Crown in Candlelight (11 page)

‘The Lord’s restless, you say?’ She shifted against Owen. Her back was dry, the dew of her early wandering had vanished into his warmth. She stroked Madog’s quiet feverish head. Owen was easing her earlier melancholy, merely by holding her, by talking in his casual voice. This was no longer the naughty boy she had once been put to guard. This was someone capable, healing, worthy. Dead creatures, her friends, lay in his saddle-bag, but he had slain an enemy … She lifted her face to the sun as they came down the hill to Glyndyfrdwy. It was a small manor, unkempt, its outlying lands lonely, its very stance spelling retirement and defeat. Sad again, she leaned against Owen, her face pressing his neck, the cub still lying like a baby in her arms.

He felt curious about her. They had grown up together, but now, pressing her, smelling the heather-scent in her hair, he thought: were she only dressed properly, her body groomed … but then, she would not be Hywelis. His contemporaries had had their
amours
, and the bards sang constantly of man and maid when they were not chanting of war. In theory Owen knew all about love. Dafydd ap Gwilym, the Nightingale of Dyfed, had been a famous lover and had found himself in trouble on more than one occasion. One moonless starless night on the way to keep tryst with someone’s wife, Dafydd’s horse and he had fallen into a peat-hag. The song ended with a curse on whoever had wielded the spade … love made apes of men. Owen smiled.

Hywelis said: ‘Hangman’s Hill looks dark today!’ She pointed to where a mound, topped with a spreading oak, glowered over the valley. There were tufts of white bog-cotton growing at the marshy hill-foot, and squirrels leaping in the branches of the oak.

‘I remember,’ he said: ‘We hanged the Saeson there, after Bryn Glas.’

‘We!’ She turned to laugh at him. ‘We were children!’

‘Yes. And we are children no longer.’

Near Glyndyfrdwy an offshoot of the Clwyd rushed down from the mountains, and in it choughs and dippers played, taking off with a clap of wings as the burdened pony approached. To the east on an eminence stood the castle of Dinas Bran, another of Glyn Dwr’s possessions, and north-easterly between Llantysilio and Eglwyseg a narrow fissure marked the pass to Ruthyn plain and the territory of the Lord’s old enemy. With these grim landmarks in sight they came home, passed through the desolate courtyard and entered the manor. There Hywelis carried the cub up to her chamber and anointed his wounds, leaving him to sleep on sheepskin in a chest. She rejoined Owen at the door of the meadhall and they went in to where the Lord sat, fretful and rigid, before a smoky fire.

Owain Glyn Dwr was over sixty years old, spare and straight, his hair and moustaches thick, his face still unerringly handsome. Only his deep eyes were fenced in by regret and dreaming, as if by looking into a time past they might by will cause reversal and change, or command a second chance. The mind behind those eyes was peopled by the dead. Often they emerged to keep him company, with sweet smiles and warnings and battle-cries from lips long rotten. Today had been one of profound phantasms and silent oaths. Faces had fled before him like hawthorn-blossom in the wind. He could swear that his dead wife had passed her hand over his face, and that Gethin the Terrible, his favourite lieutenant, had once more raised the Dragon banner on Craig-y-Dorth. The Lord sat, his long jewelled hands hanging limply over his knees, and in the draught from the opening door the smoke whirled about him so that he sat in a cloud. The fire was unnecessary, but this was his hearthstone and must be kept warm at all costs, or everything was ended. A dog lay on the edge of his mantle, in dog-years twice its master’s age. It raised its old blind head and growled, then, catching Hywelis’s scent, thumped the floor with a bald tail.

‘Quiet, Cafall,’ said Owain Glyn Dwr.

Hywelis went forward and knelt. The dog probed her skirts, smelling fox-blood, then sighed and dropped its nose. The Lord looked at Hywelis and she knew he saw her well, was examining every pore of her skin, every thread of her hair, and her every thought.

‘How is my lord and father?’ she said tenderly. The meadhall in which she knelt was sparsely furnished and its Lord the captain of a broken ship, but she felt strong, able to shoulder the trouble of others, give comfort.

‘There’s blood on you, girl,’ he said. ‘Are you hurt?’

She laughed and stroked his hand, feeling the little scars from years of handling steel and leather, and the tender veins, engorged with age.

‘No.’ She half-turned. ‘Tell, Owen.’

Owen stripped the
baga
with its booty from his shoulder and threw it down in tribute.

‘We shall eat well today,’ was all he said.

‘You’ve tried your new weapon?’

