By His Majesty's Grace (27 page)

“Perhaps we should have said
whom
you have found?”

She had known it would be impossible to keep such a thing from him. Her dependence had been on his being too far away to hear of it before she made the arrangements she planned.

Anguish crowded the walls of her chest until she ached with it. She wanted to protest, to snatch Madeleine from her cradle and rush from the chamber with her, speeding away into the night. Instead, she moistened her lips, searched wildly for something, anything, to postpone the moment when she must present her.

“It is only a girl child, sire, hardly worth your valuable time.”

“We shall decide what is worth our time, Lady Isabel. Show us the child.”

There was nothing for it but to obey. With muscles so stiff with reluctance they felt as if they belonged to someone else, she turned to the cradle, picked up the baby. Young Madeleine woke at the movement, opening her eyes to fix her trusting, gray-blue gaze on Isabel’s face.

She touched her cheek, a brief brush of the fingers, while tears burned the back of her nose. Turning, she walked to Henry and knelt, holding the baby on her swaddling board carefully balanced on her forearms.

Henry took her, holding her up before him. The baby stared at the king, essaying a small smile that turned into a frown when it was not returned.

“Her name is Madeleine, we believe?”

“As you say, sire.”

“Madeleine,” he repeated. “It will have to be changed.”

She wanted to protest, wanted to take back the baby as she began to fuss at being held out so stiffly.

“We are pleased, Lady Isabel. You have done well.”

“I did nothing, sire. It was Sir Rand—”

“Your modesty does you credit, but we are aware he did not cause the return of this child.”

Isabel gathered her courage, lifted her chin. “But he did rescue her when her mother was killed. You will grant, I hope, that the fact that Madeleine lives proves him innocent of child murder.”

The king did not remove his gaze from his daughter. “That is merely the first charge. There is another.”

“If the first was false, then why not the second? Others had ample reason to harm Mademoiselle d’Amboise. My husband had none.”

“We approve your fidelity, as we said before.”

Anger flared inside her, exacerbated by the rising cries of the baby. “It is justice that concerns me! Rand should not be in the Tower. It is only just that you free him.”

Henry lowered Madeleine and placed her in the crook of his arm before giving Isabel a curious look. “Such intemperance might almost lead us to suppose a fondness for the husband we chose for you.”

“Sire?” she said, not quite certain she had heard correctly.

“Or even that you love him if your exertions on his behalf are included.”

“Love? Oh, no, it’s only that—”

“Such a thing is not beyond the realm of possibility. The love of a wife for a husband, or a husband for a wife, is greatly to be treasured, despite those who frown upon it. We are human, you know, have human feelings, human needs.”

Was he speaking of himself with his royal plural, of the two of them together, or of human beings in general? It was not possible to say, even less possible to ask for clarification. Still, she could not prevent the fleeting notion that Henry might have fallen in love with his queen. She was young, lovely and royal in a way that he was not. After years of lonely exile, she had given him legitimacy as a ruler and hope for the future. It would require a hard heart and immense ego to be unmoved by these things. Whether he could express them was another question. Kings could seldom afford the luxury of such weakness, could not risk being unloved in return. If Henry yearned for Elizabeth’s wifely affection, it could only add to his determination to keep the knowledge of his mistress and her child from her.

Being a man and undeniably human, it would not occur to him that some secrets could not be kept. Being a king, he might well believe that nothing was as important as retaining the queen obtained with his crown. Any sacrifice would be considered well made, even the life of a friend. If it was a choice between Rand’s life and the throne of England, which would Henry choose?

There was, in reality, no question.

Oh, but did she love Rand as Henry suggested? Was this longing she felt to be close to him, this sickness inside at the thought of his death, the pangs of true love? How could she tell when she had been brought up to suppose only peasants and troubadours enjoyed such tumults of feeling? Yet she would gladly admit to the fault if it would soften the king toward her husband.

