27 August, near Marlborough
Harper,
The court has begun arresting people.
Two men I shared supper with last week were taken during the night and have not returned. Officially this concerns Rome’s annulment of the charter. Unofficially it concerns the King deciding fear is now more useful than negotiation.
I am not arrested.
I write that first because you would otherwise spend the next page imagining dramatic nonsense.
But the arrests will continue. My father’s loyalties are visibly divided, and I have spent too much time moving between factions to appear entirely trustworthy to either side.
One of the King’s lieutenants advised me privately to leave court soon on a plausible errand. I am currently inventing the errand.
Tell my father. He will know how to arrange my departure so it appears strategic rather than frightened.
The chapel with the saint and the fish has been closed by order of the Crown. Several others as well. I do not know why.
I dislike the feeling of it, and while I am not afraid for myself, I am afraid I will not see you for some time.
Be careful with my father when he receives this news. He will attempt to look unbothered and become unbearable instead.
Yours,
Geoffrey
I read the letter twice.
Then carried it directly to the study. The Baron sat at his desk surrounded by correspondence and candlelight, spectacles low on his nose. He held out one hand for the parchment before I even spoke.
He had become very good at reading my face. That was rather unfortunate, because I had become very bad at hiding anything from him.
He read silently. When he finished, he kept his hand flat against the page for a long moment, as though holding it steady against a wind only he could feel.
“He’ll be all right,” the Baron said.
“You don’t know that.”
“No.” He folded the letter carefully. “But it is what one says until one knows otherwise.”
Something tightened painfully in my throat. “Is that what you told your wife when Aldwin first rode to war?”
The question escaped before I could stop it.
The Baron looked up sharply.
I winced immediately. “I’m sorry.”
“For asking?”
“For invoking her.”
His expression softened unexpectedly.
“No.” He looked back down at Geoffrey’s letter. “Eleanor would have liked you.”
The study went very still. “She would have started calling you Lady Harper of Thames in her own correspondence within the first month,” he added. “And refused absolutely to stop doing it.”
