Daughter of the Last King, page 3
part #1 of Conquest I Series
The maid and I spoke to each other in a mixture of pidgin French and Welsh. Occasionally she tried words from her own Breton language, which had some similarities to Welsh, and I could understand her that way. Patting her chest, she told me her name was Amelina. She was a young woman with ample breasts that were a little more visible above the neck of her gown than they should be. She was on the short side and had a very long twist of plaited dark brown hair and grey-green eyes. She told me she was eighteen years old.
Amelina pinned the curtains open on the tub and the scent of cinnamon and cumin filled the room. She unlaced and pulled the nightgown from me and I stepped into the hot water, crouched and then sat as Amelina sponged the mud, blood and tears from me.
Amelina moved over to a pile of clothes heaped on the floor near the chest, holding them up for inspection. They were the garments I had worn on my journey from Llansteffan and looked like muddied, soiled shrouds risen from a grave. ‘These will have to go into the rag pile. They’re beyond repair.’
‘No!’ I said. ‘My claw.’ I had slipped it into the patch pocket of my dress on Llansteffan beach when we were attacked.
‘What?’
‘I need to keep my claw.’
She frowned at me but rummaged in the pocket and then held up the battered claw between two fingers, a look of disgust on her face. ‘This!’ she said incredulously.
‘Put it on the shelf.’ I closed my eyes and wanted to stay in the tub forever if only the water could stay warm and the tips of my fingers were not wrinkling more and more in pale whorls. I remembered my father drawing the shape of the three rivers in the sand on Llansteffan beach – The Claw. He had shown Goronwy and me how the three rivers reached up from the sea into the land, into the three parts of his kingdom, Dyfed, Ystrad Twyi and Gwyr. ‘It’s not a shape you can see, even from high up at Llansteffan fort,’ he told us, ‘but it’s a shape a bird will see, that the red kites trace in the air as they give out their haunting whistles, swooping up and down, hunting for prey, all along the three rivers.’
‘There’s a garderobe across the passageway,’ Amelina interrupted my memories. I allowed my legs to float up to the surface of the water like pale logs. ‘And I am yours. Your maid. Lady Sybil says,’ she finished lamely, when I made no reply. ‘I will sleep there,’ she pointed to a low, truckle bed close to the door. Was she my jailer?
She had a clean linen shift laid on the bed for me and the dress she fished from the chest was the smallest she could find but still it swamped me, yet she managed to artfully pin it, gather and belt it so that it was passable. Or so she indicated by her pleased expression. The dress was dark red wool with a black embroidered band across the knees and similar black bands at the cuffs and around the neck. She sat me on the edge of the bed again and brushed my hair in long strokes over and over, one hand firmly on the top of my head to steady me. Finally she wove dark red ribbons intricately through my loose hair.
The bells struck the hour of eleven of the morning, the dinner hour. Amelina led me back down the passageway and down the stairs to the hall where dishes were clattering and there was a loud buzz of conversation. She whispered close to my ear, ‘Courage, little one,’ and propelled me with a small push at my back through the doorway.
The hall was vast, even larger than my father’s at his best palace in Dinefwr. Great chandeliers with dozens of candles hung on iron hoops from the thick beams crossing the high ceiling space; two long trestles accommodated the household and castle visitors; a long hearth burnt in the centre of the hall. Sybil was presiding at the high table. I recognised Gerald FitzWalter but none of the other people sitting with her. There was an empty seat on one of the lower tables and I made for that, lifting the long red skirts of the dress so that I would not trip.
