“Tomorrow we will ride out,” she announced, “to ask my uncle in God’s name to lay down arms and submit himself to the king’s mercy. Master Edmund, you will send him this message today and then prepare such remedies as may be needed to tend the wounded tomorrow.”

The messenger boy looked caught between a sob and a shout of protest. “In a day there will be no wounded, only dead!”

She sat down to her embroidery again, a cool dismissal. She put in stitches that later she would have to pluck out, so disordered were they, and spoke to the nearest servant. “Bring this boy to the kitchens and give him his fill of meat and drink.”

It was as her fingers traced over the green ivy, embroidered at the cloth’s edge, that she had a thought that stopped her. Vines and leaves curled at the border and made her think of quiet forests where her daughter had camped with the fighting men of Ruardean. It had ever pleased her, to think of that. To know how safe her child had been under the open sky with faithful companions by her side.

“Stop,” she called too loudly. The boy turned to face her again. “Are there other of my kinsmen who fight with my Uncle Rhys?”

“His son,” came the answer, and she was standing, the embroidery frame clattering at her feet as she stared at him.

Every person in the room stared back at her as the sound echoed. For a moment she had no command of her tongue. It seemed to her that her skin grew tight, that it could not contain her, that she would split open and everything inside her would spill out before their eyes. And what use would that be? What use was she at all, anymore?

She slid a look to Master Edmund, who seemed a decade older than he had been a moment ago.

“We go now,” she said in a voice like a whip, and watched the flurry of activity as they hastened to obey her. Vincent came forward, who commanded the knights of Ruardean. “A mission of mercy only,” she told him with a hard edge in her voice. “Any man who would dare to enter the fight, whether for England or for Wales, I will see him hanged ere the next rising of the sun.”

“Aye, my lady. But it will go hard, if he calls on them to aid him.”

She looked at him, her eyes scanning his face to find signs that he was loyal to her. It was not loyalty that mattered most now, though. He was sworn to Ruardean and so would obey her as far as he was able, she was sure of it. But his heart did not belong to her.