Page 58 of The Rose at Twilight

“R IGHT TRUSTY AND WELL -beloved friend,” Madeline’s letter from Sheen began, “I greet you well. There is not much news, but the king, having been at home for a month now, looks forward to the time when her grace, his wife, will be delivered of his son and heir. They are both most confident of a boy. The court goes to Winchester for the occasion, Alys, and you must try to join us there, for I miss your conversation and your laughter. I miss Wolveston Hazard, too. ’Tis a fine place, and pleasant withal. ”

“’Tis a tiresome place,” Alys interjected, looking over the page at Jonet. She had been reading the letter aloud while they sat together by the hall fire after supper. “Even Nicholas does not want to be here, and has only written to me the one time.”

Jonet had turned her work to attend to a knot in her thread. She looked up and smiled. “You were not grateful when he did write, as I recall, mistress, and did not reply to his letter.”

Alys grimaced. “He feared I might decide to run away again, and only wrote to warn me of his displeasure if I did. As if I had not already considered that,” she added with a forlorn sigh.

“He did not deserve a reply to such a letter, but it has been three months since they left. I thought he would relent by now, but he does not write, nor does he come to see me.”

“He has been too busy,” Jonet said placidly.

“Though Lord Lovell has gone abroad, we no sooner learn that a riot has been quelled in Sussex than we hear of another in Norfolk. No doubt the master and his men are needed wherever there is unrest, but he will come home when he can, and he would write if you did. What else does Mistress Madeline have to say?”

Having skimmed several paragraphs while Jonet was speaking, Alys said, “She also mentions the riots, but she writes that the king believes Elizabeth’s babe, if it is a boy, will put an end to disorder because all factions will accept him as a proper heir to the throne.

I hope she has a daughter,” Alys added sourly.

When the only reply was a look of disapproval, she sighed.

“Do not heed my sulks.” Scanning more of the letter, she said, “This is odd. Listen. ‘Many men have sued for peace and general pardon, and the Tudor has shown much mercy. In sooth, in the case of a man named Sir James Tyrell, he has shown what some think to be an overabundance of it, for he has granted the man a general pardon not once but twice, with barely a month between the two.’ She adds that it was no doubt done in error.”

Jonet nodded agreement with that assessment, but Alys paused thoughtfully.

For men to sue for general pardon had become quite common, and meant that individual infractions were not examined closely, nor even specifically written down.

Since Sir James had been a follower of Richard’s, it was not odd that he had asked for a pardon, but to have received two of them only a month apart must mean that he had done something new in the meantime, something not covered by the first pardon.

She could not believe in a casual error of such magnitude. What could he have done?

Her tumbling thoughts frightened her, but she thought it unwise to discuss them with Jonet, and there was no one else in whom she could confide.

She was getting along with Gwilym but only because they rarely saw each other.

When he was not busy with the estate, he occupied himself with training men or horses, and she was kept busy with the domestic details.

As a result of their efforts, Wolveston was thriving as it had not done for years.

The castle was now comfortably furnished, the farms had tenants planting crops again, and the villages, their populations once ravaged by the sweat, had begun to thrive anew.

Gwilym had moved rapidly into the vacuum left by the deaths of her father and brother, and was well regarded by the tenants for his generosity and evenhanded stewardship.

He understood the military resources of the region too.

Not only could he be depended upon to have numbers and names at his fingertips should Sir Nicholas need to mobilize more men for the king but he encouraged men to practice their skills, even handing out gold coins to boys he saw practicing with their longbows.

Alys could and did admire Gwilym’s skills, but he seemed gloomy again, and unapproachable.

They took their meals separately, and she would not, in any case, have confided her worries to him.

With Madeline’s letter in hand, her yearning to be in the center of things again was overwhelming, and when Jonet prompted her to go on reading, she said, “Oh, she writes little more, only that Nicholas is at court now. Methinks I shall write to him, as you suggest, Jonet, and remind him that Elizabeth might take offense if I am not in attendance when her child is born.”

But the response to her request for permission to join the court came with unexpected swiftness, and was a flat negative.