Lady Sybil’s voice rang out angrily, and all heads turned to me. I looked up and saw she was gesturing at the seat next to her. The heat of humiliation suffused my face. I had wanted to prove I was a royal princess worthy of their respect and had made a fool of myself already. Carefully, I climbed the two steps up to the high table and sat down next to her, keeping my eyes away from the men there. ‘This is my brother, Arnulf de Montgomery,’ she said. I glanced up quickly and nodded my head in acknowledgement, avoiding his eyes. It was impossible to equate this suave, well-dressed man with the chaos of my memories of Llansteffan, with the mud, fire and blood and the noise so loud and cacophonous that I had felt myself somehow suspended, deafened, in the silent centre of it. I had barely looked at him, but it had been enough to see that without the nosepiece of his helmet he had lost the pig-like aspect I first noticed when I saw him clad in red and chain mail amidst the flames of my home. He had a well-formed, handsome face with large brown eyes and long hair as black as a raven’s wing. His drooping moustaches were a lighter brown colour.
Sybil and Arnulf were in the midst of a conversation in which I heard the name Bernard de Neufmarché again, and also the names of my father, Rhys ap Tewdwr, of Cadwgan and of their King William. Arnulf was doing most of the talking. At one point, he must have said something indiscreet because Sybil touched her fingers to his mouth. ‘Shhh.’ She dropped her usual strident voice to an intimate murmur. These two were close. Sybil swivelled in her seat toward me.
‘How old are you, girl?’ It was him, her brother, addressing me. FitzWalter cleared his throat and translated the words for me. ‘She doesn’t understand you,’ he said apologetically to Arnulf.
‘Twelve,’ I said, keeping my eyes on the table.
Sybil and Arnulf resumed their conversation, and I glanced at FitzWalter but he did not translate any more words for me. I heard the words ‘marry … Welsh … Norman … Pembroke.’ Sybil nodded her head.
‘I am betrothed, my lady,’ I said in halting French.
Sybil looked astonished that I had addressed her and in words she could understand. She said something in a sarcastic voice to Arnulf, who let out a harsh shout of a laugh and asked me a question. ‘To whom?’ FitzWalter translated.
I swallowed. I had hoped to avoid any conversation with any of them. I should have kept silent. ‘Owain ap Cadwgan, Prince of Powys,’ I said quietly.
Arnulf slammed his goblet down on the table. ‘That bastard, Cadwgan!’ He made a theatrical expression of astonishment to his sister. I had learnt that word from my father’s Norman hostages and heard it coupled with Cadwgan’s name before. Arnulf made a remark about Owain and he and Sybil laughed. I noticed FitzWalter regarding me with a look of pity. I did not want his pity. I returned his gaze stonily until he looked away, frowning.
‘May I help you to some sauce, Lady Nest?’ the man sitting to my right asked in Welsh. His accent garbled the words, but I could make out what he was saying. He was a man in mid-life with grey hair that had once been orange, judging by the traces of that bleached out colour still lingering in places. His fingers were stubby and stained with brown ink.
Relieved to be let away from the discussion between the brother and sister, I turned to him. ‘Thank you.’ I reached for a trencher from the pile on the table. It was Wednesday, a fish day. Bowls of lampreys, mussels and pickled fish were set before us.
‘I am Richard Belmeis, clerk to the Montgomery family, and will be teaching you your letters and to speak French as if you were born and raised in Normandy,’ he told me cheerfully, and then repeated his words in French for Sybil and Arnulf’s benefit.
Sybil snorted. It was an ugly sound. ‘Do your best, Master Richard,’ she told him in a voice laced with scepticism.
In the morning, Gerald FitzWalter was in the bailey below with his men, leading their saddled horses from the stables, tightening girths, loading bedrolls, readying to leave. Since it seemed I had the run of the castle, I determined to go down and ask him my favour, as he had been kind to me before.
In the bailey, I climbed up onto a mounting block to keep my feet safe from the horses chafing to be out of the crowded space. ‘Are you leaving, Sir Gerald?’ I called out.
He turned his horse’s head to regard me. He looked amused to see me on my perch. ‘Yes, I must return to my duty at Pembroke. Take care of yourself, little princess.’ He still called me that when Lady Sybil was not in earshot. She had told him sharply that I was no such thing and he should not mislead me into thinking it. I was sorry to see Gerald go. He was the only human being who had given a kind word to me since Llansteffan. Now I would be left here with Lady Sybil, who was as tender as granite.
