She had asked for certainty, and he had given her too little for too long. She had loved him in falsehood and still stood on the wall, watching him ride to save her people. She had heard his true name and recoiled, as any sane woman should.
And still some selfish part of him had felt relief that she knew at last who stood before her, even if the knowing destroyed her hope.
He wanted her understanding.
Tonight, he saw something new in that want. It was not only that he wanted her to know he had once believed himself loyal. He wanted her to believe he had been less monstrous than the stories made him. Less willing. Less eager. Less responsible.
And perhaps that, too, was only another shield.
He laughed once under his breath, a dry sound with no mirth in it.
Shields. Always shields.
The king’s rage. The other knights. The need for order. Obedience. The crown above all things. And now, even the hope of her understanding.
How many layers had he built between himself and the act of choice?
The guard outside shifted again. Somewhere in the castle, a woman’s voice rose sharply in pain or fear, then fell quiet.
Reginald looked down at his hands.
These hands had buried Donal. These hands had held Aingeal’s face. These hands had gone into fire for her people. These hands had once struck in a cathedral.
He thought of the black gelding beneath him at the lower holding. Of the choice in the yard before the gates had opened. Of Aingeal’s voice, cold and clear before every watching man.
Reginald FitzUrse rides under my authority and under watch.
Under his own name. That was the part that returned now. Not Donal. Not a borrowed life. Not a man hidden beneath a dead man’s ring.
Reginald FitzUrse had ridden out, and what he had done with that name had been chosen.
If he could choose rightly now, then perhaps he had also chosen wrongly then. The thought was simple. Brutal and inescapable.
He opened his eyes and stared at the stone floor until it steadied beneath him again.
No, he would not gallop all the way to repentance in one night because at last the road to it had shown itself. That would be another false haste. He was not remade because one holding burned, and one woman wept, and one old letter preferred the word wrath to command.
But neither could he go back. He could no longer say cleanly, I was only a servant obeying my king.
The candle had burned low. The room felt close now, all stone and smoke and the long aftermath of choices made too late.
Reginald folded the parchment carefully and set it beside the bed. Then he stood. The movement made the cut on his forearm pull. He barely felt it.
He crossed to the narrow window and looked through the slit of stone toward the dark line of the wall. Beyond it lay the road,the holdings, the fields he had ridden for under one name and returned from under another.
Somewhere within these walls, Aingeal grieved because of him. Somewhere within these walls, she carried both her people and the wound he had given her, and still she had armed him when need demanded it. Still, she had let his true name ride under her command.
He could not ask forgiveness. Perhaps not ever. But he could stop shaping the truth into something gentler before placing it in her hands. When he spoke to her next, he would not tell her only what happened. He would tell her what he had chosen.
He remained by the window until the first gray hint of dawn touched the stones. Canterbury did not leave him. It sat open in him now, vast and cold and echoing.
And for the first time in all the years since the cathedral, Reginald could not fully say:
I merely obeyed.
Chapter twenty-nine
The scent of smoke clung to the lower hall long after the fire was out. It stuck to the rushes, to the damp wool blankets draped over benches and pallets, to the hair and clothes of every man and woman brought in from the outer holdings before dawn. Even by midmorning, after rain had washed the yard and darkened the stones clean again, the smell lingered.
