Daughter of the Last King, page 16
part #1 of Conquest I Series
‘Kings!’ he laughed, and took another gulp of beer and finished off the bread. ‘What would I know about kings?’
I was disappointed. ‘Oh. Perhaps you do not travel so far to know of them.’
Now he bridled at my assumption. ‘Travelled so far. Course I travelled that far. Course I know of them, the kings of Powys and of Gwynedd. I know, I know!’ he told me crossly. ‘I’m travelling all over Wales from the north to the south, from the Irish sea to Offa’s Dyke. All over.’
‘So you are,’ I soothed him. ‘Some more beer?’ I picked up the jug.
‘Aye. Great deal of dust on the road.’
I stepped to the dresser against the wall and refilled his small beer jug and poured some into the beaker he held out in a grubby, shaky hand.
‘Well, let me see. What does a lady like you, from Dyfed,’ he said mischievously, ‘want to know about those lords? You’re from the household of King Rhys, I suppose?’
I nodded, but didn’t enlighten him any further.
‘All gone, now,’ he said. ‘Rhys’ family. All dead.’ He looked at me, waiting to see if I would contradict him, but I said nothing. ‘Well, in the north now there’s King Gruffudd ap Cynan … came back from a Norman prison to reclaim his birthright to Gwynedd. No prison could keep him in. But Cadwgan, now, well, and his brave son Owain, he’s the real card. He’s the one we’re all hoping …’ He lowered his voice to a whisper and bent his smelly head closer to mine. ‘You know,’ he hissed.
I nodded, shifting back from him. ‘I know,’ I said.
‘Come closer,’ he beckoned.
Reluctantly, I shifted my stool back closer to his knee and bent my head toward his, trying not to breathe his scent too deeply.
‘Sorry, Lady Nest, for the horse dung,’ he said in a voice suddenly changed. ‘I’ve overdone it, rather. I’m quite overwhelmed by it myself.’
I gaped at him. His voice was young, cultured. Looking around carefully, he briefly pulled the filthy rags down from his nose and mouth, revealing a young face, besmirched, and underneath the grime there were freckles. Up this close, I realised the lines on his forehead and around his eyes were drawn on with charcoal. ‘Speak low,’ he said and raised the rags back around his face.
‘You’re the son of …’
He nodded but said rapidly, ‘Don’t speak my name. I am your promised husband and I am truly sorry that this has to be our first meeting.’ His eyes brimmed with laughter. ‘I will come for you if you will still have me?’
I looked around covertly to see if we were observed, but Amelina and the girls were occupied with his pack and the hall was otherwise deserted, the servants all about their chores. Amelina had not recognised him, but then he must have grown considerably in the five years since she took my message to his father.
‘You mentioned the postern gate in your letter to my father?’
‘Yes,’ I said hesitantly.
‘I think you’re right. I’ve reconnoitered, and that is the best way. I will wait for you there at the next new moon, when the night is full black.’
I stared at him, my eyes wide, wishing I could think of something intelligent to say. It had been years since I wrote that letter. Why had he not come for me before now? So many things were changed now ….
‘Will you be there, Nest?’
‘Yes.’
The young blue eyes in the old face above the filthy rags smiled at me.
‘What’s going on here!’ Sybil’s strident voice made me jump back on my stool, her demand disturbing the peaceful murmur of Amelina and the girls, the crack of the fire and my low conversing with the ‘tinker’.
‘Just buying some thread we need from this tinker,’ Amelina said.
Sybil looked in my direction suspiciously. The ‘tinker’ knocked back his beer and stood to finalise the transaction with Amelina. One of the guards came to see him out under Sybil’s disapproving eye. He gave me a little wave with his bandaged hand as he shuffled out, bent and lame. ‘Go with God’s grace,’ I told him in Welsh.
12
Phases of the Moon
The waxing crescent moon meant the next black night was near enough a month away. I tried to act as normally as possible. I went to the keep a little less than usual. I allowed myself to study the lie of the land between the hall and the postern gate only twice. How could Owain get to the postern gate without being seen by the lookouts on the top of the keep, even on a dark night? It seemed impossible. How would I get from the hall to the gate? Could I sidle down past Master Richard’s sleeping form in the locust room, down to the undercroft and then crawl through the hole in the panelling I had seen when Arnulf chased me? It seemed a better chance than risking the drop from my window or trying to get out unseen past the many people sleeping in the hall.
