Remembrance

She looked at Gilbert. “Now he has his precious son. He has the boy he has always wanted. You should see this Talis. He is like a dream come true, beautiful, kind, so very, very good. And my husband worships him, truly worships him.”

She rose from her chair, taking a few steps across the filthy floor, littered with the remnants of hundreds of past meals. “I am dying. At most I have two years to live, and on my deathbed I want to hurt my husband as he has hurt me. I want the only thing he has ever loved taken from him, just as the only thing I ever loved was taken from me. After I am dead I want him to hear of that boy he has grown to love so much. I want him to hear all the country talk of Gilbert Rasher’s glorious son, not John Hadley’s son.”

She turned back to Gilbert. “Do you understand? I am using you as an instrument of revenge.”

Being used did not bother Gilbert; what interested him was what he was going to get out of it. “What money do I get from this?”

“For two years you will receive nothing. But when you come in two years’ time, my husband will give you everything in an attempt to keep the boy.”

“And the boy will stay with him. I know his kind. He will think Hadley is his father. There is great loyalty from father to son.”

Alida smiled, thinking that perhaps Gilbert was not quite as stupid as she’d thought. “I am taking care of that.”

“Oh?” Gilbert asked and poured her a flagon of wine. It was cheap wine, nearly undrinkable, and the pewter mug looked as though the dogs had been chewing on it, but, for him, it was extreme generosity. He had not offered her or her servants so much as a crust of bread upon their arrival. “What are you doing

to break this loyalty?”

“The boy wants to marry one of my daughters. You remember, the one I gave birth to the night Talis was born. They have lived together all these sixteen years with the wet nurse and her husband and they are attached to one another.”

“He cannot marry her,” Gilbert said. Already he was beginning to think of himself as the father of the King of England. At last his enemies would be his to punish. In essence, he would be the next King of England. He would cut off heads at a rate that would flood London.

“No, of course he cannot marry her. It cannot be allowed. And when the time comes, the boy will leave John readily enough.”

“And how have you managed that?”

She toyed with the pewter mug, not even seeing the food encrusted on it. “My husband thinks the boy stays because he wants to be a knight, because he likes all the riches my husband has to offer. But the boy stays for the girl. She is his only reason for doing anything. Quite simply, I will take that reason away from him. Already, I am separating them. By the time I get through with them, they will not remember each other.”

And that is for the better, she thought. Even if she had no other interest in this, she knew she could not allow her daughter to marry a man she loved. Alida’s parents had been too weak and had given in to their daughter when she had cried and begged to be allowed to marry John Hadley. And look where it had gotten her. If she had been married to another man it would not have killed her soul when he turned against her.

“I have separated the children and I am making sure they see other people. I want to surround them with other people. They have spent their lives only with each other and therefore think they love each other. It is only because there has been no one else.”

It didn’t matter to Gilbert what the woman did to either of them, as long as he came out the winner. “I must be given something while I wait,” he said, and Alida could not help but admire his single-mindedness. The man cared only for himself and he never forgot that what he wanted was the only thing of importance.

“We will work out terms,” she said, then began making him the lowest offer she could think of. And when he in return asked for the sun and moon and stars, she knew that she would not see a bed that night.

32

Two weeks, Callie thought. Perhaps to others they were merely days, but to her they were a lifetime. Where was he? What was he doing?

But she knew the answer to that. In the last weeks she had repeatedly sneaked down to the house and watched. Always, he was surrounded by a fluttering group of pretty women, jewels winking on their gowns and in their hair. The wind carried the sounds of their giggling, of their little squeals of delight when they tried to teach Talis something.

The first time she had seen him with them, she’d snorted in derision. Talis would hate people hovering over him; he couldn’t stand Nigel fluttering about, wanting to see what Talis was doing. And too, she and Talis had taken great pride in their studies, always competing to see who could do the best job.

But the Talis she knew and the handsome young man sitting in the sunlight on the stone bench were not the same man. This Talis couldn’t do anything correctly.

“Show me again how to do that,” he’d say, then look up wide-eyed at some fat-chested girl, as though he’d never seen anyone as smart and pretty as she.

In the few minutes Callie stood to one side looking at him, he failed in his attempts to strike the correct strings on a lute, couldn’t sing (yet she knew he had a beautiful voice), and expressed amazement at some advice a girl with wide hips gave him on how to dress.

Callie didn’t know where all the young women came from. Some were his sisters, some were ladies-in-waiting, but most were strangers to her. It was as though every pretty female in the county had been ordered to surround Talis and tell him he was wonderful.

Callie didn’t know that Talis had seen her the moment she turned the corner and that his ineptitude with the hovering women had been solely for her benefit. Truthfully, he had found all—well, almost all—of the women annoying more than anything else. For the first week he had been flattered, but now they were in his way every time he took a step, asking him to help them onto horses, showing him their sewing, wanting to practice French with him, asking him to pick fruit from the highest tree branches because he was so very tall.

Philip and James had nudged him with their elbows, and at first Talis had smiled at them, but in the last few days, he’d turned a furious face to them, making them back away from him in fear.

And Callie, he thought. Callie.

Since he’d talked to Lady Alida he had tried to keep away from Callie. It was better for both of them, was his reasoning, and, besides, he needed to learn to get along without her. He was a grown man, wasn’t he? And it would be better for her, too, if she learned to get along with other women.