Page 17 of The Rose at Twilight

He was watching her. She bit her lip, regarding him again from beneath her lashes, trying to read his expression, wondering if there might be any way to make him see her side of the matter.

Certainly, if that was too much to hope, she ought still to be able to win his good offices by employing the same tactics that had served her before now, both with Plantagenet men and others.

She looked down and said quietly, “I do not understand what you want me to say, sir, but you must not speak so to me of Richard. You are no doubt a wise man, strong and brave as a lion—”

“Such woman’s prattle does naught to soften me,” he said with sudden harshness. “Not even a wench with hair like a raven’s wing and eyes like shiny coal would move me with such simpering wiles. You will learn that I do not easily lose sight of my intent. I will have your word now.”

“I thought you liked my hair.” She was pleased with the retort, thinking she had learned to use his own device against him, to twist debate as he did himself. “You did tell me once that it is like burnished gold and prettier than Elizabeth’s.”

His stern look did not waver. “Shall I call Ian up here, Lady Alys, and tell him to bring bindings?”

Believing now that he would do it, she swallowed and said with as much dignity as she could muster, “I will not defy you again, sir, not before we reach London.”

He nodded without comment, and they rode on in silence.

Without conversation to distract her, Alys had to fight to keep from thinking about Jonet, no doubt dead now.

She found the effort to maintain a calm demeanor was exhausting, and soon realized that she had not fully recovered from her own illness.

When the fog lifted at last, and Sir Nicholas increased the pace, any inclination she might have had to initiate more conversation disappeared.

But despite his continued silence and the fact that his attention seemed fixed upon the road ahead, she knew he was watching her.

Determined though she was not to let him suspect her growing fatigue, she nearly exclaimed aloud in gratitude when at last he signaled to his men to slow again so that some could dismount and lead their horses for a time, to rest them.

She was having all she could do by then to remain upright in her saddle.

Knowing that to occupy her mind would help her stay awake, but wanting to dwell neither upon Jonet nor upon Sir Nicholas’s preference for dark women over fair, or on the humiliation she would experience if she tumbled to the ground before all these men, she forced her thoughts ahead to London.

Elizabeth would be there before her, would in fact—if the Tudor held by the vow he was said to have made at Rennes Cathedral two Christmases past—soon be Queen of England.

Remembering Sir Nicholas’s suggestion as to the most likely fate of Elizabeth’s brothers, Alys realized that Elizabeth had said nothing about either of them at Sheriff Hutton.

That was not so odd in itself, since Elizabeth preferred to speak only of herself, but as best Alys could remember, no one else had ever mentioned the two young princes either.

“You are silent, mi geneth. Art weary?”

“Aye, a little.”

“I thought it must be so, for I had expected you to speak again by now in defense of the Yorkist usurper. You have not so much as attempted to deny that he murdered his young nephews.”

It was as if he had looked into her mind, but she refused to allow him to disconcert her this time.

She said calmly, “King Richard would never have harmed them, sir. He had been charged with their care and that of the realm by one whose regard he sought and to whom he owed his greatest fealty. He would have protected his brother’s sons with his very life. ”

Sir Nicholas said gently, “It will perchance be better for them if that is not found to be the case, mistress. This country wants peace, but there are rebels who would rally in support of a Yorkist heir if they thought he could supplant our Harry. I doubt he would harm Edward’s sons by choice, but if the boys do live, Harry might find himself left with no other recourse. ”

She said, “They can be no more of a threat to him than they were to Richard, for they cannot inherit. They are bastards.”

“I have been told that your Parliament can alter that fact.”

“So, too, might they set aside the bill of attainder that prevents Neddie—the Earl of Warwick—from inheriting. You must know he is the son of Richard’s elder brother Clarence, but Richard did not harm him.

He sent him to Sheriff Hutton with Elizabeth.

If you fear for Richard’s nephews, sir, you must also fear for Warwick, and verily, the Tudor has no cause to harm him.

Neddie is no knightly warrior but only a soft and gentle boy. ”

“Like your brother?”

“My brother?” But as she spoke, she remembered that he had described the dead youth at Wolveston in just those words.

