Daughter of the Last King, page 32
part #1 of Conquest I Series
* * *
from Gerald FitzWalter’s Day Book
* * *
Pembroke Castle, Easter 1106
God has answered my prayers, and more. I have my sweet Nest and my own Pembroke. And now my glorious wife tells me she is carrying our child! I am building a new manor house for her at Carew with the latest and the best of everything. I studied the options, conferring with my master mason. Carew’s hall has a high ceiling and gleaming pale timbers. I have ordered the walls plastered and painted with a scene from the stories of King Arthur that she likes so well. The hearth is so huge you could stable a destrier in it and it is edged with fine tiles patterned in blue and yellow. A tapestry I commissioned for Nest’s chamber depicts moon and stars and another shows butterflies, bees and flowers. Even the garderobe is a new fangled marvel with a chute to the ditch outside, its boards inside covered with a green cloth and plugged with a cushion.
I had to move the boy Hywel, who is thirteen now, back to Rhydygors Castle so that Nest would not find out about him. He favours her in his looks, and while no one has an inkling who he is, they might begin to suspect if they should see them standing side by side. The poor boy is no threat to anyone, but I am ashamed of his condition and struggle enough with the reasons she already has to blame me.
* * *
from The Copybook of Sister Benedicta
* * *
Almenêches Abbey, Normandy, October 1106
I have no need to copy my letters now to and from my brother Haith, because he is here! In the abbey’s guesthouse! And Abbess Emma, all curious as I was, to hear in full an account of the battle between Duke Robert and King Henry at Tinchebray and its aftermath, gave me leave to come out of the cloister to greet my brother and invite him to dine with her this evening. ‘Go now,’ she said. ‘He is just arrived.’
‘Thank you, abbess. This means the world to me.’
I rushed out in time to see Haith dismounting and groaning loudly at his aches and pains. He did not see me for a moment and I watched him stretching his muscles.
‘Oh, thank God!’
He turned to see me running toward him. ‘Benedicta?’ Twenty years since he had seen me, except through the cloister grille.
I fell upon him.
‘Benedicta! I’m filthy from the battle. Don’t!’
‘I don’t care! I don’t care at all!’ Blood and dirt grimed every inch of him, but I gladly gripped him and rubbed my face and hands against him, sobbing. ‘You’re safe! You’re alive. I was so afraid for you.’ That creased grin that I remembered so well from our childhood, that turned his face, mouth and chin into a series of V shapes; his voice, the blue sparkle of his eyes.
‘Yes, I think I recognise the little girl I was separated from in Bruges so long ago in this nun here!’ he laughed. ‘Grown into a fine woman, albeit all concealed in that voluminous black habit and wimple. I’m fine. It’s so wonderful to see you, Benedicta, but you are outside? Outside your cloister?’
‘The abbess gave me leave. Isn’t twenty years of separation enough excuse? I am often outside the cloister now. I am the one who carries messages to the bishop and others, as you know. Haith, you are so pale beneath that grime.’
‘Forgive me. I am bone tired.’
‘Of course. Come and sit by the fire and tell me and Abbess Emma all about it. We have heard rumours and now you can confirm it all.’
Two hours later, Haith, washed and fed, looked like he was feeling considerably more human. The abbess and I looked at him expectantly and he set down the beaker of our best damson wine. ‘The battle was swift and there were few casualties before Duke Robert’s surrender. King Henry has the duke and others captive. Curthose’s small son William Clito is placed in the care of Helias de Saint-Saens. Henry has been unanimously proclaimed duke of Normandy and will soon set about restoring order here.’
The abbess looked down at her hands folded in her lap and then up again to Haith. ‘Poor Robert Curthose, to lose everything, but his rule has not been a happy, peaceable one. I am in hopes the new duke, Henry, will repair all our fortunes. What of my brother, Robert de Bellême?’
‘I believe there was some secret negotiation between Bellême and Meulan before the battle.’ Haith paused to let us make our own surmises regarding that statement. ‘He escaped from the battlefield.’
‘Then our troubles are not over,’ the abbess said.
Haith turned to her in surprise. ‘Perhaps not quite yet,’ he agreed in a low voice.
