Conqueror (37 page)

She couldn’t turn dirt another moment. She was too restless. She needed to walk the walls.

She scrambled to her feet, tugged on her skirts, and started for the battlements. She was moving at a rapid clip, head down, when she slammed into something hard.

“Uugghh!” exclaimed a voice. Alex staggered back a few steps, gripping his stomach and grimacing.

“Sir Alex,” she gasped, and hurried forward. “Are you all right?”

He backed up a few more steps, holding out his hand, warding her off. “Fine, my lady.”

She drew back and straightened her skirts, swirling them about her ankles. “What a nice evening.” She said the polite nothing with her eyes averted. She did not want to see Alex, not with her suspicions about
his
suspicions floating through her mind.

“’Tis,” he replied tonelessly.

“Yes, ’tis.” She bent her head and started forward again.

“Been on any rides lately?”

She turned around slowly. “No.”

“Ah. I just wondered if your horse had come up lame.”

“No,” she said more slowly than she had turned. “Why?”

Alex shrugged. “No, I didn’t think so. I saw him gone from the stables, that is all.”

Faint dread spread in a cold flood through her stomach. “I like to ride, sir. Has my lord some problem with that?”

He shook his head, his eyes never leaving hers. “Nay.”

“Then I cannot see where it should concern you.” She lifted her head in an icy pose and started walking away.

“If you hurt him, you will be sorry, Guinevere.”

She stopped but did not turn. He didn’t say anything more, and she started walking again, fighting not to clutch her chest, to hide her hammering heart.

“I have heard riding clears the head,” he said to her back. “Especially when it aches.”

It took all her reserves not to pick up her skirts and run.

Griffyn set his men loose on the Nest and its environs like worker bees of restoration and repair. A few began preparatory work on the crumbling stone of the castle’s defensive walls, but most were sent to the fields.

October was for ploughing, the last of the year. Fighting men tended to fight, unless otherwise occupied. Practice with lance, falchion, and sword was a frequent device Griffyn used to stave off boredom and keep their fighting skills honed to a razor’s edge, but ploughing was even better. It was more demanding, and more importantly, it was a joint effort. A common purpose tended to blur the divisions that led to bloodshed. His men were going to live here. They were going to build families together. Best to start now.

As he was trying to do.

He was aware of Gwyn wherever she went, in the kitchen gardens with Cook, talking with Raashid and William of the Five Strands—she’d insisted he stay on—about marling the fields of a distant manor, greeting a messenger or, most often, walking and talking with one of the multitude of women who inhabited the Nest.

Where did they all come from?
he wondered as he helped haul stone on the walls the next afternoon.

“A bevy of breasts and giggles,” Fulk gruffed when Griffyn brought it up. But Griffyn had seen him stop sweat-inducing labour to help one of those bright lights traverse a set of stairs, so he was not a reliable gruff.

Then again, it did appear Gwyn had adopted every orphaned or dispossessed waif from the River Clyde to the Ouse. They were everywhere, their bright gowns and winsome smiles making his men drop hammers and scatter handfuls of nails. And always, there was Guinevere, her voice carrying over the bailey, indistinct in words but bright in tone, her red or yellow or emerald green skirts floating over the cobbles as she hurried here and there.

He threw another wet shovelful of mortar onto a stone, aggravated with himself. Everything he’d been fighting for his whole life was here in front of him. But instead of reveling in it, he spent hours each day searching through dark, cobwebbed rooms.

He’d explored every chamber in the castle, from kitchen to chicken roost, upturned every chest, unlocked every box, examined every parchment of de l’Ami’s. Nowhere was there a hint of anything more holy than tithes to monasteries and mission houses. Nothing whatsoever about safeguarding treasures coming out of the dark ages of Christendom.

It was as if every hint of it had been swept away by time. Or Ionnes de l’Ami, who’d wanted the Hallows above all things.

And now, Griffyn was starting to want them too.

He paused in his shoveling and wiped the back of his arm across his sweaty forehead, listening to the sounds of his men working. He stared over the battlement wall at the green expanse of the Nest’s fertile fields and hills. No. He might be home again, but a life’s mission realised was not enough anymore.

