Uneasy Lies the Crown (4 page)

After locating Rhiannon and placing little Dewi in her care, Owain led Margaret by the hand down the front steps, along the foot-worn path past the glutted orchard where the pale green apples were not yet riddled with wormholes, and to the sloping banks of one of the fishponds. Argent fins flicked at the surface, breaking its mirrored sheen and sending ripples to pulse against the reedy shores. Insects buzzed with complaint as Owain and Margaret’s passing stirred them from their task. The midnight plumage of a party of swifts cut across the sky as they hawked for a meal.

Suddenly, a screeching shadow dove at them, its banshee cry shattering summer’s song. Owain tackled Margaret to save her from harm. In a deep sea of grass, they rolled over and over, drowning in their own laughter. They did not come to rest until Margaret’s kirtle dipped into the pond waters. After she plucked the grass from her hair, Margaret crawled further up the bank, a stockade of spike-rushes surrounding her.

“Are we safe now?” Standing, she wrung the water from her hem.

“For the moment.” Owain clambered up after her, grabbed her by the waist and pulled her down on top of him. From where they were, overlooking the pond, they could gaze until sunset at the sapphire reflection of the sky and the titanic Berwyns on its rippling surface. Owain’s mind was hardly on the view, however, for he was stricken by the beauty of his wife, his love, his soul. He wanted nothing more at that moment than to hold her forever and lose himself in her. “You are safe here with me. In my arms. Safe from all harm. I will build you a castle and slay the dragon that dares look your way.”

“Ah, pity. You would lock me up in a castle? I much prefer the roving shepherdess’s life to that of a captive lady.” She outlined his mustached mouth with her fingertip. “But you said you were going to show me more of the orchards... and the fields. Come now. The children will think us lost. Rhiannon will send out an army to find us if they carry on.”

“The children and the fields will wait. They will be there when we are done.”

“Done with what?”

He caught her hand and pressed her open palm to his lips, dousing it with a kiss. “Making love, Marged. But then, am I ever done loving you? Do you know that every morning, before I open my eyes, I breathe you in and hold it in my lungs? Then I know ’tis not a dream I’m living, although it would seem so. Ah, I cherish each groan you give when the sun marches in through the shutters, every little protest when I steal too much of the blankets —”

“Which you do all too often.” She puckered her brow in scolding. “I have right to protest. A woman with child —”

“That was months ago, my sweet. Have I mistreated you since then?”

A yellow strand of hair fell across her face as she rolled from him. Finally, Margaret turned her head and gazed at her husband.

“It has happened again,” she said, one hand upon her still slim abdomen.

Owain bolted up. “So soon?”

She rolled her eyes. “You were there. Or have you forgotten?”

His strong arms wrapped her in a protective embrace. “Do you know the servants say that all I have to do to impregnate my fair wife is wet her fingertips with a kiss?”

“I think all you have to do is look at me... nay, think of me in that way and suddenly I’m heavy with child.”

“Could you love me forever?”

She smoothed the waves of his hair and contemplated the thought. “I will love you, Owain, long after forever is done and gone.”

Catching her hand in his, he gripped her fingers firmly. “They say there is trouble in Ireland again.”

“When is there not?”

“True. But there are rumors King Richard wants to quell the rebels there. I will be called to serve him.”

“Must we speak of that now, Owain?”

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said anything. Now,”—he lifted himself up from the ground and with his hungering mouth left a trail of kisses from her lowest rib to her shoulder—“I shall remind you why it is I brought you here.”

Sweetly, lovingly, longingly, he kissed her neck. Her arms went round him as she pulled him closer, losing herself in the fevered heat of his kisses. He pulled off his shirt and tossed it in the reeds. Margaret reached to touch his tautly muscled stomach. Then, in shameless invitation, she drew her skirts up.

He glanced at her nakedness and though he had seen it infinite times before, her beauty was still a rapturous wonder to him. “Dare I ask how God so blesses me with the miracle of you?”

“’Tis not the time to be talking of God,” she said lowly, a dreamy grin on her lips.

“You will say otherwise shortly,” he promised and kissed her throat, hard and hungry. Then his mouth closed over hers.

The sun paused at its zenith and shone gloriously down on them—two lovers seeking and devouring each other, becoming one. Their murmurs intermingled and climbed in pitch as Owain moved faster within her. Blood and heart and breath all pounded through his body as he ascended toward the plateau that always lay in the next moment. Then he felt Margaret shudder beneath him and her breath catch. Every muscle and fiber of his being contracted. Inside his head and all around him the world went white, like a wave crashing around him... pulling him under.

Slowly, he felt himself coming down from heaven—soaring like an eagle above the earth, drifting lower, looking down on all creation. The sound of the wind became his own breathing and the strong beating of wings his heart.