* * *
A few months after our arrival at Pembroke, I found I was carrying Gerald’s child. I was as happy as he was, as Amelina was, about it. It felt like I had finally started another life, after Henry. I frequently rode to Carew to visit my holdings and my people. Now that Gerald has finished building the comfortable new manor house, it has become my principal residence. I was still unable to bring myself to go to Llansteffan, so Gerald’s steward continued to take care of my interests there.
Not long after my twenty-sixth birthday, early in October 1106, we received news that Henry had finally succeeded in subduing Normandy. He defeated his brother Duke Robert at the Battle of Tinchebray, fought on the lands of Sybil’s nephew William de Mortain. Elizabeth’s husband, Robert de Meulan, and her lover, William de Warenne, had been two of Henry’s commanders in the battle. Robert Curthose was disinherited of Normandy and in the custody of Bishop Roger at Devizes. Henry was proclaimed duke of Normandy as well as king of the English.
Elizabeth wrote to tell me she and the queen had been to visit the former duke in his captivity, and that he was comfortable, although downhearted and anxious for his son. I tried not to flinch at every mention of Henry’s name that was so frequent on everyone’s lips, so lost to mine.
Sybil wrote that her brothers, Bellême and Arnulf, had repeatedly petitioned the king for the return of their lands, but were denied. I felt glad of that. If Arnulf ever returned here as Gerald’s overlord, it would have been an unwelcome complication. The threads holding Gerald and I together were fragile still, and we were winding them carefully about each other. But I felt safe. Henry knew better than to ever trust the Montgomerys again. He would not relent.
‘Many Normans can breathe easier now,’ Gerald told me, ‘now that their heartlands in Normandy and England are combined together under one overlord.’
Gerald took me to visit the site of my father’s old llys near Carmarthen and then on to the castle of Rhydygors where the Norman lord Richard FitzBaldwin had recently reestablished the castle and we dined with him. My mother and her child had died here and FitzBaldwin kindly showed me to my mother’s grave, where I laid flowers and shed tears. ‘Do you know if her child that is buried here with her was a boy or a girl, had a name?’ I asked.
‘No,’ FitzBaldwin said, embarrassed by my emotion, ‘I’m sorry I don’t know anything about it.’
As I was mounting my horse to leave, I noticed Gerald turning a boy around swiftly by his shoulders and pushing him into the darkness of the kitchen doorway. He strode back toward his horse, keeping his eyes down on his boots. His face was flushed. He was hiding the boy from me, but why? Perhaps he was an illegitimate son? I could not blame him for that when he nurtured my own.
For the first half an hour of our ride, Gerald remained silent. I would ask him about the boy another time. ‘The Welsh roundabouts live in peace alongside their Norman lords,’ Gerald told me, ‘and it’s largely because of your presence. You are their lady and they are happy. They accept us because of you.’
I was not sure how I felt about that. The king had appointed new Normans to lands in Wales, filling the vacuum left after the fall of the Montgomerys. He gifted the fertile lands of the Gower coast to Henry, earl of Warwick, and Bishop Roger of Salisbury was building a new stone castle at Cydweli. I had no news of my brother Gruffudd, who I presumed must still be in Ireland if he lived. Perhaps he had accepted his disinheritance and given his sword arm to some sea venturer.
Before the end of the year, our son was born at Carew. The bells of the chapel and the town church peeled to greet his arrival. ‘I should like to name him Rhys,’ I told Gerald.
He pulled a face. ‘I think he must have a Norman name, my love. Sorry.’
‘I want him to be named Rhys.’
‘Let’s call him William and when we have daughters, they can have Welsh names, hmm? Gwladys after your mother?’
I saw he would not relent despite his gentleness. ‘Then our second son will be named for my kin.’
‘Perhaps not our second one,’ he still demurred, ‘but our third son, for sure!’ He beamed at me.
I could not win this battle. ‘Three sons and daughters! We will be very busy then, my lord.’
‘Yes, Nest, my darling love, we will be very busy!’ We laughed and gently he stroked our son’s cheek.
