“Do any stare at me in wonder?” she asked, still looking up at the face she had come to see. “Do they whisper their suspicion of the lady who seems to pay homage to the rebel?”

“Nay, my lady,” came the answer. “Not yet.”

“You will tell me when they do, and then shall I be gone from here. Not a minute before.”

She kept her voice mild. At least she thought she did. Many times in the month since she had learned of Llewellyn’s death, she had found that her perception did not match reality. Always in small ways, like this. It should worry her. Certainly she had not shouted, she reasoned, as she memorized the precise curl of Llewellyn’s hair where it fell on his forehead. Had there been anger in her voice? Impatience? She could not say for certain, and Llewellyn did not provide an opinion.

Tomorrow she would be forty, and today she spoke in her head to a dead man, asking if her voice had been too sharp. A frail mind and a hard heart, is that what age did to her? She had thought she might wail at this sight, this evidence that all her hopes were ended. Yet she did not wail or weep, nor even feel despair. She only felt empty, and tired.

“I am told it was the Mortimers who betrayed him, that they did lay a trap.”

She heard Tegwarad’s grunt of mild interest beside her. He waited, but when she did not speak again he moved from her side to give her privacy. She did not follow to tell him that she believed there was more betrayal in store for those who continued fighting. Now the Welsh nobles would turn on each other. The war went on, with some Welsh still fighting despite the death of their prince, under the banner of Llewellyn’s brother Dafydd. She knew they would not succeed, even were there not betrayal in store. It did not need skill in the art of war, nor knowledge of the enemy’s plan, to see that without Llewellyn they were lost.

“Truly, I had thought of that,” she whispered now. It was not an apology. She was not penitent. She had known that Dafydd would never unite the Welsh. She had known that if Llewellyn fell, there must be another to take his place in command of their hearts. She, and only she, had planned for that. “It was a sound plan. But it failed. I failed.”

The only answer was a winter wind that stung her eyes. It didn’t matter anymore. There would be more fighting and dying, more cruelty and destruction. She must watch all of it come to ruin despite her foresight, despite a lifetime of effort. Now the only thing to do was to sit very still in the safe place she had fashioned for herself, and wait for it to be over.