Not since he’d heard the dying words of Ionnes de l’Ami. Not since he’d been given a key that might unlock a treasure.

Gwyn was changing. Over the course of the weeks, she felt it, deep inside. Shifting like sheets of ice atop a melting river, rushing towards the falls, she was lost in Griffyn.

She even almost forgot. There were days where hours passed without her recalling the loyal treachery in her cellars. At times, it was as if Prince Eustace didn’t exist. Until the night the messenger came.

The afternoon had tilted away in long slanting shadows when Gwyn climbed up on the battlement walls and let the wind blow her skirts back. She smiled at the bustling around her, which was slowing now as suppertime drew near. But even during the lull, there was a verve, a pulse, that had been absent for years.

The castle had come alive again.

The architect had arrived days ago, and every male over the age of ten was now up on the walls or down in the forests. Huge trees had been felled to make the scaffolding, and now wooden skeletons danced beside the tumbled-down ramparts, their steps and platforms filled with sweating men in chausses and boots, buckets of cement, and pages running hither and back again.

The valley resounded with the shouts of men and the ring of hammers, the slow squeal of cranes lifting the huge stone blocks into place on the castle walls. Cartwheels clattered over cobblestone, horses whinnied, children shouted and laughed, racing to pick up nails that had fallen or to carry water to the men.

But what moved Gwyn most of all was that the women were laughing again. Their dead husbands and fathers became more distant ghosts each time a Sauvage warrior smiled at them or their children.

She doubled rations for every soldier who had made one of her women laugh.

Out on the fields, too, came renewed life. Griffyn’s men augmented her agricultural force considerably. The effects were immediate and obvious. Fast and furious the fields were ploughed now, ridge and furrow, ridge and furrow. For the first time in two years, Gwyn’s heart lifted.

Griffyn seemed happy too, turning towards her with the half-smile that dimpled his cheeks and made her belly flip over. Of course, there were the days when no one knew where he was for hours, but she was far too busy to monitor him, and not inclined whatsoever. Unless he came upon her mid-day (which he had twice now, once in the landing outside their chambers, once in the orchards, both times bringing her to such a swift, stunning climax she was dizzy for half an hour afterwards) she might not see him from dawn until dinner.

Her job was to direct the children, tend the wounded, manage merchants and orders and servants, and ensure food and a steady stream of sweetened water made it up to the workers throughout the crisp autumn days. And throughout all the chaotic, loud commotion, Gwyn smiled.

Which is why as evening darkened the sky into a dusky twilight that evening, she knew very well why she climbed to the ramparts and let the wind blow back her skirts. Because she wanted to be near Griffyn, purveyor of miracles.

The air was wondrously chilled tonight, and the men were purple outlines along the ramparts, clustered in groups of twos and threes. Some leaned against stone merlons, some sat on the stairs, others perched on the walls themselves, legs dangling as the sweat dried on their tired faces. Every second man was one of Griffyn’s, but their allegiance was indistinguishable under the cover of darkness, sweat, and the leather flasks being passed round.

Griffyn stood with a small group of men—Alex, Jerv, Fulk, a few others—the russet sunset flaming behind their outlines.

Guinevere approached. “My lord?”

He turned and smiled at her, that slow, lopsided grin. Even now, even after all they’d…
done
, the blood still rushed to her face. He held out his hand. “Come, Gwyn, see what we’ve done.”

What they’d done was astonishing. They had almost completed repair along this section of the west battlement wall. Forty soaring feet of ashlar restored to its glory. Even the gap in the accompanying defensive tower had been repaired, up to twenty feet or so.

This is what Papa had dreamed of doing. Rebuilding, restoring the Nest to its glory.

“I know you don’t care if he thought you a demon, Griffyn,” she said softly, “but you should know that my father would have been proud of this. Of you.”

Griffyn pursed his lips. “’Tis simply stone and strong men, Guinevere. Had your father wanted to, he could have done it.”

Gwyn smiled sadly. “Perhaps. But I think, if he could have, he would have. There was very little that mattered to him after, after—” She swallowed through the tightness in her throat. Behind them, men drifted back to their conversations. She could hear Alex say something soft but abrupt, then he fell silent.