What would happen if I were caught? I supposed it would hasten plans for my marriage to Arnulf, or perhaps I would be taken out of Wales and kept in close confinement in Bristol or Gloucester. I thought of my brothers Cynan and Goronwy, but I did not think Sybil would allow me to be executed. I had never heard of any Welsh noblewoman executed. I supposed if I stood at the postern gate in the dark, Owain would throw a rope over and haul me up, catch me the other side, row us silently across the moat further down, out of sight of the keep. What would happen if the plan succeeded? I would be married to Owain and live at the court of Cadwgan, return to the Welsh ways I knew from girlhood, but I had been living among the Normans now for five years … I would lose Sybil, the girls, Amelina. Sybil would be shamed if I escaped and Amelina would be punished, most likely turned out destitute. After a while, I realised I could plan and worry no more. I had given my promise for the betrothal and the escape. When the night came, I would put on my dark brown dress that might conceal me in the dark and go and wait for Owain to come for me.
I watched the nightly changes of the moon from gibbous to waning with an increasing sense of dread. Part of me did not want to go but to remain here with Sybil and Amelina, even with Arnulf. This was the world I knew, and I knew nothing of Owain and his father, how life might be for me in Powys, but he had risked his life and liberty once for me and would again. I could not let him down.
Wash Day came and I knew tonight would be the moonless night. My heart was heavy, though I sang my usual Welsh washing songs, as I stripped the linens from the beds with Amelina and the girls, as I carried them down to the vats in the bailey, as I pummelled and rinsed, my hands and forearms chafed red with soap. Sybil helped me carry a heavy sodden load to the line and peg out the sheets, nightdresses and shifts. Smoothing my wet hands on my apron, I watched the wet clothes wave at me in the wind, looking as if they were bidding me farewell from my life here. Surreptitiously, I looked with grief at Sybil bending, a hand to the small of her back; Amelina flirting with the cook who dabbed at soapsuds on her nose; Mabel and my girls giggling and slipping in the puddles left by our ablutions.
* * *
Dead of night, I slipped out of my room without waking Amelina. I could take nothing with me – not my fine dresses, nor my splendid glass beakers. I wore all my jewellery since I might need to hock it in my new life. My claw and knife were in the pouch at my waist. I could not risk a last glance backward at Amelina from the doorway. The passage was silent and pitch black, but I knew my way around every inch of this castle now. Slowly, I lifted the latch on the door of Master Richard’s room and peered in. He lay snoring, and I sensed rather than saw the locusts’ myriad eyes bulging at me as I traversed the room and gained the broken stairwell. Down I went and through the undercroft to the place I had seen with the broken panel. I stood on a barrel and felt for the gap, but began to panic. I could not find the hole. It must be here somewhere! My fingers felt a different surface. The hole had been mended, patched up in an effort to keep the rodents from the stored food and goods, but the patch was rudimentary and, using my knife, I managed to prise it up and open the hole again. It was barely big enough for me to squeeze through. I took off my cloak and bundled that through first and then struggled through the gap, getting caught at my hips and having to roll left and right violently to free myself, tearing my dress and scraping my shoulder and fingers badly. Once through, I crouched next to the building in the dark and re-clasped my cloak about me, listening.
All was quiet. I kept to the edges of the buildings, waiting to run between them, listening carefully for sentries. I knew where to avoid dogs that might bark and holes in the ground that could be stumbled into in the darkness. Eventually, little by little, I reached the postern gate. There was an occasional snatch of voices from the sentries high up on the keep and the creak of wood as they patrolled up and down. I peered through a knot in the wooden palisade, trying to see signs of movement on the moat or the far bank. I shivered uncontrollably, despite my thick, dark cloak. Once a patrol came close to where I stood and I lay flat with my face in the wet grass, praying they would not see me. I waited, waited and waited, through the long, cold night, startling at the squeaks of bats and the hoot of an owl, peering through the knot at the splash of a frog or rat in the moat. But Owain never came. When the cockerel crowed and the glimmer of dawn was appearing, I made my way back to my chamber, the way I had come, before I was seen by the guards.
