Crown in Candlelight (18 page)

Outside the hall she began to run, stumbling on the long black gown, no longer attuned to castle or Lord or valley, almost insensible of the world itself. She saw Megan standing grimly by the door to the courtyard and cried out, before the woman could speak: ‘I see nothing! I am nothing!’

Megan, turning to open the door for someone who came slowly up the steps, did not answer.

Hywelis reached her room, dizzy from the spiral. Under the bald stone eyes of the saints she threw herself on the floor. Soon they would come and turn the key in the lock until such time as she was taken to the house at Valle Crucis, to live without the breeze or the grasses, or the wild monarchs who flew and scampered between plain and mountain. Without father, without Owen. There were deities who when displeased could take mortal wits away. Then Owen ap Meredyth, his voice and his flesh, was the most powerful of all.

Weeping she lay, and did not hear the scraping outside, or the timid voice, but felt the rush of air from the opening door. She turned her head so that into her vision came a dirty sandalled foot, an ankle fanned by a threadless gown.

‘Hywelis,’ said the bard’s thin voice, ‘I have come to beg your pardon.’

Wearily she struggled to her feet and went to the arrow-slit. ‘I betrayed you to the Lord …’

‘He would have known anyway.’ The sun was shining. In a far meadow someone was flying a peregrine, it hovered and stooped, brightly bound by a sunbeam.

‘I love the Lord,’ said Gruffydd Llwyd, ‘and was envious of your favour.’

The sun grew brighter.

‘I have been to the river,’ he said softly. ‘I brought you something to make amends.’

‘Nothing …’ she said, then looked round aid saw what he carried, half-swathed in his garment. Bright eyes in a thin Face, and the white blaze between the ears and down the back. The coat a little rough, and a new wound on one delicate paw.

‘Madog, Madog!’

‘He has hurt his foot, but you can heal it. When I found him he was embattled, with a feral cat.’

‘By the river? Then he was near … he was coming home!’

He came to her quite gently, a spark of mischievous affection in the golden eyes. She sat, cradling him, his warmth invading her, salving her grief.

‘Am I forgiven?’ asked Gruffydd Llwyd.

She was not listening. As she sat holding Madog, a blinding tunnel of sunshine shafted through the arrow-slit and engulfed her. Without warning, the slit widened before her. She saw the panorama of the valley. Of the world. Her inner blindness shattered and dispersed. Even at the height of her power it had never been like this. Kingdoms formed up to unroll before her, in surpassing beauty and poignant dread.

‘Girl …’ said the bard.

Trembling, she opened herself to the moment. There was no need to fear its dissolution; power rushed upon her, terrifying, almost insupportable. She felt as if she sat at the nucleus of a vast gale, being buffeted by voices of the unborn, seeing green lands yet undiscovered, the whole world a bauble for her spirit’s examination. She thought she cried: ‘Wait! Wait!’ and the shattering vision slowed, conformed, and steadied to one small area. She smelled rain-washed heather, hidecloth and horses. She saw the pavilions of the English, and Davy Gam, emerging from a tent, scratching the sore socket beneath his eye-patch. There was the guard Fletcher, drunk; she smelled his reeking breath, knew he had been reprimanded lately. Then her heart shuddered as she saw the figure approaching him. Owen, golden in the sun, carrying his springald … Fletcher made a jest about it, and Owen turned away, cross and laughing; she saw his eyes, bright as amber honey. In ecstasy she. hung upon his image but it was already changing, still Owen yet not Owen, his features ageing, his dress altering to the style of a time yet to be, his face fining, becoming sour, secretive … passing quickly. Then Owen again, almost unrecognizable as a giant figure against a backcloth no longer of tents and hillside, but a gaudy chamber. Jewelled, he stood splay-legged, while a woman wept at his feet. Then he too was gone, to be replaced by the merest essence of Owen’s features now refined in a woman whose magnificence proclaimed her suzerainty over empires. She stood by the sea, her long white hand extended to welcome in a fleet of carved fighting galleons heavy with gold. She wore a ransom of pearls, looped and cascading over her bodice and starry collar and woven into her hair, which was as red as Hywelis’s own.

Now you see his greatness, said a voice in hen head, and the shaft of sun folded itself and its visions away.

The bard was frightened. He searched her distended eyes.

‘I thought you were dying!’ he whispered. Then, incredulously: ‘Is it … the sight?’

