The Rose at Twilight
Read The Rose at Twilight Online
Authors: Amanda Scott
Amanda Scott
DEDICATED TO
Olive L. Bacon, Gwyn the Books, Robin Cain, Kate Nisky, Jane Roderick, Tony and Ann Whiley, and all my other friends in Brecon, with affection and gratitude.
1
S
HIFTING IN HER SADDLE,
Lady Alys Wolveston wondered irritably if the sky meant to drip forever. Gloomy, dark clouds hovered overhead, and the drizzling, soaking, depressing rain just fell and fell. Would it never stop? Would the sun never shine on England again? Even her scarlet cloak brought no cheer to the day, though in general it could be counted upon to set off her golden hair and hazel eyes to excellent advantage. Sighing deeply, she pulled the heavy, damp hood lower to protect her face and huddled over the plodding mare’s neck, having no desire to look at her half-score companions in misery or the bleak, rain-darkened moorland that spread for miles in every direction. She paid no heed to their route either, knowing that her escort from Drufield Manor would see her safely returned to Wolveston Hazard, her father’s great gray stone castle overlooking the river Trent.
Beside her, she could hear Jonet mutter a rhythmic cadence, and knew that she was repeating her rosary. Again. As if a plump little woman swathed in gray wool and talking to beads could stop the rain. Swiftly Alys crossed herself and glanced about, wondering if by some movement or fleeting expression of countenance she might have betrayed the blasphemous thought.
“Mayhap,” she said aloud in a casual tone, “our Lord sends a second flood to show us His displeasure.”
“Then He would flood Wales for helping the usurper,” snapped Jonet, “not all Yorkshire and north Nottinghamshire for defending our rightfully anointed king.” Her pale blue eyes flashed.
“Hold your tongue,” Alys said, keeping her tone even. She rarely spoke sharply to Jonet, who had served her most of her life, but she could not let this pass. “Such words are foolish now. One must be circumspect.”
Jonet snorted. “This lot be loyal enough, I warrant. Old men and children for the most part, but loyal to their king.”
“Richard is no longer king,” Alys said, swallowing the lump in her throat as she thought of Anne’s Dickon, dead now and named usurper by a man unworthy to kiss his boots. She remembered the good years at Middleham before King Edward had died, and before Anne’s death. Dear, gentle Anne. At least death had spared her the pain and horror of her beloved Dickon’s defeat. “Things will be different now,” she said, more to herself than to anyone else.
But Jonet, still clicking her beads, said tersely, “Aye, and this weather be the least of our worries, I’m thinking. ’Tis to be hoped your lord father be safe and sure, not trembling in fear of his life like yon Drufield and his ilk.”
“My father is known to be a scholar, not a soldier,” Alys replied. “King Richard always said he would be better suited to run an abbey than a castle. Even King Edward used to laugh at him, though he scolded Dickon, Anne said, for not setting a more powerful man to be warden of Wolveston Hazard when Dickon was Lord of the North. But Wolveston is beyond the reach of raiding Scots armies, yet not so far afield that Pontefract, Tickhill, or Conisborough cannot provide us protection if the need arises, so Dickon let my father be. Mayhap the Tudor will do likewise.”
Jonet shifted her weight awkwardly on her saddle. “The rain be easing. And to think ’twas at last bidding to be a dry day, if a cold and gloomy one, when we left Drufield Manor at dawn.”
“’Tis as well it was,” Alys pointed out, “for Lord Drufield would have delayed our journey again had it not been so, and my lord father did command our swift return.”
His order had come ten days before, on the heels of the dreadful news from Leicestershire that King Richard had been slain in battle and that Henry Tudor, the Lancastrian Welshman, with his French and Scots mercenaries, had emerged victorious. A fair copy of Henry’s round-letter demanding that the nobles of the north bow swiftly to his rule had been carried by the same messenger and had included news of many deaths, including those of the great Earl of Northumberland, the Earl of Lincoln, and Francis, Viscount Lovell, whom Alys’s brother Roger served. Alys remembered Lincoln and Lovell well. The first had been wise beyond his twenty-five years, a man who chose his words with care; the second, a gallant, merry gentleman, filled with gaiety, who could always make them chuckle at Middleham. How her life had changed, she thought, once Anne’s Dickon had become king.
“Middleham may be in the usurper’s hands by now,” she said, again speaking her thought aloud.
“Aye, but ’tis naught to us if it is,” said Jonet, adding bitterly, “Och, mistress, but I shall perish from this cold and damp. We ought by rights to have sought shelter long since, in Doncaster or Bawtry.”
“And so I should have done, were Wolveston not so near that I can well nigh smell its hall fires burning,” said Alys tartly. “I have seen neither stick nor stone of the place these two years past, and I do not mean to tarry longer. Geordie!” she shouted.
“Aye, mistress!” came the return shout from up ahead.
“How far now?”
