Rhuddlan (20 page)

Henry was generous in victory. After the
treaty which formally ended the war was set, the majority of his
prisoners were released after giving security and their lands were
restored to them. He chose to ignore Louis’ large part in directing
and inciting the rebellion, preferring for diplomatic reasons to
consider it the result of the Young King’s sense of grievance. To
this end, Henry gave his son more responsibilities and a greater
allowance. The king of Scotland was released after signing a treaty
in which he acknowledged Henry as his overlord. The earl of
Chester, the earl of Leicester and Ralph de Fougères were the only
ones whom the king kept his prisoners, lodged in comfortable but
secure confinement in the royal castle at Falaise.

Richard Delamere watched his friend become
gradually more uncommunicative as the days passed. Longsword wasn’t
coping well with the realization that Henry’s purpose was to put
everything back to the way it was before the rebellion and that
included keeping the Young King his heir. They had both been amazed
when the Young King was received back into Henry’s paternal
benevolence without a murmur. If Henry had had harsh words for his
son, he’d delivered them in privacy so strict that no other person
had heard them.

Longsword was at first stunned and then
angry. Although Delamere warned him to just swallow it, the
bitterness welled up so high inside him that he finally confronted
his father. Any legitimate argument he might have had were lost in
his frustrated shouts and scathing accusations and his timing was
bad because the king was in the midst of an informal council
meeting and the chamber was full of men. Henry didn’t like being
shouted at, particularly before witnesses, and he answered the
challenge with his own booming voice and forced Longsword into a
glaring silence. When Longsword would have replied, Henry told him
to get out and not to dare enter his sight until he was summoned.
The younger man strode angrily from the chamber, slamming the door
behind him, and went straight to the stables, where he threw the
saddle over his horse and disappeared alone into the countryside
for two days.

Delamere knew Longsword had a temper and
after the first night wondered if his friend was going to do
something stupid like ride to France and offer his services to
Louis. The next day Henry sent for his son, only to be told that
his whereabouts were unknown. Concerned, the king ordered a search
organized but this proved unnecessary. In the morning, Longsword
trotted into the castle, his anger finally subdued but something
like mistrust in his eyes when he beheld his father waiting for him
on the steps leading to the hall.

Delamere sat a discreet distance from the
closed door idly nursing a cup of weak ale. His mind was too
distracted to even pay much attention to the flirtatious glances of
the castellan’s pretty young daughter. He expected at any moment to
hear the wild burst of Longsword’s fury and the equally strident
response of the king but no sound came to his ears. He didn’t know
if that meant he could relax or if something far worse than a mere
argument between father and son was taking place.

Finally, the door opened and Longsword
emerged. His face had been sunburned by a long summer of fighting
the king’s war but to Delamere it looked unnaturally pale—and
emotionless. Longsword appeared not to have seen him; he walked
almost silently through the hall and outside. Delamere
followed.

“Will!” he called when Longsword showed no
sign of pausing. He ran a little. “Will!”

Longsword stopped and turned around.

“Where are you going?”

For a moment Longsword made no answer, as if
he were confused by the question. Then he said, “I don’t know.”

Delamere came up to him. “Let’s go up on the
wall,” he said quietly.

They climbed the narrow steps to the wallwalk
in silence and in silence stared blindly out at the view of neatly
cut golden fields, recently harvested. Longsword was an
uncomplicated man; Delamere had always known exactly what he was
thinking just from the expressions which flitted across his open
face. But now his friend’s face was shuttered and Delamere didn’t
know how to proceed, whether to speak or to wait.

Longsword solved the problem. “The king
thinks it would be a good idea if I leave his household,” he said
abruptly, in a flat, tight voice.

Delamere jerked his head around to stare at
him, open-mouthed. He was too stunned to speak; then he sputtered,
“I don’t believe it! Why? What reason could he possibly give
you?”

“The king said I have no understanding of his
situation. He said that my unfortunate hatred of my half-brother is
irritating to the point where it interferes with his efforts at
diplomacy. He said it would be better for him, the Young King and
especially for me if I were sent out of Normandy.”

