I hadn’t expected that.
‘You do not need to be frightened of me,’ he said, softly.
‘I am not.’
He stood straight, propped the document holder against the wall, then walked over slowly and sat on the side of the bed.
He looked very tired, impossibly wearied.
‘Edmond tells me the child is well,’ he said.
‘He is.’
‘And you?’
‘I am well.’
‘You almost died,’ he said, ‘twice. First by Madog’s hand, and then from childbed fever. By God, Maeb, I —’
‘I am alive now, as you see, thanks to Edmond.’
‘You should never have left the Tower,’ he snapped.
‘To travel so near your confinement, and then to be stolen by Madog and Henry!’
‘If I was stolen then that was not my fault!’
He glared at me, then very suddenly he relaxed and gave a soft laugh.
‘Look at me. I admonished myself over and over on the ride to this house that I must not snap at you, and yet it is the first thing I do.’
‘You were worried.’
‘Yes.’
‘Because if I died then you might not find your precious diadem?’
‘Because I love you.’
I dropped my eyes. I did not know what to think, or what to say.
‘You have not been able to find the diadem,’ I said, after a lengthy pause.
‘No.’
‘No doubt you searched this house inside and out while I was gone.’
‘I did.’
‘And yet still no diadem. Raife … I do not have it. I never have.’
‘The plague came here and stopped,’ Raife said.
‘The imps tell me it is here, somewhere. My master grows angry and fretful. He wants his diadem back.’
Oh, how easy those words now slipped into his speech. His master. The imps.
‘If I have that diadem,’ Raife continued, ‘then all this is finished. The death. The terror. I can end it all.’
‘Have you no soul to speak so easily of the death, the horror that has been visited on so many, among them your own wife and children? How can you still ride through this city, which has suffered so terribly, and still bear your head high? How can you —’
‘Maeb, I will ask you again. Please, trust me. Damn it! I wish Adelie had found the time to teach you your letters! Trust me.’
He took my hand as he said that, and I pulled it away immediately. Why in the name of all the saints was he carrying on about whether or not I could read?
‘I can’t trust you,’ I said.
‘And yet,’ he said, bitterness ringing every word, ‘whenever you have asked me for trust I have given it to you. At the ordeal … trust me, you said, and I did.’
‘I am blameless in this, and you are not. I will not trust you.’
He looked away, the muscle in his jaw clenching and unclenching.
‘Who were you,’ I said, ‘before you went down to hell?’
‘A man,’ he said.
‘And what sin did you commit to be sent to hell?’
Raife’s eyes narrowed and I wondered what lies he was conjuring for me. Then he gave a chuckle, which surprised me.
‘I lusted after beauty,’ he said, ‘nothing but a bauble. It seems such a waste, now.’
‘That was all?’
‘It was enough.’
‘You did not murder?’
‘No, I did not murder.’
‘What was your name?’
Sadness filled his eyes.
‘I cannot remember.’
‘How long ago did you live in your first life, when you were a man?’
‘A long, long time,’ Raife said.
‘Countless generations. I had to spend a great deal of time in hell, you know, to work my way up to being the Devil’s right-hand man. You just don’t do that overnight.’
There was definite humour in his eyes now.
‘Don’t jest of it,’ I said.
‘Would you have me weep, as I wept when I thought you lost on the way to Pengraic? When Edmond sent word that you lay at death’s door from childbed fever? When I thought constantly on the fact that it was Edmond with you at Pengraic and not I? Did you bed him, wife? Did you think to make a better alliance for yourself than that you made with me?’
‘I did not bed him,’ I whispered.
He reached out, touched my cheek briefly, then dropped his hand.
‘I wish I could believe that.’
Trust me, I almost said.
‘I did not,’ I said.
Raife sighed, and looked away.
‘I have heard rumours of how Edmond reached you on that mountain.’
‘He used a falloway,’ I said.
‘The same knight who appeared to me in the forest east of London also appeared to Edmond, and led him to me.’
‘You have powerful protectors,’ Raife said.
‘Who is it, I wonder, this knight?’
The way he said it made me think that he knew who it was.
‘I believe it to be Stephen,’ I said.
‘Aye,’ Raife said, ‘it is Stephen, lost to the Old People, now. And Ghent too, from what Edmond said. Maeb, I am sorry for Ghent. He was good to you and loyal to me. I liked and respected him. He did not deserve that death.’
I was almost in tears at both his easy acceptance that the knight who protected me was Stephen, and at his sorrow for Ghent. That was genuine, I think. I could discern no dissembling beneath his words.
‘I wish …’ I said.
‘Aye,’ Raife said, ‘and I have spent these past months wishing, too.’ Then he rose, walked over to the door to close it, and came back to me.
‘Tomorrow,’ he said, ‘the diadem. But not tonight. Not tonight.’
He stood me upright from the bed, unclothed me, and disrobed himself.
We went to bed.
We lay there side by side for a time, staring at the ceiling.
Then Raife sighed and rolled over to me. He kissed me, and caressed my body.
I would have thought myself sickened to have him touch me, but I was not. I might have been afraid, knowing what he was, but I was not. I was very sad, for everything that had been, and might have been. I think it was for that reason that I allowed him to make love to me, and perhaps even sadness that allowed me to respond to his touch.
I don’t know what else it might have been.
For thirty years, I have convinced myself that it was sadness that made me accept him that night.
I did not once think that it may have been love, for that admission, literally and figuratively, would have led me to hell.
Chapter Three
I woke just after dawn the next morning. I lay there, listening to Raife breathe, knowing he, too, was awake.
The moment felt awkward for both of us, I think.
He rose after some minutes, opening the shutters of the window to let in the soft morning light. He stood there, the light illuming his body, gazing toward the Conqueror’s Tower.
I wondered if he was thinking of Edmond.
Then Raife turned and bent down, lifting from the floor the document holder he’d brought with him the previous night. He came back to the bed and sat on its edge, close by me.
I sat up, looking at the document holder.
‘What is it?’ I said. As I did not know my letters I could not imagine what kind of document he might wish to show me.
Raife’s mouth quirked in a wry smile. ‘These months you were gone,’ he said, ‘I spent both half angry with you and half desperate to wonder how I could achieve your trust. The angry part of me did not want to bother. It said to me that if you did not wish to trust me, then so be it. We would both need to live and die with that.
‘But the part of me which loves you begged me to find a way, any way, to try and make you understand …’ he paused, as if seeking his words carefully, ‘my motives in what I do, and where I have been, and with whom I consort. That part of me drove me to construct this.’
He hefted the document holder in his hand.
‘Raife?’
He sighed, then opened the document holder and slid out a large sheaf of tightly rolled loose vellum pages.
I expected him to unroll them, still unsure of why he wanted me to study written words I could not possibly understand, but Raife continued to sit, looking at the rolled sheafs of vellum, the fingers of one hand lightly tapping them.
‘I sat many nights over these, Maeb,’ he said.
‘Imagine, the lord of Pengraic, a man of such immense wealth and power and nobility, sitting at his table late into the night sketching these poor drawings for you.’
‘Drawings?’
He lifted a hand and pressed a finger against my lips.
‘Just look at them, Maeb. Do not speak. Do not speak. Just look and, I pray to God, understand.’