The Devil's Diadem (64 page)

Edmond was my hold on life, my single protector, and I needed to consummate that protection as soon as I could.

Besides, I would be a liar to say that I was not already well on the path to loving him. I loved Raife with a passion, Edmond with a quiet, solid regard.

Edmond was no fool, and knew precisely my reasons behind my leading him to the bed. He may not have suspected that I was breeding again (although he might have done, for he was aware that Raife and I had spent a night together), but he certainly understood all the other reasons.

He loved me, I knew, and lusted for me, but he apprehended also that when he bedded me he solidified his control of the vast wealth of the earldom of Pengraic. My son Geoffrey would become his ward, and until Geoffrey reached his majority Edmond would control all the Pengraic wealth and estates. It would help Edmond enormously if the boy’s mother was compliant and willing and not a force pulling Geoffrey the other way. Edmond as king was already a powerful man. With the wealth (and the subsequent military resources) of Pengraic behind him, he was virtually untouchable, personally controlling a third of the land in England as well as almost half of the Welsh Marches.

Bedding a scandal-ridden widowed countess was a small price to pay to ensure such power. Keeping me from another noble’s bed was an absolute necessity, because if he didn’t then his hold over Geoffrey’s wealth might be compromised.

But … as much as a king and countess took to the bed that night, it was also man and woman, and a man and a woman who had been moving toward each other for some time. Our love-making was sweet and simple; comforting, warm, full of aching promise and hope and, perhaps, even a little redemption.

When we were done I lay in his arms and cried for everything I had lost, and he held me and comforted me, and did not mind my tears. One of the things I came to love about Edmond was that he did not resent Raife, nor was he jealous of him. I could, and did, weep for Raife often in the coming months and years, but Edmond allowed me that, and did not complain.

From that night, Edmond became the centre of my existence.

Of my new life.

Part Eight
The Falloway Man

Chapter One

A
s I had known it would, terrible scandal erupted the day after Raife’s death. The only witnesses to his death had been Edmond and myself (and five imps, but neither Edmond nor myself deluded ourselves that they would spring to our defence!). There was not even a body. Some refused to believe Raife was dead at all — the rumours that the Earl of Pengraic had been seen here, there, over that mountain or beyond the seas in Normandy or other realms within Europe continued for many years. He was even spotted in the Holy Lands, and beyond, in those exotic empires far to the east.

It was the rumours that either myself or Edmond had pushed him to his death that were the most damaging, however. We both stood to profit from Raife’s death: Edmond gained control of Raife’s vast wealth and power; I gained the king. Edmond had never hidden his interest in me, and the fact — noised about within the day by servants from the palace of Westminster — that I had gone straight from the tragedy of my husband’s death to the king’s bed did neither myself nor Edmond any favours.

It was a tense six months. The country had been devastated by plague and, subsequently, there was still unrest in many parts, while Raife’s untimely death prompted a power struggle within the aristocracy and a small, but no less unnerving, power struggle against the king. I saw little of Edmond for many months as he rode about the country at the head of what amounted to a medium-sized army, gleaned from his own lands as well as those of the earldom of Pengraic.

The Church and the Templars, now a powerful force within English and European society, aided Edmond, backing him against claims he had murdered Raife. They did not back me. I think both Church and Templars would have happily thrown me over the parapets of the Conqueror’s Tower after Raife if they thought they could manage it.

But they backed Edmond. Edmond, from both his position as King of England and his control of the Pengraic wealth and estates, was now a supremely powerful man, and one from whom the Church thought it could profit.

The Templars wanted more land and wealth in England.

Edmond could manage that for them.

The Church wanted total freedom from secular control, taxes and influence, as well as land and patronage enough to establish half a dozen new monasteries.

Edmond could give it that.

It was a heavy price for Edmond to pay, but he paid it.

