden box.

“This departure from London is sudden, Addis. I trust that you are not fleeing for your life.”

“It is time to go, that is all.”

“The Kings plans have been set aside for a time?”

“Mortimer is watching very closely. We will disperse, to make the watching harder. But if you speak with him, tell him that you think that his suspicions are correct. Let him know that Edward grows restless.”

“That will only force his hand.”

“His hand was forced the day Edward came of age. Let him know that time is running out. Let us see just how bold a usurper he is.”

“Are you ready for that?”

Addis did not respond. He would not explain more to a man who had not sworn to the cause. He set the box on
the floor, and poured some wine into two goblets. “Sit and drink with me, mason. Speak to me of simple, uncomplicated things.”

Rhys noted the shadows in Addiss eyes. Nay, they were not ready, and this knight knew it. Something was pushing things forward too quickly, either Mortimer's suspicions or the King's impatience. Addis did not exactly flee London for his life, but he took his family away to protect them.

They sat in two chairs near the hearth in the large chamber that held the lord's curtained bed.

“I saw a knight in the city today, Addis. A face I did not know.”

“You know all the faces?”

“Most of them. He was young, and wearing no lord's livery from what I could tell. Wealthy, though. Too well dressed for a young man without a patron. I heard him called Sir Guy.”

The name pulled Addis out of his thoughts. “Describe him.”

“Golden-haired. Middle-sized. Very handsome, almost like a woman. A sword with a yellow stone in its hilt.”

“You describe Guy Leighton. He is Mortimer's man, livery or not. If he has been called to Westminster, it is not good news.”

“How so?”

“He is the kind of man who would kill a King and enjoy doing it.”

That was indeed not good news, and not for the reasons Addis worried. Not only did it speak against Guy's character, but it suggested that Joan might get entangled in something very dangerous.

“How do you know him?”

“My first wife's brother tangled with him years ago, when he was no more than a boy. He was ruthless then, and the years have made it worse. He came to Mortimer's
attention during the rebellion. Mortimer gave Guy an army, and sent him out to secure the northern Welsh marches, to take the lands that had belonged to Despenser and Arundal. He did it in the name of the crown, but really in the interests of the House of Mortimer. You have heard of the bloodbath; I do not need to remind you of it. But Leighton may be guilty of more than the usual acts of war. It is said that he even disposed of women and children if they proved inconvenient.”

Rhys went very still. The words penetrated one by one, but halfway through he knew what was coming.

No great champion had pressed Joan against the Cathedral wall, but the man who had misused her.

He realized that he had been expecting this. He had come to Addis to hear it put into words. His pride had blinded him to the truth, but his soul had understood.

“There was an inquiry in one case,” Addis continued. “Nothing could be proven, but a girl and her brother drowned in a river, and Guys hand is seen in it.”

The chamber felt very warm suddenly, and Rhys's body very cool. “An inquiry? That is unusual. In war, people die all the time.”

“Not the children of a baron. Not the son and daughter of a marcher lord.”

His blood began pulsing slowly. “Tell me about it.”

“It happened three years ago. Even if the stories are true, he will not pay until he faces eternal damnation.”

“Tell me anyway. Who was this baron?”

“Marcus de Brecon. His lands lay south of the Despensers'. Much smaller holdings than those, but he was a tenant-in-chief, sworn directly to the last king.”

Rhys knew of Marcus de Brecon. The names of all the marcher lords were familiar to those who had lived in the region.

“De Brecon was an honorable man, and would not
betray that oath of fealty during the rebellion. And so, after the abdication, he was vulnerable. Mortimer claimed he had been in league with the Despensers, and sent Guy Leighton to disseise him. There are those on the council who insist it was an independent move, but the documents bore the King's seal—and while everyone suspects that Mortimer uses the seal with impunity, no one can prove it.”

