Daughter of the Last King, page 9
part #1 of Conquest I Series
‘No,’ I stammered, ‘I don’t mean to. I am betrothed to Owain ap Cadwgan and I will hold to that and must tell it to a priest if they attempt to force me from it.’
She laughed at me. ‘You little fool. You think that will stop them? They take what they want and do what they will and they will marry you to Sybil’s brother, Arnulf, who rules Pembroke in your father’s place. Soon, I expect,’ she said with unpleasant satisfaction. ‘I’ve heard them speaking of it.’
I made allowance for her. She was angry and misused.
‘I would prefer death to this life, or at least a nunnery to these couplings,’ she declared, ‘but I am not allowed even that mercy.’
The door creaked and Sybil rushed into the room, berating us: ‘I heard you speaking your barbarous language. You should both know better. You will speak French at all times!’ I took a breath. She had not understood anything we said. ‘I hoped for a better model from you, Lady Agnes, for the girl.’
‘Yes, forgive me, Lady Sybil. It won’t happen again. I was momentarily misled by the girl addressing me in the old language and slipped into it without thinking.’
I kept my irritation to myself that she blamed me and held no solidarity with me. The horn for the meal sounded, and I went to my own room briefly so that I could hide the roll of parchment. I had no time to read it now in full but could not resist partially unrolling it and glimpsing a brief snatch of the words written there in Latin. The poet was Rhygyfarch from Saint David’s in Deheubarth.
* * *
The people and the priest are despised by the word, heart, and work of the Normans. Families do not now take delight in offspring; the heir does not hope for paternal estates. But instead the broken spirit falls, weighed down by lethargy, and, immersed in shadows, does not know what day it is.
* * *
‘Sybil urges you to hurry down.’ Amelina was at the door.
‘Yes, I’m coming now.’ I put the parchment in the casket on my aumbry shelf and went down with Amelina to the hall, joining the company who were sitting down to eat. Sybil had ordered the rushes changed and the scent of rosemary was strong in the air. A fire burnt bright and furious, keeping the frigid weather outside at bay, although during lulls in the conversation we heard the wind swooping round the corners of the buildings and the candle flames guttered with the draughts. The men who accompanied the lords were ranged on trestles and benches stretching the length of the crowded hall. Piles of weapons stood on either side of the hall door where the guests had disarmed. The chairs and benches at the high table were spread with red embroidered coverings and cushions and slung with grey and white wolf furs. Wine, mead and ale swilled in casks and great bowls set on each table. A bustle of servants went constantly to and fro, refilling beakers. Meat was served on skewers and roasted geese on silver platters lined the centres of the tables, ready for carving. Candlelight glinted on the gold, silver and ivory of Sybil’s best crockery. I looked nervously at these lords and soldiers with their big hands, hoping they would be careful and break nothing. If any of Sybil’s goods were shattered, it would be me and the servants who would feel the brunt of her anger.
Sybil and Robert FitzHamon sat in the centre of the high table. To FitzHamon’s left sat Sybil’s brother Hugh, then Neufmarché’s wife Agnes, then Sybil’s brother Roger, and then me. Arnulf was seated on the short side end of the table, with his knees pushed up against mine. To Lady Sybil’s right were Neufmarché, Roger’s wife Almodis who was heiress to the county of La Marche in France, Sybil’s brother Philippe, Gerald FitzWalter and then Master Richard, who again was seated on the end side of the table facing Arnulf down the length of dishes and candles. It was like looking at the pedigree of the Montgomerys I had drawn up, come alive. All were here except the oldest brother, Robert de Bellême, who remained in Normandy. It was a lot of new people to take in, but I needed to know them, these Montgomerys, since they were my captors, and might be my kin if I were forced to wed Arnulf.
I was curious to finally meet Sybil’s husband. The men of the castle obeyed FitzHamon gladly and everything seemed to work even more smoothly with his presence. He was not tall, shorter in fact than his wife. As Amelina had said, he was not a pretty man, aged around forty with hair a mundane brown colour. His most prominent feature, and his worst, were his teeth, which protruded at the top, making him look like a coney in its warren. Despite his rodent appearance and the rigour of his command of the household, he gave me only fair words and looks, and I did not fear him. I felt he was a man who would talk straight to me.
