Uneasy Lies the Crown (38 page)

“Marged, my sweet,” he said, reaching toward her and taking her hand in his, slowly crumpling the letter in his other hand, “I love you with all my heart. I always have. Always will.”

“And I you,” she said.

Arm in arm, they retreated inside. Even in their grand suite, which dominated the whole of the third floor of the gatehouse, the air was frigid, but the cutting wind was held at bay by the thick walls of stone and the deeply set glazed windows. Beneath the down coverings, Margaret molded her body to his—his chest pressed to her back and his breath warm upon her neck.

Iolo Goch:

Rumors that King Henry lay mute and blind on his deathbed came as often as the rain that falls upon the Isle of Britain. But evidence was to the contrary. He was not so ill that he could not mastermind treaties with France, Brittany and Scotland. If Wales was to survive, it had no choice now but to do so entirely by itself.

Then, my lord Owain’s last remaining ally fell. Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland, ran up against the Sheriff of Yorkshire at Bramham Moor in the month of February in 1408. There, he was resoundingly defeated and killed.

The worst was yet to come. Harry, once more, set upon Aberystwyth. This time, Rhys held out as long again, but by summer’s end, he surrendered. There was no fleeing to Harlech to plead with his prince, for Harry had already dispatched Sir Gilbert Talbot to begin the siege on Owain’s royal stronghold.

51

Harlech Castle, Wales — October, 1408

A few hours more could have made all the difference in the world. One more barrel of water. One more sack of flour. A bottle of wine. A piece of fruit. All the difference in the world.

For a furious string of days, Harlech was victualed to the highest stone. Harvest was yet a couple of weeks away and that immutable fact would prove a hardship to the Welsh and provide a feast for the oncoming English. Even by night, supplies were hustled across the drawbridge, carried on aching shoulders up the one hundred and twenty-seven steps from the water gate, or hoisted hand over hand on ropes over the walls of the outer ward.

Harry’s dogs were on their way. The ships came gliding up the coastline first. Owain and Margaret watched the assaults from a crack in one of the shuttered crenels along the battlements. The Welsh sailors did not put up much of a fight. They were faced with an entire fleet of English warships far outnumbering them: single-masted, oared cogs with banners fluttering in arrogant surety. Many of the English vessels had assayed the lopsided fray from a safe distance, as if to exclaim how absolutely the English could and would dominate. Jars of pitch were launched at the Welsh ships. Flaming arrows followed. Black smoke billowed upward into a crystal blue sky. As the Welsh dove overboard, trying to swim to the refuge of shore, English archers eyed their bobbing marks from the fighting castles perched at the bow and stern of each vessel. Arrows hissed through the air. Pools of blood spotted the harbor and diffused outward, staining the beach vermilion. When the first dead Welsh sailor, floating face up with the shaft of an arrow protruding from his forehead, washed ashore, Margaret clutched her belly and retreated behind the merlon. Her face as pale as a drift of winter snow, she went to her knees.

Owain crouched beside her. Stiff at first, she yielded to his protective arm and leaned her weight against him.

“More times than I could count I have nursed soldiers,” she said. “Some back to health. Some I knew would die within the day. And all I could do was hold their hands and stroke their heads while they cried out in agony. I asked their names and said prayers for them when the priests were too busy with others.” Closing her eyes, she reached an arm across her husband’s strong chest. “I often wondered what it was like for you, to witness the killing and dying, day after day after day.”

He pulled her against him even tighter. A loose strand of her still-flaxen hair fell from behind her ear. Thoughtlessly, he wound it around a forefinger. His own hair was almost entirely silver now. But Margaret was still undeniably beautiful. How was it that she had held on to her youthful appearance through so much strife and sorrow?

“There is too much danger in thinking about it,” he said. “You learn not to.”

The air was thick with the scent of smoke. Every now and then, ashes floated on the wind and wandered inside the castle walls.

“How long before the French come?” Margaret asked.

Owain laughed dryly. “The French? Civil war consumes them. They couldn’t care less about Henry’s little Welsh parasites.”