“After Mamma died,” Gwyn continued, “the only things that moved Papa were my mother’s letters to him on Crusade. I remember watching him, after supper. He would sit on a bench in front of the fire trough, night after night, reading those letters til the flames burned out.”

Griffyn caught up her hand in his. “Your mother was lettered?”

“Oh, certes. Papa ensured she could read and write before he left on Crusade. That little chest I gave you, back at Saint Alban’s? All their letters were in there. Not that I could read them,” she added. “But one day, I had hoped—”

She broke off as Griffyn’s fingers tightened almost painfully around hers. His face looked odd.

“What is it?”

He didn’t answer, but swung away to look at Alex, who was suddenly hurrying down the stairs, his boots clattering. Gwyn watched too, a knot of unease forming in the pit of her belly. Griffyn was still squeezing her fingers much too tightly.

She tugged on her hand.

He looked down slowly, with that odd, blank expression.

“Griffyn? What is it?” The small knot of uneasiness rethreaded itself into something prickly. But before she could name it ‘fear,’ it was gone, because Griffyn’s gaze cleared, and his smile returned.

“My apologies, Gwyn. You were speaking of your father. Your mother, in fact, being able to read. And you, not.”

She nodded, feeling very much like a missing conversation had just scurried away, much like Alex had down the stairs.

“You need not fear, Gwyn,” Griffyn said, and this time, his fingers tightened just enough to lift her knuckles to his lips. He pressed a kiss to each. “Your father is gone, as are his strictures. I will teach you to read.”

She couldn’t summon the will to speak the truth on the matter, to say she’d feared neither Papa nor his infrequent ‘strictures.’ What she feared then is what she suddenly realised she might need to fear again: the strange distancing of the Lord of Everoot. This going-away, when his body was still present.

She rested the side of her cheek against his long, hard body as he turned and responded to one of the men. He was sweaty, with a strong musky odour. She inhaled, feeling safe and protected and, well, that was sufficient.

This was all she wanted. Just to be near him, watch him turn his thoughtful grey gaze on whoever was speaking, occasionally asking questions or adding comments, but mostly listening. And people expanded under his attention. He was like a draught. They drank him in, grew brighter. His knights
and
hers. Jerv. Fulk.

Griffyn was making good what was once soiled, bringing life to what had been dead or dying. Papa hadn’t possessed the heart to create what Griffyn was doing so effortlessly, in fifteen days, in enemy territory. Griffyn had simply swept in and made it good.

And she was going to betray him.

Madness.

She stared at the rock-strewn walkway underfoot, as a very novel, very reckless thought occurred to her:
Need she?

There’d been no word from King Stephen. He could have had a messenger to Everoot within days if he’d wanted, even if he’d been standing on the cliffs of Dover. Why no news, then? No succor? No instructions for her?

Perhaps King Stephen
was
going to sign the treaty. Her heart fluttered. Perhaps there was no ruse. Mayhap ’twas over, and her king knew it.
She’d
concocted the notion that it was a lie. Her heart started rattling around in the wide, open space the dawning realisation created.

And on this flimsy foundation, she was to betray the most decent man she’d ever known?

Her mouth opened, without any real decision on her part. “Griffyn?”

It was like those mornings when she wanted just another moment of lying abed, warm under the furs, but her body would start moving on its own, climbing out into the cold morning air, doing what needed to be done, without her ever deciding anything.

Relief washed through her like sparkling rain. It was over. She was going to tell him about the prince.

“Griffyn?”

He looked down. “Aye?”

Her heart was hammering, her fingertips cold. “There’s something I have to tell you.”

Alex appeared just then, racing up the stairway. He stopped, one boot on the top step, panting slightly. His tunic was soiled from the day’s work, half caught up in the waist of his hose, his blond head disheveled. He looked flushed, harried. Or excited.

“Pagan, you need to come. Now.”

“What is it?”

Alex leaned forward.
“I found something.”

Before the words were fully out, Griffyn had dropped his arm off Gwyn’s shoulder and was striding away. She stared after them, shocked. At the top of the stairs Griffyn suddenly turned, as if he’d just remembered her. “What did you want, Gwyn? Can it wait?”