The speech of Lady Sybil’s four brothers, on the other hand, oozed with double meaning and self-interest, and was all of politics, power and wealth, in Wales, in England and in Normandy. There seemed to be nothing straight about them, and the gathering of them here all together simply underlined that impression. The older brother, Hugh, enjoyed humiliating and paining others. When servants approached with sauce or wine, he found reason to belittle them, so that their hands shook and they foundered in their duty. He was scathing to his own brothers, especially Arnulf, amusing himself by remarking that a fifth son could not hope for much and was usually sent into the church. Arnulf bristled beside me. I saw the effort in his face muscles to resist rising to his brother’s crude bait. ‘Yet I am master of the lands of Deheubarth and not he,’ he muttered under his breath, beside me. That was not a topic of conversation I wished to engage in with him.
Roger de Montgomery, seated on my right, was, he told me, nicknamed ‘The Poitevin’ because of the French lands of his wife. He was cheerful and pleasant. He and his wife Almodis were grand in very fine clothes and ate with most particular manners.
And then there was Neufmarché, with his overloud voice. A crevice of a scar on his face pulled down the edge of one of his eyes and most of the ear on that side of his face was missing, healed into a gnarled lump. I was grateful there was a barrier of several people between him and me. Gerald caught my eye down the length of the table, offering me a glance of reassurance. I smiled, wishing I were conversing comfortably with him rather than with Arnulf and Roger.
The Montgomerys and FitzHamon talked of the king’s Christmas court that they had recently come from, and of the events of the last year. I listened carefully, pretending I did not notice Arnulf’s knee-jostling and his chivalrous service of food to me. They talked of King William’s conflicts with churchmen, his argument with the king of the Scots, and the murder of that king and his son. My royal family was not the only one cruelly treated.
Talk turned next to the conflict between King William and his brother Duke Robert, and now I could feel the undercurrents of careful veilings, since there was not a consensus on this topic at the table. The Montgomerys, I knew, were for the duke, while FitzHamon was the king’s man. The Montgomerys had to be indirect about their position, but the glances they exchanged with one another spoke volumes nevertheless, and FitzHamon was not deceived and knew he sat in a nursery of traitors.
There had been a truce between the two brothers, the duke and the king, and a mutual agreement, since both were unwed and without legitimate heirs, that King William would be Duke Robert’s heir to Normandy and Duke Robert would be King William’s heir to England, until such time as one of them did produce their own son. The truce, however, soon cooled and at the last Christmas court, Duke Robert sent a declaration reneging on the undertaking. ‘So more war and no heir,’ said Sybil, rounding things up succinctly.
‘I thought King William meant to wed the Saxon princess, Matilda of Scotland, the daughter of the murdered Scottish king,’ Hugh said to FitzHamon.
‘Yes, it was so, but William was not much taken with the lady.’
‘No?’
‘He said he did not want a nun in his bed, and she looked and acted like a nun.’
‘No good at all,’ remarked Arnulf, looking pointedly at me.
I felt uncomfortable to be so physically close to him. I was thirteen, but I knew I could find myself in his bed before too long. My brother Goronwy had found it amusing to describe to me what the marriage bed entailed when I was betrothed to Owain. Arnulf was the most handsome of the Montgomery brothers but he had attacked Llansteffan, imprisoned my mother, been present when Goronwy was murdered. I answered his compliments and attempts at conversation with monosyllabic replies. Feeling his attentions rebuffed, he tapped his glass for more wine with increasing frequency. In this company, he was reduced to the junior brother and I did nothing to ease his discomfort.
The discussion turned to the poor health of their ageing father, the earl of Shrewsbury. ‘I imagine the king will not bear Robert as father’s heir to the earldom and the Montgomery lands here in England and Wales?’ Hugh asked FitzHamon. Despite his absence, Robert de Bellême felt like a strong presence in the room.
‘No, Bellême scuttled any possibility that he would inherit the earldom with his support for your Uncle Odo’s rebellion against King William,’ FitzHamon responded.
