Rhuddlan (98 page)

Down the steps, through the pantry and down
another stair to the linen room. It was cooler on the ground level.
The door leading outside was open but there wasn’t anyone around.
She went through it and considered where to go. The landscape
directly before her was mostly black; the quarter moon had not yet
risen and the kitchen garden was in darkness. Around to the right
of it, torchlight flickered in the distance, marking the location
of the stables, latrines and barracks. The postern was there, as
well, and beyond it, the village where she had last met Longsword.
Not a real village, of course; there was some commerce in it but
only local. All of the inhabitants labored in the keep.

The postern would be closed at this time, she
knew, and she could only guess the kind of debate she’d have to
have with the guard on duty before he would open it for her. She
wasn’t in a mood to argue with anybody. She sighed. Giving orders
and arguing seemed to comprise the majority of her conversation.
She wondered what people really thought of her. Of course, there
wasn’t anyone she could ask; she had no confidant at Rhuddlan.

Only the dead couldn’t argue, she thought,
and caught her breath. She hadn’t consciously made the connection;
it had just come to her. She would go to the chapel and visit
Richard Delamere one last time. He was certain to be buried
tomorrow; she was less certain that she would be allowed to attend
and this might be the only opportunity she’d have to say
goodbye.

The chapel had always looked to her as though
it had been an afterthought of the builder. Its very location,
stuck onto the south wall of the castle, was suspicious. There was
no entrance from inside the hall; a visitor had to go out and walk
around the keep to get to it. The other end was built onto the
curtain wall, which meant there was no clear way around the keep
itself. And because the chapel’s western side opened onto the rear
of the castle, open windows in the summer allowed pungent smells
from the stables and latrines to waft in, tempered only by a
bountiful crop of herbs in the kitchen garden which stood in
between.

The carved wooden door was partially ajar and
she hesitated for a moment and stared at it, wondering why it
wasn’t closed. In the next instant she chided herself for
stupidity; most likely it had been left open to keep the air within
from becoming overburdened with the smell of Delamere’s decaying
body. Her servants had cleaned him well and wrapped him tightly but
it was still too early in the season for the harvest of the herbs
which, through generous distribution about the chapel and in his
shroud, would have hidden that scent of death. She went inside,
holding the lamp out before her.

The altar was to the left of the door, facing
east, and lying upon it was the neatly bundled body. She hadn’t
been positive the Church allowed bodies on the altar but she hadn’t
been about to leave him on the floor or on one of the narrow wooden
benches. She tiptoed very quietly up to it, knelt down and put her
lamp on the wood floor and bowed her head to pray.

After a while, she felt a
strange sensation between her shoulders which distracted her so
much that she lost her concentration on the task at hand. Her ears
pricked up. Quite clearly now, she heard the sound of breathing and
it wasn’t coming from
her
nose.

She stood up and turned around to face the
rows of benches. The only illumination in the chapel was from her
lamp and the small, perpetual flame which burned on the altar. The
back of the room was in shadows and she couldn’t see to the end of
it.

“Is someone there?” she called out.

She heard another sound, as if someone was
shifting in his seat. “I am, Teleri.”

It was Longsword. She picked up the lamp and
walked slowly down the aisle to the rear of the chapel. Longsword
was sitting on the last bench, his back against the wall and his
legs stretched out along the seat.

“Why are you here?” she asked.

“I wanted to see Richard. I’m sorry—I cut
open the shroud. I wanted to see his face.”

She glanced back at the white-wrapped figure.
“It’s no matter. Easily resewn.”

“I’d thought, with this weather, you might
have buried him already,” he said.

She was surprised. “You said you’d only be
gone a short while. I had him in the cellars until this afternoon.
It’s quite cold down there. The earl’s men were kept in here, you
see, but when they’d gone and I knew you were on your way, I had
the place scrubbed out and Sir Richard brought up.”

She had given him the opening without
thinking. She tensed when she realized it but then relaxed. After
all, she had wanted to do this tonight, hadn’t she?