“Mayhap I do love him,” she said as heat burned its way to her hairline. “My husband is a good and honorable knight, and tender in his care of me.”

Henry watched her with a smile in his eyes, though it faded before it reached his narrow lips. “We will overlook your outburst for the sake of the avowal, also for the service rendered us this day. We recommend, however, that you not try our patience further.”

“If you truly believe that I have served you well…”

“Do not presume. It is unbecoming.”

She lowered her gaze. “No, sire.”

“We cannot allow you further liberty to interfere in matters of the realm. You will remain confined to your chamber while you reflect on the wisdom of keeping to your woman’s place. When you understand its limitations you may apply to rejoin the court, but will not be seen until then. Do we make ourselves clear?”

A curtsy was her only answer, for she did not trust herself to speak. It seemed to be enough. Henry swung on his heel and stalked toward the door. The steward leaped to open it, and then followed Henry from the chamber. Outside, the king made a royal gesture and the wet nurse came to him, trotting obediently after him as he disappeared along the corridor with the baby in his arms.

Isabel felt for the stool behind her and sank down upon it. Bending her head, she put her face in her hands while her whole body shook with violent tremors. She hated it, hated that anyone, even a king, could so discompose her. It was the power he held, she knew, the power to decide the life or death of others in an instant, to extend pain or joy, to shut someone away from the light forever or to set them free. No one should have such arbitrary control over another soul.

She was confined to the four walls of this small chamber. She could do nothing more to help Rand, nothing to help herself. What happened now was in God’s hands.

The baby was alive, but Rand was still in the Tower. Henry had not the time to order his release. Would he ever find the time? Did he intend that Rand, like so many others, should be left there, forgotten and alone? Or would he, some fine day, quietly decree that Rand should be tried for his crimes and, just as quietly, hanged in some hidden court?

The king had Madeleine and there was nothing she could do about it.

Should Henry decide it was best that the babe disappear again, never more to be seen, if he determined that his reign as King of England would be safer if she did not exist, then that would be the end of it. Isabel could not quite believe he would make such a decision, but neither could she be certain he would not. Between the two possibilities lay abject fear.

Such a sweet, beautiful child to cause so much grief, so tiny and so helpless against the forces around her. How could anyone harm her? How could they?

If she had not taken the baby from the nuns, Madeleine would be safe. She should have left matters as Rand had them. The guilt of it was like a knife blade in her heart.

The king thought her efforts to save Rand sprang from love. The grief and dismay she felt, now that she was forbidden to do more for him, made it seem he was right.

How had it happened? Was the intimacy of bed sport enough to cause this pain of longing? Was it his smile, his kisses, the panting joy he brought her, the feel of him hot and hard inside her? Was it his concern for her comfort, his air of command, his strength that he expended for everyone except himself? Was it the hard musculature of his body with its scars from old battles and old loyalties well served? Was it because he had taken David as his squire and turned another baseborn lad into a man? Was it because he risked injury, therefore his chance at victory in the melee, in order to save a small boy who was so full of reckless joy that he ran into danger on Tothill Fields?

Was it all these things?

Or was it simply that something inside him drew her, the lost, tormented, illegitimate boy loved by no one who had somehow become a man deserving of respect and affection calling out to an orphaned girl left to fend for herself and her sisters in a brutish household? Was it in the hope that he might, one day, come to love her?

Reasons, all good, all true, yet what did they matter? She loved him. She knew it for the truth in this moment. She knew because of her grief-stricken horror at the thought he might die for her sake, after all.

It could not happen.

Isabel lifted her head and used the edges of her fingers to wipe the wetness of tears from under her eyes. No, it could not happen. She refused to stand for it, though it might require a miracle to prevent. A miracle or a grand, royal boon.

There was one hope left, only one.

Isabel rose to her feet, straightened her veil and smoothed her skirts. With a lift of her chin, she moved to the door, put her hand on the latch and pulled it open.