He could have abandoned me — he could still have exerted control over the Pengraic wealth without me through his wardship of Geoffrey — but he did not. He brazened out some of the rumours, he led his army into the thickest of the rest of them, and he did what he had to in order to ensure the support of the Church and the Templars.

At least there was a Pengraic son and heir for whose paternity there could be no doubt. I thanked God for that, day and night, for otherwise I think the earldom of Pengraic would have been broken up. If Edmond did not have wardship over an undoubted legitimate Pengraic heir, then Edmond could not have held onto the lands and wealth for Geoffrey’s majority.

I stayed at Westminster for some of this time, but under Edmond’s orders and a heavy escort removed myself from Westminster to the royal manor at Elesberie for many months until the fuss died down.

Eventually, given Edmond’s efforts and the fickle nature of rumours, the scandal lost its force. Edmond returned to Westminster for a few weeks, then came north to Elesberie to see me.

I was waiting in the courtyard of the manor house, nervous and excited in equal amounts. I was concerned that the time apart, and the efforts Edmond had been forced to go to on my behalf, might have dimmed his passion for me, but I need not have worried. He jumped down from his horse, a wide grin on his face, his eyes alight with joy, and seized me in a bear hug from which I could not escape for long minutes.

Eventually he put me down, breathless from his embrace and kisses.

‘You are well, my lady?’

‘I am, my lord.’

He held me out at arm’s length and looked me up and down.

‘You
look
well. You have grown some roundness. It suits you.’

I blushed. The roundness he referred to was all in my belly.

Edmond smiled at my discomfort, and then, arms linked, we went inside.

That night we made love for the first time in many months. I was deeply relieved that he still felt passion for me, and that his eyes still warmed whenever they looked my way. I did not deceive myself that he would remain true to me, or that I would remain forever by his side, but I was grateful for whatever time he gave me and knew that he would not cast me away without support. I had the four manors Raife had given me on our betrothal, but I did not doubt that Edmond would eventually add to those.

We lay side by side, still slightly sweaty from our love-making. Edmond gave a small sigh, and ran his hand over the mound of my belly.

‘It would be best,’ he said, ‘if you named Pengraic as the father of this child.’

Raife
was
the father of the child, but it suited me if Edmond thought he himself might be.

‘Of course,’ I said.

Edmond’s hand continued to rub, back and forth, back and forth. It was enormously soothing.

‘The King of France has approached me,’ he said.

‘He has offered me the hand of his youngest daughter in marriage.’

I froze, all the pleasure of our reunion vanishing in an instant.

‘Maeb, no matter how much I wish it, you know I cannot marry you.’

‘I know,’ I said, unable to stop the tears from running down my cheeks.

‘The scandal … no one would accept you as queen.’

‘I know,’ I said, dashing the tears away with the back of a hand and wishing they did not flow. And I
did
know that Edmond could never wed me, but even knowing it did not stop the pain.

‘Shush,’ he whispered, kissing away the marks of the tears.

‘Negotiations can take years. We will bicker this way, and then that way, back and forward.’ He kissed me again, and smiled a little.

‘Possibly even sally forth on a small war or two to make our points.’ Another kiss.

‘And besides, the girl is but eight. I could not bed her for years.’

‘I know.’

‘And yet still you cry for me. Ah, Maeb, you shall not lose me. Believe me, any wife I take to queen will weep ten times the tears over my adoration of the Lady Maeb and her hold over my heart than you will ever weep over me.’

I smiled a little now. He was teasing, I knew it, but I loved him for making the effort.

‘Oh, Maeb, surely you know I loved you from that moment you fell at my feet? You were,
are
, so lovely, so transparent, so honest. Raife adored you. This king adores you. I have half a mind to lock you in a dark, dark dungeon so that the Pope shall never see you for he, too, would forgo all his vows to have you at his side.

‘But, all jesting aside, my lovely woman, do not think that I will ever let you go, nor let go the hold you have over my heart.’

