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H e stood, dazed and despairing, in a corner of the hawk-house with Hal’s father.

Moris Hartwin had become like a true father to him over the years, and seemed perfectly pleased to treat Gryff like his own son.

It was he who had heard the ominous whispers between lords as they hunted that morning and repeated them now to Gryff.

“It can only bode ill.” Gryff had said it at least a dozen times now. Every debate and every imagining – every path came back to this. “To hope it is for my safekeeping is senseless.”

Prince Llewellyn was dead. Gryff had learned it two weeks ago and was still surprised at how it grieved him.

The prince had been such a large and looming figure in his life, and now he was no more.

But the uprising did not end with Llewellyn’s death.

The fight against England continued and, predictably, some of the Welsh nobles began to turn on each other now that hope was fading.

They traded their loyalty away to the king for English titles and promises of continued wealth.

Those few Welsh who stayed true to the fight followed Llewellyn’s brother Dafydd now.

Gryff had sent yet another message to his father and brothers, warning them that the king’s wrath would be unlike any they had yet known if they dared to follow Dafydd.

He had begged them to see the sense in making peace now while the king might still reward them for it.

If they waited too long and fought to the bitter end, they would hang.

His only reply was the news yesterday that his father led a fresh attack on the king’s army.

And today Gryff learned through whispers that he was to be taken from Lancaster’s household at last, to be carried for reasons unknown to an unnamed place. It filled his mind with dark portents.

“Know you what Edward intends for Llewellyn’s daughter?

” he asked Moris. “Will has said the king is resolved that she will never marry nor live free. She is a babe in arms, born only months ago and damned because of her father. Already they plan prisons for the sons of any Welshmen who have led the fight against Edward. The fathers will hang and their children be made captive for life.”

Moris rubbed a hand over his face. He had begun to look old in this last year.

“We cannot know any of it for truth. It is yet only rumor and intention.”

In better times, Gryff would have laughed at this optimism. Now he only pulled his cloak tighter around himself, shivering in the January freeze. Hal often said that his father was too good, always expecting reason and justice.

“When they come for me, then will we know it as truth.”

“Cannot William discover what is planned for you?”

Will was at court, and if he knew anything he would never trust such intelligence to a letter – if he would share it at all. Of late Will had grown closemouthed and even more cunning. He valued his place at court and in the king’s trust highly. Mayhap more highly than any friendship.

“Did he know of it and wish to warn me, he would have done it already,” Gryff answered, feeling his heart sink further.

It was the first time he admitted to himself that he did not feel sure of Will, who was no longer a lonely boy hoping to make a friend.

Will was in line be a great Marcher lord and, as such, would be nearly as powerful as the king himself.

Now more than ever, as powers shifted, a Marcher lord could not be trusted to stay loyal to a powerless friend.

“They say the king speaks of such bloody vengeance against the Welsh that any who think to defy him will quake in terror. If I am suspect–”

“But you are not!” Moris was insistent.

This much was true. Gryff had spent nearly a year in demonstrating that his loyalty was to Edward and not to Wales.

“My blood is suspect,” he said bluntly. There was no hope that the king would forget that he was Welsh, and that his father was even now laying siege to a Norman castle.

Gryff had to admit it was a most efficient way to end all resistance to Edward’s rule: stamp out the bloodline of every man who fought against it.

“I tell you true, if I knew a way to escape these walls, I would fly far from here. I would flee to somewhere safe, though I know not where that might be.”

“Haps you should,” came Moris’s unexpected reply. “If it is your life in the balance, you should.”

Gryff blinked at him, this man who cared for him like a father and who rarely spoke with such a dire tone.

To flee was unthinkable, an irrevocable decision that would likely damn him in the king’s eyes.

Before he could say so, there was a noise, the sound of someone entering at the far end of the hawk-house.

“Say nothing to Hal of this.” Moris spoke low and urgent. “He can say in truth he knew naught, do you choose to flee.”

It seemed absurd even to think it. He would have said something to Hal despite Moris’s warning, but he did not want to burden his friend with so much grim news.

It was easier to curse the cold and talk about which birds should be flown on tomorrow’s hunt.

It was easier to forget that no matter what he might choose, his days here were numbered.

Gryff spent every moment of that day expecting the king’s men to carry him away and, now that the seed of the idea was planted, he passed a sleepless night considering the possibility of fleeing.

To France, perhaps, or further. First he would have to find a way to escape this fortress filled with men loyal to the king, and that was a seemingly insurmountable obstacle.

But then he realized it might not be so difficult.

He had lived here for so long and was such a part of the household that he had all but forgotten, until recently, that he was a hostage.

And everyone else here, including the household guard, had grown just as relaxed in their attitude toward him.

Still he thought of no way it could be done.

Outside these walls the only people he knew were his Welsh kin, and to go to them was certain death.

He had no horse, no coin, no place to go.

In the morning, it all seemed like the most desperate kind of fantasy. He put it out of his mind and tried instead to dismiss the growing dread. He tried to tell himself that there was no noose tightening around his neck, that the king would let him live in peace and free once the war was done.

Then the message from Will came, a whisper from a courtier as he passed in the hall that very afternoon. “Be on your guard. Your bastard brother thinks the time is ripe to make himself the only living heir.”

The man was gone before Gryff could ask if this meant his trueborn brothers were dead.

In the hawk-house he told Moris that perhaps there was naught to be lost if he fled for his life. If Rhodri did not kill him, the king was like to throw him in a tower.

Moris nodded somberly and said he knew a place.

It was not as far as France, but in time Gryff might be able to make his way out of England to certain safety.

Until then, it was simple enough to smuggle him out hidden beneath the empty barrels that would be delivered to Monmouth tomorrow.

And there, said Moris, was a friend who would lead Gryff in secret away from this place he had come to think of as a home.

He was to go to a Brother Clement, who tended the hawks at an abbey deep in the wilds. It was far from Wales and Windsor and anywhere kings or murder-minded bastard brothers might find him.