Amelina sat awake and dishevelled on her pallet bed staring as I crept in. ‘Oh Lord, Nest! I was so afraid when I saw your bed empty. What’s happened? Where have you been? I thought best to wait for first light before I looked for you or told Sybil.’ I fell into her embrace sobbing, telling her my sorry tale. ‘You’ll catch your death of cold in those damp clothes!’ She began to strip them from me. ‘That was him! The tinker! I didn’t recognise him at all! He is so brave and naughty, I told you! But you meant to go without me! There is a reason he didn’t come, Nest. There must be a reason. Perhaps he has been injured or captured!’
We stared at each other in alarm, but there was nothing we could do except wait to hear news. We sat in the hall with Sybil and the children, sewing, talking as usual, and I was relieved at the end of the day that no news came. At least we knew then that he had not been captured or killed attempting to gain entrance to the castle.
What hope did I have of rescue now? My brother Gruffudd ap Rhys was still a child, only a little older than Mabel. It would be years before he returned to Wales, if he ever did. What would the shape of my life be now? Saint Benignus, angry at Sybil’s deceit, had let us both down.
Sybil received her own bad news soon after. Her brother Hugh had been killed in Anglesey, pursuing Gruffudd ap Cynan and Cadwgan. My curse of the Dogs of Annwn was starting to work. First Philippe de Montgomery had been disgraced and sent on crusade, FitzHamon was thwarted in his hopes of an heir to inherit the Welsh kingdom he had stolen, and now Hugh de Montgomery was dead. Roger de Montgomery, Arnulf, Neufmarché, they were still under my curse, waiting to work its magic on them. Excepting Gerald FitzWalter and Sybil de Montgomery, I repeated firmly in my head, to ensure that the Dogs understood who to hunt down and who to leave untouched.
‘Do you know what became of Cadwgan ap Bleddyn and Gruffudd ap Cynan?’ I asked, thinking there might be an answer to the mystery of Owain’s failure to appear at the postern gate in those events.
‘They are fled to Ireland.’ And perhaps Owain with them then, I thought.
‘Who will be earl of Shrewsbury now, lady?’ I asked Sybil.
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Roger was implicated in the last plot against the king and has more or less retired to Countess Almodis’ lands in France. It seems likely the king will appoint Arnulf.’ Her face expressed her pleasure. ‘And that would put the seal on your marriage too, I imagine. He will make you a very good husband, Nest, I assure you.’
I kept my expression neutral. I resolved with myself not to think too much, to wait and see, but how feeble my resolve was. The image of Arnulf’s mouth coming close to mine, the heat and weight of his body pressing against me, came unbidden to my mind. If I married Arnulf, if he were made earl, I would be mistress of Pembroke, my father’s llys. It would be a return to my rightful status, of sorts, but I had cursed him. Should I, and how could I, lift my curse against him? But was he Goronwy’s murderer?
* * *
Sybil laid out the large map of northern France that the king had given her. On the hall table, she placed heavy pebbles strategically at its corners to keep it unrolled. She and Amelina pointed out places so that we could follow news of the king’s campaigns with FitzHamon and see the locations of the exploits of her oldest brother Robert de Bellême, which we heard of from their letters.
‘Here is where I was born,’ said Amelina, her finger on Brittany in the north-west of the map.
‘Here is where I grew up and first met Amelina,’ said Sybil, pointing further south, to Alençon.
Hovering above France on the map was the coast of England and then above Cornwall and Devon, there was the southern coast of Wales. I looked but did not point to Pembroke where I was born, or to the ravaged lands of Deheubarth that belonged to my family.
Listening to the constant battles for territory in Normandy and the contentions there had been between the sons of the Conqueror, William Rufus, king of the English; Robert Curthose, duke of Normandy; the third brother, Count Henry; and between the other Norman barons, it explained something to me about why their race were here, harassing the lands of others, first the kingdom of the Anglo-Saxons and now the Welsh. Their homeland seemed to be in ceaseless turmoil and contention. They knew no other state.
