Crown in Candlelight (14 page)

‘You still wear the torque,’ said Glyn Dwr. He touched her neck. His eyes were hard. It was a warm evening but still fire blazed on the hearthstone, and often he motioned for it to be fed so that the flames raged higher. Sweat streamed down Hywelis’s sides, and the bard, sitting a little apart on his stool, showed a dewy white face. The three sat alone.

‘I do. I cannot remove it,’ she answered honestly. ‘Nor would I wish to, Father, your gift …’ Reasonless guilt held her as she tried to read his expression. There was nothing for her to hide and, like a resentful child, she saw in his strange humour the spoiling of her day. She would like to have crept to bed where she could lie, enhancing in recall every word, every touch, every look.

They had strayed only to the river, pausing at a small white rapid that poured over round stones. She had cupped her hands, and he had nuzzled the water from them like a thirsty animal. Laughing through diamond drops, he had laved the coolness over her face and neck, while Madog groped with a slender paw in the river-mud, gloomy and sad, and suspicious, as the Lord was now.

Owen had praised her beauty with a skilled affluence of words that had amazed that small corner of her mind that remained unbe-witched. He had held her close, she had felt their hearts, hers racing in double time, his calm and strong. His eyes had invaded hers with blue and gold. He had kissed her, brow and cheeks and lips, as if he loved her but had room for other thoughts, and this she accepted as his right. And whereas she had longed for him woman to man, now she craved him as a dying person craves the Host. It was more than love, more poignant, more fated; heavy not only with their twin destinies but with the destinies of kingdoms. For he had given her a commission to fulfil.

She did not know how to begin, not under the Lord’s searing stare. In the end it was Glyn Dwr who broached the matter.

‘You saw the emissary from Young Harry?’

He managed to inject venom into the name, although it was half-hearted. For through all that prince’s burning conquests, the Lord had watched him as a father, rueful yet secretly proud, surveys a renegade son. There was still anger in him, but it was controlled.

‘He offered us the King’s peace. I shall die outside the peace. And be buried in a churchyard wall—neither in holy soil nor out of it—to fox the Devil!’

She laughed nervously. ‘Don’t speak of death.’

‘Nor shall I,
until you do
.’ His eyes flowed over her in the hot light, probing. Almost whispering, he said: ‘Hywelis … you’ll tell me. Say that you will acquaint me with my day and hour, so that I am not taken at odds, unfinished. So that I, like Red Iolo, may truly choose my burying ground.’

She flinched from the unspeakable task within her power. She looked for guidance towards the bard. He sat soberly stroking his harp. She fidgeted with the golden torque. It felt cool and volatile, a weighty serpent. Madog, who had been sleeping under her chair, got up and stretched, and old Cafall, lying on the Lord’s robe-hem, tensed instantly and snuffed about.

‘I promise,’ she said at last.

‘The day and hour?’ he said eagerly. ‘When you see, you will share the sight? So that I may prepare my soul’s health and the disposition of my estate?’

‘I will.’ She was emboldened to seek payment for the promise. ‘I am exercised in my mind, my lord, about a certain matter. Will you now hear me?’

He was still. His eyes made her shiver. She wondered how to start; useless to dissemble. The Lord shared her blood.

‘Concerning Owen ap Meredyth ap Tydier …’

The eyes grew fiercer than fire. Frightened, she half-rose and stepped by accident on Madog’s paw. The cub. sprang across the flagstones, colliding with Cafall, who gave a rasp of fury. He blundered forward, and felled Madog. Cafall could no longer bite, but he could roll and crush and tear with claws. The bard leaped from his stool and seized Cafall by the jaws, wrestling him to the ground. He lay breathing tersely, his eyes closed. Hywelis dived to take his head on her lap, while Madog skulked behind her chair.

‘You laid hands upon a royal dog!’ said the Lord, without anger.

‘Your pardon, Lord,’ said Gruffydd Llwyd.

‘He’s old, he’s ill.’ Hywelis did not look up. ‘It’s no one’s fault.’

‘He hates the fox,’ said Glyn Dwr. ‘The law of nature. Tend him, Hywelis.’

She cradled the great head. Trails of saliva glistened on her gown. What she had begun, she must complete.

‘Concerning Owen …’ She kept her eyes on the dog, heard the Lord’s gaunt silence.

‘… he longs to go to war. Your refusal has broken his heart.’ Again silence, until a green branch spat in the fire, and Cafall in his swoon sighed deeply. Above her head she felt the Lord relax a trifle.