But he said nothing. She couldn’t read his
expression in the murky light. The whites of his eyes glistened in
the lamplight so she knew he was looking at her, but she had no
idea what he was thinking. The situation was bizarre.

She broke the silence with a tentative
accusation. “You’re not yourself, my lord.”

“No?”

She frowned and tried again. “You didn’t want
to speak with me earlier because you were tired. Why aren’t you in
bed?”

“Have you ever broken a bone, Teleri?”

She shook her head.

“It hurts like hell, Teleri. I can’t sleep.”
He held up a jar with his left hand. “I’ve drunk almost three of
these and I still can’t sleep. Would you like any?”

She shook her head again. He lifted the jar
to his mouth and drank. After he swallowed, he settled the jar on
his lap and closed his eyes.

She didn’t know what to
do—stay or leave. She had thought their confrontation would be
loud, angry and perhaps even violent. But this…
situation
had her
bewildered.

He opened his eyes. “Why don’t you sit?”

That was it. “My lord,” she said in a firm
and louder voice, “I’m sorry you’re in such pain. But I think we
have an important matter hanging between us and as long as we’re
both awake and here together, we should discuss it.”

For a moment he was still. Then he sighed.
“Very well. What do you want to say?”

“Well…” She bit her lip, disconcerted. “Well,
I want to tell you why I allowed the earl to leave.”

“Yes?” he prompted when she didn’t go on.

“Well, because he was
my
prisoner and so mine to
dispose of.”

He inclined his head. “All right.”

“
All
right?
” she repeated incredulously. “You
agree with my decision?”

“Of course not, Teleri, but as I told you
earlier, I’m too tired to debate it now.”

She
wasn’t tired. “I was the only one who was suspicious of his
story, William! If it hadn’t been for me, you would have come back
to a shell, not a fortress! All your men would be dead and everyone
at Llanlleyn, too!”

“Didn’t you think that was reason enough to
hold onto him?” he asked. But his voice was calm, not angry. “I
could have sent him to the king for judgment.”

She didn’t answer. Instead she stared
steadily at him until he frowned. “What?”

“I just wonder if he would have survived such
a long and arduous journey, my lord,” she said. “Especially as he
was very ill this past winter and his health hasn’t yet
recovered.”

“No? Well…” He drank again from the jar.
“Anyway, the point’s moot—he’s gone. And losing Haworth will most
likely put to rest any further plots against me.”

“Is Sir Roger truly dead?”

“I didn’t see him; I was flat on my back and
unconscious. But the wound was supposed to be very bad. Fitz
Maurice told me Haworth’s men were seeking aid from Rhirid’s
physician. Guri’s physician now, I suppose.”

She was silent. A small breath of wind came
through the open door and flickered through her lamp, distorting
the shadows along the wall. She said in a steady voice, “There was
another reason I let the earl leave…He told me you’d seen the king
and had asked for his assistance in obtaining an annulment of our
marriage…”

“Ah.”

She was stung; she didn’t know why. Perhaps
in some recess of her mind, she’d believed that Hugh was wrong—or
lying. “Is that all you have to say, my lord?”

He groaned a little. “Teleri, the last thing
I want to do is argue with you. Even if I weren’t tired and in
pain, I know I wouldn’t win.”

“I don’t want an argument; I want an
explanation!”

She could feel heat
spreading across her face; she could hear a note of anguish behind
the sharp words. She wrapped her free arm around her waist and
pinched herself hard in the side. She didn’t want to show any
weakness to him but it was difficult because he was behaving in an
unfamiliar manner. Their conversation so far had actually been
civil and his voice almost…
kind
. And she didn’t like the way he
wouldn’t stop looking at her, as if he were seeing her for the
first time and wasn’t displeased. It was disconcerting. She wished
for another breeze to extinguish the light in the lamp so she
wouldn’t have to know he was still looking at her.

“Sit down, Teleri,” he said quietly,
startling her.

“I don’t—”

“Sit down. My neck hurts from tilting my head
up at you.”

