“Owen?” Her voice was soft, lilting, incredulous.
Owen dismounted. He walked towards her. “Mother.” He bent to embrace her. They clung together for a long time, watched by the two children from the doorway, and by Pen, who remained mounted.
Slowly they moved apart. Owen came back to Pen, his mother beside him. He reached up and lifted Pen and her child to the ground.
“Mother, this is Pen Bryanston and her son, Philip. Pen, this is my mother, Esther, the Lady d’Arcy.” He turned slightly towards the house. There was a catch in his voice. “And those are my children, Lucy and Andrew. They do not know their father.”
Pen looked at the woman, looked at the children, who were gazing at the strangers with frank curiosity. Then she turned her gaze helplessly on Owen.
Owen said quietly, “Mother, I need you to tell Pen.”
Owen’s mother looked between them. Her expression was grave but there was a light behind the clear gray eyes. “You are sure, Owen?”
“Yes. I cannot do it myself.”
“Very well.” Her tone was decisive despite its melodious lilt. “You and your child are welcome indeed to my hearth, Pen Bryanston, as you must be welcome in my son’s heart. Only thus would he have brought you to me. Let us go inside.”
She turned back to the house.
Pen looked at Owen. His expression was open now, in his eyes a look of relief, as if finally he had laid down a great burden.
“Will you go?” he asked softly.
“Yes . . . yes, of course.”
“I will be waiting for you.”
Pen nodded and hurried after Lady d’Arcy into the warmth of the house, where the air smelled of new-baked bread, woodsmoke, dried lavender and rose petals.
Lady d’Arcy led Pen into a small parlor at the back of the house. A child-sized spindle stood in one corner, a half-spun ball of wool on the distaff; a rag doll drooped lopsided on the window seat. Pen stepped over a spinning top, noticed the sheet of parchment on the table with the letters of the alphabet painstakingly copied in a childish hand.
Lady d’Arcy noticed Pen’s swift observations. She smiled a little. “Owen’s children have sharp minds. They learn quickly, much as their father did.”
She subjected her visitor to a close and candid scrutiny. “My son must love you very much to bring you here,” she observed. “I thank God for it. These last years have been hard for us all.”
Pen said simply, “I love Owen, madam. But there are questions . . . problems . . .” She shrugged slightly, and turned a little so that Philip could look over her shoulder out of the window.
“Yes, I imagine there are. Pray sit down.” Lady d’Arcy gestured to the settle beside the fire. “Take a cup of elderflower wine.” She poured from a jug that stood on the table, then selected an apple from a basket on a low table and gave it to Philip.
“Not Owen’s son?” she said in soft question.
“No,” Pen said. “My late husband’s and mine. But Owen has played a part in his life that I can never repay.”
Esther d’Arcy smiled at that, and the smile grew behind her eyes, showing Pen the beautiful woman she must once have been, before care and sorrow had settled upon her.
“I think you have already repaid it,” she said as she sat with her own cup on the settle opposite Pen. “By bringing him home.” She gazed meditatively at the broad oak boards at her feet, before finally raising her head.
“Owen was married some ten years ago, at his father’s behest. His father belonged to the royal family of de Guise. It was a good marriage, a good alliance for a member of that family and for Estelle’s. Set the child down, there’s no harm he can do in this room,” she said, seeing Philip wriggling on his mother’s lap.
Pen set him on his feet and he set off around the room on one of his voyages of exploration.
“Estelle was very beautiful, rather vain, not very clever,” Esther continued. “She knew nothing of Owen’s activities for France.” She looked sharply at Pen, who nodded her understanding.
“Owen is very dedicated, he was often away. Home sufficiently to father two children, however,” she added dryly.
“To be brief, Estelle enjoyed flirtation, maybe even more than that, I don’t know and I won’t speculate. She was ignorant of Owen’s life; Owen failed to warn her or to take sufficient care of her. He failed to anticipate the danger into which her vanity led her, and thus failed to protect her.”
Pen said nothing. Owen’s mother spoke this criticism of her son without emotion, but she was watching Pen closely for her reaction. Pen gave her none, merely sat upright on the settle, her hands circling the cup she held in her lap, her eyes checking Philip every few minutes.