‘Yes! And more! and more!’

‘Tell the Lord.’

She set Madog on the chair and ran. I am redeemed; the words fled with her down the spiral, shouted triumph as she reached the hall. My lord, my well-loved father, let me serve you now! I can see all your fortune, even your enemies’ movements, I can count their number, spy on their strategies, and all without stirring from your side! Father, my lord, here is the sight, the strength, renewed, doubled and redoubled time without number …

He was bending stiffly over the dying, fire. Cafall had been carried to the dais, and his body was covered with a purple pall. She called the Lord’s name, and he straightened, and instantly recognized what had passed within her, and his joy flamed up to mirror hers, as he stretched out his arms.

She took only two paces. What she saw, with the deep magic bearing her towards him, halted her as if by bowshot. For a moment she flung her hands over her eyes, vainly willing the truth to depart.

Smiling he came to meet her and she saw them. About the majesty of Owain Glyn Dwr shone the corpse-candles, the stars of death, drawing him home at last.

Our King went forth to Normandy,

With grace and might of chivalry,

There God for him wrought wondrously,

Wherefore England may call and cry—

Deo gratias
…

Anon.,
c.a.
1415

The greatest fighting ship in England lay at anchor in Southampton Water. Woven in gold on her chief banner were three images of God and his Mother, flanked by the arms of St Edward, St George, and England. As she moved on the swell, a gilt crown glinted on her topcastle; her capstan bore a sceptre wrought with three fleurs-de-lys. At her deckhead stood a crowned gold leopard. She flew many forked banners and square pennoncelles embroidered with swans and antelopes, and her ensigns and standards were edged with feathers. Glowing about her scarlet waist were painted serpents and birds, and her bulwarks were tessellated and studded brightly with the quartered shields of the knights assembled on her deck. She was
La Trinité Royale
, the royal flagship, otherwise known as the
King’s Chamber
.

Aboard, King Henry stood looking beyond the gaudy vessel’s bulging belly. His fingers were curved about a dragon’s head decorating a stanchion and they slid into its wooden mouth as if daring it to bite him. Slowly his gaze moved over the quay, then out along the narrow seapath where the last of the fleet came under oars to join the stunning flock of which
La Trinité
was the nucleus. Now fifteen hundred ships surrounded her. Their masts seemed to touch the clouds; sea and sky looked full of a massed intricate grandeur of sail at sight of which his heart rose in wondering glory. Even though he had planned for this moment for months, years, he was still moved. He clutched at the painted dragon’s mouth, wary of his own emotion.

A storm petrel skimmed past his face, almost brushing the arrow-scar earned at Shrewsbury when he was sixteen. Those who were close to him said it had spoiled his looks, but secretly he cherished it as an honourable token of his first battle against the Welsh. His gaze moved from the incoming fleet, and he saw the flagship’s master coming on deck from below: Stephen Thomas, the finest mariner in England. Only the best for this, God’s cause. The master went among the crew, giving orders, feeling a rope-stay, squinting at the broken froth of waves on the horizon. Henry watched silently, aware that others in their turn watched him, their king and leader.

He wore neither cap nor crown, and his brown hair was cropped close as a cannon-ball. Beneath a broad high brow and sharp nose, his cheeks and lips had a naturally florid, open-air look. His bright brown eyes were level, judicial, carrying deep within them only a spark of his unpredictable temper. He was lean, in his doublet of fine English wool, and had been so since an illness in his eighth year when physicians had poured bitter remedies into him and had bled him until he could hardly stand. Lost as to the nature of his malady, they had not asked whether his distress of body was linked with the spirit, or had wondered how deeply he had loved his mother, Mary de Bohun, married to Henry Bolingbroke at twelve and dead at twenty-two after bearing six children.

He had recovered, but now he was wary of love, of any emotion. These things were not for kings, and king and heir he was born, tempestuous in the cradle, turning adolescently to vice, licentious as his grandfather John of Gaunt, whose passion for Katherine Swynford had spawned the powerful Beaufort family. He was thinking of Henry Beaufort, Bishop of Winchester, at the very moment when the prelate’s bitterest enemy came, treading the salt-slick boards towards him. His younger brother, Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, made no secret of hate or love or resentment.