“Rhys?”

Rhys? Rhys would not give me a drink of water if I were dying of thirst.

“Soon, my love. He will not fail us.” How easily he had taught himself to lie to her. But how could he abandon hope before her?

A long silence settled between them. The screams of dying sailors were becoming less frequent. Even the smoke was diminishing as the Welsh ships took on water.

“I know that he wanted Nesta to leave long before she did,” Margaret announced bravely. Owain realized it was the first time she had ever spoken the name of his mistress.

He swallowed and nodded once, thankful that Margaret had not looked at him just then. “She would have left a long time ago, but for the girls.” Owain glanced along the wall-walk, lined with jars of sulfur, oil and sand to be dropped scalding on assailants at the foot of the castle walls when they came with their towers and ladders. “I am full of regrets, Marged, and desperate for your forgiveness... but I know there is nothing I deserve less.”

“Let regrets go, Owain. We must think on the good times.” She brought his hand to her lips and kissed his knuckles, cracked and dry and riddled with scars. Then she pressed his fingers to her cheek.

“But it seems they were so long ago. Another life,” he said.

“They will come again.”

“No, never again. I know now. Slowly, the dream is dying. I see it as if from a distance. And as I look back, I think on how different things might be for us... if only... if I had not...” His voice trailed off. “But after everything that has happened, it will be Prince Harry who will be my undoing. Do you know why?”

“Why?”

“Because he understands what his father never could. He is no bully, like Henry. Once, he was reckless, yes, but no more. His soldiers love him. And all of England will love him one day. He knows how to balance ruthlessness and kindness. For those things, Wales will bend to him—softly, willingly... and with relief.”

“Will you make me one last promise, Owain?”

“Anything.”

“Promise me you will never, ever give yourself up. As long as you walk free, Wales will live on.”

It was so much to ask. Too much. But she did believe in him. She always had. He had simply been too blind to see the toll it had taken on her.

“I promise,” he said.

Iolo Goch:

A great host of English soldiers enveloped the land surrounding Harlech Castle in the ensuing days. An entire city sprang up, enclosed behind a flimsy, yet effective stockade, complete with everything including taverns and prostitutes. Behind the cover of the high-topped palisades, carpenters buzzed like insects, erecting the siege engines which, when completed, would stand as tall as the castle walls themselves.

The surrounding fields, pregnant with provender, were put to the torch. Cattle were rounded up and penned to serve as fare for the English camp throughout the duration of the siege. The decimation suffered by the Welsh peasants nearby drove them into the mountains, where the elderly and ill succumbed to famine. Others froze to death from lack of shelter.

The caltrops, which had been so stealthily scattered by our men-at-arms in the tall grass surrounding the castle grounds, were painstakingly plucked up by Englishmen, some of whom fell to the accuracy of our Welsh arrows. But every shaft launched from within the walls was one less at hand for when they would be truly needed, if and when an all-out assault ever came.

Meanwhile as winter settled in, all the inhabitants of Harlech could do was watch, wait and pray that the storms battering the coast would take their toll on the besiegers. And yet the attacks, in sundry forms, began. Half-rotten carcasses of cows were catapulted over the castle walls—their stench and decay augmenting the illness already festering within. Not only did livestock serve as ammunition, but human corpses, as well.

It was not Prince Harry who made the first demand to surrender, for he was still finishing his business at Aberystwyth, but Sir Gilbert Talbot. The demand was resolutely refused by Edmund Mortimer from the wall above the main gate. My lord Owain, for reasons I did not wholly understand, was reluctant to make his presence known.

Talbot then gave the orders. Under cover of a spate of arrows, pioneers surged forward, furiously mapping safe ground. The traps and trenches that the Welsh had riddled the ground to the east of the castle with were numerous, but in the end they only served to delay the inevitable. The English pioneers filled them in to make safe routes for the roofed mantlets beneath which the miners could carry out their work. Later, the siege engines, with which the engineers and soldiers would batter the fortress, would be rolled across the solid earth. The burning fagots and red-hot bundles of iron discharged from the castle were minor deterrents, like flies that buzz about the ears of a horse.