‘Can I ask you a favour, sir?’
Gerald frowned. ‘What is it, princess?’
‘My brother, my half-brother Idwal, who was captured in the battle. I would like to know how he fares. Perhaps I could send a letter to him?’
‘I doubt it,’ Gerald said curtly, starting to turn his horse away. Seeing the expression on my face, he relented. ‘I will try to find out for you, but it’s unlikely I can bring you any good news of your family. Lady Sybil’s household is your family now and you must make shift.’ His cheerful expression sobered. ‘I fear there is little kindness in war, Nest.’
‘Another question, sir!’ I called out, seeing him start to turn his horse again. ‘Who killed my brother Goronwy on Llansteffan beach?’
‘Neufmarché’s men, I suppose.’ He called out a command and was gone, riding swiftly through the castle gateway, followed by his soldiers. I watched his back retreating out of view, feeling pathetic in my desire to latch on to someone, like a motherless duckling, seeing him leave me and feeling more bereft than before.
* * *
Sometime after these events of my girlhood, Henry watched me writing. ‘Always scribbling like an inky clerk, Nest!’ he said and gave me this journal. I smoothed the palm of my hand down the fine vellum of its blank pages and began to scribe the story of my life. It gave me comfort in the hardest times and was my constant companion, but after the Battle of Crug Mawr I had no heart to write anymore so I put the book at the bottom of a chest brimful with jumbled documents – letters, bills, writs, charters, testaments, genealogies, maps.
Now that I am an old woman and much has passed, my nephew Rhys is asking me questions to help him in his contentions with the Norman lords in Deheubarth. I unearthed this, my neglected journal, and collected together other pertinent papers in my possession. These papers included the notes scribed by Sir Gerald FitzWalter at Pembroke Castle in Wales and the copybook of Sister Benedicta containing correspondence with her brother, Sir Haith. These siblings, Benedicta and Haith, were to become dear to me, as the reader of my journal will see, as the tale unfolds. Rustling between these papers is the story of my life and my land.
Like an ‘inky clerk’, I have put the papers into a kind of chronological order and look with amazement on the story they tell between them, which I was all unaware of at the time. You never know how the past will turn out. Henry’s sister Countess Adela once wrote, ‘Lest acts be confounded by oblivion through time, let us take care to recall them in memory with virile writings.’
I will give Rhys his answers distilled from these pages to help guide him, yet I will not give him this book full as it is with so much tinder that, if lit, the conflagration might consume the world, or at least my castle here at Llansteffan where I sit at the end of my days. Llansteffan has seen conflagrations enough already.
I never thought to be so old. The backs of my hands look like dry old parchments that might themselves be written upon. This brown-spotted tissue-thin skin was once moon-pale, my long fingers and thumbs loaded with gems winking in candlelight. In that time, long ago, powerful men did things they should not have done for the sight of me. There is relief and regret that my time as that young woman is all over with now. From the perspective of old age, love and desire seem like a madness driving our lives, a madness that I miss, nevertheless.
The shifting scenes written down here are like two parallel games of chess: with one hand, Henry plays against me and my Welsh compatriots, and with his other hand, he plays against the Anglo-Norman barons. Most times he won, but not always. I am so old that my bones ache and creak: my knee, my hip, my shoulder. I shift over and over at night seeking a position to hold the pain at bay and find sleep and, when I cannot sleep, I read and wonder at the variegated story of my life.
I insert here the first extract from the correspondence of the Flemish knight Haith with his sister Benedicta, a nun at the abbey of Almenêches in Normandy. Haith was in service to Count Henry, the youngest son of William the Conqueror. The Flemish brother and sister wrote to each other in a cipher that my clerk decoded and translated from the Flemish, a book code based on a psalter their mother gave them, a copy to each. Benedicta sent her copybook of the letters to me when she knew she would write no more. I have Haith’s psalter and he marked the passage for himself, deciphering the code so it was not difficult for my clerk to follow and reveal their words to one another.
