“Yes.”
She looked at me for a long moment. Then she crossed the small distance between us and slipped her hand into mine.
We stood that way in the chapel, with her hand in mine, and somewhere in the past hour, without permitting myself to examine it, I had discovered that I no longer knew how to want anything in this world that did not also include her in it.
Merde.
Ten
HARPER
The family councilon the eve of Runnymede was the four of us. The Baron, Aldwin, Geoffrey, and me.
A candle burned low on the table between us, its wax pooling across the scarred oak. Outside the narrow window, the river caught the last of the dying light in thin silver ribbons, and the damp summer air carried the smell of rain and horses from the lower yard.
I sat with my hands folded in the sleeves of a navy wool gown my maidservant had insisted suited me. The fitted cuffs still felt faintly theatrical no matter how often I wore them. I had stopped reaching automatically for nonexistent pockets weeks ago, which felt less like adaptation and more like surrender.
Across from me, Geoffrey rested one hand beside an untouched cup of wine. He wore dark blue wool trimmed sparingly in silver braid, elegant without ostentation. Over the past few weeks his hair had grown slightly too long at his collar. He looked tired tonight, worn thin at the edges by responsibility and the looming threat of war. There was a faint smear of ink along the side of his hand where he had dragged it across fresh parchment without noticing.
Beside him, Aldwin looked built for war. Broader through the shoulders, restless even while seated, one boot hooked around the bench as though he might stand and start pacing at any moment. Unlike Geoffrey’s careful court-dark wool, Aldwin wore riding leathers beneath his cloak as though he expected violence to interrupt supper.
At the head of the table, the Baron sat motionless in dark green wool lined with vair, candlelight silvering the threads in his neatly trimmed beard as he bent over the parchment before him. Everything about him felt measured. Controlled.
The wine in our cups was dark Gascon red, sharp with spice, expensive. Geoffrey barely touched his. Aldwin had already emptied his twice.
“The charter is signed tomorrow,” the Baron said.
“And you chose not to attend,” I said carefully as part of me wished there was some way I could be there, see the history in the making.
One corner of his mouth shifted. “I had no intention of standing in a riverside meadow while desperate men tried to force a king into honesty.”
Aldwin snorted into his wine.
Geoffrey did not.
The Baron had stopped asking whether the things I predicted were certain. Once his scouts confirmed the date and the location and the names with enough accuracy to plan against, he had quietly shifted from skeptic to something far more cunning.
“What matters for Thames in the immediate aftermath?” He leaned back in the ornately carved chair.
“The weeks after the signing are the most unstable,” I said. “King John signs because he has no choice, but he doesn’t intend to honor it. He’ll appeal to the Pope almost at once. He’ll argue the charter was signed under duress and ask for it to be annulled.”
“Will the Pope comply?” Aldwin asked.
“Yes. Pope Innocent annuls it within months. That’s the start of armed conflict, and it will be roughly two years before a settlement.”
“Two years,” the Baron repeated. “Outcome?”
“Neither side wins decisively. They exhaust each other. The charter survives in a softer form because both parties need a framework to govern inside.”
“What I need is what Thames does with it.” The Baron leaned forward, elbows on the table.
I’d been thinking about this question for a week, and hadn’t wanted to be the one who answered it.
With a deep breath, I said, “There’s a pattern in the records, the families that came out strongest didn’t commit entirely to one side. They split. They sent men to both.”
The room went quiet except for the soft hiss of the candlewax.
“Both,” the Baron said, the corner of his mouth lifting.