‘And that is all?’ he said slowly.

She bowed lower over Cafall’s grizzled brow, silent. Far from it, she could have said, and needlessly. He knew.

‘But you’d send him away? Perhaps to death?’

She looked up, full at him. ‘He will not die in a French War. But he is linked, somehow, to France.’

The Lord’s eyes gleamed, the fine falcon face grew drawn with intent. ‘You’ve seen? You know his fate also?’

‘I have an inclination as to his fate. I still have power.’

It was all he needed; the unassailable testament of her purity. She was still his seer and salvation.

‘Get up, girl. Tell me your mind.’

The blaze had gone from his look, even the fire burned less unbearably hot.

‘You think I should send my lordlings to fight for Henry?’

‘Father, other marcher lords will do so. Even your brother-in-law, Davy Gam, is in favour. In all the valleys men are weary of stagnation, and the young ones are keen to be tried, and I heard the courier say that Wales would be rich, rewarded by the King.’

In his mind a blackened ruin arose, corroded by grief and fire.

‘Sycharth,’ said the Lord. ‘I cannot forget.’

‘Do you hate King Harry for what he did?’

‘No. I remember the good fighting he gave me. I remember how my brother was killed at Usk, when Harry had lately been made Lieutenant of Wales, but I remember also the friends of his I slaughtered. I taught that young cock all he knows of strategy and siegework, as surely as if I had put him to school in my yard and at my quintain. I respect him truly. But his race is my enemy, and it was under Harry Bolingbroke, not his son, that I learned to hate the Saeson. Hate them in my own right, apart from the old persuasions of Taliesin. All the traditional hurts I took upon me, when Bolingbroke usurped sweet Richard’s throne …’

The bard began a little doleful tune.

‘… so that Grey’s usurpation of my lands echoed that greater crime. Ay! that’s the song I wrote to Richard. I wrote it when the campaign was afoot to prove him living, though we all knew him murdered at Pomfret. And he loved Harry, and nutured him. Another reason why I cannot hate the King. It’s a web, all the threads tied wrongly now, confused and warped. The one clear skein is my desire for the supremecy of Wales, of which you will apprise me, Hywelis, in God’s good time.’

He continued: ‘I met Richard’s little French girl, Isabelle. For her sake I was pleased to ally myself with her countrymen. When they came to Milford Haven, after my second Parliament at Harlech, they brought me six hundred crossbowmen and twelve thousand armed troops …’

‘And then they ran away,’ said Hywelis. ‘Back to France, never to return.’

‘Ha!’ Savagely amused, he said: ‘You’ve learned your lessons well, girl. You deem this reason then to ride against them? To reclaim, in the King’s name, all Aquitaine, all Normandy, the South. Harry’s grown greedy. He wants not the riches of France or a bride of France, but both. And if he fights as he fought me, I see no bar to his gains. But what has this to do with Wales? He has drawn our cousins in antiquity, the Irish, to his banner, but he will find Wales, at least my portion of it, a different matter.’

‘The marcher lords will agree,’ she said stubbornly. ‘Davy Gam will go, and the young men, and—’

‘And so they do not love Wales as I,’ said Glyn Dwr. His eyes were no longer benign. Hywelis slid to her knees again.

‘Father. Let Owen go.’ She kissed his hand, the raised tumultuous veins. He laughed, cruel and triumphant, like the growl of the eagle. Gruffydd Llwyd looked up from his harp.

‘A strange demonstration of love! Can you no longer brook the sight of him? I thought you were enamoured …’

‘Deeply. Dearly.’ And the bard instantly struck an intricate distressful chord, hoping to cover her words.

‘Then he shall not go,’ said the Lord, getting up. Painfully, Cafall also struggled to rise. Glyn Dwr stooped and lifted the great beast in his arms. Standing thus, he said: ‘No scion of my house shall ever ride under the English banner. And hearts do not break. At least, not for something as slight as this. Poor Cafall! We are old tonight.’ He left the hall, bowed, as if he carried his own soul.

The bard and Hywelis looked at one another. Yesterday’s quarrel was forgotten.

‘I don’t understand,’ said he. ‘I have never seen him so unkind. And you! Why, if you love Owen so, would you send him away?’

‘Why? I cannot bind him. I can only give what I can, and even now I’ve failed him. Should he leave me, I would still be with him. Even though my body were here in Glyndyfrdwy, my spirit would be with him in the field. How can I show him my love, other than by giving him his heart’s desire?’

‘Don’t weep,’ said the bard, disturbed.