When the English drew close enough, their soldiers scurried forth with ladders. Those that were able to make it as far as the top of the outer wall without being skewered by a Welsh arrow found themselves face to face with their foes.

All in all, our prospects were abysmal. The English, wholly aware of that, began their first direct assault on Harlech two days before Christmas.

52

Harlech Castle, Wales — December, 1408

In the silver wash of dusk, Owain crouched behind a merlon, waiting silently as the stifled grunts of an English soldier making fast progress up the ladder reached his ears. Holding his breath, Owain gripped his sword in his right hand and in his left he clutched a small taper axe. The ladder creaked as the invading soldier grappled at the stone block lying across the crenel to pull himself over.

Owain swung his sword in an arc and severed the thumb from the soldier’s left hand. Muted by shock, the soldier flailed himself forward, his short sword scraping the stones as he attempted to position it for a counterblow. Owain shot up from his hiding place, pinned the soldier’s sword against the stones with the flat of his blade and smiled slyly.

“I don’t believe you were invited,” Owain mocked. “Go back to where you came from.” And with that he buried his axe in the meat of the soldier’s neck.

With a gurgle, the soldier’s eyes rolled back into his skull. A bubble of blood foamed from his crooked mouth. He leaned backward and then went limp.

Owain reclaimed his weapon with a forceful heave and nudged the cleaved soldier away from the wall. The body toppled, taking with it the next soldier in line a dozen rungs down.

Before the incursion was ended, Owain snatched away the lives of four more Englishmen bent for glory. The act of placing himself in the forefront of the castle’s defense lent heart to his beleaguered garrison, but Owain was painfully aware that no amount of courage could deflect the torment of starvation which could eat away at the most stalwart soul.

The following night, on the solemn eve of Christmas, Owain, who had as yet granted no indication to the besiegers that he was actually present at Harlech, summoned his son-in-law to the constable’s chamber. A sorely depleted store of arrows lined the walls. It was nigh on midnight, but Owain meant to determine the extent of Edmund’s resolve before declaring his plan to anyone else. A single candle on the table in the center of the room provided a small circle of light.

Bleary-eyed, Edmund stepped into the light. The square set of his shoulders was gone. Clearly, he could not stand unsupported for long.

Owain was sitting on the edge of the table, his feet swinging beneath him. A few rolls of tattered maps lay in a pile beside him. He had brought them out, perused each one cursorily and then pushed them aside, for their contents were branded on his memory, so countless were the times he had pored over them.

Edmund wiped the perspiration from his forehead with his sleeve. He pulled out a stool tucked beneath the table and settled himself with obvious weariness upon it.

“Are you unwell?” Owain probed with concern.

“I have been better, but it will pass. A slight fever, nothing more. A little ache in my marrow. These things seldom last more than a day... two at best.” Edmund planted his elbow on the table and propped his head against a fist. “This must be serious business for you to forego sleep on the one night we might be granted peace.”

“What I am going to ask of you, Edmund,” Owain said, “I do so with both trust and reluctance. Reluctance, in that I must. Trust, in that I hold great faith in your leadership.”

“Ask anything, m’lord. There’s nothing I would not do for you.”

Owain pulled air into his lungs and held it a moment before speaking. “Are you certain of that, Edmund?”

Pink-rimmed eyes betraying his weeks of sleeplessness, Edmund looked at Owain and nodded. “Has it not always been so?”

As the click of a sentry’s boots rang out from the gate passageway, Owain glanced toward the door. The footsteps diminished.

“Good then. I grant Harlech to your charge. Defend it as long as you can. But see that my family is not harmed. Do you understand?”

Edmund was obviously taken aback. “No, I don’t.”

“I mean hold out as long as you can. But if you must surrender to keep them well and safe, then do it.” Owain hopped to the floor and paced just beyond the perimeter of the candle’s power. “Tomorrow night, when there is no moon to betray us and the English are drunk on ale and stuffed to their collars, myself, Maredydd and a few others will steal away and once beyond —”