There was something chilling about
Longsword’s voice. It was unnatural for him to be so calm—he ought
to have been ranting, striding up and down the wallwalk, waving his
arms and loudly cursing his fate. Delamere thought it strange, too,
that he kept referring to Henry as ‘the king’; he’d never heard
Longsword call him anything other than ‘my father’.

“And that’s it?” he said finally. “He’s
turning you out?”

Longsword continued to stare stonily out
across the sun-warmed field. “Not quite. The king’s being very
generous to me. He’s giving me a place to go. More than adequate
compensation for my support during the war, he said. He sounded
very satisfied about it.”

He himself didn’t sound as pleased. “Where is
it?” Delamere asked apprehensively.

“Wales.”

“Wales? Wales as in the other side of the
kingdom?”

Longsword nodded. “Yes, that Wales.” He
turned to face Delamere, his expression still bland. “It seems,
doesn’t it, that the king not only wishes me to get out of Normandy
but out of England as well?”

“He must have a reason, Will! Perhaps it’s
your strong arm. The petty Welsh rulers are none too secure and the
peace Henry’s made with them is tenuous at best, especially in the
south.”

“You must read the king’s mind better than
that, Richard, because I’m being sent to the north. To Gwynedd. The
principality where the king has strengthened his peace with Prince
Dafydd by giving him his half-sister in marriage. The place whose
ruler loves the king so much that in return he surrendered the
Norman castle his father captured seven years ago and sent him a
contingent of archers to fight for him in the rebellion. By the
way, that’s the castle I’m getting. Rhuddlan. God alone knows what
kind of state it’s in after being in the hands of the Welsh.
Custodian of Rhuddlan. Probably the most boring appointment in the
whole of the empire.”

Despite his friend’s lackluster portrayal,
Delamere was excited for him. “But your own castle, Will!”

“He made his other bastard,
Geoffrey, the damned bishop of Lincoln!” Longsword finally
exploded. “He could have made me an earl at least! I
am
the eldest, after all!
But no—a mere custodian is sufficient enough for William the
Bastard!”

Delamere knew—and he was sure Longsword knew
it too, but in his hurt and anger was choosing to ignore it—that
King Henry had, since the start of his reign, been reducing the
number of earls in England by not creating new earldoms as rewards
and not filling old ones when their previous holders died without
heirs. An earl’s wealth was bound up in his land and the more land
he had, the more knight service he owed to the king. The situation
could be potentially threatening to the monarch, as Henry had
learned during the civil war when some of the barons who had sworn
to his grandfather to support his claim to the throne switched
their allegiance to his uncle and spawned over a decade of
devastating conflict. It was rumored even now that the king’s
punishment of the earls of Chester and Leicester, his only
remaining prisoners and two of the most powerful men in England,
would be severe enough to ensure that their influence would become
drastically curtailed.

Delamere was annoyed on his friend’s behalf.
It would have been fitting to make Will an earl, he thought; he
deserved it for his loyalty and would have been so pleased and
proud by the elevation in rank that he would have done anything for
the king in return, including getting down on his knees and kissing
the Young King’s boots. Being the keeper of a royal castle wasn’t
the shabby appointment Longsword was making it out to be, but it
certainly didn’t have the prestige and attendant power of being an
earl.

“Maybe he’s waiting for a vacancy in an
existing earldom,” Delamere suggested feebly.

“Yes, I’m sure it’s something like that,”
Longsword agreed sarcastically.

Delamere lapsed into an uneasy silence,
unused to Longsword’s unfilial attitude.

“There’s more,” Longsword said after a
minute. He did not sound enthusiastic. “There’s a prize that goes
with Rhuddlan. To further bind their friendship, Prince Dafydd has
offered up his niece in sacrifice to the mighty king of England.
And I’m the lucky one who gets to marry her.”

PART III

Chapter 14

September, 1176

Rhuddlan Castle, Gwynedd

It was unusually warm for a mid-September
morning, that much William fitz Henry had learned in his two years
as lord of Rhuddlan Castle. And although he knew that soon enough
the weather would turn bone-chillingly frigid, he still cursed the
heat which caused the sweat to drip into his eyes and between his
shoulder blades as he practiced his swordsmanship against one of
his garrison knights. The two of them were bareheaded and shirtless
and dearly would Longsword have loved to stop but he refused to
give up before his competitor.