‘I’ve failed.’ She got up, crying, stumbling to the door with Madog gliding beside her. Outside in the passage the worn stone arches were lit through the embrasures by a moon almost at the full. Light silvered a deep recess and limned a shadow round the figure waiting there. She went to him. Once again his breath was hers, his heartbeat shook her own flesh. She tasted him, drank him, slipped into his mind, saw through his eyes, becoming his past and his future, his griefs and joys, flowing within him as his own breath. And all this without a touch or a word, for she stood apart while he waited, tense and hopeful.

Madog saw the moon through the slit. He lifted his mask and bayed gruesomely. Owen came forward to Hywelis. He touched her wet cheek.

‘So it was hopeless?’

‘I tried. Owen, I tried.’

He took her head in his hands and kissed her.

‘You must try again.’

‘I dare not.’ Madog gave another awful howl.

‘What ails the fox? You should let him go. Soon it will be too late. He will be estranged from his brothers and they will turn on him.’

‘I have never asked the Lord a favour before. I thought he would grant me this,’ she said.

‘Yes. You were the one. He would not even listen to Davy Gam. But you are closest of all to him.’

‘The old dog is sick,’ she told him.

‘Ay!’ said Owen, and laughed almost bitterly. ‘But there’s still might in him!’

The Lord is jealous,’ she said. ‘of your youth, the sights of blood that await you. He was training you to fight for Wales. Only to that end does he think you should show your strength. And he is jealous’ (more softly) ‘of what passes between you and me.’

After a moment he pulled her to him, saying: ‘You’re my true, good girl. You know my needs and hurts. Come …’

They began to walk along the passage, Madog pulling at his lead to avoid the moon’s weird face.

‘I must go to bed.’

‘In a moment. I still need your help. Though the Lord says no, I say yes. I will have my way, Hywelis.’ They were at the stone stair which snaked upwards to the women’s apartments and coiled down to the men’s quarters below.

‘What must I do, my Owen?’

Whispering, his face trellised by moon and shadow, he told her. The King’s courier had not yet departed over the border. Even now he was negotiating with Davy Gam and the henchmen of other marcher lords, and all not a mile from Glyndyfrdwy. But secretly, for they were chary of the Lord’s displeasure.

‘You know this valley, Hywelis.’

‘Every blade and stone of it.’

‘In day and darkness?’

‘Both.’ Then, warily: ‘Owen! you would disobey the Lord?’

‘You must guide me. Without you I’d be lost. Even with the full moon tomorrow …’

‘Betray the Lord?’

He tipped up her face. The patterns of moon and shadow altered his expression so she could not read it, but for an instant he looked distinctly like Glyn Dwr himself at his most sardonic and fierce.

‘You love me. You gave me the word. I did not even have to woo you.’

‘Yes. Oh, yes.’

‘And now, when I ask so little, you falter, you fail.
Cariad
,’ he said caressingly, ‘you would not be culpable. We should be back before dawn, unseen. I need only place my hands between those of the King’s proxy and swear loyalty to Henry. Even the Lord would have to acknowledge such an oath, or live in dishonour.’

‘I am his bondmaid and his sight,’ she said faintly. ‘I dare not.’

‘No harm will come of it.’ He began to kiss her, long and slowly. She stood, passive, dreaming; doubting, lost. In her flaccid hand Madog’s collar slackened. The fox raised his paw and thrust off the rushy band, and was gone instantly down the spiral stair.

‘Love,’ said Owen. ‘I need you, girl. Be my eyes and ears tomorrow night.’

‘I have lost Madog!’ she cried suddenly.

‘We’ll find him together.’ Still kissing, murmuring.

‘No, there’s a gap in the wall below, he’s been watching it for days. He’s gone.’

‘Then it’s an augury.’ Owen’s voice shook. ‘The valley for Madog and France for me. None shall know your part in tomorrow night. Only do this, I beg you, Hywelis.’

She had no choice. He would go from her. No more love-legends, brief joys. Yet he would be closer to her in France, and in her debt, than if he stayed, full of resentment, perhaps hatred, on the manor. Either way she would lose him, but this way his essence would still be hers. Decision gripped her. She nodded.

‘Will you return to me from France?’ she whispered. ‘Will you ever come home to me?’

‘My pledge on it.’

‘I shall be with you always,’ she said softly. ‘Owen, though I hate war, every sword-thrust you make will have my arm behind it. If you wake in camp be sure I will be wakeful too. My soul shall be your shield.’