Page 141 of The Daughters of Avalon
From this vantage, even without a tower, the beach was clearly visible. Offshore, waiting for permission to enter the harbor, a new ship waited to dispatch cargo, sails unfurled and the sea stretching endlessly. Not unlike her husband’s kisses, the view never failed to steal her breath. As lovely as she imagined Blackwood must be, as much as she someday hoped to see it, and so much as she appreciated the size and edifice of Aldergh, she could simply not imagine a more beautiful place to be than Warkworth—its lady in truth, even if she could not yet shout it to the heavens.
After all, Giles would keep his new title, and he would keep it, not because Stephen ordained it, but because the Church intended to install a champion here at Warkworth—a voice for change and an agent for Duke Henry, who even now was being groomed to restore his grandfather’s dynasty.
Only now, months later, Rosalynde understood so much of what Giles could not tell her, and she knew it despite that he had kept his vow of silence. She understood because she and Will had been there as witnesses… on that day, in the woodlot south of Whittlewood and Salcey.
Little did her mother know, Giles was not some lowly lord with so little power or influence; he was a man who governed from the shadows, and his whispers were more formidable thanshouts. That ship out there—one of many that came and went so furtively—was a testament to the power her husband wielded. In less than three months, they’d already accumulated more than two years’ worth of rations, and there was a secret hermitage under construction for emissaries of the Church, with a chapel carved directly into the stone.
In an effort to forestall hostilities, it had been Giles’s idea to put a worm in Matilda’s ear… to give Stephen a conciliatory offer: Keep his throne whilst he lived, but pass it off to Duke Henry, instead of his son. In return, Matilda would appease her barons to keep the King’s Peace. The proposal would be presented to her at the next council in Rouen, and even now they were discussing the particulars.
As for news from Westminster… with two months remaining before Giles must formally renounce her sister, the London palace was silent as the sword in her husband’s belt.
Life was complicated, she realized. Destiny was so much like the forging of a great sword. You melt the steel, brilliant and mercurial, and once poured, you must allow it to settle according to its will. But the cast, as well as the character of the alloy, would determine how the steel cooled. A hundred times the cast might be filled, and a hundred times the alloy would settle. And then, once removed from the die, knowing hands would hone and polish it, and despite the unalterable sameness of the die, every single time it would produce a slightly different sword. Where Rosalynde’s choices might lead, she had no clue. But she now understood as she never had before, that she, too, had a part to play in the story of England, as her sister Elspeth did… as Rhiannon must.
Little by little, she saw the mystery unfolding…
Even as Warkworth was being restored—stone by carefully laid stone—so, too, would England’s tale be told. But if Elspeth had never escaped the priory, she would not have met Malcom,and if Malcom had not been tested, he would never have abandoned the Usurper. Now, he bent the knee to the Scots king, and his defection had begun a chain of events that, even now, continued to weaken Stephen’s—and Morwen’s—hold upon the realm. For now, the Book of Secrets was safe… and that was all Rosalynde could do.
Her gaze was drawn to the figure ascending the motte, carefully picking his way over the newly delivered stone. “Have a care, Rose,” he called. “I’d not see you come to harm in your own home.”
Her home.
His home.
Despite so many lingering worries, the thought lifted her mood. Eager to see him after the long morning—to hold him, kiss him—she moved to the edge of the stone, and threw her arms out, reveling in the breeze that gave wings to her cloak. “’Tis beautiful!”
For the moment, Giles made no move to climb to her height, seeming content enough to stand in her shadow.
“Youare beautiful,” he argued, with a familiar gleam in his eyes. It was a game they so oft played, one that normally ended in a bed—their bed.
“Nay,” she said with a grin. “Youare beautiful.”
As it always did, the saucy argument made her husband laugh. But he sobered at once, staring a long while, before opening his palm and producing a small object—a shining ring. Very deftly, like a trickster, he moved it between his fingers, then held it aloft, so Rosalynde could see it.
When she squinted, he leapt up onto the cornerstone, as agilely as a boy. “Wilhelm recovered it from the fire,” he said, turning the ring between his fingers, so that the sun glinted off the metal. He turned it slowly, so Rose could examine the depiction of a lion sejant holding in his dexter-paw an axe, andin the sinister, a tilting-spear. It was a sigil, she realized—a smaller, more delicate version of the lord’s ring.
“He gave it to me when we returned from Aldergh. I saved it, intending to present it to you… but after.”
He had no need to explain what “after” meant. The two of them had wedded in secret, with only her sister, her lord husband and their priest as witnesses. As of yet, Giles had not revealed their God-spoken vows to anyone, save Will, though it was hardly a secret that the lord of Warkworth had returned, if not with a bride in name, then a bride of his heart. Later, once all was made right with her sister, and Warkworth was ready to withstand a strike, he would rebuke the betrothal to Seren, and they would wed again, only this time with the Church’s blessing, here before all their people at Warkworth.
“Did you come to tease me?” She asked.
He shook his head. “Nay, my love. I saw you standing here and realized… tomorrow is never promised.”
That was true. For now, there was a fragile peace in the realm, and even Will was thriving in his role as steward, but tomorrow promised more discord. No matter how diminished Morwen might be, her mother would stop at naught to see her prodigy seated upon England’s throne.
“After all we have been through, you will not be my Ayleth,” he said, and reached out to take Rosalynde by the hand, sliding the ring onto her small finger. Rosalynde’s heart tripped, knowing what it meant. There was no one who would see this ring upon her finger who would not understand. “It was once my mother’s.” He gave her a nod. “Now, it is yours, my lady of Warkworth. If you will have it…”
She held up her hand to look at the ring. “Oh, Giles,” she whispered. “’Tis beautiful!”
“Youare beautiful,” he argued, and when Rosalynde laughed, he pulled her into his arms, kissing her soundly.
“Yeah, I will have it,” she said with glee. “I will have it, and I will have you. And I will have you until the end of my days.”
His dark eyes crinkled at the corners, but then he sobered. “Rose… there’s more,” he said. “There’s another reason I gave it now.”
“Oh, no. What more?” A feeling like dread doused Rosalynde’s joy as he reached back to pluck something from his belt. It was a parchment… bearing the king’s seal… already broken. “It came for me whilst we were in council,” he said, avoiding her gaze for the moment. “We spoke at length about the implications. Read the letter,” he demanded.
With trembling hands, Rosalynde took the parchment, her heart tripping painfully, as she straightened it, then read as he bade her…
