Page 9 of Retribution

Cambridge grunted. “She is a child,” he muttered. “A child who must be guided. She cannot function without my reason.”

“True,” Langford said. “She is a good lass. She only wishes to please you.”

Cambridge chewed loudly, but his eyes had a distant cast to them, as if his mind were somewhere else. “She does,” he said. “And she will yet. She is a tool, Langford. Only a tool.”

“A tool for what, my lord?”

Cambridge swallowed the bite in his mouth. “Whatever I wish,” he said simply. “Langford… answer a question for me.”

“If I can, my lord.”

“What do you see when you look at my Pearl?”

“I see youth, innocence,” Langford said. Then, he shrugged. “I see a fine flower of womanhood. Why do you ask?”

“She is an angel, is she not?”

“She is, my lord.”

“And you could never suspect evil from an angel, could you?”

“Nay,” Langford said. “Not from her. Why do you ask?”

Cambridge took a long drink of the wine before answering. “Because she may be the solution to my problem.”

“What is your problem, my lord?”

Cambridge sat back in his chair, wiping at his mouth with a damask napkin as he pondered the question. Then, he snorted. “Not simply my problem,” he said. “England’s problem.”

“I do not understand, my lord.”

Cambridge sighed faintly, placing his napkin on the table. “A man born to the throne,” he muttered. “A man who returns to England upon the event of his father’s death to assume his rightful place. A man who seems to assert his dominion over us all. It would have been better had he simply stayed away.”

Langford’s brow rippled with confusion. “You speak of Edward?”

Cambridge didn’t acknowledge the question, nor did he answer it. He simply collected his wine cup and took another sip, all the while clearly mulling over something. His mind, his manner, seemed heavy with it.

“She is a tool,” he finally mumbled. “My tool. My Pearl, my angel. There is nothing so disturbing as a killer angel.”

That made absolutely no sense to Langford. “Is there something I can do to help you, my lord?”

Cambridge seemed to be in a trance of sorts. He was lost to his own thoughts for a moment longer before finally shaking himself loose of whatever spell had him. He glanced up at Langford.

“There may indeed be something you can assist me with,” he said. “But not at the moment. At this very moment, we are preparing for a feast to welcome home a king. I never liked him, you know. A more arrogant and controlling man has never existed. I rather found myself hoping he would be killed whilst away from England, finding some damn war no one cares about. He could not even come home for his own father’s death.”

Langford began clearing away the remnants of the meal now that Cambridge was clearly finished. “He was far away, so I heard,” he said.

Cambridge sipped more wine. “Possibly,” he said. “As I said… it would have been better had he stayed away.”

Langford didn’t have anything more to say to that. He finished collecting the gold utensils, motioning in other servants to clear the rest. He was the only one allowed to touch the archbishop’s plate or valuables. He left Cambridge sitting at his table, lost in thoughts that seemed to be dark and mysterious, as he carefully cleaned the items used at the meal. He wasn’t allowed to leave Cambridge’s sight with his valuable plate and cups, so he went to the corner of the hall where a bucket of hot water awaited. Even as he cleaned, he found himself looking over at the archbishop, wondering why the man seemed to be so enigmatic.

She is my tool…

It would have been better had he not returned…

There was a message in that.

Something dark was on the horizon. Langford could feel it.