“But two, mebbe three miles, mistress.”
“There, you see,” she said to Jonet.
“Aye, I see another hour of this wretched misery.”
Alys chuckled. Jonet’s family had long served her mother’s family in Yorkshire, and Jonet had gone with Alys to Middleham, where she had been fostered by the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester until two years ago, when he had become King Richard the Third of England. He had sent the pair of them to his castle at Sheriff Hutton, and then, six months ago, they had gone to Drufield Manor. Before being sent to Sheriff Hutton, Alys had expected to continue to serve Anne of Gloucester, to become a lady in waiting to the Queen of England, but that had never come to pass.
She still did not know the reason for Richard’s sudden decision to send her away from Middleham. Anne had assured her many times over that she had done naught to offend, that Dickon was pleased with her, that it was, oddly, her own father who had commanded the change. Richard had agreed to Wolveston’s demand without consulting Anne’s wishes, or Alys’s. After that, of course, there had been naught to do but obey his command. The reason for Alys’s departure from Sheriff Hutton was much clearer in her mind. She grimaced, thinking of Elizabeth.
The sky had lightened, she noted, and the downpour was gentling to a drizzle. Perhaps it would stop for a time soon. It had been raining off and on, sometimes heavily, for nearly a fortnight. She was tired of rain.
Forty minutes later, the rain had eased to little more than a gloomy mist when there came a shout from Geordie, up ahead. “Riders, mistress! A score or more, approaching fast!”
At first she thought it must be her father riding to meet her with some of his men, but it quickly became apparent that the riders were soldiers in arms. Nearby, a particularly young member of her escort reached for his sword.
“Hold!” she commanded. “Observe their banner and beware.” The oblong banner looked tattered, but it waved valiantly from the standard bearer’s lance and, although its primary device, a golden wyvern, was unknown to her, it was quartered with a fiery red Welsh dragon on a field of green and white sarcenet. Such a device had recently been described to her, more than once.
“Sithee, m’lady, they’ll be fer murderin’ us,” muttered the lad to whom she had spoken, but she saw that he had taken his hand from his weapon, and was grateful.
“We are no threat to them,” she said quietly. “I doubt not that once they have ascertained our destination they will leave us to go our way in peace.”
The leader of her escort evidently agreed with her for he signed to the others to draw rein. The armed troop thundered up to them moments later, bringing their chargers to a standstill in a clamor of harness, trappings, and crashing hooves, some of them only feet away from Alys and Jonet.
When one man separated himself from the others and rode toward Alys on a muscular black horse with white pasterns and a narrow feathered stripe down its face, she straightened in her saddle and pushed her hood back a little, preparing to identify herself and demand safe passage for her company. The rider was a large man, tall in the saddle and unusually broad across the shoulders, even when one allowed for the bulk of the leather jacket and padding beneath his light, metal-plated brigandine. He wore a helmet, but the faceplate was up, and although he carried a sword at his side, his gauntlets hung by their thongs over the hilt and his horse was unarmored. When the rider drew up before her, he removed his helmet altogether, revealing thick, dark hair, curling tightly in the damp air.
His countenance was stern, even harsh, but that might, she reflected, be due to his prominent cheekbones, hawklike nose, and jutting, stubborn-looking chin. Though he appeared to be no more than five or six-and-twenty, he was assuredly the leader of these men. Indeed, she thought, he looked like a man who would take the lead in any company, one who would demand his way in any debate, and one, moreover, whom only a man of great daring, or a fool, would venture to cross.
She raised her chin, looked him straight in the eye, and waited for him to speak. His eyes were deep-set and as gray as the day itself, she noted, and hard, like flints, making her wonder briefly if he might be older than she had first thought. But no, she had not been mistaken. Even as she watched, they changed, softened. His features softened, too. A small, brief spark of amusement lit his eyes, accompanied by a look of compassion that gentled his harsh countenance.
“Lady Alys?” His voice was deep with an unusual lilt in it, his accent gentle, not one she recognized but pleasant nonetheless and soothing to the ear.
“Aye,” she said. “I am Alys Wolveston. How is it that you know my name?”
“We have been looking for your arrival these two days past,” he said. “You are older than I had expected.”
She lifted her chin an inch higher, carrying herself, albeit unconsciously, much as the late queen had done. “My age is of some consequence to you then?”
He shook his head. “Your father spoke of his little daughter. I expected to greet a
plentyn,
a child.”
“I am eighteen,” she said casually, as though she had been eighteen for a very long time, not a mere three weeks.
“’Tis odd you are not wedded then,” he said crisply.
She gritted her teeth at the arrogance of the man. “Who are you, if I may be so bold as to inquire?”
“I am called Nicholas ap Dafydd ab Evan ap Gwilym of the house of Merion,” he said. “Englishmen who cannot wrap their tongues around our Welsh consonants do call me Nick Merion.”