She wanted to tell him not to bother looking
at her but instead she sat down on the bench in front of his and
set the lamp between them. “Is it true?” she asked, her voice again
under control but her arms crossed over her chest in case she
weakened.

“Is that the real reason you let Chester
go?”

She shrugged. “Probably.”

“Even knowing what he’d done to Richard?”

“Now you’re angry…”

“Shouldn’t I be? You said yourself Richard
was a good man. Yet you gave up the earl just to spite me?”

This wasn’t the argument she’d thought he’d
use. It wasn’t right; she hadn’t considered the earl had had
anything at all to do with Delamere’s death.

“One of Haworth’s men killed Sir Richard,”
she said. “That’s what you told me when you asked me to prepare his
body for burial.”

His mouth opened as if he were about to
retort—she knew he would point out quite correctly that Haworth’s
men were the earl’s men—but instead he lifted the jar up once again
and drank from it. Then he closed his eyes and was still for so
long she thought he had fallen asleep. She was irrationally hurt by
his apparent indifference, which surprised her when she remembered
how she’d half-feared a violent reaction. But this unconcern was
strange and seemed more dire. Had she finally pushed too far? A
husband’s revenge could be harsh and a wife had little protection
against it. Teleri had only to look to the current status of her
father-in-law’s marriage as proof.

Then he spoke. “The truth is, Teleri, I ran
away. That’s what Richard said we’d done—he was kind enough to
include himself even though it had been my idea—and last week when
I crossed the march into Gwynedd, I knew he was right. I ran away.
I hated being here. I’d had nothing but bad luck here. I wanted to
have back the life I’d had before I was sent here, when I had no
more responsibility than to use my sword against the king’s
enemies.” His voice dropped. “And I wanted to be free of all the
women in Gwynedd who’d ever had some claim on me…”

“I suppose that included me,” Teleri said
bitterly.

“Yes.”

She snorted. “Well, then you can hardly
condemn the earl for breaking your three-year peace when you
yourself broke faith with me. We had an agreement, William!”

He stared at her. “I was angry with you,
Teleri…You can’t begin to imagine how angry I was. I didn’t
consider that I’d made any agreement with you. I merely accepted
what you offered.”

“And laughed at me behind my back, no
doubt!”

He looked down at the jar in his hand. “No…I
really didn’t care that much.”

That hurt. “So you saw the king and asked him
to help you get rid of me,” she said flatly.

“He refused, of course. I
wasn’t too surprised.
He
was never one to run away.”

She shook her head slowly, confused by the
pain she felt listening to his story. “Perhaps I ought to have
fallen in with the earl, after all,” she said stiffly. “Then
Rhuddlan would be gone, Llanlleyn would be gone and I’d be gone to
the Perfeddwlad. You’d have come back to nothing. You’d have had
your wish.”

“Now
you’re
angry.”

“Shouldn’t I be?”

He sighed. “Of course you should.”

They were both silent. Teleri wanted to get
up and walk out of the chapel before she started crying. She had
wrongly believed their agreement, their second attempt at this
marriage, had put their relationship on firmer footing. That had
all been in her own mind, hadn’t it? She felt like such a fool and
as the embarrassment and frustration grew inside her, eating at her
stomach, it took all her inner strength not to break down in
tears.

“But I came back, Teleri…” he said
quietly.

“Yes. Why?” she retorted. “I’m sure you could
have stayed in the king’s service for some time, perhaps forever.
Or until some adversary killed you.”

“You’re right…but I chose to come back
instead.” Suddenly and painfully, he pushed himself more upright
with his good arm and then swung his legs over the bench so that he
sat facing her. His face was close to hers, only a few hand spans
away, and she could feel as well as hear the ragged breath caused
by his exertion. “I’ll admit coming back was Richard’s idea. He
wanted to see Olwen. But once I’d agreed to accompany him, I knew
it was the right decision for me, as well. I realized I was tired
of doing all the things I’d left Wales to do. I realized I missed
Rhuddlan…And you.”