“Nay, I simply spouted nonsense, that is all. Nothing about you is common. And your eyes, Philippa, they are the blue of the Plantagenets, a striking blue as vivid as an August sky.” Philippa rolled her eyes at his effluence. “Aye,” Lord Henry continued, rubbing his hands. “Aye, that is bound to please the king mightily when he finally meets you.”
To meet the king. Her father. It held only mild interest for her now. All babes had to be born of someone. She was a royal indiscretion, nothing more, and that fact was going to ruin her life. “Please excuse me now, sir,” she said. “I must decide what to do. If you wish to stay, you will use Edmund’s chamber. If the chancellor wishes to stay, then he will sleep—” She broke off, shrugged, and walked away.
“Philippa’s not happy,” said Edmund to the old man who wasn’t Philippa’s father. Just imagine, Philippa was the king’s get! It frayed the thoughts, such a happening. Did that make the King of England his step-grandfather?
“Your father, young Edmund, will make haste back to reason once he’s had a chance to think things through. He’s not acting like a man should act, given this heavenly gift.”
“You don’t know my father,” said Edmund. “But Philippa does.” Edmund left Lord Henry and walked to Crooky who was still sitting on the ground, rubbing his jaw.
“Aye, I was cuffed by a royal princess,” said Crooky, his face alight with reverence and awe. “A real princess of the realm and she wanted to cuff me! Her fist touched me. Me, who’s naught but a bungling ass and so common I am below common and thus uncommon.”
“Nay, Crooky, she’s the king’s bastard and her fist did more than just touch you. I thought she was going to knock your head from your neck.”
“Split you not facts into petty parts, little master. Your stepmother is of royal blood and that makes you . . . hmmmm, what does that make you?”
“Perchance almost as uncommon as you, Crooky.” Edmund caught Gorkel’s eyes and skipped away.
“The mistress is beset with confusion,” Gorkel announced, “and so is the master.”
“Aye.”
Gorkel ground his teeth and stroked his jaw. “You must speak to the master. You’re his flesh. He must heed you.”
Edmund agreed this was true, but he knew his father well enough to realize he could say nothing to change his thinking. In any case, there was no opportunity. Dienwald, astride Philbo, was riding out of the inner bailey, alone, a blind look in his eyes. Men called after him, but he didn’t respond, just kept riding, looking straight ahead.
In her bedchamber, Philippa sat on the bed and folded her hands in her lap. The situation was too much to absorb, so she simply sat there and let all that had occurred flow over her. Words, only words out of men’s mouths, yet they’d changed her life. She didn’t particularly care that she was the king’s bastard. She didn’t particularly care that now the facts of her life had become quite clear to her. She didn’t care that Lady Maude had made much of her life a misery. And finally, she didn’t care that she now knew why Walter had wished so much to wed her. She could only begin to imagine what prizes he believed would become his upon marrying her.
What she cared about was her husband. She saw his pale face, heard his infuriated words ringing in her ears, blanched anew at his rage over his betrayal. Betrayal in which she had played no part, but he didn’t believe that. Or perhaps he did, only his outrage was so great, it simply didn’t matter to him who had done wh
at.
If King Edward had been in the bedchamber at this very moment, Philippa would have cuffed him as hard as she’d cuffed Crooky. She would have yelled at him for his damned perfidy—but then she would have crushed him with embraces for selecting Dienwald to be her husband. What was one to do, then?
Life had become as treacherous as Tregollis Swamp. She rose and began to pace. What to do?
Would Dienwald return? Of course he would. He had to, for he had no place else to go and he also had a son he wouldn’t desert.
She knew she should give the women instructions; she should speak to Northbert about the lord chancellor’s men as well as her fa . . . nay, Lord Henry’s men-at-arms. She knew she should find out what Robert Burnell wished to do, and Lord Henry as well, for that matter. Thus, she finally left the bedchamber, duty overcoming loss and fear.
Lord Henry and Robert Burnell were drinking Dienwald’s fine ale and chatting amiably. They would stay until the morning, they told her, both of them so ecstatic in drink that she doubted whether Burnell, that devout churchman who never flagged in his labors for his king, could stay upright for much longer. She sought out Margot.
The woman curtsied to her until Philippa thought she would fall on her face.
“You will cease such things, Margot. I am nothing more than I was before. Please, you mustn’t . . .” Philippa broke off, stared blindly into space, and burst into tears.
She felt a small hand clasp hers and looked down to see Edmund through her tears.
“Father will come back, Philippa. He must come back. He’ll soften, mayhap.”
She could only nod. She retired to her bedchamber, rudely, she knew, but she couldn’t bear to be with either Lord Henry or Robert Burnell, her father’s chancellor.
Dienwald didn’t return. Not that night or the following day.
Late the next day following, another man arrived at St. Erth, a man alone, astride a magnificent black barb, and he was searching for Robert Burnell. The chancellor had planned to depart that morning, but another long evening spent swilling ale with Lord Henry had kept him in bed—rather, the former steward’s bed—until late that morning. Even now he was pale and of greenish hue.
For an instant Philippa thought it was Dienwald, finally come home, but it wasn’t, and she wanted to kill the stranger for her disappointment.
His name was Roland de Tournay. She greeted him, not seeing him, not caring who he was, saying nothing, and merely led him to where Burnell and Lord Henry were sitting before a sluggish fire, trying to ignore their pounding heads.