A man-at-arms stood outside. No doubt he had been assigned the post to see that she did not leave the chamber. It made no difference; she would not contest with him.

Lifting her voice, she called out for David.

19

T
he pealing of the bell in the belfry directly above his Bell Tower chamber dragged Rand from the table where he sat trying to write, composing his last will and testament on a sheet of parchment. It was melancholy work, and he had no great objection to being interrupted. Moving to the high window, he leaned one shoulder against the stone beneath it, listening.

This was no ordinary tolling, nor did it seem an alarm that might cause the Tower drawbridge to be raised upright and the portcullis to come down. Every bell tower in the city seemed to have taken up the clanging, as if a legion of mad bell ringers had invaded them all. The clamor grew louder, raising dissonant echoes from far and near, while beneath it could be heard cries and cheers.

Abruptly, the probable cause struck him. Elizabeth of York must have given birth to a son.

Henry had his heir. The Tudor dynasty was secure.

Rand gave a low laugh. How pleased Henry would be, though his long and solemn face might never show it. A son and heir. A legitimate claimant to the throne of England, which, even more than the marriage of this new male child’s parents, signified the true merging of the houses of York and Lancaster.

No wonder people cheered in such noisy jubilation. It meant stability, prosperity, the final end to the warfare of the past thirty years and more. Yes, and of the hundred years before that. An end to the constant battle carnage, the beheadings and hangings.

Except his hanging, of course.

Past kings had been known to pardon certain criminals to mark a royal marriage, birth or death, sometimes emptying whole prisons. It seemed, in Rand’s rather prejudiced view, a fine custom. Not that he dared hope for it.

Rand was glad for Henry, truly glad. Indeed, he was. Even if, given half a chance, he would like to knock the royal idiot on his royal ass.

As his hand fisted, he looked down to see that he had closed his fingers on the dangling end of Isabel’s favor that was tucked into his shirt cuff. He pulled it out, drew it across his palm with sensual pleasure in the silken glide, like the slide of her clothing under his hard hands. But no, he must not become lost in such things again.

With a few practiced, one-handed moves, he tied the long length around his upper arm where it had been on the day of the tournament. He had mangled the piece of silk until it was little more than a rag. Originally white, white for purity, it was no more than a grubby gray now.

He knew what it was supposed to be, however. Oh, yes, he knew. If he wore it always, they must surely bury it with him.

Sweet Isabel.

His mouth watered for the taste of his wife. She had come to him in a hundred dreams, sat beside him, let him put his head in her lap while she ran her fingers through his hair. He had listed a thousand things he wanted to know about her, and a thousand more he wanted to do with her. He had undressed her in imagination, piece by piece of clothing, tasting every inch of her skin, filling his hands with its satiny resilience.

Imagination had to suffice for she had not come to him since that one, vividly remembered visit.

Where was she? What was she doing? Was she even alive? And what had she done to David that his squire did not come to relieve the bastard fancies that tormented his idle mind?

So deafening was the sound of the bells that it covered the noise of approaching footsteps, the scrape of the key in the lock. It was the draft from the window as the door opened that made him turn.

David stood there like the answer to a prayer. He seemed to have grown taller, broader and even older since his last visit. He was travel-stained, or so it appeared, his shoulders and the folds of his doublet coated with dust while brown tracks of sweat streaked his face. Weariness was in his eyes, yet they were bright blue with pleasure and his lips tilted in a grin.

Gladness propelled Rand toward him. He clasped the lad’s shoulders for a moment, before buffeting him on the arm. “Where have you been, you son of Satan? I thought you had gone off on some quest and forgotten me.”

“I’ve been to Winchester and back again, sir, among divers other places.”

“Then you may know if the bells ring for Henry’s heir. Am I right in thinking so?”

David inclined his golden head in assent. “A fine boy it is, who will be named for King Arthur of legend. At last report, both newborn and queen were in good health. The king is in high spirits, as you may imagine, and has ordered all manner of celebrations for the christening.”

