Page 44

N an retreated to the tower roof again the next day.

She should be attending her lady, or bent over an embroidery frame – something, anything.

But she needed a kind of peace that could not be found anywhere except in this high corner of the manor, open to the wind and sky.

A place where she could see the world but the world could not see her.

Word would come soon. The king held court barely a day’s ride from here, hunting at some manor she had never heard of.

Close enough for a pigeon to have carried a return message already, and she did not know what it meant that there was none.

Perhaps it was not safe, or perhaps there was no news yet.

But if nothing else, Robin should come back tonight.

It might be any minute. She stared at the horizon, trying not to watch for riders.

At Morency she would have lost herself in sparring with Davydd and Robin, or listening to the unrelenting flow of Suzanna’s chatter as they stitched an altar cloth.

Or hours spent next to Gwenllian in the herb-house, her occasional murmur about this or that cure, the quiet companionship as they sorted and steeped and distilled.

Life had made sense there. She had made sense there, or felt she had.

Lord Robert found her at midday, and looked out with her at the sky for a long minute before saying only that there was no message yet.

Just the sound of his voice was a comfort.

It was him who had been the first to soothe her when she came out of that awful place, before her lady arrived to barter for their release.

He had even wiped the blood and tears from her face, gentle as her own father – or as a father should be, if he cared more about his daughter than his drink.

So when, hours later, the Welshman appeared on the roof, she made herself stay still. She knew it was Lord Robert who had told him where to find her, and he would only do that if he thought she should hear what the Welshman had to say.

He held himself differently now. It had been there in the hall and it was here too.

It wasn’t just the fine new clothes they had given him.

There was a sureness in his body, an absolute control of the space around him, the confidence like arrogance that was the birthright of highborn lords.

It was so very far from the shrinking man she had found tied to a tree.

When had it begun? Why had she not seen it for what it was?

She looked out at the horizon, and felt him looking at her.

It was a long time before he spoke. He soaked in her silence first, fit himself into it in that way he had.

For a moment it felt like it had only days ago, like she knew his every thought and feeling.

Hiraeth , she thought – and knew it was not the distance from his lands that grieved him in this moment. It was the distance from her.

“It means naught to me that they call me a prince,” he said quietly. “Is but a word. One that has damned me.”

She tried to believe him. She tried not to remember how he had lain naked before her, all spread out like a banquet beneath her greedy hands, no shame in her as she compelled him to serve her hunger.

If it were but a word, she would not feel this way. If it were but a word, he would have told her.

“The Welsh have no kings, only princes with little wealth,” he continued, so determined to explain it. “My only worth has been as pawn, to my father and to Edward.”

Nan had no worth to any kings, and her worth to her father had fit easily into the palm of his hand. A few coins, spent and forgotten. Her worth.

“It is the Normans who rule, and it means little to them that I was called a prince. When I lived among them, they looked on me with contempt.” It was there in his voice, how it still stung him. “They sneered at me. Every day, for years.”

He made it sound like she should be amazed.

If she felt like talking, she might tell him how she and Oliver were treated like dogs when a Norman lord had held them.

Worse than dogs. But she had told him that already, all of it.

He had seen the scars. So she stayed silent and tried to care about some sneering in his youth.

“I could not tell you for fear of my life. If Rhodri knew I lived, or the king... I could tell no one.” She could hear the urgency beneath his calm coaxing, hear how much her silence unsettled him.

“I verily believed I could live a simple Welshman, with none to remember my birth. I tell you, it is what I wanted.” The yearning was in his voice, the same way he sounded when he spoke of his home. “I wanted that, and you.”

She had imagined it. She had. No use in pretending otherwise.

She had imagined a place in the green hills he had described, him flying falcons and Fuss hiding from the hawks.

And now her imagination added a child – his child – in her arms, and she wanted it with a breathtaking ferocity.

All of it: the place and the child and him.

It made her dizzy with longing, and then sick with hate. Hate for him because he made her want it. Hate for his murderous brother, hate for the king. Hate for all of them because they stole her Welshman and replaced him with a prince.

“It means naught to me, Nan,” he insisted. “It is but a name.”

A name, just a name. Gruffydd son of Iorwerth and grandson of Cynan the Red, that was what he was called. The leader of Aderinyth, who probably had a bard to sing the history of his family for ten generations.

She was Nan. Just Nan from nowhere, with a whore for a sister.

Though he stood close enough that she heard his every breath, all she could feel was the distance that had come with this word he said had no meaning.

Even if a lesser prince, he was still a lord, like those she had served, those who felt free to grab and take as their right.

Those who commanded serving girls to their beds, who had looked at her and seen a sweet morsel to get their hands on, who were the reason she had made herself strong and deadly: so that they could never hurt her again.

But one had found a way to hurt her in spite of it. Her heart seemed to bleed, a steady seeping as though from a skillful cut, no matter that he had not intended it. Any of it.

“Say something,” he entreated.

She could not. She could feel how much he wanted to touch her. Her eyes stayed fixed on the horizon. The riders would come soon.

“Know you what has become of the other Welsh princes?” he asked suddenly.

She did not. She remembered hearing that the prince of all Wales who had died, Llewellyn, had a tiny baby girl. Nan had been vaguely aware that there were other Welsh princes but they were just more lords, to her. It had never been a thing that mattered before.

“Prince Llewellyn had no sons when he died. His daughter was taken from Wales and given to a convent as a babe in arms. She will never be allowed to leave it, for fear the Welsh will rally to her. They say she does not even know Welsh, and it will never be taught to her.”

There was no anger in his tone but she heard it anyway, and understood why. They stole even her language from her, this orphaned Welsh princess, as though taking her land and her people were not enough.

“Prince Dafydd was executed for treason.” He paused, and she nodded quickly to let him know he need not detail the execution to her.

Everyone had heard of it, how the traitor Dafydd had been tortured.

His skull still rotted on a spike in London.

“He had two sons, both imprisoned at Bristol. The oldest was near my age. Last year he died in his prison. The younger prince...” His voice faded, and she glanced to see his face.

His lips had gone white at the edges, and she looked away quickly.

“He is there still. He is locked in a cage every night.”

The sun seemed too bright, the air too cold. She did not know what to do with the images he put in her head. She pressed her tongue hard against her teeth and thought of her lady, wise and cunning, who said he would not be put to death. Nothing had been said about cages.

“It is a curse. All the misfortunes of my life have befallen me because they call me a prince. Believe me that I would live happily as your Welshman. I have lived happily as that.” He stepped closer. Close enough to touch. “In all my wretched life, Nan, it is the only happiness I have known.”

What was there to say – the truth, that it was the same for her? She stared out at the empty sky and remembered him saying simply, And then I wake, and you are there. He had said it like it was an answer to everything. And it had felt that way.

But it was no answer to this. There was no answer to this at all.

He turned from her to face the same sky, and they looked out in silence together. She could feel him giving up on her. Yet her tongue would not move.

“Tell me anything of what is inside you.” He said it like a prayer, a supplication to her silence.

What was inside her. She thought of Oliver dead on a dirty floor.

She thought of her mother telling her to care for her brother and sister.

She thought of her aunt marveling over simple embroidery, of Bea with a blade pinning her sleeve, of Robin whispering in the dark.

She thought of princes and cages and far green hills.

“Say something,” he whispered.

But she did not, and he left her alone under the open sky.