Nicholas himself followed soon after it, however, and despite her frustration, Alys was glad to see him.

She was in her solar with Jonet, counting linens, when he strode into the room.

Casting aside an armful of hand cloths to throw herself into his arms, she scarcely noticed that Jonet’s face lit up then fell again when he came in alone; and her own delight lasted only until he told her he could stay less than a week.

“But you have been gone nearly three months!”

“I had duties, lass, far from here.”

“And an erring wife who required punishment,” she snapped, pulling away, making no effort to contain her flash of anger.

“Aye.” He signed to Jonet to leave them, and she did so with an alacrity that astonished Alys. “Come back here,” he said then, “and soften your temper. I do not want to brangle.”

Seeing desire in his eyes, she felt her body respond, and said impulsively, “Take me back to London with you, Nicholas. You cannot know how much I have missed you.”

“Had you mentioned me before London, I’d believe you.”

“Oh, you enrage me!” She whirled from him, and would have stormed from the room, but he grabbed her and pulled her back.

When he kissed her, she melted against him, and when he scooped her into his arms and carried her to their bedchamber, she made no protest. In truth, she had missed him sorely, but if she hoped to find him more agreeable to her wishes once he had slaked his thirst for her, she was disappointed.

“Elizabeth’s temper is uncertain, lass,” he said, stroking her hair.

“She is attended constantly by both her mother and Lady Margaret, and ’tis said the pair of them are driving her mad.

And although everyone insists that the child will be a boy, she must be terrified of having a girl, for she is unpredictable and moody.

You’d soon find yourself in the briars again. ”

“I can take care of myself,” Alys said.

“Nonetheless,” he replied, “she has not asked for you and you will not go.” He shifted his position to look at her and said gently, “It is not safe. The court goes to Winchester soon to await the birth, and Harry has ordered transcripts made of the papal bull that both confirms his title and marriage and threatens excommunication to anyone who impugns either one. The contents will be read from pulpits across the realm. The bull has even been set in type, printed like the new books, so it can be posted everywhere for men to read for themselves. Under the circumstances, ’twould be unwise to allow you to go where you might annoy Elizabeth.

Now, no more chatter, mi calon. We have better ways to spend our time. ”

Agreeing with his last statement, if not all the others, she recognized that further argument would not move him, and decided to make the most of the short time he was able to spend with her before he returned to his duties.

They had only one other dispute during his visit, when she learned the fate of the Stafford brothers, whose rebellion, like Lovell’s, had failed.

“The leaders fled into sanctuary,” Nicholas told her, “but they were soon dragged out again by the king’s men—”

“The Tudor ordered them taken from sanctuary!” Alys exclaimed, unable to believe her ears.

“Aye,” he said. “Humphrey Stafford was hanged, drawn, and quartered at Tyburn in London, though Thomas was pardoned.”

She remembered what Lovell had told her about the Tudor policy of pardoning and punishing, but the tale horrified her. “How can you bear allegiance to a man who would break sanctuary?”

Nicholas said calmly, “He did what he had to do. Traitors claim immunity wherever they can find a cross, and Culham is not a proper sanctuary. Harry is a wise man, and I bear him allegiance because I believe he is good for the country.”

“For Wales, you mean!”

“Nay, mi calon, for England too. We need a proper king, a man, not a youth or a child over whom men wanting the power of the throne would continue to fight. Now, enough. I would go riding with you today to see more of my land.”

And so she rode with him and dined with him, debated with him and slept with him, enjoying his company and his attention so much that when the time came for him to leave again, tears welled into her eyes and spilled down her cheeks.

He paused to kiss them away, murmuring, “It will not be so long now, and you have plenty to do here, although methinks you have done little to please my brother. The poor fellow is more dour than ever. Must you brangle with him all the time?”

“I do not, sir,” she said, mopping moisture from her cheek with his handkerchief.

“He has been like that since you sent Madeline away. I cannot think how you ever imagined they might make a match of it. She did seem a little attracted to him for a time, but if he heeded her at all, it was only to criticize her.”