Rand smiled with a shake of his head before his amusement faded. “But Winchester, you say? What took you there at such a time? You cannot have had cause to await the birth with the rest of Christendom. That is, you couldn’t unless… Is my lady there?”

“Nay, sir. She is here.”

He sighed, unaccountably glad to know it. “And Henry’s daughter, the small cherub Madeleine? How does she fare?”

“She is well also,” the lad said, shielding his gaze with gold-tipped lashes before shifting his shoulder in a shrug. “She is with her father.”

“Her father, the king?” Rand asked, while his heart flailed his ribs, making it feel bruised.

“Aye, sir.”

Dread mingled with rage threatened to close off Rand’s breath so it was a moment before he could speak. “And how has this happened when she was meant to be safe elsewhere?”

David said nothing. A woman’s voice answered instead, coming clear and strong from the door of his prison chamber. “She is with Henry because he took her from me.”

Isabel.

Isabel, lovely beyond his most fervent dreams in a scarlet mantle trimmed in blue over a blue gown and with a pale blue veil over her hair. Blue for fidelity. Blue, though he refused—would not allow—that it might carry the message he craved. She might have donned it as a whim or, more likely, to persuade the constable of the Tower of her devotion so she was allowed to visit him again.

She was so clean compared to his bearded, unwashed, unkempt state, so very fresh and serene that he wanted, suddenly, to pull her into his squalor and force her to share it. Base though it might be, he longed for her to comprehend his futile, despairing rage at its deepest depth, and to join him in that, as well.

Instead, she seemed above it, uncaring for the long days he had spent with little word of where she was or what she was doing. Careless of the fate of a baseborn child, one upon whose small existence might hang the fate of a realm, she had just announced what might be its death sentence. That, above all, he could not bear.

“And how did it happen that you had her?” he asked, his voice like a sledge pulled over gravel. “What mad caprice made you take her from her hiding place when you were told to let matters lie?”

Hauteur descended over her features, though not before he saw a flicker of pain deep in her eyes. “My own caprice, sir,” she answered, “and why not? What difference can there be between a widow able to go her own way and a woman with a husband so willing to die that she might as well count herself bereaved? But we have no time for this. Your squire has been to Winchester and back again in the past several days, has ridden through the night to deliver the order for your release. It has been duly presented and accepted, so you are free to go. You have an hour’s leave at the palace to make yourself presentable, and then we must make haste to Winchester for an audience with the queen.”

It was too much to take in at once. Rand put his spread hand on the nearby table for the sake of something solid to support him in what seemed a dizzying fog of delusion. “You mean… You can’t mean Henry has signed a pardon.”

“A most official document, one affixed with a great deal of frippery and stamped with the privy seal.”

“But why? How?”

Her smile was brief. “It was the boon asked for by Elizabeth of York in exchange for presenting him with a son. Are you not honored to be so valued? But come, there is no time to waste. We must be away.”

“Elizabeth, the queen consort. Not Lady Margaret.”

He sounded stupefied to his own ears, which was not surprising as it was exactly how he felt. He had accepted his death, taken its likelihood so deep within it was almost impossible to accept that it could be otherwise.

“The king’s mother may have spoken on your behalf. But it was Elizabeth of York who bargained for your life.”

He shook his head. “I don’t understand. She barely knows me.”

Color rose in Isabel’s face that might have been from anger but had the appearance of embarrassment. “She knows me, which is enough.”

“And I am to hasten to kneel before her for what reason? Other than a chance to express my gratitude, of course.”

“She wishes to see for herself that you have been released unharmed, as promised. It comes, no doubt, from others disappearing while locked away within these walls.”

He knew not how to reply to that, being unable to equate himself with her brothers who had entered here, never to be seen again. While he made coherent sense of his thoughts, David began to unfasten the sword belt at his waist. Taking the sheathed sword in his two hands, he stepped forward.