Some weeks after the Christmas celebrations and the feast of the Epiphany in the new year of 1107, I sat down at my desk to update my journal. There was a roll of parchment on my desk, tied with a blue ribbon, that I did not recognise. I unrolled it and found a poem written in Welsh.
O sea-bird, beautiful upon the tides,
White as the moon is when the night abides,
Or snow untouched, whose dustless splendour glows
Bright as a sunbeam and whose white wing throws
A glove of challenge on the salt sea-flood.
‘Amelina,’ I said, looking up as she came into the room with a pile of clothes in her arms. ‘Do you know where this parchment came from?’
‘No.’ She shook her head, pulling a puzzled face. ‘I thought you knew.’
‘I’ve never seen it before.’ I turned it over in case there was a dedication or explanation written on the other side, but there was nothing. ‘A poem. A gift from someone in the castle, perhaps?’
She shook her head again and continued folding the clean clothes into a chest. The provenance of the poem was a mystery then, for now.
I reached for parchment and my quill again and drew up a genealogy to show how my bloodline, the line of the daughter of the last king in Wales, flowed on in my two sons, Henry and William, and how they are related to the royal families of Briton. Perhaps my sons will lead the Welsh back to their patrimony, despite their Norman names and blood. Perhaps they could marry into the families of Gruffudd ap Cynan in Gwynedd or Cadwgan ap Bleddyn in Powys. I would find out about the daughters of those princes. I am the daughter of a king. My son Henry is the son of a king and kin to princes and I will see he has his due rights.
There is no way back now. My sons are Normans, no matter what I tell them about their Welsh heritage, and my husband is Norman. My own desire to be resistantly Welsh is now necessarily compromised and hedged about by love.
26
The Hobbled Claw
One morning in late spring in the year 1107, I returned from my ride and Gerald, who stood with his mason in the courtyard of Carew, looked up to smile warmly at me, calling out ‘There’s a messenger for you in the hall, Nest!’
Inside, I pulled my gauntlets from my hands, and Amelina fussed around me, undoing the clasp of my cloak and slinging it over her arm. The messenger put down the beaker of ale Amelina had furnished him, stood and bowed to me.
I took a seat. The messenger held out two scrolls to me. ‘Lady.’ I took one of the scrolls. It was a letter from Sybil de Montgomery.
* * *
To my dearest sister, Nest, chatelaine of Pembroke. You may have heard that Henry, king of the English and duke of Normandy, has lately returned from Normandy and held court at Windsor. I was summoned there and went trembling because, Nest, I am sorry to tell you my husband died a few weeks ago at Tewkesbury Abbey. He never regained his wits. King Henry has made his own bastard, Robert FitzRoy, lord of all my lands in Glamorgan, Bristol and Gloucester and intends to betroth Mabel to him, as FitzHamon’s heiress.
That insect Belmeis is continuing to enrich himself as sheriff of Shropshire, usurping the battle-won gains of my father and brothers like a roach. King Henry has sent my Hawise and Cecile as novices to Salisbury and Wilton Abbeys so that all the FitzHamon inheritance is concentrated in Mabel. He tells me nothing as yet of how he means to dispose of me or Amice, but you will know all this soon yourself and we will speak directly of it, for he summons you to attend the betrothal in Cardiff. I long to speak with you. Perhaps you can intercede for us with the king? If he sees you in person, your beautiful face, he will not be able to resist, I know it. In misery for the fate of my family. Your dear friend Sybil.
* * *
I wiped a tear from my cheek, not at the thought of FitzHamon dead, but for Sybil’s grief and insecurity, for her girls. I hoped Hawise and Cecile were treated kindly by the nuns in their abbeys and determined to write to them there. The king’s bastard son Robert would, I thought, be a kind husband to Mabel. Perhaps she and he could intercede with Henry for Sybil since Henry was very fond of Robert, his first-born. Might Henry allow me to bring Sybil and Amice into my household? Henry. I would see Henry in person in Cardiff then, at the betrothal.
The other scroll the messenger held out to me bore Henry’s seal and was the summons Sybil had warned of. It was addressed to me and said nothing of Gerald. It informed me that Haith would arrive to escort me to Cardiff. I looked up from Henry’s signature to see my husband coming in with a brace of pheasants hanging over his shoulder. He leant and kissed my neck as he passed behind me. ‘What do you have there?’ He slung the pheasants on a side table and washed his hands.
