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Wide awake, she rolled over. What boon does the lady want? the Fool had asked. She wanted such simple things. To be safe. To be looked at without scorn. To sleep through the night without worrying whether they would have food to meet the morrow. To see her mother smile and hear her sister laugh.
And tonight, God help her, she wanted him.
She crept from bed and grabbed her cape as Agnes snored on. Crossing the ward, she climbed again to the roof of the tower. As a child, she had loved to watch the sun rise. Each time, she could begin life anew. For those few moments when first light touched the world, she had had no one to please, no one to be but herself.
Here, as the winter wind quieted in anticipation of the life-giving ball of light, she could believe that the stars ruled people’s lives and that she was truly a daughter of the sun.
She recognised his steps, surprised that, after only a few days, she knew his gait. As he reached the ramparts, she composed her smile and turned, dizzy at the sight of him.
Impossible hopes danced in her heart. ‘Did the Lord of Misrule send you after me again?’
He held himself stiffly, his hands clenched as if to keep from reaching for her. ‘We must talk.’ The words seemed forced. ‘About the kiss.’
Kiss. The word lingered on lips that had moved soft and urgent over hers. The memory brought heat to her cheeks and to places deeper inside. ‘What is there to say?’
‘I should not have forced you.’
So. He regretted his passion now. Well, she would not reveal her weakness for him. He would only use it against her in the end. She shrugged. ‘It is Yuletide. It meant nothing.’
‘Really?’
His question trapped her. To admit he moved her would leave her with no defence. Oh, Mother, how do I protect myself against the wanting?
‘Of course not.’ She crafted a light and airy tone so he would not know she had dissolved at his kiss and no longer recognised the new form she found herself in. ‘You took no more than I had offered.’
‘Well, then…’ He nodded, finishing the sentence and the incident. His rigid muscles relaxed, but he did not move closer. ‘What brings you to the roof, Lady Solay? It is too late to see the stars.’
‘I come to watch the sun.’
She was grateful that the breeze quickened and blew his scent away from her. One more step and she might reach for his shelter.
‘The sun is near its lowest point, Lady Solay. It has withdrawn its light from the world.’
His words brought back her childhood fears. Sometimes, as her life had changed, she had watched for the sun to rise, uncertain that it really would. ‘Yet it was at this, the darkest hour upon earth, that the brightest son was born.’
‘Are you speaking of the Saviour or the King?’
She smiled. The analogy had not occurred to her, but it might make a flattering conceit for the King’s reading. ‘Both.’
‘The sun comes up every morning.’ He leaned on the battlements, facing her. ‘Why do you find it worthy of watching?’
‘Why? Just look.’
He turned.
In anticipation of sunrise, the sky erupted in colour—bruised purple at the horizon, then striped blue, and finally brilliant pink. ‘The heavens are more reliable than your justice. The sun comes up every morning.’ Her words came out in a whisper. ‘Even in our darkest hours.’
‘Have you had many of those?’
‘Enough.’ More than dark hours. Dark years after the death of the old King snuffed the life-giving sun from their sky.
‘But you survived.’ No compassion softened his words.
She blocked the memories. She had spoken too much of herself and her needs. ‘Has the world never been harsh to you?’
‘No more than to most.’ Pain gilded his answer, but whatever weakness had sent him to the roof in near-apology was gone when he looked at her. ‘Do not try to play on my sympathies. You will not change my mind about your grant.’
The memory of the kiss pulsed between them. Could an appeal to his sense of justice change his mind? ‘King Richard has given his clerks more than we would need.’
‘And the clerks didn’t deserve it either.’
‘Don’t deserve?’ Despite her resolution, harsh words leapt to her tongue. ‘The King is the judge of that, not you.’
‘Not according to Parliament.’
‘Parliament!’ She spat the word. ‘Those greedy buzzards stripped us of everything, not only what the King had freely given, but lands my mother acquired with her own means.’
‘Lands she took from others and did not need.’
‘She needed them to support us after his death.’
‘She had a husband to take care of her, more fool he. Better to ask for a husband to support you.’
‘Now you mock me.’ Husbands were for women with dowries and respected families. ‘No one would have me.’
‘If the King decreed, someone would.’
‘Then perhaps I shall ask him.’ The very idea left her giddy.
He grabbed her arms and forced her to look at him. Some special urgency burned behind his eyes. ‘Don’t let him force you. Only wed if it is someone you want.’
Her heart beat in her throat as she looked at him. That was why her mother had warned her against this feeling. If the King decreed, it would not matter whom she wanted.
She stepped back and he let his hands drop. ‘If someone weds me, be assured that I will want him.’
Disgust, or sadness, tinged his look. ‘And if you don’t, you’ll tell him you do.’ The brilliant colours of daybreak faded as the sun emerged. The sky had no colour; the sun, no warmth. ‘Here’s your sun, Lady Solay,’ he said, turning towards the stairs. ‘May it bring you a husband in the New Year.’
As his footsteps faded, the image he had suggested tantalised her like the dawn at the edge of the day. Marriage. Someone to take care of her.
She pulled her cloak tighter and let the wind blow the fantasy away. Better to focus on pleasing the King with a pleasant poem and a pretty future.
But Justin’s suggestion tugged at her. Perhaps he had deliberately shown her the path to circumvent the Council.
If the King had no power to grant her family a living, he might find an alliance for her with a family that would not allow hers to starve.
And if the King were gracious enough to find her a husband, she would take whomever he gave, even if the man’s kisses did not make her burn.
Chapter Five
As the sun rose to its pale peak on the last day of the year, Solay set aside the astrology tables in despair. She read no Latin, so she could understand none of the text. In a week, the Yuletide guests would be gone, and she with them unless she could create a story from the stars to please a King.
