“Good,” Darcy said. As soon as it was a decent hour, or at least a little closer to one, they needed to talk to Roderick, too.
Jack's eyes were wild now. “He thinks this is the King's Bond. How can that be? The Bond was lost centuries ago, and I am not royalty.” Then hesucked in a breath. “Or at least I was not until yesterday,” he said in a small voice.
Devil take waiting for a decent hour. Darcy sent to Coquelicot, waking her from a drowsy state, and asked her to find Roderick and Frederica.
Unfortunately, only Frederica arrived, and that nearly two hours later. And she did not look pleased, though she embraced Jack and told him how glad she was to see him awake again.
“Where is Roderick?” Darcy demanded, too exhausted by the long night of fear to have any tact left.
She grimaced. “Back at the inn, or at least he was when I left.”
“We need him here!”
“I know, but he is an idiot!” She threw up her hands. “He says he cannot come, that he should not be so close to the center of Jack's power. And lest you suggest, like a sensible man, that we go to him, he will not meet with Jack, either.”
Darcy frowned. “Why not?”
“Some nonsense about being Welsh,” she snapped. “He is being ridiculous. He did give me some questions to ask which might help us understand what this is - though he told me not to say they were his idea.”
He did not envy Roderick, being at the wrong end of Frederica's anger, but Darcy also agreed with her. How dare he just abandon them, after everything they had done together, after being his guest and fighting by his side?
Jack rubbed his eyes. “What are you two dancing around? Will, you said to wait for Roderick and Frederica. I need you to tell me whatever you know, even if it is incomplete. I am not a fragile infant who will break, simply because I was birthed by a horrible witch and my father is a useless wastrel.”
“Gentiane has already told him it may be the King's Bond,” Darcy said. “Which more or less summarizes allIknow.”
Frederica sat beside Jack with a sigh. “I do not question your strength, only my own ignorance. We know what happens with an ordinary land bond, or at least Darcy does. What took place last night was very different and more intense. It is similar to stories told in Wales about how the King's Bond is formed. And you were at St. George's Chapel, the center of the old English King's Bond. So far, that is all our evidence.”
“There is one more thing,” Darcy said. “When he was in the land, Jack saw the white cliffs and the sea. I only envision Pemberley and a few miles beyond it.”
Frederica nodded. “Then for now, we must assume it is true. According to Roderick, though, it may not mean much. There is another step to the true King's Bond, where the holder of the Bond awakens the power of the land in the heir. Without that rite, whatever it is, the King's Bond is no more than a larger than usual land bond - some ability to help crops grow, awareness of storms and floods, that sort of thing. For the King's Bond of the old stories, with the ability to break open the earth and to drown incoming armies, another king must awaken it in you.”
“So it is useless, then.” Jack sighed. “At least against Napoleon.”
“Improving the harvest prevents famine,” Darcy said sharply. “Hardly useless.”
Frederica continued, “Also, the Bond does not respect legal borders, only its own sense of what its country is. Yours, if it is like the Plantagenet one, would not cover all of what we consider England, either. Most of the southern half of the country, and only as far West as the beginning of the Welsh Marches. When you think about the parts of the country that kept rebelling - the North, the Scots, the Welsh, the Cornish - those are the ones outside the King's Bond.”
“Not that it matters,” Jack said in a low voice, “if I cannot use it. Is there no one who can awaken it in me, so we could stop that bastard Napoleon like the Russians did?”
Darcy spread his hands. “The czar of Russia is the only ruler we know of who still has the King's Bond, but even if he were willing, by the time you traveled there and back, the invasion will be over.” Then a thought occurred to him. “Unless a certain disinherited Welsh princeling knows of some hidden person with a King's Bond.”
Frederica snorted. “A Welshman willing to give that much more power to the English? They would die first.”
Though he noticed she did not deny that Roderick might know someone. Or be related to him - had not Roderick's father managed to keep their small land mostly free of the English? Or perhaps that had simply been the dragons of the Gwynedd Nest. It did not matter, if they would not help Jack.
“If I leave, will these infernal voices in my head go away, so I can pretend this never happened?” Jack asked.
He did not want to say it. Oh, how he did not want to say it! “That will always be an option, but perhaps first we should find out just how much your new land Talent can do. We have only Roderick's word about this awakening, and that based on ancient stories. And he, as Frederica noted, has reason not to want the King's Bond in English hands.”
Jack shifted in his seat, as if he needed to get up and pace but did not trust his strength. He made his hands into fists and examined his fingernails, still caked with dirt from digging them into the ground. Finally he said grudgingly, “I suppose I must. If it were not for this invasion, I would say to hell with all of them. But I cannot let England fall to the French without even trying.”
“It might be best to keep this to ourselves, though,” Frederica said. “No one knows about the King's Bond except the four of us and Gentiane.”
Before Jack could respond, a peremptory knock came at the door.
Darcy stiffened. “Who is it?” It was still early enough that the important inhabitants of the castle would still be abed.
“Your mother,” came the acid response.