‘A letter from Sybil. FitzHamon has died.’
He sat down beside me and took my hand. ‘I am truly sorry to hear that. He was a great warrior, a great lord. One of the first of us to make a bridgehead in Wales.’
I extracted my hand. ‘I cannot celebrate that.’
‘No … I …’
‘And also,’ I said, brandishing the second scroll with the king’s seal. ‘A summons to Cardiff from the king.’
Gerald paled. ‘The king …’
‘Mabel will be betrothed to his son, Robert. I am summoned to attend.’
‘And the king …’
‘Will be there.’ I finished his sentence and looked steadily into his face.
* * *
I woke Amelina before first light the following morning. ‘We’re going to Llansteffan.’
‘What?’ she looked at me blearily. ‘I thought you never wanted to go there again.’
‘Come on. We’re going. You, me and the boys. We are going to watch the morning tide in the bay and I am going to plan the restoration of the llys.’
We rode to the headland near Llansteffan where we could look out across the river Taf behind us, the river Tywi below us and the river Gwendraeth across the estuary, all flowing into the great bay. We could see the blackened timbers of Llansteffan further along the headland. The Claw. My place.
The waters had been receding out to sea for some hours, leaving myriad little rills snaking across the brightening mudflats toward the main channel. The weak light gathered more and more to itself, turning from pale to murky yellow-gold, from the merest blur of pink to red-gold. In its transitional roll into light, the water sloshed out of the bay to the sea and later would roll back in again.
The bay was a near relation to the morning, with its great opening at the convergence of the estuaries of the three rivers, with its great sky. Its fishes, birds and pebbles all rolled together toward the warming sun. Colour was emerging from the silver greys of old moonlight. Small, vivid islands of grass in the sand were surrounded by puddles and pools left behind that would be collected again on the water’s next return.
I creased my eyes against the new glare of the pale sun, looking toward the sand of the shifting dunes – The Walking Dunes. I took in the extraordinary empty expanse of the estuary – the greys and silvers and pale yellows stretching around us in all directions – the screams and swoops of gulls, the salt lick of my lips, the breeze on my cheeks blowing strands of hair across my face, the distant fishing boats out in the bay, the tiny dark figures of men and women with their clothes hitched up, out on the mudflats, searching for cockles, mussels and seaweed.
You had to be always conscious of the tides here, the spring tides and neap tides, the weather, the state of the sands, the phases of the moon. I knew how to walk quickly on the sides of my feet across dubious, waterlogged surfaces. My brothers had taught me, and I would teach Henry and William how to do it.
It was very quiet on the estuary, only the sound of birds and the soft lull of the water, where the wind died down between the headlands. Ahead there were wading godwits, redshanks, oystercatchers and sandpipers, their silhouettes lined up along the edge of the retreating waters, snatching at insects. The sun was on the distant sands on the far bank. I looked at the ghostly yellow shimmer of sandbanks underwater. The sand banks were uncovered at every tidal retreat, and then the waters heaved back over them. I looked across the estuary opening out now where the three rivers became the sea. The mist and cloud on the third river, the Gwendraeth, was indistinguishable from the whitening sea. The water was several hours past its high water mark. It was flowing back out fast, uncovering more and more mud and sand in the Gwendraeth river mouth. The Cefn Sidan Sands shimmered ahead, now silver, now bronze, the pale early morning sunlight bouncing on the fine grains and pulverised shell. Blithe midge explored the landscape of my ear and neck. A rookery of seals basked on the distant rocks.
Slowly, pausing after each, I said the names of my dead family aloud, rolling them on my tongue as the sea rolled the pebbles. ‘Rhys. Cynan. Goronwy. Gwladys. Her unnamed child who died at Carmarthen. Idwal.’ Little Henry looked curiously at me, wondering what I spoke of. The hounds of Annwn had hunted down the Montgomerys and FitzHamon but Neufmarché lived and ruled still. They would come for him in time. The tide was almost fully out now and would be turning again soon, rushing back to cover all.
