“You would have preferred not to leave now.”
His eyes lifted to mine. “You know why.”
Heat climbed slowly beneath my skin despite the cool stone room.
I didn’t answer as he covered my hand with his, warmth spreading through my arm. Then with a small sigh, he gathered his notes and rolled them carefully, long elegant fingers still marked with ink.
“Sleep, if you can,” he said. “You will be the only person at Thames tomorrow who fully understands what is coming, and my father intends to use you for that.”
“He’s going to lean on me for the entire war.”
“He is.”
“All right.”
He paused at the doorway.
“May I write to you?”
Heat spread across my collarbone and cheeks. “Yes. I would like that very much.”
* * *
The messenger arrived the following evening.
King John had signed the Great Charter at Runnymede. The barons had accepted. England, for this brief impossible moment, had a monarch bound by law.
I heard the news from the gallery above the great hall, where I had been standing since midafternoon unable to do anything useful because I was waiting for a document I had spent eight years of my professional life studying to become real.
Below me, servants hurried to refill cups with wine while the Baron received the messenger with the carefully neutral expression of a man who had expected this news and refused to show it.
I knew the document by heart, had held fragments of it, read every major scholarly analysis published in the last fifty years.
And somewhere thirty miles from here, it was lying damp and newly inked while a king who hated it stood over it having just made history he would spend the rest of his life trying to unmake.
Geoffrey was below in the bailey with a saddled horse and one of the Baron’s rings, preparing to ride south. Aldwin was already gone. He had left before dawn.
I stood in the gallery and watched the messenger be given wine and fresh mounts. Watched the Baron disappear toward his study with his hands clasped behind his back. The war was three weeks away.
Geoffrey was riding toward a king’s court tonight to begin lying for a living. His brother was riding north to begin killing.And the manuscript that had brought me here remained dark and silent in the chapel, waiting.
I stood in the gallery for a long time. Then I went down to the bailey to say goodbye. Geoffrey stood beside a dark bay destrier already flecked with foam from impatience, a charcoal traveling cloak thrown over his shoulders instead of house colors. Torchlight slid briefly across the Baron’s seal ring where it rested against the reins.
I had the absurd sudden thought that I wanted to memorize him exactly as he looked in this moment. The damp night air smelled like horses, smoke, rain, and river water. Like leaving.
Eleven
HARPER
Geoffrey stoodbeside the destrier with one gloved hand resting on the saddle, his charcoal cloak already damp at the shoulders from the mist drifting off the river.
“Lady Harper.”
Court address. The grooms were within hearing and we didn’t know who might sell information for a price.
“Sir Geoffrey.”
He had pulled off his right glove, folded it once across his palm, then unfolded it. It was the only restless gesture I had ever seen him make.