I thought he was being kind. At that time I did not truly believe him. I thought that eventually his fascination with me would fade, his passion ebb, and I would be put aside, albeit with a gentle kindness.

I did not know then that Edmond would keep every promise he made to me for the rest of his life.

In the middle of a cold, frosty winter, six weeks after Christmastide, I gave birth to my second son, Hugh. It was an easy, gentle birth which hardly pained me at all, and, compared to his brother’s, accomplished in comfort and safety.

I delighted in this baby from the moment of his birth. I could not wait to hold him — I think I snatched him from the midwife’s hands — and I put him to the breast immediately. Edmond, who, while not present at the actual birth, had been pacing about in the hall of Elesberie manor and was in the birthing chamber the moment the midwife allowed it.

If I had ever doubted the strength of Edmond’s love, I did not at that moment.

He had tears in his eyes, whether of relief or happiness (or both) I do not know. He reached out a tentative finger and touched the baby’s head.

‘Look at his hair,’ Edmond said.

‘It is as black as yours.’

I have to admit some relief that Hugh then, as later, always took after me in face and form and did not in any manner resemble Raife.

My son thrived. Edmond loved him as his own.

We spent until early summer at Elesberie, then Edmond made the decision to bring me back to Westminster for his summer court.

It was risky. Neither of us knew if there remained any widespread ill-will against me, or if indeed, there might be any risk to my life.

But my major enemy, the Templars, were now negated. They had more land, more wealth. Their murmurings about my sins and possible connection to witchcraft had vanished. I do not know what Edmond told them about the diadem, but to my knowledge they never mentioned it again.

I think that possibly they had decided that if they could not control it, then it were better that no one could.

Nobles had also been to and fro at Elesberie where Edmond had continued to hold court, albeit a smaller court than he had held at the Tower, or did at Westminster.

None of these men, their wives or their sons, showed me any resentment.

Edmond’s own sons, Richard and John, stayed long months at Elesberie and they treated me respectfully, if a little coolly.

I do not think they welcomed Hugh, who they believed was their illegitimate brother. Illegitimate or not, he posed a threat to them.

So I returned to Westminster with Edmond and with our son (for so he was treated), Hugh. It had been a year since I had been south to London and Westminster, and I was astounded at the change.

The plague had indeed vanished with Raife’s death, and now the realm and its peoples breathed easier. Hope had replaced fear, rebuilding had replaced devastation. London, so shattered by fire and plague, was still a place of empty spaces where once had been buildings, but these spaces were now clear of burned timbers and harboured gentle carpets of flowers and small shrubs. In other places new buildings had sprung up, some completed, others still to be finished.

The streets were alive with people once more. Edmond later told me London had witnessed an influx of some fifteen thousand new souls in the past year alone as people flocked to the city from this realm, and others, to take advantage of the burgeoning trade and market in rebuilding, and of the need for crafts and people to ply them.

We stopped briefly at the city, then rode south down the banks of the Thames to Thorney Island. Even though I had stayed there some weeks after Raife had died, I had mainly kept indoors. When I had left, it had been at night, and I had been heavily hooded against both the dark and the rumours.

So now, when we clattered over the wooden bridge to Thorney Island, it was as if I was seeing Westminster for the first time. The abbey and its monastery — the smaller but no less grand newly built church of Saint Margaret’s — the great hall, the palace, the village. It was summer now, and everything shone under the sun.

People from the village and servants from both abbey and palace lined the street for the final approach to the palace, and they cheered and waved ribbons attached to sticks. They called out Edmond’s name, over and over and, to my utter astonishment, mine.

I wondered how much coin Edmond had caused to be spread among the crowd for them to shout my name so.

We rode to the entrance of the great hall, the household members among our company continuing on to the living quarters of the palace to fit it for our return. Hugh and his nurse, Blanche, were among them. I hated being parted from him, even for half a day, but even I could see the sense in keeping him quiet and safe in our privy chambers in the palace rather than in what I could already see was the hubbub of the great hall.