The Montgomerys held an awkward silence for a while and I studied them as they ate. Hugh resembled his sister, Sybil, with fair colouring and a broad face. Philippe’s looks were darker, and he was the slightest of the brothers. Sybil had told me Arnulf was twenty-eight years old. He was lavishly dressed in a black tabard intricately embroidered with gold thread at the neck. His leather shoes were fastened with two gold bosses in the form of lions. Roger seemed the most cheerful of all the brothers, talking about his estates in Lancaster. ‘Good wool land,’ he declared to me brightly, spooning plum sauce onto the duck on my trencher.
I did my best to look and behave like a woman in this company and not a child. I was tall for my age and Amelina had dressed me in the dark blue gown that matched my eyes. Since I was an unwed virgin, my hair was uncovered, loose and long on my shoulders. Amelina had woven silver thread with tiny embroidered flowers into the thick black of my hair, and I wore a delicate silver circlet on my brow. ‘Oh, what a Celtic beauty!’ she told me as she dressed me and I had giggled with her. I felt Arnulf’s eyes roaming over me all the time and thought perhaps I should not have allowed Amelina to deck me out like this. I should have hid in drab instead, yet I wanted them to remember that I was a daughter of the royal House of Dinefwr, and I was not vanquished.
Neufmarché talked about his castle building in Brecknock, disparaging the Welsh efforts to resist him. ‘Wales is ours!’ Arnulf called down the table to Neufmarché, raising his beaker.
Neufmarché was in the process of returning the salute to Arnulf when FitzHamon’s voice interrupted his movement, and Neufmarché replaced the beaker on the table, leaving his meaty hand wrapped around it. I turned my eyes away from the sight of his dirty fingernails and the repugnant, truncated index finger. ‘Not quite yet,’ FitzHamon said calmly, but with assurance. ‘While you and I,’ he said to Arnulf, and then turned his face down the table to the other guests, ‘your father and brothers, and Neufmarché here, hold the south and borderlands, the north and heartlands are swarming with insurgents. It is unfortunate the earl of Chester allowed the northern Welsh pretender to escape. The Welsh rally to him and he threatens our gains. King William has been greatly displeased.’
‘Gruffudd ap Cynan, you mean?’ asked Gerald.
‘Aye.’
I looked down at my trencher swiftly so that no one would see my expression. Gruffudd ap Cynan was no pretender. He was the rightful king of Gwynedd and had been mouldering in the earl of Chester’s prison for years. My heart leapt at the news of his liberty. If he could escape from a Norman prison, then so too could my brother Idwal, so too could I.
‘The sons of Bleddyn will keep him busy,’ Arnulf said.
‘Perhaps,’ said FitzHamon, ‘or perhaps they will join forces with Gruffudd ap Cynan and keep us busy.’
‘Bring it on!’ shouted Neufmarché in a voice so loud it jarred the ears. ‘Sooner in the field, sooner slaughtered!’ He raised the beaker in his fat grip in Arnulf’s direction. I was startled as the men seated in the hall began to thump their knife handles on the table, louder and louder, raising their goblets to Neufmarché’s aggressive words. I tensed my jaw. Gerald was studying me, but I looked away from his attempted commiseration.
‘Is Flambard still holding sway as principal adviser to the king?’ Roger asked FitzHamon when the racket had died down.
‘Aye, Flambard has a wizard way with lucre and the king likes and needs that.’
‘For sure,’ Roger grinned into his wine. He appeared to be admiring his own reflection there.
‘No good will come of this appointment of Anselm as archbishop of Canterbury,’ Hugh stated. ‘He’s an uncompromising bastard, a reformer, and will soon be at loggerheads with the king.’
‘Already is,’ FitzHamon said.
I was shocked that they would speak with such disrespect of an archbishop. When everyone had eaten their fill and the men were leaning back, their stomachs bulging, their faces growing red with wine, the soldiers in the hall began to make their own entertainment, singing with the village girls that Sybil had enlisted as extra maids for the feast, taking out whistles and starting up harmonies, staggering out the door to relieve themselves. Lady Sybil and her family exchanged gifts with one another for the New Year: cloth, hounds and jewels. Sybil surprised me by telling me she was giving me a horse and ordering Gerald to see me get used to riding the mare and not break my neck. ‘Gladly,’ he said. ‘Anyway Lady Sybil, Lady Nest apparently rides better than I ever will,’ he said, grinning at me. I blushed, surprised that he remembered what I had said to him last year.
