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N an stood in the door of the manor kitchen, watching a boy sweep ashes from the hearth. It was a small kitchen, but as warm and welcoming as any other. The bustle of the evening meal was long finished, the cleaning done and the servants scattered, and now the sun had set.

She knew, long before he appeared beside her, that Robin had found her.

He had probably searched for her all day, but she had discovered a secret stair that took her to the top of the tower where she looked out across the fields for hours and hours.

For the first time in their friendship, she had avoided him, because to share this moment with him or even to look at him would make it real.

When he came to her, he stood close and gathered a fold of her dress in his fist. He had done that when he was a child, when he felt especially protective of her, or very lonely or scared for himself.

It had been years. Now the fold he gathered was nearer to her hip than her knee, because he had grown so tall.

“Do you remember,” she asked him, “the mice when we slept in the kitchen at Dinwen?”

He leaned against her a little, warm pressure at her shoulder. “And Hawys snoring, and the smell of dried fish when the wind blew southerly.”

The boy at the hearth had banked the fire, leaving the embers faintly glowing.

He nodded to them and stepped out of his wooden clogs as he left the kitchen, walking with bare feet toward the hall.

Now he would go to his own bed, wherever it was, prepared to wake early to start the day’s long labor.

Stoke the fire, turn the spit, grind the spice.

All of it was as familiar to her as breathing.

A prince. Not a falconer. Not even just a lord. A prince.

“Will you sleep with me by the fire?” she asked Robin.

“Nan –”

“Say you will.” She was the one who used to say it wasn’t right for him to sleep by her side in the kitchen, for all that he was a page at the time. “I want to be just Nan, with her Robin at her side. Just for a little while.”

They made a place in the corner by the hearth, his cloak spread below them and hers over them.

He grumbled a little about the hard floor and she teased him for growing soft.

When they laid down, he did not curl his back against hers as he used to.

Or maybe he did, and it felt different. Everything was changed. Everything.

Fuss settled at her feet and they all lay in the dark for hours, not sleeping.

She thought of the steward at Morency, and how she had once considered becoming his wife because he was a good man and wanted her.

She had let go of the idea easily, because she could not fathom marrying so high above her.

A prince. The last living prince of Aderinyth.

Deep in the night, she turned onto her back. Robin turned too, like he’d been waiting for it. He took her hand in his, and they stared up at the blackness above them a long time before he whispered to her.

“Do you love him, Nan?”

She tried to remember words. She seemed to have lost them. There were sounds that meant something, that would say what was trapped inside her. Breath and tongue and teeth and lips. Simple sounds. They would make it real.

“How can I love a prince?”

It was so plain, when she said it out loud.

Princes were not there to be loved. It was as senseless as loving a barrel or a trout or the pope.

She could still hear Lady Eluned reciting his string of names and title, word after word after word.

Then her own name next to it, one little sound anchored to nowhere and nothing. How could she love a prince.

“You like him more than pork pie,” said Robin quite reasonably. “That is no small thing.”

Nan turned her face to him. She could barely make out the outline of his profile.

“Do you still love Ansel?” she asked, and felt his fingers twitch against hers.

Robin had loved him from their boyhood, though none but Nan knew it.

He had gone to the tourney knowing Ansel would be there, and they would see each other for the first time in many years.

Last night he had whispered to Nan that Ansel was cordial and warm, with all the same passionate interests as when they were boys, and their meeting was joyful – until it was not.

Ansel did not want him. Not that way. Robin did not say it outright, but he did not have to. She knew the sound of a broken heart.

“I know not,” he answered at last. “I think me I know naught of love.” He squeezed her hand, and twined his fingers with hers. “Nay, I know the hurt of it. But that is all.”

She turned her face back to the ceiling.

There were tears that spilled over and trickled their way to her hair.

She could weep for Robin. It must be for Robin.

If she were to weep for herself, she might never stop.

Her brother, her mother, Oliver, Bea. The Welshman.

There would be no end to her weeping, so she must not let there be a start.

