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think?”
      “It's magnificent,” said the king. “If only Gilbert the Red could see it now.”
      “Judging from the ones I have, the man wasn’t much on beautifying his castles, just fortifying them. I doubt he’d approve.” Hugh le Despenser the younger grinned at his son. “Your mother will, though. She was born here, you know. Well, not smack in the middle of this hall, of course. In one of the chambers over there.” He pointed toward a wing abutting the great hall. “I’ve had work done there, too. Next time your mother comes to stay, she’ll have a chamber fit for a queen.”
      There was a rather awkward silence, which Hugh inadvertently made worse by glancing up at one of the corbels below the great hall's roof rafters. It was a head of Queen Isabella, wearing a magnificent stone crown. His father's eyes followed his. “It seemed like a good idea at the time,” he said ruefully. “Anyway, the king's over here.”
      Edward chuckled. “Don’t look so distressed, Hugh. We’ll say the queen is a representation of my mother. Why, I think I even see the resemblance now that I think of it.”
      His father grinned. “And here's me, and there's my sweet wife. The heads were all Hurley's idea, in any case. I shall find it strange to have a meal with oneself gazing down upon oneself.”
      They had finished admiring his father's improvements and were sitting down to eat when a man entered the great hall. Though the man was not in livery, Hugh, his eighteen-year-old eyes sharper than his father's or the king's, recognized him from a distance. “Father? Isn’t he one of Grandfather's men?”
      “Yes.” His father rose and met the man as he crossed toward the high table where they had been sitting. “Man, have you news from Bristol?”
      “Yes, my lord. My lord—”
      “Yes? Speak out.”
      “It is bad news, the worst. The Earl of Winchester surrendered Bristol Castle to the queen's forces. He had no choice; the garrison would no longer fight for him. He held out for six days nonetheless, but—”
      “Where is he? Is that whore holding him prisoner? Edward! We must save him.”
      “My lord, it is too late. The earl was tried as a traitor the very afternoon of his surrender. He was condemned to death by a council convened by the queen and her paramour. The sentence was carried out the next morning.” The man crossed himself. “The earl died two days ago, my lord.”
      Hugh, along with the king, had joined his father in the middle of the hall. He saw his father lurch to the side and into the king, who kept him from collapsing. It was Hugh himself who managed to ask, “How?”
      “Beheaded, Master Hugh.” He hesitated. “They dragged him through the streets and hung him first. The whoresons who had the arranging of it made him wear his surcoat with his arms reversed. His head was sent to Winchester. His body was put back on the gallows. It was still hanging there when I left Bristol.”
      Hugh's father, still propped up by the king, was breathing harshly. It was the only sound in the great hall. Hugh, standing on his other side, took his hand. “Come, Father. Let me take you to your chamber.”
      “No.” His father managed to stand upright. “No. I need— I must—”
      He staggered out of the hall. Hugh would have followed his father, but the king, a powerfully built man, stopped him merely with a touch of his arm. “Best leave him alone for a time, Hugh.”
      “But he's distracted, your grace.”
      The king shook his head. “I know your father well. He needs time alone. When the time is right, I will go to him.”
      “When? Tonight when he lies in bed?”
      Hugh could not believe what had come out of his own mouth, and he had said it loudly enough that the words echoed through Caerphilly's great hall. He waited for the king to knock him to the floor. Instead, Edward said, “I am forgetting that the Earl of Winchester was your grandfather. I grieve