“Owen had . . . has still, I assume . . . his enemies. The enmity is not personal but professional, you understand?”
Pen nodded.
“He had some information about a member of the Spanish court that would lead to that man’s arrest and execution. In order to prevent him from divulging that information, the man and his faction set a trap for Estelle. They presented her with a courtier, one so attentive she gave him her complete trust. She was a trusting soul,” Esther added, taking a sip of her wine.
“She was inveigled into a clandestine meeting and was abducted, together with her children. She had hired a new nursemaid a few weeks previously, ardently recommended by her suitor. . . . More wine?”
“No, I thank you.”
“Very well. Owen’s wife and children were held hostage. Unless he agreed not only to bury his information deep as the grave but also to play turncoat, enter the service of the Spanish as a double agent, they would die.
“This was no idle threat,” she said with soft emphasis.
“No,” Pen agreed, reaching out a hand to steady Philip, who had stumbled against the table as he reached for another apple.
“Owen rescued his wife and children. He has friends of his own, many of whom would give their lives for him.”
Pen had little difficulty believing this. She was mesmerized by this story, discarding now the mismatched pieces of Robin’s version.
Esther sighed suddenly. “When he had his family safe he decided that the only way he could guarantee their safety while continuing his work was to take them out of his life. If they were seen to have no meaning for him, they would be of no value as blackmail. He repudiated his wife, disowned his children, gave himself completely to the causes of France.”
Unconsciously Pen massaged her temples. It was still a chilling tale of one man’s ability to cut himself off from emotional attachments, to cut himself off from his children.
“His choice was very simple,” Esther said, watching Pen closely. “Either he gave up his life’s work, or his family. He paid the penalty for his foolishness in not warning Estelle, in not guarding her more carefully. He loved—loves—his children deeply. He has never forgiven himself, I believe. But neither do I believe that he considers the choice he made between country and family to be wrong.”
“For Owen,” Pen said. “Not wrong for Owen.”
“But for others maybe,” Esther said. “Yes, I can see that.”
“Did you consider it wrong?”
Esther hesitated. “For Lucy and Andrew’s sake, yes. They have never heard their father’s name spoken since they came to me three years ago. Andrew then was three, Lucy two . . . about the same age as your little one.” She smiled a little, her gaze soft as she followed Philip’s concentrated progress around the parlor.
Then she sighed again. “Owen believed it was the only way he could keep them safe.”
Pen continued to press her temples, as if it would help her mind pick its way through this thicket. Owen’s mother was telling her the bare, unvarnished truth. She had not shirked from criticizing her son, had not shirked from expressing her own doubts as to the wisdom of the course he had taken.
But Pen knew in her blood and her bones how his separation from his children had devastated him. She remembered the little girl who had run in front of his horse, the deep shadows in his eyes when he’d talked of children, the competence with which he’d anticipated the needs of a two-year-old on their journey, the ease with which he handled Philip, and her own child’s comfort in his arms.
“What of Estelle?”
“She died two years ago. Plague visited the town where she lived.”
“She was not in a convent . . . a silent order?”
Esther shook her head. “No. That was the fiction. In fact, she was living on one of her family’s estates in Provence. She lacked the excitement of the court, but little else. She enjoyed the social life of a provincial court, and I believe she had a lover. She was not unhappy . . . and she was safe.”
“I see.” Pen frowned. “Why would Owen not tell me this himself?”
“I imagine because he was afraid he would try to justify his actions, and he knew I would not,” his mother said quietly. “He has never been a coward.”
Pen picked up Philip, who was leaning against her knees, sucking on the core of the apple, his eyelids drooping.
Owen needed her to understand, to accept, to forgive. Pen held the child’s head until his eyes closed and his body went limp against her. “May I leave him here?”
“Of course.”
She rose and laid the child carefully on the settle, then she left the parlor.
The soft notes of a harp drew her down a passageway and across a hall to the half-open door of a paneled chamber at the front of the house.
Owen sat at the instrument, his eyes closed, his fingers moving over the strings. It was the sweetest melody. Pen stood in the doorway listening. She could hear yearning, sorrow, and hope in the sounds he drew from the instrument. His two children sat on the floor, listening in rapt silence.