Henry turned and stared out over the sea, glory nipping again at him, despite his vigilance. He thought of conquest. France. His undeniable heritage. The great Edward III, through his mother the She-Wolf of France, had laid a claim that he, Henry, would substantiate or die in the full of ambition. His full red lips parted to the sea air. From below, a galley-boy threw a pannikin of rubbish overboard and the scavenging gulls dived and screamed. The King’s almost inaudible prayer mingled with the larine cries. O God; who hath sent us to the beginning of this August day, let us fall into no danger. Soon the tide would be full, and Stephen Thomas was watching every wave and cloud, with half an eye out for the sovereign’s expected command. The royal ships vibrated gently round the
King’s Chamber
, like leashed hounds.
La Trinité de la Tour
(the
Little Trinity
), the
Katherine
(named in honour of one of the sought-after prizes—a Valois princess), and the
Coq de la Toure
. Their bulwarks were lucent with gold leaf, their pavises, which shielded them against bowshot, were blue and green and carved with serpents, lions, falcons, all proof against the Evil Eye. Above, the painted antelopes and the reptiles and birds on the sails glowed, undulating as if restive after movement. A lookout clung to the yardarm like a spider. As far as Henry could see were the ships, and their very beauty seemed to make them omnipotent. Again he controlled his emotions. His brother of Gloucester, Earl of Pembroke, was almost at his side, and Humphrey was excitable enough without further infection. A hand slid over his own, pressing his fingers deeper into the dragon’s wooden mouth. He heard a laugh.

‘Sire, are you talking to yourself?’

‘I was praying,’ he said stiffly.

He withdrew his hand from that of the man who knew so much about him, of the old brawling days, the drunken nights when no woman, wife or virgin or slut, was safe from the royal brothers: himself and Humphrey, and John of Bedford, and Thomas of Clarence. The dead days of shame. His eyes darkened with his sincere intensity.
Domine, peccavi
. Lord, judge me not; not now.

Humphrey of Gloucester’s sigh was drunk by the sea-wind. He knew his brother Harry better than Harry knew. He was content to follow him, be it in the streets of Coldharbour, rutting like a demented ram, or into the toils of this, God’s cause. Humphrey, at twenty-five, was three years younger than his brother, young enough to regret the King’s abrupt conversion and the end of play, but old enough to see that by following him there would be richer rewards than those of lifting a harlot’s kirtle and drinking the nights into madness. And when this expedition was over he would, as always, go his own way. Harry might be given to God’s cause but Humphrey believed firmly in temporal as well as eternal bliss. He had his library, his wardrobe crammed with vanity, his priceless artefacts. Poets acclaimed him as mentor and master. There were wealthy women with fine bodies who would be his, once he returned ennobled by his heroics in France. He leaned beside his brother, looking out to sea. Those momentarily naked eyes were full of deep guile and wilfulness, and even a secret monstrous strain of cruelty showed clear. In contrast, Harry looked innocent. His calm ruddy face often put Humphrey in mind of St Paul—the totally debauched utterly cleansed, and thus far holier than ordinarily good men.

The afternoon sun burned their bare heads. Mariners ran on naked feet about the decks, making ready for the signal to sail. Thomas, Duke of Clarence, was aboard the
Katherine
. The fourth royal brother, John, Duke of Bedford, had remained in London, acting as Lieutenant of England in the King’s absence.

Harry turned abruptly and said: ‘What are you thinking?’

‘About St Paul.’

‘Not, I hope, his voyage to Crete … that hazardous expedition.’

‘He survived,’ said Humphrey.

‘I can never tell what you’re thinking,’ said the King, and studied the heavily handsome face.

‘I was thinking, truth to tell, of the old days. Do you remember when we robbed those merchants in Chepe? And the woman …’

Harry said quietly: ‘Those days only existed in another, bad life. We can only go through this new life with pure hearts. Have you made confession?’

‘His Grace the Bishop of Winchester himself gave me absolution.’ (And it took the best part of a day, Humphrey thought, remembering Beaufort’s severe, ambitious face.)

‘That’s good. I am glad you saw my holy tutor. Would to God you two could love one another.’

‘He’s proud,’ said Humphrey, flushing. ‘Lord Bishop he may be, but he’s Beaufort, bastard stock. Of course—’ hastily, seeing his brother’s expression—‘Lady Swynford was so beautiful, none could blame my grandsire Gaunt. Would I had known such a lady.’ He spoke sincerely, fascinated by the legend of Swynford’s body and wiles.