* * *
from Gerald FitzWalter’s Day Book
* * *
Pembroke Castle, Whitsuntide, May 1098
Lord Arnulf’s brother Hugh, the earl of Shrewsbury is dead, killed in Anglesey by a lucky shot through the eye-hole of his helmet by the Norse king Magnus Barelegs who had arrived off the coast as a kind of spectator on the struggle between Gruffudd and Cadwgan and the earls of Shrewsbury and Chester. Gruffudd and Cadwgan have been driven to Ireland and failed in their latest attempt to force us out of the land, but King William must act fast to appoint the new earl of Shrewsbury or else they will be back taking the advantage again. I fear the king is occupied in Normandy and will not turn his attention to our needs here in Wales.
Arnulf has arrived at Pembroke and is waiting to hear what follows his brother’s death. He is certain he will be granted the title. ‘Who else?’ he told me at dinner. ‘The king will not appoint Robert or Roger, who are proven traitors. No treason has been evidenced against me. I held Pembroke loyally for the king, thanks to you. Who else? You are looking at the next earl of Shrewsbury and Pembroke, Gerald. And you will be my man.’ He clapped me on the back and ordered the best wine brought out for supper and we made a toast to our future.
My own fortune will rise with that of my lord. That is the positive. But the negative is that his elevation will inevitably lead to his marriage and I dread that day when I have to see Lady Nest taken to Arnulf’s bed.
We broke bread together in the morning in the hall and drank ale to settle our sore heads from the previous night’s carousing. ‘Will you take a wife when you are made earl, lord?’
Arnulf swallowed and put down his beaker. ‘Indeed, I will. It is high time that Welsh princess was writhing beneath me, don’t you think?’ He gripped the back of my neck and I flinched at the sourness of his breath as he came close.
‘The Welsh princess?’ I said, feigning surprise. ‘An earl might look to a better prize.’
He raised his eyebrows in query.
‘The king’s court is littered with Norman and Anglo-Saxon heiresses who would bring you wealth as well as fine bloodlines.’ He was silent, looking at the table, and I thought to go on. ‘Adeliza of Huntingdon, for instance, the heiress of that Earl Waltheof who was executed by the Conqueror for his treachery. You could ask King William for her hand, perhaps? She would bring an enormous dowry.’
Arnulf considered this. ‘The king will be concerned not to create an overmighty lord. I have already seen that in his dealings. And the Welsh princess shores up my position here with the local population. Besides, I have seen her, and she is well worth the plowing, but this Adeliza or some other heiress could have the face of a horse, no!’ He slapped me hard on the shoulder again and I feigned to share his amusement. I decided to take the next opportunity to tell Nest that Arnulf murdered her brother Goronwy on Llansteffan beach. She can never know the truth of it. She has mellowed toward Arnulf of late. If she grows a hatred for him, it may not prevent the marriage, but at least it will prevent her loving him.
III
1099−1104
13
Pentecost
‘Nest!’ Sybil stomped through the door of Master Richard’s chamber and looked at his locusts with evident distaste.
Master Richard was startled and dropped his pen, splattering ink on the parchment he had been carefully working on. ‘Tch!’ I passed the little sand box to him to soak up the ink before rising from my chair to face her. Sybil rarely came along the passageway to this room. What had I done to merit such a visit?
‘Lessons are finished for today,’ she said, pressing her hand to her ample breast, still out of breath from climbing the stairs from the hall. ‘You have to be measured for new dresses.’
‘New dresses!’ whined Master Richard. ‘My lady, I hardly think that warrants the interruption of the child’s study.’
‘She is no longer a child, Master Richard,’ she told him. ‘She is eighteen and her lessons with you will soon be over. Her lessons as a woman are about to begin and new dresses are certainly pertinent to that. Come downstairs, Nest. We have received an invitation to the inauguration of the king’s new hall at Westminster for the Pentecost court. The king orders specifically that you should come, so he must mean to confirm your marriage.’