Rhys listened, but another voice silently joined the tale. Joans voice, speaking in the kitchen,
His army came, to take by force the estate of a lord who had stayed loyal to the last king. My father owned property in the region, and joined the fight
.

“You really mean that no one will risk Mortimer's displeasure by trying to prove it. Marcus died in the battle?”

“He resisted. Leighton offered no terms, he never does.”

He died when the castle fell. So did my betrothed, and almost every man who defended the keep
.

“It is said that he was cut down after he had finally surrendered, that all inside the keep were massacred, but again, there is no proof. With the son and daughter dead, there was no one to petition the King or parliament for justice, and no witnesses left whom the courts would find reliable. As I said, there was an inquiry into all of it, including the disappearance of the heir and his sister. Lancaster tried to stir the barons' discontent with the story, but it went nowhere. But many think those drownings too convenient. It removed witnesses, and the boy's challenge to Mortimer's hold on the land.”

The new lord was a vile man, one of Mortimer's favorites. He knew no law but his own will. He took everything belonging to anyone who stood against him, all in the name of the crown. So Mark and I left that place and came here.

Jesus.

A rush of agitation flooded him. He could not sit still,
but rose and paced while his mind accommodated this astonishing discovery.

“Their names. The son and daughter. What were they called?”

“I was not at the council when this was discussed. If their names were ever given to me, I do not remember them.”

Mark and Joan. Their names were Mark and Joan.

He turned his back on Addis, and pretended to admire a tapestry on the wall so the Lord of Barrowburgh would not see what this had done to him.

Conflicting emotions poured through him. Waves of amazement followed waves of anger. She had deceived him, not by lies but through omissions. She had not trusted him enough to confide it all. She had not thought herself safe with him. At the beginning he could understand that, but later …

She was not the daughter of a mere yeoman or gentry knight. She was Joan of Brecon, born of the noblest blood.

I save myself for myself and for duties and plans much older than your knowledge of me. I will not let you interfere with them.

His mind replaced the tapestry's woven images with others. Joan, watching her honorable father cut down. Joan, facing Sir Guy alone in the hell her world had become, realizing that only she stood between her brother and his extinction. Joan, eyes flaring with anger and resolve, clinging to the dream of justice so that her soul would not die.

She had been right. She could not ignore the past. She was not a nameless nobody who could forget forever. She and her brother had run for their lives, but there had always been the danger that the past would follow.

And it had. It had caught up with her today in the marketplace.

“They are vulnerable,” he heard his voice say, while his mind saw Sir Guy hovering over Joan at the Cathedral. Smug and familiar. Predatory, like a hawk that had caught a helpless dove in its talons.

He shook off the image, and turned. Addis watched him curiously.

“They are vulnerable. Mortimer and the Queen. He is careless in his own palace. He watches and sniffs, but he waits for the sight and smell of an army. I walk through Westminster freely, and have been totally alone with him several times. It would be an easy thing for me to—”

“Nay.” It came as an uncompromising command. “When you are taken you will be executed, and Edward will not be able to stop it, no matter how it solves things. Nor should this be the work of an assassin. It must be the King's move, and legitimate, and it must also deal with the Queen, not just her lover.”

“Then let Edward move. Not on a battlefield, but in his own home. You say that he has a handful whom he can trust. Let them go with him to the Queen and Mortimer, and arrest them.”

“Mortimer may be vulnerable to a craftsman, but not to the king he holds down. He is surrounded by guards when he sees Edward.”

“If it is not expected, it can be done. Even at Westminster, but surely at another holding, where the guard will be thinner. How strong is Mortimer's sway over his followers? He buys them with power, and they will desert him when that is gone. The realm grows weary of his excesses, and I can not be the only one who is disgusted that I helped bring this about. A small band, Addis. A quick move. It will be over before he can marshal his support, and even his household guard will hesitate to cut down an anointed king.”

Addis rose and paced. His large body circled the chamber
several times while the golden lights in his dark eyes burned deeply.