‘Yes, and it’s sweet. It gives death and life!’—with a winking smile at Hywelis. She caught the light in his eyes, it made her shiver. She did not know him at all; or if she had ever known him, the time had come to learn him truly: He was young, and it was as if his very youth made him dangerous, ready to play with life as if it were weightless … and she remembered suddenly how well he could sing, and wanted to hear him sing now, this minute. But his glow, his arrogant stance, gave extra years to the Lord, whose face seemed greyer as if Owen had drained off all the light.

‘Is my lord sad today?’ she asked.

‘Sad? Since when need you ask my mood? Owen, feed the fire. This hall is full of ghosts, they chill me through.’

Owen bent as bidden with a branch. The fire coughed out more smoke. In the whirling greyness Hywelis saw a face, gone in a blink but unmistakable. As Owen straightened she whispered in his ear: ‘Cheer him!’

He answered merrily: ‘I’ll set a feast for my lord! Fine plump birds, if only Megan troubles to roast them right!’

‘And Hywelis shall wear a fine gown,’ said Glyn Dwr, brightening a trifle.

‘And I’ll be your cup-bearer!’ cried Owen, ‘and serve you even though you keep me my feet all night!’

The branch caught as he spoke, burning hotly. The Lord smiled at last. ‘Your father bred a fine boy, Owen. What say you, Hywelis?’

‘Not a boy.’ She raised her face. ‘A man.’

‘I’ll go and tell the bard,’ said Owen. He left with the dead birds over his shoulder, their beaks dropping blood the length of the hall.

‘Your face is red, Hywelis,’ said Glyn Dwr.

‘It’s the fire.’

‘Is it?’ The Lord examined his own hands, watching them tremble slightly They had been steady at Craig-y-Dorth. They had shaken after Grosmont.

‘I saw Gruffydd today’ he whispered.

‘So did I.’ Hywelis dropped her head on his knee. ‘Not a moment ago, in the smoke.’

‘All my sons … save one. And Gruffydd was the dearest, my edling, my heir. And Meredyth seldom comes, though he upholds my name in Deheubarth. We are still rebels, Hywelis.’

The trembling extended throughout his body. The old dog awoke and whined.

‘Margaret came to me, so sorrowful. And Cathryn, and Alice, and Rhys ap Gethin, and I knew not who was dead and who was wandered away.’

‘I have wandered from you myself,’ she said sadly.

‘But you always return.
Diolch I Dduw!
’

‘From today I promise to stay in hall,’ she said, wild regret striking with her words. She did not give promises lightly. Now she surrendered delight; the dawnlit stealthy ramblings, the stroking of young rabbits too trusting to run, the sight of eagles at play, throwing a heather-root to one another in mid-air. But Glyn Dwr shook his head.

‘I would not have you other than you are. Your mother was a hill-woman, a faery-woman, and her spirit became yours at her death. It is not for me to imprison you for loving your wild kingdom.’

‘Father, my heart and love is yours, you know it.’

‘For ever,’ he said in a queer harsh voice. ‘To be given to none other. Pure as light you are, Hywelis, and your eyes will see what is hidden, so long as you cleave only to me. You are rare. Gentle. Fierce. Though you are not like the women of my generation, who became wild beasts after Bryn Glas, when Mortimer and his army were captured. You were too young to see what they did …’

‘They castrated the Saeson prisoners,’ said Hywelis flatly. ‘I remember Megan coming home, blood to the elbows, and laughing.’

‘We were desperately provoked. Had I been crowned Prince of Wales and recognized in Westminster; had Grey, God’s curse on him, not—’

‘Father, my lord, leave it. It’s done.’

‘It is never done!’ he said wildly. ‘And some day, girl, you will point me to another comet. Your sight will show me new victory. So long as you are pure and love me only. For the giant must die when his daughter marries …’

Suddenly her heart contracted. She said: ‘That’s a legend I do not know.’

‘Then,’ said Glyn Dwr rising, suddenly tall and terrible, ‘we will have Owen ap Meredyth ap Tydier tell it to us both.’ The old dog staggered on to its legs. She knew then that the Lord was jealous; it was more than a father’s jealousy, it was a warning, and she was lost in it. ‘I’ll change my clothes,’ he said. ‘This night we’ll be merry. We’ll damn the Saeson, and tell the old tales, and drink to our lovers. I’ll call their souls from Hell to our hearthstone. Girl, tend the fire!’

