Within days, he would be gone from her life for ever. The only man who had ever really seen her. She had thought to make a memory tonight, but perhaps she would repay a debt instead.
* * *
Staying close to the wall, Nicholas guided Anne out of the Hall. Revellers were spilling out of the Hall, looking for fresh air, and the yard that had been theirs before was now dotted with other couples.
He found quiet shelter in the stairway, where torches studded the walls so that guests would not miss a step and tumble down the stairs cascading below them.
They settled on one of the steps and Nicholas brushed the hair away from Anne’s brow, wanting to take her lips again, but her mood had shifted. The moment lost.
She took a breath. ‘Tonight is goodbye.’ Her voice was steady. Steadier than he felt. Now he was the one whose legs seemed too weak to carry him forward. He did not want to examine why.
‘I do not leave yet.’
‘I do.’
Shock. Where would she be going? ‘I thought the Prince and Princess would remain at Windsor.’
‘They will. I go alone.’
‘Alone?’ An echo, that word. She had never gone anywhere alone. ‘Where?’
She pursed her lips, looking not at him, but down the stairs that disappeared into darkness. ‘To the convent of Holystone.’
He’d never even heard the name. ‘Where is that?’
She shrugged. ‘Northumberland. Near the Borders.’
None of the words made sense. ‘On a mission for your lady?’
A deep breath, then Anne met his eyes again. ‘My lady thinks I need a rest.’
‘Do you?’ The words were sharper than he had intended.
She shrugged.
Something was wrong. Why was she going alone to a desolate, dangerous wasteland? She had wanted to travel, especially without her lady, but there was no excitement in her voice. ‘Is it what you want?’
‘It is...better that I go.’ She looked down the stairs that would take her away. In the flickering torchlight, they almost seemed to move. ‘I have been with Lady Joan a long time. I remind her of too many things.’
He sensed treacherous ground here. ‘What things?’ He asked as if it were his right to know.
She did look at him then, long and hard and silent, as if she were making a hard decision. ‘Of the past. You asked me once if I knew who witnessed her marriage to Holland. I do. It was my mother. My mother was the witness.’
If he had been standing, he would have fallen.
He tried to reorder the pieces, to fit together everything he had learned, confirmed and did not know.
A clandestine marriage with a witness. And all his questions had come to naught. It had seemed strange at the time, but she had insisted she did not know.
He grabbed her shoulders and shook her. ‘I asked you and you lied.’ Anger doubled, for lie upon lie. He should not have been surprised. And yet... ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
She looked down at her lap. ‘I have never told anyone.’ Her words were a whisper, as if she did not want to tell him either.
Yet here, breathing the scent of her, knowing this would be the last time he would see her, his anger shattered.
He let his hands slip off her shoulders and gathered her fingers in his. ‘Tell me.’
* * *
With her fingers tight in his, Anne felt at once safe and trapped. She had led him this far, exchanged a night of passion for a night of truth, or partial truth, uncertain whether she was looking for redemption, forgiveness, or simply a witness.
The top of Nicholas’s head met hers as they looked down at their clasped fingers. ‘Where were they? When they married?’ he whispered, the words muddied as they bounced against the walls and down the stairs.
This part was easy to tell. She had repeated it many times. ‘Flanders.’
‘Why were they in Flanders?’
‘Thomas Holland went in the retinue of the Earl of Salisbury. He was part of the embassy of earls and bishops sent to present the King’s statement of grievances to Philip of France.’
Nicholas nodded. ‘And Joan?’
His question was sharp. He might not forgive her for this, but then, it would not matter now.
‘The following summer. She was not yet ten and still in the care of the Queen, so when she came to Flanders to join the King, Joan and some of her children came, too.’
‘And your mother? Why was she there?’
‘Serving the Queen.’ She could see him about to ask the next question. ‘She brought me with her.’
‘You couldn’t have been...’
‘Barely born. She could have left me with a wet nurse, but the Queen brought some of her own children, as well as Joan, too, so she could not force Mother to leave me behind. Already, they could tell I was not going to be...’ still hard to say ‘...like other children.’ A smile now. ‘We were there for three years, travelling with court.’
‘In the midst of a war.’ His sigh said he knew exactly what that meant. ‘At least I was never asked to find food and lodging for the Queen as well as for fighting men.’
She nodded. ‘It was difficult. An Abbey one night. A peasant’s house another. Some nights, we did not know where we would be sleeping. Mother was supposed to watch over Joan, but it was hard. Some nights...’
Some nights, no one was certain where Joan slept.
She could see understanding dawn on his face. ‘And Holland was there?’
‘By late summer of the third year, I think. Mother told me, but it is hard to remember clearly.’
‘You were a babe.’
‘Nearly four by then. But it was clear...’ She looked down at her leg. ‘Mother had her hands full with me. The Queen had three of her own children with her. No one had much extra time to mind the Lady Joan.’
‘If she was twelve, she was a maiden of age, capable of taking care of herself,’ he said, with a cynical edge to the words. ‘But Holland was a fully fledged fighting man by then.’
She nodded. ‘Six and twenty. And weary of the battle, I’m sure. They had a victory at sea, then a defeat on land. The King and his men were in Ghent, frustrated, short on funds and trapped. The King had to escape in the dark, leaving the Queen and the rest of us behind as hostages. No one knew when we might see home again.’
She remembered none of it well. None of it except the fear.
‘And that was when...?’
She nodded.
‘Men at war lack...control.’ The grim set of his lips told her he understood. ‘Did he even woo her?’
‘I don’t know. But he was dashing and had served as the King’s lieutenant in Brittany. No doubt he would have drawn a young maiden’s eye.’ But then, most men drew Lady Joan’s attention. Anne imagined it had always been so.
‘And she his?’
She gripped her hands together. It was hard to talk of this part, particularly after she and Nicholas had just...
‘Mother