The Conqueror

“Excuse me, milady,” he muttered, then turned and shouted, “Faster, Peter! Move yer weary self faster or ye’ll be dumber than a stump by Yule. And ye’ve not so very many brains to give all away to a quintain,” he added ominously.

Peter saluted. Fulk sighed and turned back. “Where did ye find this one, milady?”

“Where I found all the rest,” she replied dully. “Dying somewhere.”

Fulk grunted. “Well, that makes it worth somethin’. I’ll give him this; he works harder than all the rest put together.” He punched his knife tip through another hunk of meat. “Milady? Ye asked me a question.”

Mist saturated everything. She brushed her wet hair back with a cold, damp fingertip. “Eustace. The prince. What kind of man is he?”

He considered her. “Ye mean, what kind of man was he?”

“Indeed. Was. What kind of man was he?”

Fulk’s keen gaze scanned her face. “Ye’ve been in a war yer whole life, milady. What do ye think it does to men? Princes all the way down. It’s got a ruinin’ effect, it does.”

“Not everyone. Not everyone gets ruined.”

Fulk met her eye. “Ye’re thinking of your Papa.”

But she wasn’t. She’d been thinking of Griffyn. Now, though, she was thinking of her father, thinking hard.

“He was no saint, Gwynnie. Ye’ve got to know that, after all this time. He was no better’n the rest in some ways.”

“Was he worse?”

The question popped out before she could stop it, puffed up like a small white cloud in front of her lips. Fulk stopped chewing. His cropped head swiveled around.

“I suppose it’s in how ye look at it, milady. Which side ye’re on.”

“And what if,” she began. Her stomach churned sickeningly, as if she’d just ridden over a wave. “What if I were someone who already lived here at the Nest, when Papa came and captured it?”

Fulk looked away. “There was a fire.”

Something sharp and wicked rose up in her throat. “What fire?” Fulk didn’t answer. “What fire? Did Papa—”

She stopped short. Leave it unfinished. Her head floated light, dizzy. The mists kept bouncing their words back, cloaking them, so it felt like they were under a dock, whispering about piracy and shipwrecks and other, awful things.

Do not ask again.

The stiff, unwanted silence continued until Gwyn asked in crisp voice, “What about Eustace, Fulk? I asked about Eustace, the king’s son.”

Fulk cleared his throat, planted one beefy palm on the hilt of his knife, and cast a squinted eye at the ground. “Well, milady, he’s meaner’n they come.”

“What?”

“He’d a mind of his own, and not so’s you’d respect it, but more like be disgusted by it.”

“Well,” she exclaimed, flabbergasted.

“And don’t think yer brother thought any different, milady.”

Her jaw fell open. “But they were friends.”

Fulk shook his head. “None o’ that. Eustace was goin’ to be his king one day, that was all.” He shoved a wedge of meat onto his knife tip. “Eustace was nothing but trouble, and bett’r for all of us that he’s dead, forgive me Jésu,” he finished, tossing a glance of half-hearted penance skyward.

“But Fulk?” she said in confusion. “Why did you support King Stephen, then, knowing Eustace would follow him to the throne?”

He gave her a surprised look, hunk of meat skewered and dangling, dripping, before his mouth. “Why, I wasn’t supportin’ him, milady. I was supportin’ you.”