Megan, who with her countrywomen had tortured the English prisoners twelve years earlier, now helped Hywelis dress for the Lord’s impromptu revel. Megan was black of hair and eye, stern and wiry. She had been body-servant to the lady Margaret and now acted as a chatelaine and cook, servant and hostess. She was changed, like all others in Glyn Dwr’s meinie, from the sentry on the gate that once welcomed all to the rough ponies in the stable built for the destriers of war. She stripped Hywelis of the bloodstained rags and plunged her into a tub of hot water redolent of gillyflower essence. Hywelis sat fretfully watching her whiteness redden, wrinkling her nose. Megan washed her hair, rubbing it dry as Hywelis stood naked, shivering in the air that blew through the arrow-slits.

‘Here.’ Megan tugged with a horn comb. ‘You do it. I’ve not the patience.’

Hywelis caught their reflections in the burnished silver mirror. She fancied Megan looked sour and sneering, and remembered that she had once loved the Lord with a desperate passion and likely still did.

‘Your father says you are to be royally robed tonight;’ said Megan.

The giant must die when his daughter marries. Was she then to be always the precious vessel of his power? Was there more to it than she knew? She met Megan’s eyes in the silver. Then the woman laughed, the tension fading from her face.

‘It’s nothing,’ she said. ‘I was only thinking … how young you are, how beautiful your body. Repining that age has me now, and I kick against it.’

‘I’m still the same,’ said Hywelis. ‘Just a dirty, wild, woodland girl.’

‘Not dirty now!’ said Megan with emphasis. ‘Here, I’ll find you a gown.’

A strange spring of excitement started in Hywelis. She looked down at her own body, amazed. Megan, who had no great love for her, had called it beautiful, and she was now determined to make herself as much a thing of beauty as possible. Tonight Owen would sing, and the song would unravel a fresh mystery, plant new signposts … Silk over Megan’s arm, silk the colour of old leaves, laced with tarnished gold. She swirled it into a cave for Hywelis, drew it over her body. Her skin took on amber shadows. There was a narrow gold girdle which snaked twice about her waist and fell in tassels to her knee. Megan lit candles and Hywelis leaned to the mirror. Out of the gloom her face bloomed like a strange milky flower, her eyes reflecting the dress and the dusk. Enormous eyes through which the sad past spoke, yesterday and all the days before it, the mourning of widows, the crying of children; the lament of lovers lost. Even the screams of horses mutilated on the field of battle. The eyes filled and the dolorous images were washed away. All but one; for the hands that now tended her hair were real, and what had those hands once done?

‘Did you enjoy it, Megan?’ she heard herself say ‘Did your blade give glory? They were men …’

‘They were our enemy,’ said Megan briskly. ‘And it was long ago. Are you ready?’

Hywelis stood up, slender as a knife, the gold tassels swaying on her thigh.

‘Who wore this dress last?’

‘The Lord’s daughter Cathryn. She’ll not need it where she is.’ Hywelis bowed before the mirror in mourning and in gratitude; then, casting one last look she saw sadness changed to recklessness, and the dream in bud.

The Lord was talking with a neighbour on his dais. Another departure, for he seldom invited guests these days. His hair and moustaches were sleek and he wore a gown of soft green wool with a gold collar set with beryls. His bard stood nearby. The bard, whose title was Gruffydd Llwyd ap Dafydd ap Einion Lygliw was neither old nor young, but as he had never in his life had his beard trimmed, it hung unclean and sandy-grey to his waist where it was tucked into the girdle of a soiled purple mantle, and gave him the appearance of great age, He was at present offended, for the Lord had been recalling the art of the late Iolo Goch and the Nightingale of Dyfed, lecherous as a sparrow, thought Gruffydd Llwyd sourly; one would think there had never been any other bards but those two, and doubtless they had been wafted to paradise on sheaves of their peerless couplets and stanzas. Still, this place was a living in hand, with most of the noble households of Wales split or overturned … Then Glyn Dwr turned to him and smiled and before that warmth his rancour fled instantly and he knew he remained at Glyndyfrdwy not for convenience but like all others, through love.

Hywelis entered, the Lord’s eyes brightened with pleasure, for she was the faery-woman reborn, so fine and fair, and came from his place to take her hands. The bard looked uncertain, wondering for an instant who she was, then saw it was merely Hywelis, scrubbed and bedizened, and taking down his little sycamore harp from its nail, he teased a sweet chord from it in her honour.

‘You’re beautiful, my daughter,’ said the Lord. ‘
Lili’r môr!
’

And it was so long since he had called her this, his lily of the sea, that she felt her eyes grow hot and controlled herself, for here came Owen, who thought her strange. She would be strange no longer; she was fair and a lady. The Lord was holding something out to her, a coil of gold plaited like the water sliding off the rocks just before it reached the basin beneath Eglwyseg Mountain.