Owen opened his eyes and looked at Pen. All the yearning, sorrow, and hope that he had put into his music was stark in his gaze.
She smiled at him, holding his gaze, then quietly she went to sit down on an armless chair behind the children. Owen’s fingers moved over the strings, and now he plucked a magic filled with hope and promise.
“The woman has confessed to the use of witchcraft and sorcery in her work in the Bryanston household, my lord duke.” The black-clad guardsman held his cap to his chest and bowed as he delivered his information.
Northumberland looked up from the papers on his desk. “And what of the king? Does she confess to treason?”
“No, my lord duke. Even on the rack, she held to the story that she had been sent at Lady Bryanston’s behest to do all she could to aid the king’s recovery.”
“Did she administer poison to Philip Bryanston at his mother’s behest?”
“She denies that, my lord duke. But she admits to doing nothing to help the earl during his illness, on Lady Bryanston’s orders. She also confessed to giving Lady Pen Bryanston a potion to induce premature labor, again at Lady Bryanston’s order.”
“Well, well,” Northumberland declared, stretching his legs beneath the table. “So Lady Bryanston and her crawling son introduced into the king’s bedchamber a known poisoner, a confessed witch, a woman they had used for their own purposes.” He ran the flat of his hand over the papers in front of him, smoothing them with a rustle.
“Arrest the lady, her son, and her son’s wife on a charge of treason. Have them taken to the Tower and let us hear what they have to say.”
“Aye, my lord duke.” The guardsman bowed again, turned with a salute, and left the duke’s privy chamber.
Northumberland rose from the table. There were no heirs to the Bryanston earldom. It would now be available for bestowal for services rendered. As he remembered, it was a considerable estate, with lands in Oxfordshire and somewhere in the north of England. Rich lands that had once belonged to several monasteries, dissolved under the old king’s regime. They would make a useful bribe to some member of the Privy Council in exchange for a signature on the young king’s
Device
to alter the succession.
Miles Bryanston left the brothel, drawing on his jeweled gloves. The child had gone. The woman said it had died of a fever, but there was something about her shifty eyes, her wheedling tone, that made Miles uneasy. Better just to tell his mother that it had died, though. Not give her any ideas.
His eyes gleamed. Maybe he’d just tell her that he’d done what she’d ordered. Maybe he’d say he had dropped it in the river. That way he’d get credit, and no one would be any the wiser.
He hailed a skiff at the steps. “Westminster!” He sat down on the thwart, pulling his cloak more securely around him. It was a neat plan. Take the credit, quieten his mother, and all’s right with the world.
He was whistling to himself as he entered the Bryanston mansion. Joan was crossing the hall, looking distressed, which was not unusual.
She greeted him with upflung hands and a great sigh. “Oh, Miles,” she said.
His good mood evaporated. “What is it, woman? Why do you always look so miserable? ’Tis enough to curdle the milk.”
Joan sighed again. “Lady Bryanston . . . your mother . . .” Tears filled her eyes. “She has been so unkind to me all morning. Dolly had another little accident, just the littlest one, and Lady Bryanston threw her out into the kitchen yard and has forbidden her ever to come in the house again. And now she’s so sick . . .” She gave another shuddering sigh, and the tears trickled down her cheeks.
“Oh, Miles, I could almost believe she’s been poisoned.”
Miles grimaced. Dolly was Joan’s pet spaniel, a thoroughly useless animal in his opinion, with an unfortunate habit of having what Joan euphemistically referred to as “accidents.”
“Probably she ate rat poison in the yard,” he said with scant sympathy. “Where is my mother?”
“In the library, above stairs.” Joan wafted off, weeping bitterly.
Miles ascended the stairs and entered the library. Lady Bryanston glanced up from the ledger on the desk. She was looking frustrated. Accounts always flustered her. The sums never came out right, and this time was no exception.
“Well?” she demanded.
“I dealt with it,” Miles declared, leaning against the door in a posture redolent of self-satisfaction. “He’s gone.”
“Ah.” Lady Bryanston leaned back in her chair and regarded her son with something remarkably like approval. “Good. Then we have nothing further to concern us.”