* * *
from The Copybook of Sister Benedicta
* * *
Gloucester, Easter, 1093
Greetings dear sister, wise mistress of the holy dishes, from your brother Haith. I picture you there in your abbey, marshalling your pots and pans and commanding the swivels of your spoons and ladles. Here, as promised, is your next instalment of the adventures of your little brother in the cipher as you demand, but guard these papers well, Benedicta, or at least the psalter that reveals the code, for my tears would flood the land if harm came to my Lord Henry from the betrayal of any words of mine.
We find ourselves back in England after such a long sojourn in Normandy. We are in Gloucester but it has been a sorry time for we came here expecting the death of Henry’s brother, King William Rufus. Count Robert de Meulan took us to ship across the British Sea and then up the Severn with haste when news came that the king was gravely ill.
The king has no heir, and it is in the minds of Meulan and Henry that my lord is the unspoken heir to England and would make a better one than the oldest brother, Duke Robert Curthose. This nickname for the duke, Curthose, meaning short legs, was his father the Conqueror’s invention. He taunted him with it – I heard it myself – and it sticks still. I am a biased commentator as you often chastise me but I assure you, Benedicta, Henry would be a most careful, astute king with a true sense of his responsibilities as God’s caretaker of the country, whereas I have seen Curthose’s court first hand and there is no proper care for the people of his lands there. You see that yourself in the poor people crowding at the alms door of your abbey, or in your hospital, those who have lost everything in the constant warfare of the lords in the surrounding countryside.
They say that at William Rufus’ court, everything is for sale, including the king’s love. (He is nicknamed Rufus, Benedicta, because of his ruddy cheeks. Ruddy with drinking, I suppose, or fornication – I put that in to check that you are awake.) Henry’s father, the Conqueror, has left behind him a sorry legacy of contention between his three sons and divided loyalties and lands in England and Normandy for his barons. I think Meulan is right to see Henry as the brother who could heal these contentions and divisions. He has a brain of brilliance, I assure you. He is up hours before me and the sun each morning and when I finally join him yawning with my hair awry, he tells me I look like a sleepy lion and someone should throw a bucket of cold water over me! ‘Why do you rise so early, my lord?’ I asked him.
‘Because I wake with my brain burbling at me,’ he says. ‘I can lie there in bed with my head rattling through lists of things to do and sudden new thoughts that I need to write down, or I can rise and start putting those lists and ideas into action.’
‘I don’t have that problem at all, my lord,’ I say.
‘I am well aware of that, my friend!’ he says, laughing. ‘Never mind. One burbling brain is enough between the two of us.’
One morning, when we were all at Gloucester waiting on news from the sick king’s doctors, I overslept and lay in a dark corner of the hall near the hearth, rolled in my cloak. I was roused awake by the rasp of a bench as Meulan and his brother Henry, earl of Warwick, sat down close to where I lay. They did not see me, thinking everyone was about their business by that hour. When I realised the content of their discussion, I stayed as still as I could, just about able to hear and see them through a bald patch in my cloak. I listened to the brothers’ conversation so that I could pass it on to my Lord Henry later that day.
‘I am glad to see you in England, brother,’ Warwick began. He is the younger of the two brothers and has been a solid supporter of King William Rufus.
‘I think you will see more of me in England now,’ his brother, Meulan responded.
I was intrigued, Benedicta, to know more of Meulan who has a formidable, and I would say, well-earned reputation as warrior and politician. He fought as a young man at Hastings with the Conqueror, gaining vast lands here in England as a result, which he mostly passed on to his brother Warwick, since Meulan also has substantial lands in Normandy and France. There is an accord between these two brothers that, alas, is not there for the sons of the Conqueror.
Meulan told his brother that he had tried for the last five years to give his support to Duke Robert Curthose in Normandy while Warwick was working for the family’s interests with King William Rufus in England. Meulan despaired that Curthose was unruly. He could not control the Norman barons, especially Bellême, the eldest of the Montgomery brood.