“You must have this, sir. It stood me and your lady in good stead, as you intended, but belongs now at your side.”

Rand took the blade, clasping its scabbard in a hard grip to still the tremors that shook his hand. For a second he stood unmoving, staring at the sword, symbol of his pretense as a gentleman and a knight. Yes, and of his return to that status.

“Strap it on, good husband, as is your right,” Isabel said with a small clap of her hands. “But then gather what you require and let us go before Henry sends to say he has changed his mind!”

It was an excellent point.

Rand’s few belongings made only a single parcel—his precious books and his lute, the parchment sheets he had covered with writing, his best doublet and hose that he had been saving so he need not go to his trial looking like a villein. He left the cell without a backward glance, striding forth with single-minded determination. His pace along the corridor was so swift that Isabel had to run a few steps now and then to keep up with him, though he could not make himself slow for her comfort. His every sense was painfully alert. He feared a shout to halt, dreaded a yeoman jailer coming after them to demand his return. Yes, or some official puffed up with self-importance stepping forward to claim a mistake had been made and he was not free, after all.

They passed beyond the walls and through the various courts. Suddenly, they were outside the gates. The town surrounded him, its noise too loud, the smells too strong, the milling throng too dense, the smoke-hazed sunlight too bright. He felt like some creature exposed by the removal of a stone, so rattled by the sudden change that his one thought was to scurry into hiding.

The impulse faded within moments, yet remnants remained. He was not entirely free of their taint even after they reached Westminster Palace. It clung to him while he bathed in the hottest water the servants could bring, then shaved and changed into raiment suitable for travel. When they set out for Winchester, it mounted to Shadow’s saddle with him. It was there in a prickling at the back of his neck, the itchy feeling between his shoulder blades, the urge to ride as if the hounds of hell were on his trail.

If Isabel was aware of such misgivings, she kept them to herself. She was not a chatterer, the sort of female who felt it her duty to fill every moment of silence with inane observations and questions to which she already knew the answers. She rode with her face set and her gaze turned forward, did not even speak to her maid Gwynne, riding on her far side, much less him. David was much the same, though he had the excuse of fatigue.

There was little chance for conversation in any case, for the three of them did not travel alone. They were accompanied by outriders in the livery of the royal household, an honor escort of yeomen guards sent by the king’s order. They were welcome protection from trouble along the way, though their true purpose, Rand thought, might well be to prevent him from hying off in the opposite direction.

By degrees, the sense grew upon Rand that he was actually free. The sun upon his shoulders felt like a benediction, the wind in his face like a caress. The scents of curing hay, drying hops and Michaelmas daisies blowing in the hedgerows had never seemed sweeter. Isabel, riding at his side, was so lovely that it wrenched his heart to look upon her. The fugitive gleam of her hair under her veil, the curve of her cheek, the sweep of her lashes, the shapes of her arms under the dust mantle and the way it fell over her breasts, the line of her thigh where her leg hooked around her sidesaddle—everything enthralled him.

His wife.

His wife, who had come for him, had somehow arranged his release from prison. Or was it, perhaps, his escape?

She had yet to answer his questions. The turmoil of making ready for their departure had prevented it before, and the presence of the king’s men made it impossible now. Besides, he was in no mood to shout back and forth over the noise of hoofbeats and saddlery and the wind in their ears. He wanted quiet and privacy so he could be sure of the answers he desired.

Among other things.

The need to be alone with her was a desperate ache. He longed to hold her, to touch her, to feel her beneath him, around him, clutching him as he buried himself in her to the hilt. He wanted to sleep for a year with her held close in his arms.

So strong was the urge that he resented her distant air and the way she did not quite meet his gaze. He was also annoyed by the faint assumption of authority about her, as if he was her prisoner now, one she meant to deliver whether he willed it or no. These were matters that could be adjusted.

As the day passed and the miles fell away behind them, he began to long for nightfall and whatever place they might find to take their rest.