Before she wove a fiction, she had tried to decipher the truth, but the symbols in the chart the old astrologer had drawn blurred before her eyes.
She trusted no one for help except Agnes. When she had asked what ill omens the old astrologer had seen, Agnes’s already pale face turned white.
‘He said the King must give up his friendship with the Duke of Hibernia or the realm would be in danger.’
No wonder the man had been jailed.
Idly, she flipped through the tables of planets, wondering when Lord Justin Lamont had been born. He had the stubbornness of the Bull, but his blunt speech reminded her of the Archer. Perhaps one of them was the ascendant and the other…
Foolishness. She put the tables aside and turned to her real work. Her future lay in the hands of the King, not in the kisses of Justin Lamont.
She studied the King’s birth chart again. Some aspects didn’t match the temperament of the King she knew. Aggressive Aries was shown as his ascendant, yet he seemed the least warlike of kings.
The eleventh house was that of friends; the twelfth of enemies. Surely just a slight shift could move the Duke from one to the other.
A different time of birth would do it.
She turned pages with new energy. She would populate the chart as she wished and suggest it had changed because she used a different time of birth.
Smiling, she began to draw.
By late afternoon, she derived a chart that suited her purpose, and, it seemed, the King much better. A square formed the centre of the chart, Capricorn, his sun sign. Four triangles surrounded it, forming the four cardinal points as triangles from each side. Then, the additional eight houses formed another square around the first.
The shift clustered more planets in the house of friends, but it also described his character more accurately. From this one, she could spin a happy future for the King and, she hoped, for her family.
She hesitated. If it were dangerous to change her own time of birth, what would she risk to change the King’s?
Yet it was the only answer she had. At least she was sensible enough to tell him no bad news. No one was likely to know enough to dispute her conclusions and, if anyone did, she would laugh and say she was only a woman and not a real astrologer.
Justin’s mind wandered as the Court wasted the afternoon listening to bad verse penned by courtiers playing poet. The words flowed around him unheard. He had spent the last week telling himself that he was relieved that the kiss had meant nothing to Solay, though it galled him that she could swoon in his arms like a lover and then laugh. He should have expected nothing less. Even the woman’s body lied.
Across the room, she was fawning over Redmon again. Since he had told her to seek a husband, Justin judged every man she spoke to for the role. She would have few choices. The man must have money, not need it, for she would bring no dowry. He must be acceptable to the King, but not too important, for if he were, he would get a better bride.
She gave the Earl a dazzling smile as it came her turn to present. Then, she licked her full, lower lip, cleared her throat, glanced at Justin and started to read.
They call them men of law, an empty boast
They claim that law means justice
But justice comes quickest to him that pays the most.
His cheeks burned. Though no one looked his way as they laughed, he knew her words were directed towards him. Her poem told an amusing tale of a dishonest lawyer, brought to justice by a benevolent and pure King. The verse lacked polish, but it showed promise. The words were clever.
More than clever. Something about them seemed very familiar.
After the King applauded heartily and the afternoon’s entertainment ended, Justin sought her out. Her small triumph had touched her lips with an easy smile.
‘A pretty poem, Lady Solay,’ he said. ‘Did you suggest the subject to John Gower?’
Solay’s smile stiffened. ‘What makes you ask that?’
He did not dignify her lack of denial with an answer. ‘I did not think him a man to be swayed by kisses.’
She did not blush, which made him think she had not tried physical persuasion of the King’s favourite poet. Odd, he felt relieved.
‘The idea was his, not mine. He told me he was trying something new and if the King did not like the poem, Gower would put it aside. Since the King liked it very much, I dare say he will finish it and then tell the King and they will both think it a good joke.’
‘So now I must keep secrets for John Gower’s sake, not yours?’
Behind the pleading look in her eyes he saw the shadow of resentment. It must gall her to beg his co-operation. ‘You wouldn’t spoil the surprise, would you, just because the verse doesn’t flatter you?’
Shocked, he realised he had never even considered it. ‘It is Gower you wronged, not me. You sling borrowed barbs about lawyers, but you know nothing about me at all.’
‘I know you helped Parliament impeach the King’s Chancellor on imaginary charges.’
‘The charges were real.’
‘Not real enough, I see.’ She nodded towards the Earl of Suffolk, laughing with the King. ‘The man is with us today.’
He gritted his teeth. ‘The King released him. Not Parliament.’ Richard had imprisoned the man for a few weeks, then, as soon as Parliament had gone home, set him free as if Parliament had never ruled. As if the law meant nothing.
She lowered her voice to whisper. ‘You say you care about truth, but others say you care more about destroying those closest to the King.’
‘And you let others decide what you think.’
She didn’t answer, but turned to smile at Redmon across the room. The man smiled back, broadly, and she started to leave.
‘I hope you are not thinking of him as a husband.’
She kept searching the room, not meeting his eyes to answer. ‘When you suggested marriage you did not request approval of the choice. In fact, you told me only the King could decide.’
One of the young pups across the room winked at her, elbowing his companion, and she gave him a slow smile.
The boy’s grin grated on him. ‘That one is not looking on you as a wife,’ he growled.
‘How do you know?’
‘Because I am a man.’
‘Well, the Earl of Redmon is.’ Behind the lilt in her voice he heard the edge of anger.
‘Did the stars tell you so?’
‘He was born under the sign of the goat. We should get along well enough.’
‘Did the stars also tell you that he is old and rich with wealth and sons and three dead wives? All he needs is someone to grace his bed. That should not be difficult for you.’