The sentry in the tower shouted and put a
fortunate end to the contest. There was a rider approaching, he
called down; a solitary man. A moment later he turned back with the
welcome news that the horseman was Sir Richard Delamere.

“Pull open the gate!” Longsword ordered. He
wiped his forehead with the back of his hand and spat onto the
ground. One of his men brought a bucket of freshly drawn water to
him and he rinsed the dust from his mouth and then drank deeply. He
nodded to the young man with whom he’d been practicing and passed
him the ladle. “A good bout,” he said. “You almost had me.”

“No, my lord,” the other man protested,
grinning. “I was barely holding on to my sword towards the
end.”

“As for me,” Longsword said with the barest
hint of amusement, “what kept me going was pretending you were my
wife.”

The men standing around him burst into
laughter and were still chuckling when Delamere rode into the ward
and slid effortlessly from his saddle.

“Seems when I left you were all hanging about
doing nothing,” he said with a broad smile. He bowed to Longsword.
“My lord.”

“Where the hell have you been, Richard?”
Longsword demanded irritably. “It’s been nearly a month!”

Delamere looked surprised. “But you know
where I was. Why? Was there trouble while I was gone?”

“Trouble would have been welcome!” Longsword
snorted and strode off towards the keep.

“He’s been in a foul temper since the day you
left,” one of the knights told Delamere. “Couldn’t keep still.
Every day we were out hunting.”

“There can’t be anything left in the
countryside to kill,” added someone else.

“He wanted to visit you once. Took four of
us. We got halfway to there and then he changed his mind.”

“Snaps at everyone. Last night he had one of
the servants in tears when she didn’t fill his cup fast
enough.”

Delamere sighed. It was becoming obvious that
Longsword relied on his company to divert his mind from his hatred
of living in Wales.

He found Longsword in his chamber, changing
his clothes with sharp, angry movements. He leaned casually against
the wall of the open doorway and crossed his arms over his chest.
“Miss me, did you?”

“You said you’d only be away a week or so!”
Longsword retorted, combing his damp hair with his fingers.

“I’m sorry, Will,” Delamere said calmly. “I
forgot the time.”

“You forget your service to me!”

Delamere gritted his teeth but refused to be
drawn into an argument. Strictly speaking, he owed Longsword only
forty days of service a year. “I’m sorry, Will,” he repeated.

For a few moments there was silence as
Longsword sat on the edge of his bed and pulled his dusty boots
back onto his feet. Then, as he criss-crossed the laces, he
grudgingly asked Delamere if he had enjoyed his stay at the
manor.

“Very much,” he answered, careful not to
sound too enthusiastic. “The little one’s a terror. He can’t be
bothered with walking; he half-runs, half-stumbles everywhere,
always in a rush.”

“And your wife?”

“Olwen is well. But she isn’t my wife,
Will.”

Longsword stood up and reached for his belt.
“She might as well be. You’ve no fancy for anyone else, have you?
And what of your children? I know too well the taint of
illegitimacy.”

Delamere shifted uneasily. “I’m happy the way
things are,” he said, shrugging. “And the only thing Olwen’s
fretting over now is the baby that’s coming in a couple of months.
Anyway, in Wales a child isn’t illegitimate if his father
acknowledges him.”

“God in heaven,” Longsword shivered. “The way
you speak, it sounds as if we’ll be here forever.”

Rhuddlan was a moderate
fortress on a spit of land between the sea and the River Clywd. It
had long been an important location, although not necessarily for
strategic reasons. To the Romans, who had an auxiliary fort there,
it was a stop along their road which continued west to Caernarfon.
Later, to the native rulers of Gwynedd it was the site of a
llys,
the home and court
of the chief and one of the first urban areas in Wales by virtue of
its proximity to the waterways which facilitated trade and its
abundant iron ore deposits. To the Normans who invaded after 1071,
it was a springboard to further incursions into Gwynedd, ambition
which had been stifled with the emergence of strong Welsh leaders,
principally Owain, who captured the royal stronghold there and
razed it in 1167.