Here Be Dragons - 1 (46 page)

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She did not want to tell him; that was evident. She fidgeted a while longer, lavishing undue attention upon the small dog curled up beside them. "Poor
Sugar, she cannot comprehend why I no longer have a lap for her to sit in."
She sighed, then said with obvious reluctance, "I'll teu you. But you must understand how it has been. My nerves are so on the raw these days that I find myself always on the edge of anger, much too quick to flare up, to take offense. But I cannot seem to help it. In truth, I have been feeling wretched for months with this babe, even before Llewelyn left me, and these five weeks that he's been gone . . . well, I'd not ever want to relive them, Richard, not even for the surety of my soul!"
He waited without prompting, for he was that rarity, a Plantagertet with patience to spare, and Joanna sighed again. "This morn Sugar ran off, disappeared without a trace. I was so fearful for her, sent servants out to search, to no avail. Then . . . then the child of one of the grooms told me that he'd seen Sugar down by the riverbank, ere he knew she was missing. And he said she was with Gruffydd."
"Ah, Joanna, surely you did not?"
Joanna flushed. "Yes, I did," she admitted, with a trace of defiance. "I
accused Gruffydd of chasing Sugar away." From the way she averted her eyes, Richard suspected she'd accused Gruffydd of even worse. He said nothing, and she stroked the dog until the heat had faded from her face. "I was in the wrong, I know that. I had no proof, should not have . . . but I did, and within the hour, Sugar came back of her own accord, muddy and matted and unhurt. I apologized to Gruffydd, but as you saw, he will not forgive me. I
knew he would not, not the way he cherishes a grudge!"
"Joanna, you can hardly blame him for being hurt and resentful. How old is he now, not thirteen till the spring, no? Well, you have to"
"Richard, you do not understand. I should not have said what I did, would to
God I had not. But you do not know what a wretched, hateful boy he is. Believe me, he's quite capable of harming a dog out of spite!"
"Have you ever talked to Llewelyn about him?"
"No. At first I thought I should be capable of handling him myself. As
Llewelyn's wife, I owed it to him to make peace with his children; a man should not be burdened with problems of the hearth. And . . an(* it would serve for naught, would only cause Llewelyn hurt. With the girls, I think I've finally managed to gain their trust. Even GwladysI asked her to stand as
Elen's godmother, and since then she's been slowlyever so slowlywarming toward me. But Gruffydd has give me naught but grief from the moment of my arrival at
Aber. I de*es him, Richard, I truly do. He's wild and perverse and dangerously u predictable, has none of Llewelyn's strengths and every damned one his failings!"

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Richard glanced up sharply. "Do you want to talk about that about Llewelyn's failings?"
Joanna hesitated, and then confessed, "Yes, I think I do. We had a truly dreadful quarrel when he left, by far the worst of our marriage. I was so angry with him, Richard; I still am. He knows how fearful I've been about this baby, he knows, but it was not enough to keep him with me That's hard for me to understand, harder still to forgive."
"We heard he was encountering little resistance, found Powys was his for the taking. Is that true?"
Joanna nodded. "Llewelyn has few peers on the battlefield," she said, with perverse pride in that which gave her so much anxiety. "Men say he is a brilliant commander."
That, Richard thought grimly, was precisely the trouble. "Think you that he'll stop at the borders of Powys?"
"You have not heard, then? He has crossed into Ceredigion, into the lands of
Maelgwn ap Rhys, has pushed as far south as the River Ystwyth."
"Jesii! But how can he hope to hold it? Maelgwn is no man to yield up what is his. I know the man, Joanna, met him often when I served in South Wales with
William de Braose's son. His past is a bloody one, includes the murder of a brother and the imprisonment of his own father. He makes a bad enemy."
"I know. Ednyved's wife Gwenllian is sister to Maelgwn and Rhys Gryg; they paid a visit to our court last year. After meeting them, I found it easier to understand why Gwenllian is such a bitch! But to answer your question, Llewelyn does not mean to hold Ceredigion for himself. He means to turn most of it over to Maelgwn's nephews. They've been feuding with their uncles for years, are more than willing to acknowledge Llewelyn as their overlord in return for his backing against Maelgwn."
"Yes," Richard said slowly, "I expect they would be." Joanna could not have given him a more disquieting answer. Had Llewelyn merely acted to seize what lands he could for himself, it would be much easier to dismiss him as just another of the power-hungry princes and lords of the Welsh Marches, a region that seemed to spawn more than its share
°f renegades, outlaws, and rebel barons. They could be troublesome, e de Braoses and Maelgwns and Fulk Fitz Warins, but their aims were understandable, their vision was limited, and sooner or later they over-
eached themselves, were undone by their own greed. But a man who
°u'd voluntarily yield to others land he had himself won at sword-
" mt, such a man had ambitions above and beyond filling his coffers, r ndering his weaker neighbors. Such a man posed a genuine danger n8'and's interests, would have to be dealt with.

