Chapter 17
CHAPTER 17
“Aye, a more treacherous harlot never lived! As cunning as Eve. As wanton as Jezebel. Enticing decent, God-fearing men to her bed like bees to a honey pot.”
It took Holly a dazed moment to realize the damning denouncement had come not from Austyn, but from his father. The old man waved his arms for emphasis as he strode toward the grave, all traces of uncertainty banished from his step. The fire had been restored to his rheumy eyes. Sanity flirted with their depths, somehow more dangerous than the vague madness that kept him occupied most of the time. Having never heard him utter more than two words at a time, Holly could only gape.
“A weak, willful woman my Gwyneth was, given over to sins of the flesh. She could never be satisfied with only one mortal man to quench her insatiable lusts. Nor with two. Nor with…”
’Twas as if the floodgates of silence had parted to loose a river of virulence. As he ranted on, Holly became aware that his impromptu sermon was collecting an audience. Emrys, Carey, and a white-faced Winifred clustered at the garden gate. Nathanael watched from the chapel door. Other castle inhabitants came creeping out from the brewery, the mews, the smithy, their curiosity overcoming their trepidation. Holly kept her eyes averted from Austyn, fearing he would judge her just another leering witness to his anguish.
’Twas Carey who came forward and gently took the old man by the arm. Holly suspected it was not the first time he had done so. Nor would it be the last.
“Come, sir,” Carey said. “’Tis time for your evening meal. Pickled lamprey, you know. Your favorite.” The others retreated as abruptly as they’d appeared, as if Carey’s simple act of kindness had shamed them.
Rhys of Gavenmore pointed a condemning finger heavenward as he marched alongside the man-at-arms. “Strumpets, every last one of them! Panting for a man’s rigid staff like bitches in heat. Only too eager to spread their thighs and milk him of every last drop of God-given vigor—”
A door thudded shut, mercifully cutting off the vivid recital. If Holly could not look at her husband before, she certainly couldn’t look at him now.
“I’ve never seen you blush before. ’Tis quite becoming.”
Austyn’s quiet words confused her. They gazed at each other over the chasm of his mother’s grave. Unnerved by his steady perusal, Holly ducked her head, worrying her bottom lip between her teeth. Since he’d began to stare through her instead of at her, she’d grown rather careless about mangling her appearance.
“I’ve never seen you throw flowers before, sir. ’Twas quite unbecoming.”
“I should have warned you. All the Gavenmore men are cursed with”—he hesitated, as if uncertain how much to reveal—“unpredictable tempers. By Gavenmore standards, that was but a mild tantrum.”
“Then I should hate to see a severe one.”
“As would I.” Austyn rose and wandered to the crest of the hill. He stood with hands on hips, gazing over the crumbling curtain wall to the swollen river. The bruised lavender of twilight framed his rugged profile.
“My father’s Welsh loyalties weren’t always as pure as he pretends them to be,” he said. “When he heard the English king Edward was attempting to ensure peace with his contentious neighbors by building several castles along Welsh rivers and strategic byways, he volunteered Gavenmore as a site. He knew the king would bestow extravagant rewards of land and wealth to each lord who swore his fealty to such an undertaking.”
“Nathanael taught me of such castles.” She did not add that Nathanael had also taught her that Edward’s dream had never been fully realized. That the Welsh continued to stage sporadic rebellions against the sovereignty of Edward’s son to this very day.
A wistful smile played around Austyn’s lips. “’Twas a magical time to a boy of nine. The place swarmed day and night with master builders, carpenters, diggers. Carey and I managed to get ourselves into some abominable mischief. You can imagine our excitement when we learned that Edward himself was to honor us with a royal visit. We’d never seen a real king before.”
Austyn’s expression darkened. “’Twas a rainy autumn eve when he and his entourage arrived. Edward was getting on in years, but he was still a virile man. I was a rather plump lad, but he lifted me as if I weighed no more than a feather.”
Holly could not help but smile at the image. There was certainly no hint of lingering baby fat on Austyn’s well-honed physique.
“They sat up late into the night—my father, my mother, and this English king. Laughing, talking, jesting with one another. The king was charmed to distraction by my mother’s singing.”
Holly shivered as the ghostly echo of some long forgotten melody seemed to play across her nerves.
“’Twas almost midnight when they retired. My father awoke later to find the bed beside him empty.”
Suddenly, Holly didn’t want him to go on. Would have done anything to stop him. Even thrown her arms around his neck and smothered his words with her mouth. But she was paralyzed, her limbs weighted by dread of what was to come.
All emotion fled Austyn’s voice, leaving it cold and distant. “He searched the castle for his Gwyneth, just as he still does. But that night he found her. In the king’s bed.”
“What did he do?” Holly whispered.
Austyn shrugged. “What could he do? ’Twas not uncommon for an ambitious lord to permit his liege the pleasure of his wife’s favors. He simply closed the door and returned to his own bed.
“At dawn the next morning, he bid Edward a gracious farewell, swearing his eternal fealty. Then he climbed the stairs and strangled my mother to death.”
The stark beauty of Austyn’s profile was stripped of humanity, so impenetrable it might have been carved upon a tomb. “I found them there on that bed, on the same rumpled sheets where she had lain with another man. Father was cradling her lifeless body in his arms, rocking back and forth and weeping. He kept kissing her face, begging her to wake up. All the while her limp neck was swollen and purple with the marks of his fingers, her face black with death.”
Holly clapped a trembling hand over her mouth, appalled that she had come to Rhys’s defense. Had allowed him to follow her about the castle like a harmless puppy. Had gently clasped his frail hands in her own, those very hands that had squeezed the life from Austyn’s mother.
“When Edward heard of her death,” Austyn continued, “he withdrew his builders and his favor. He stripped my father of his title and all his holdings, drove all of his finest fighting men to desert him until only the most loyal of his peasants remained.”
Holly understood now why she’d witnessed no squires or knights training in the list. Why the castle was guarded not by skilled men-at-arms, but by farmers and bakers and beekeepers.
“Edward’s son continues to hound us, seeking to tax us until we have no choice but to surrender even this barren rock. All because of the treachery of a woman. Because she betrayed us.” Holly heard in his bitter whisper the echo of a wounded child, a child forced too soon to bear the somber responsibilities of manhood. “Abandoned us.”
“Abandoned you?” She shot to her feet, her compassion smothered beneath a maelstrom of churning emotions. “I think not, sir, for ’tis you who have abandoned her.”