Despising herself for a fool, she kept her countenance with effort and said with another casual shrug, “I do not think them at all similar. My brother was no doubt a scholar like my father, who detested war. Neddie is … Well, not to put too fine a face on it, sir, Neddie is a bit simple.”

“What about your other brother,” Sir Nicholas asked, “the one who had already left Wolveston? Do you still insist, mi geneth, that you know not whither he has gone?”

Alys shot him an angry look. “I do not wish to speak of my brothers, sir, and you are unmannerly to ask me such questions. In point of fact, I scarcely know them.” That, at least, was true, and she was glad, for she found it uncomfortable to lie to him.

But she truly did not know Roger well, since she had met him only on a few occasions since leaving home.

Daringly, she added, “I believe you question me only because I have made you think of things you had rather not have pondered. You did not know our king and yet have you attempted to blacken his name, only to justify your own allegiance to his usurper.”

“Why must I justify my allegiance? You do little enough to justify your own, and do you not honor Richard for his unswerving fidelity to his brother, King Edward? I should think you would understand that such loyalty needs no justification.”

She was silenced for a moment, because she understood that men frequently believed such things.

Her own loyalty, regardless of what he might think, was not so easily commanded.

She believed in Dickon because Anne had believed in him and because she had loved Anne.

But perhaps it was likewise with Sir Nicholas.

After all, the Tudor was also a Welshman, though he had spent most of his life in France.

Perhaps Sir Nicholas’s true loyalty was to Wales, and to the Tudor only because all Welshmen believed he might be depended upon to benefit Wales.

“Well?” he prompted.

She smiled. “Perhaps you are right, sir.” It was always better, she knew, to agree with a man until one had marshaled one’s thoughts with care.

One accomplished two things thereby. One pleased the man in question, thus disarming him, and gave oneself a chance to think of a new and better argument.

Then, when the time was ripe, one still might have the last word if one was careful and a bit lucky.

A woman in these perilous times had few weapons with which to protect herself against masculine power and authority, so it behooved her to make careful use of the two greatest ones she did possess, her wits and her allure.

With these thoughts in mind, she turned the subject, but it was not long before the conversation died again.

She was finding it harder to keep her seat, and Sir Nicholas seemed reluctant to stop the cavalcade to rest properly.

Her replies to his comments became monosyllabic, and although the fog had lifted, the scenery around her began to blur.

Her eyelids were heavy, and kept drooping, until suddenly and without warning, she slept.

When she awoke, the first thing she noticed was that the sounds around her had not changed.

There was still the rhythmic clatter of hoofbeats on the road, the tumult of the river to her left, and the steady murmur of men’s voices behind her.

She was also still mounted, although her saddle seemed to have grown more supportive.

Even as the thought crossed her mind, she realized she was no longer riding her palfrey, or riding alone.

When she realized that she leaned against a broad masculine chest, her head nestled comfortably in the hollow of his shoulder, she started, straightening as best she could to look about her in bewilderment.

“You ought to have told me how tired you were, mi geneth ,” Sir Nicholas said behind her. “I should not have liked it much had you fallen beneath the horses’ hooves.”

“I am sorry to have troubled you,” she replied tartly, straining to turn and look at him. “I suppose it was too much to expect you to stop this procession while I rested.”

“There was no need. You are not ill, merely exhausted, and that is not to be wondered at.”

“I can ride my palfrey now,” she said stiffly.

“I think not. You will do better to rest while you may, and Black Wyvern can carry us both easily. You are no weight at all for him compared to a full suit of armor.”

“I am surprised he will consent to carry me at all. He cannot be accustomed to skirts.”

“He does as he is bid,” Sir Nicholas said with meaning in his voice.

“Moreover, he is fully accustomed to trappings of all sorts. Though we do not burden our horses with all the colorful but unneeded ornaments that the English do, we do, even in Wales, have tourneys and ceremonies for which such trappings are worn.”

“But you do not wear armor now either, though you travel in enemy lands,” she said, voicing a question she had wanted to ask since she had first laid eyes upon him and his men.