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"Joanna . . . what does Llewelyn want for himself, for Wales?"
She surprised him then, said, "Are you asking for yourself, RJCI ard? Or for
Papa?"
"For myself," he said, and she smiled, reached out to brush the haj back from his temples. But she did not answer his question.
Branwen approached with mulled wine, retreated discreetly out Of hearing range. Richard drank, studying his sister. Despite the fact that John's mother'd had one of the best political brains in Christendom, or perhaps because of it, he had never encouraged Joanna to take an interest in statecraft. He'd pampered her and protected her, indulged her and lavished love upon her, but he'd never asked her what she thought, never shown any curiosity in the workings of her brain. Her political education had come from her grandmother, during those months she'd spent with Eleanor in Poitiers.
And, it was becoming disturbingly apparent to Richard, from Llewelyn ab lorwerth.
Richard drank again, spat out sediment that had not settled to the bottom of the cup. He found himself wishing that Joanna were not becoming so quick to comprehend the subtleties and consequences of power, to grasp that which women need not know. Far better for her if she were like Isabelle, if she cared only for womanly whims and the joys of the moment, if she were not aware of the gathering clouds.
Suddenly he felt very dispirited, felt caught up in currents beyond his control. He knew his father had no liking at all for Joanna's husband, that he distrusted the Prince and disliked the man. But Richard did like Llewelyn, for he could not help but see the changes marriage had wrought in Joanna. Neither he nor his father had been able to give Joanna what she most needed, a sense of belonging. Llewelyn had somehow succeeded where they had not, and Richard was grateful to him for it. He knew Joanna had found more than contentment in her marriage, that she'd found a rare and real passion. He knew how deeply she loved Llewelyn, and he wished that she'd never laid eyes upon the Welsh
Prince, wished that he had the power to blot the past thirty-one months from her mind and memory, for he did not think her present happiness was worth the suffering that was sure to come.
She had refused to answer his question, but he knew what her answer would have been, knew all too well what Llewelyn ab lorvvertn wanted. He wanted a Wales free of all English influence, wanted a united country under his own rule, a sovereign, independent kingdom like Scotland. And Richard knew his father would never allow it to be No English King could.
"Richard . . . was Papa very wroth with Llewelyn for laying claim Powys?"
"Yes, I fear so," he said reluctantly, hoping she would not intetf ate him further, not wanting her to know the true extent of John's rage [then he was told that Llewelyn's red-and-gold lions were flying over much of mid-Wales.
"I knew he"Joanna gave an audible gasp; her wine cup splashed fs contents onto the window-seat cushions.
"My God, Joanna, is it the babe? Do not move, I'll fetch your women ..."
Joanna's breath was coming back. "You need not panic," she said, sounding faintly amused. "It was just a stray pain. They come and go in the last days, mean only that my time is growing nigh."
Richard's relief was considerable. Like most men, he knew next to nothing about the birthing process, was quite content to keep it that way. "You']]
have a midwife, of course, and women to help, to do whatever . . . whatever must be done?" he asked awkwardly.
"Two midwives, Dame Rhagnell and Dame Meryl. And Branwen and Alison, of course. I should have liked Catherine to be with me, but her youngest has been ailing." Joanna frowned; having Catherine with her would have gone far to allay some of her anxieties. "I wish I were not so fearful, Richard, wish I

