Chapter One #4
Elle was so shocked, so terrified, that she couldn’t even speak.
She took another step back and ended up falling onto the cot behind her.
She was shaking so badly that she couldn’t maintain her balance.
She was starving, full of wine, and de Lohr had played his game to his advantage.
She was no longer in a position of respect, but in one of surrender.
And that was exactly what he was demanding.
Her surrender.
It had come to that.
She struggled to push herself up from the cot.
“You cannot ask this of me,” she said hoarsely, her voice quivering. “I shall not—”
He cut her off. “Shall not what?”
She swallowed hard, frightened by the man. “You cannot—”
He cut her off again. “I can do anything I wish,” he said. “I am the victor. Bear in mind that I do not need your permission for this. I can simply do it.”
She ended up on her feet, but it was shaky. “How would you feel if someone was treating your wife the way you are treating me?”
“What makes you think I did not treat her like this when I first met her?”
“And she still married you?”
“She had no choice. Nor do you.”
He was right. God help her, he was right. She knew it and he knew it. Distraught and unable to conceal it, Elle turned her back to him. The tears began streaming down her face, but she didn’t lift her hand to wipe them because she didn’t want him to know how badly he’d upset her.
Everything was at an end.
Nothing he said was untrue. Brython was falling to the English no matter how hard she tried to keep up the defenses.
God, she’d tried so hard. The truth was that she only had about four hundred men to de Lohr’s thousands.
They were able to hold as long as the English didn’t get over the wall, but they had.
The portcullis was probably already lifted and the English were probably already in possession of the castle.
Gruffydd had probably already been released. Everything she’d fought for…
It was gone.
“I put my brother in the vault because he said the same thing,” she said, unable to hide the fact that she was weeping.
“He wanted me to marry an English warlord and create an alliance. He is allied with the English king, much like my father was, and he expected me to be complicit in their betrayal of my country. But I cannot do it. I cannot do it for him or for you.”
Christopher could hear the defeat in her voice.
She was no longer the stubborn, hysterical woman who had first entered this tent.
Too much drink and no food was breaking her down, as he’d intended, though he had to admit he felt some pity for her.
He wasn’t cruel to women by nature, but she was an exception.
She would probably ram a dagger into his chest given the chance.
He had a fighter of a woman he’d married, as he told her, so he knew how to deal with them.
At least, he hoped so.
He’d had some practice.
“Then what is your choice for the rest of your life, my lady?” he asked, not unkindly.
“To be a prisoner? Because that is what you will be if you do not agree to my terms. You will be kept by the king and, more than likely, married off against your will. You’ll find yourself in France or Aragon or somewhere east. You will never see Wales again, but if this is a life that suits you better than my offer, then I will ensure you receive it. The choice is yours.”
Again, he was making it seem as if she had options in this.
Whatever decision she made, it would be on her head even though there was no real choice in front of her.
It was hell or even greater hell. Those were her selections.
The tears began to come again, no matter how hard she tried to stop them.
“You are asking me to betray my country,” she whispered tightly. “You are asking me to surrender everything I am.”
He shook his head. “I am asking no such thing,” he said. “My lady, you seem intelligent. If you have held off my army for a month, then you are not only bright, you are clever. I want you to think about this situation from a different perspective. Can you do that?”
“Why should I?”
“Because it is important. Will you try?”
“Speak, then.”
Christopher wasn’t sure he had her cooperation, but he was going to try.
“As the wife of a prestigious warlord, you will be in a unique position,” he said.
“Your men, your vassals, will see that you are willing to work toward a peaceful coexistence with England, a country that is not going away. We are not going to disappear tomorrow. We, and you, and even the Scots, live on a land surrounded by oceans, and it is ours to protect. There are so many enemies who have tried to do us harm, but we are the keepers of this glorious and unique land. Wales is glorious and unique, as is England. Separately, we are weaker than we would be if we were all united. United under one king to protect everything we have. Does that make sense?”
Elle was still tearing up, quickly wiping at her eyes because she was embarrassed that she couldn’t seem to control her emotions. “I suppose it does,” she said. “But Wales is smaller than England. Why should the English covet it so much?”
He began to tear apart the bread, which was cooling by now. The smell of it arose fresh as he broke off the end of the loaf. “We wish to bring peace,” he said simply. “Peace for all.”
“We do not need the English to bring us peace.”
He cocked a blond eyebrow. “Then you can bring it amongst yourselves?” he said, his tone cynical.
“Because the Welsh have been fighting amongst themselves since the world began. You still fight among yourselves. There will never be one king to unify you because you cannot agree on who it should be. Look at England—we have one king. No small, bickering kingdoms. We are united under one king, and that is what makes us stronger than Wales and Scotland. We are trying to bring that peace to you, but you are warmongers. You think war is the only way, and that is a horrible existence. Do you really want to be at war for the rest of your life?”
She had stopped weeping for the most part, knowing he was, again, correct in his assessment of the Welsh.
They did fight each other quite a bit. There was no unifying king, nor was there any hope for one.
Even she knew that. She could smell the fresh bread, and it was weakening her resistance, killing her resolve.
The concept of surrender was becoming easier and easier.
“I do not want to be sent away,” she finally said. “To never see my home again would be worse than death.”
Christopher took a knife off the table and buttered his piece of bread.
“Then it would be reasonable to accept the offer of a marriage to an English warlord,” he said.
“You could remain here, at Brython, and you could teach your children about their Welsh blood, and your husband could teach them about their English blood. They will be children of two worlds, and they will be the seeds of peace, my lady. Your children would do great things in the history of our countries. Would that not make you proud?”
Elle was watching him butter the bread with longing in her eyes. His words made sense, but they were confusing her because she’d only been raised to understand conflict. Understanding peace… That was a difficult concept.
“I… I do not know,” she said honestly.
Christopher could see that she was put off balance by his question.
“Having such children would be leaving your mark upon the history of Wales far more than fighting and dying for Brython,” he said.
Then he stood up and went to her, holding out the piece of buttered bread.
“Peace is always the better way, my lady. I believe you can become a great lady if you will only understand that.”
The bread was too close, and she was starving.
She couldn’t even remember when she last had bread.
Her pride collapsed and she took the bread, shoving it into her mouth as he directed her toward the table.
Like a dumb animal being led to the slaughter, she let him guide her to a chair even as he put more food in front of her, all the food she could eat.
All the food she’d been denied since the siege began.
Food and drink was hers for the taking as Christopher poured wine for her himself, leaning down so he was closer to her ear.
“If you are to play a man’s game, then you must remember this,” he said quietly.
“In battle, there is always a winner and always a loser. In this case, you have lost. This loss will be what you make of it—it can change your life to one of gratitude or one of misery. Choose gratitude, my lady. You cannot always have everything you want in life. Teach your husband about the Welsh. Show him the good things, not the hatred and resistance. Give him a reason to help you fight for your people, should it come to that. Give him a reason to defend you.”
With that, he finished pouring and headed over to the tent flap as Elle continued to shovel food in her mouth, which was so full that she could hardly chew.
Christopher kept an eye on her as he muttered to a soldier outside the tent.
When the soldier fled, Christopher reclaimed his seat across from Elle and watched her eat.
Like a woman starving.
Perhaps it had been a dirty trick to play on her, withholding food when she was clearly very hungry, but he thought his tactic might have worked. At least he had her thinking.
Now, he had to get the other half of this equation thinking, too.