“Only a fool could not want you,” she whispered. “And he’s worse than a fool, to hurt you.”

She listened to the steady rise and fall of Robin’s breath, and felt his hand tighten gently on hers.

“He cannot change what he is, Nan. Though it brings pain to one who loves him, he cannot change what God and his birth have made him.”

The words were meant for both of them, a bitter truth.

Her life had been spent in accepting injustice and sorrow, knowing from birth that to rail against it was wasted energy.

But now there was something in her that seemed to beat against the bars of a cage, howling that it was not fair, it was not fair.

A prince. God save her, a prince.

“M ake haste, girl, she waits!”

The lady frowned at her amid the bustle of the kitchen, the morning light so bright that it blinded.

Nan fumbled as she washed her face and hands.

It seemed impossible to braid her hair neatly, and she wished her kerchief was cleaner.

The knot in her stomach did not abate when she sipped the watered beer on offer.

Robin had left before the kitchen stirred, whispering to her that he was not a child anymore, and he would not have anyone think her lewd. He was ever chivalrous, even to a nobody like her.

“Honeyed water, not plain,” Nan said to the servant assembling the tray. “And cheese. He won’t ask for it, but he always likes a bit of cheese.”

Both the lady and the servant scowled at her when she did it herself, but she did not care.

This was something she knew, and she could not let it be done incorrectly.

Her lady preferred honeyed water in the morning, and Lord Robert loved cheese.

She chose the most pungent, then set a milder one next to it.

And a pile of wastel bread for him, too, with bits of apple in.

She looked for anything else to add, but the tray was already laden with a variety of food, more than two people could ever eat.

Her hands were empty as she followed the scornful lady, because they would not let Nan carry the tray or the jug.

They treated her as guest and not servant – a guest who had slept on the kitchen floor but was summoned to a private audience.

It was not the solar they took her to, but a smaller room next to it.

There was a large window, beautiful tapestries, and two chairs at a table set by the hearth.

Her lady waited for her there, alone. Lord Robert would not come. It was not to be that kind of meeting.

Nan made her courtesy, troubled by her stained kerchief, the coarseness of her dress, and most of all that Lady Eluned stood at the window and did not look out at the sky, but at Nan.

When the refreshment was set out and the others left them alone, she felt her lady’s eyes on her. She could not seem to meet them.

“Sit, Nan, and eat.”

Lady Eluned filled two cups with honeyed water and added a touch of the wine. It was the good kind, the best their French vineyards had to offer. Nan knew it by the color and the scent.

It should not be so difficult. She had done this before.

But it always took every ounce of boldness she had, to sit down with a great lady and take a cup that had been poured by her hand.

Now she clutched the cup and stared at the food until Lady Eluned tipped the jug of wine again, adding a bit more to Nan’s cup.

“Drink, Nan.” And because even her most gentle voice was bred to command, Nan obeyed.

When Lady Eluned had first given her a coin all those years ago, neither of them could have thought it would turn out like this.

It started as a simple request, a moment’s transaction that tangled the life of a serving girl with that of a great lady, whose rival was a monstrous and lustful lord.

It ended with Oliver dead, and Nan scarred but saved – and with this undying gratitude, these deep bonds.

There was no such thing as silence between them, not truly.

Still, she braced herself for the words that must be spoken.

“Your sister,” said Lady Eluned. Not a question or a command. Just an offering, an opening. Just a word, with a wealth of understanding behind it.

“She is a whore and a bawd, outside the walls of Lincoln.” Nan watched shadows drift across the floor before the window, clouds moving across the sky. “You warned me, my lady. You said there are things worse than death that might befall her.”

She had also warned of hurts from which Nan could not protect herself, because there was no defense against them. Sometimes she thought Lady Eluned saw everything, even before it happened.

“Is it worse than death, to be a whore and a bawd?” Lady Eluned asked, her voice mild. “If she lives that way unwilling, I know well you would bring her out of it, no matter the cost.”