did not dread it so, for when a woman is tense and fearful, the pain is worse.
If I did not remember Elen's birth so vividly . . . But I will not be so afraid if I know Llewelyn is here. As long as he is close at hand . . ."
Joanna's voice trailed off; after a moment, she looked up, gave Richard a shy smile. "I never knew it was possible to be so angry with a man and yet want him so much, too. But right now I think I'd gladly forgive him any sin on
God's earth if only he'd walk through that door, if only he comes back for the baby's birth ..."
RICHARD would never have admitted his doubts to Joanna, but he thought it very unlikely that Llewelyn would return in time. Richard had known few husbands all that eager to endure long hours of waiting outside the birthing chamber, and he found it hard to believe a man would interrupt a military campaign because of a young wife's fears. Mayhap for a first child, but Llewelyn already had seven children, already had a son. He said nothing, however, did what he could to raise
15 sister's flagging spirits, and was never so pleased to be proven Wrong as when Llewelyn rode into the castle bailey just before Vespers On November 20.
mCHARD awoke with a start, a sleepy sense of disorientation. After a
Went or so, he remembered where he was, in the great hall at Dol
- elan, and glanced over at the pallet where his brother-in-law had

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been sleeping. But Llewelyn's pallet was empty. Despite the hour, R^ ard felt no surprise; several times in the night he had heard Llewelyn rise, go out into the rain, and each time he returned, wet and shivering he had answered
Richard's low-voiced queries with a shrug, a shake of his head.
Pulling on his boots, Richard moved to the heavy oaken door opened it a crack.
It was just before dawn, a blustery, cold Monday; the wind was still gusting, and after a night of unrelenting rain, the bailey was ankle-deep in mud.
Llewelyn was mounting the stairs up into the keep. He'd not be given entry, Richard knew; men were strictly barred from the birthing chamber. But Branwen or Alison would join him on the drawbridge in the forebuilding, would give him word on Joanna's progress.
Richard retreated back into the hall, sent his squire for a chamber pot and then a cupful of ale. It was a quarter hour before Llewelyn returned. Moving at once to the center open hearth, he stood as near the flames as he could, blew on his hands to combat the crippling cold, and rejected an offer of bread and cheese to break his fast. In the harsh morning light, he looked to be a different man from the one who'd come back in such triumph just three days ago, jubilant after six weeks of successive victories. He suddenly seemed a stranger to laughter; lack of sleep and a failure to shave gave him a haggard, unkempt look. And remembering how he'd doubted that Llewelyn would return for
Joanna's travail, Richard wondered how he could ever have been so stupid.
"How does she?" he asked, again got a weary shake of the head in reply.
"No change, or so they claim." Llewelyn accepted a cupful of ale, swallowed without tasting. "Eighteen hours it's been," he said, and Richard realized he did not even know if that was an excessive length of time.
"Is that overly long?"
"Not if the pains are light, feeble. But Branwen says Joanna's pains are right sharp, and coming close together. She got no rest at all last night. If the birth drags on ... So much can go wrong, Richard, so much. If the babe is lying in the wrong position, the midwife has to reach up into the womb and try to correct it. If she cannot, both mother and child are like to die. Or the babe can be too big. Or the pains can go on so long that the woman's strength gives out. There's always the danger that she'll lose heart, the danger of sudden bleeding. And afterward, the danger that she'll not expel the afterbirth."
Richard looked utterly blank, and Llewelyn said impatiently, "That is the skin that held the babe when it was in the womb. If it does not me out of its own accord, and the midwives cannot pull it out, the woman will sicken and die. And even if she gives birth safely and then expels the afterbirth, there is still the risk of milk fever. They say as many women die from that as from the birthing itself."
Richard had already been told more than he'd ever wanted to know about childbirth. "How in God's name do you know so much about it? The midwives I've met have been as closemouthed as clams."
"I asked Catrin to tell me." Llewelyn was staring into the fire, caught up in memories of a woman with hair the color of the flames, in memories of a summer seven years past. After a long silence, he said, "I wanted to know why
Tangwystl died."
FOR Llewelyn, those hours just before a battle always passed with excruciating slowness. But nothing in his past had prepared him for the way time fragmented and froze as he waited for Joanna to give birth to their child. When it had become clear that Joanna's delivery would be neither quick nor easy, he'd sent for Catherine, hoping that her presence might give Joanna comfort. But although she was only twelve miles away at Trefriw, she had yet to arrive, and he did not know whether to attribute the delay to the rain-swamped roads or to the continued illness of her child. Each time he made that grim trek across the bailey, sought scraps of information from an increasingly evasive Branwen, he was aware of a new and frightening feeling, a sense of utter impotence.