After dinner, each of the Mongommerys stood one at a time and told a tale. Despite myself, I enjoyed the stories and the vivid pictures they created with their words. Arnulf’s performance, I admitted reluctantly to myself, was the best. ‘Now you, Nest,’ Sybil shocked me, calling down the table. I felt suddenly sick. I had to refuse, run from the hall. I looked to Gerald, and he raised one eyebrow cheerfully, his face alight with encouragement, then my glance passed over Neufmarché.
They thought the Welsh were easily beaten, trodden underfoot. I stood abruptly, knocking over my beaker and a trickle of red wine soaked swiftly through the tablecloth, ran between the wooden planks of the table and dripped onto Arnulf’s fine tabard. He made a small irritated sound in his throat. I looked away from the dripping wine, staring into the blazing hearth, trying to forget everyone else in the room. I imagined I was at my father’s court, surrounded by old familiar faces, by the faithful warriors of his teulu. I recalled the face of my playfellow, the bard’s son, who had told me so many winter tales and who had died at Llansteffan.
‘My story …’ I began and my voice was small and shaking at first, but then gained in power as I moved into the well-worn grooves of the tale. I had been celebrated for my precocious narratings at my father’s court, but now I must speak to these aliens in their alien tongue. ‘My story is of the Dogs of Annwn who, about this time, at the Yuletide, come from Hell to hunt down wrongdoers.’ They were all looking at me. The soldiers and servants in the hall stilled their activities and listened avidly as I hooked them in. I gestured dramatically up to the ceiling above our heads. ‘The Dogs can be heard at night passing through the air overhead in full cry, leading the Wild Hunt of King Arawn and his fairy horde, all dressed in white and translucent gowns, all insubstantial as the river mist.’ Lady Agnes shivered. ‘The hooves and paws of their horses and hounds and the feet of their servants run through the air. And with them,’ I shouted suddenly so that Lady Almodis jumped in her seat, ‘rides the hag Matilda of the Night.’ Now I went on rapidly. ‘That hag is dressed in black rags and looks like a bony skeleton risen clagged and damp from a grave. Alongside those ghost riders come the hounds, the hounds of Annwn!’ I looked all around again and saw they were gaping at me. ‘Those great howling white ghost hounds with their red ears, and their huge fangs, foretell the death of all who hear them.’ I swept my arm around the room, my pointing finger lingering at Neufmarché and then at Arnulf, modulating my voice up and down with the lilt of the tale. I looked emphatically into the faces of each of the other Norman enemies seated there: Hugh, Roger, Philippe, FitzHamon. ‘On the night of the new year, their growling grows softer and softer as they approach, hunting down wrongdoers until …’ I dropped my voice to an intimate whispered finale, ‘they can run away no more.’ Silently I cursed that the Dogs might visit them, these Normans, eat them alive, drag them down to Hell where they belonged. Lady Almodis stopped eating the pink and yellow sweetmeats piled before her, her hand stilled in horror halfway to her open mouth. My tale ended, I thumped back down into my seat, shaking like a storm-tossed sapling.
There was a moment of silence and then my performance was greeted with enthusiastic clapping and thumping on the tables. I look a deep breath and looked up, smiling at Gerald, who laughed with me.
‘Well! And here she has another talent, along with her comeliness, eh?’ Arnulf shouted beside me, as the hubbub began to subside. ‘She tells a good tale!’
Everyone in the hall shouted back their agreement to him, and I flushed hot scarlet, amazed at my own courage, shifting in my seat, lifting my refilled beaker to my mouth to reassure myself, seeking to find some way to make myself inconspicuous again. Master Richard nodded his grey and ginger head at me, with a smug expression that said, there she is, my masterwork – telling you a gripping tale in word-perfect Norman. I wished intensely the Dogs might come and feast on their innards and their sweating, drunken grinning faces, excepting perhaps Gerald FitzWalter and Sybil.
‘I could be wed to her by now,’ Arnulf said to FitzHamon, turning suddenly angry and aggrieved. ‘It would legitimate the succession of my heirs in Pembroke. I’ve offered the king 500 pound of silver. Would he accept a higher offer?’