5

Sycharth, Wales — 1394

One week before Owain was to accompany King Richard to quarrelsome Ireland, Margaret gave birth to twins: a boy and a girl, Mary and Sion. They had not come with the usual ease that Margaret had previously delivered her children. The boy child had been turned around when her pains began. The labor went on most of the day, at first intense and excruciating. Then later, as Margaret drifted in and out of consciousness, the physician was finally able to turn the child inside her and deliver each one. Margaret was oblivious to their incipient cries. When the babes were washed up, Owain was called in to see them. A nurse cradled them protectively in the crook of each arm. Their small red faces peeked from cocoons of swaddling. They were tiny—born early. Their attachment to life was a hair so fine a single tug might snap it.

Owain leaned against the bedpost, gazing at Margaret, who was swept away in a sea of exhaustion. For a long time he studied her, worshipful of her, thankful and yet gripped with a fear that paralyzed him. Lamplight flickered upon her face, pale and sparkling with perspiration like a fine dusting of crystal. He glanced at the physician, who was packing his instruments and washing his hands as if there were nothing more he could do.

His voice tremulous, Owain probed, “Will she... will she be well soon?”

“More likely so than not,” the physician said. He was a Jew named Abraham that Owain had brought to Sycharth from London to attend to his large family. He wiped his hands on a towel, and then gathered the bag that contained his mysterious tools. “But there were complications. If she were to deliver another child, she could die. Do you understand?”

The strong cries of his new son and daughter filled his ears with the assurance that they had gained their place in the world and were not letting go.

Owain nodded dully. Then he knelt beside his love and wrapped his large hands around one of hers. He kissed her knuckles, and then pressed them to his whiskered cheek. “Marged, the children need you. I need you.” And he buried his face in the sea of down coverings that surrounded her and wept more tears than he had ever in his life shed.

Waterford, Ireland — 1394

The sight of a green-faced man retching over a ship’s railing is not the image one usually conjures of a king. For Richard, the passage over the Irish Sea was a necessary evil. He was on his way to subdue the latest uprising precipitated by the mutinous chieftain McMurrough. The voyage, however, was treacherous. Fickle gusts of October wind hammered at the sea, pushing the waves mountainously high and tossing the ships like fallen leaves in a rampant river.

Among Richard’s personal guard were his Cheshire archers, bearing the king’s livery of the white hart, renowned for their prowess with the longbow and as arrogant as they were accurate. The king had also summoned Owain to attend him. For now, Owain had been relegated to the honor of holding onto the king’s shoulders as Richard leaned out over the sea, puking up the last gulp of water that he had cleansed his mouth with.

Owain passed him a sodden scrap of cloth as the king pulled back. Richard buried his face in it and moaned grievously. Low, gray clouds trudged across the sky. Owain blinked away the stinging mist and some minutes later, when the king was standing on his own and the hue of his face was less blanched, he ventured a comment. “I see you have your legs under you now. Are you feeling improved, then?”

A scowl crossed Richard’s mouth. “I will feel better when I have been at Dublin three days and the earth stops pitching beneath me.” He laughed, but almost instantly the humor slipped away. “Who do you trust, Welsh?”

“Your pardon, sire?”

Richard sniffed, then drew a damp kerchief from his sleeve and blew his nose. “I mean—who do you trust with your secrets?”

Uncertain of the intent behind the query, Owain answered safely. “My wife, I suppose. There is nothing I would keep from Margaret. And there is nothing she would ever judge me too harshly for.”

The wind whipped harder at them, winter’s promise on its breath. Racked with tremors from the cold, Richard shoved his hands under his armpits.

“Damn it! Hurry, boy! Where is my blanket?” Richard railed at his page. “Your negligence will be the cause of my ague.”

The king’s page, his hair dripping with rain and his lips blue from the permeating chill of sea air, bolted off and returned with a dry, woolen blanket from below deck. Richard held out his arms stiffly and the page draped it in rehearsed fashion, pulling the blanket over the king’s head to serve as a hood. Richard swooned as the ship’s prow lifted over a swell, then plummeted. He grasped at a rope secured to the mast.

White knuckled, he confided in Owain. “Trust no one, if you can. Those that swear they live to serve you will plot your demise while you sleep.”

“Someone seeks to betray you, my lord?” Owain brushed the stream of rain from his forehead.

“Have and will again, I fear.” He beckoned Owain close and whispered into his ear, “Bolingbroke.” Richard leaned back, his pupils searing the warning into Owain.

“Why do you tell me this?”

“Because I trust you. And I must trust someone. My first wife Anne is gone. Curse the plague that took her. My friends Burley, Pole, Vere—they called them all traitors to the realm. But you, Sir Owen de Glendore,”—he grinned at the endearment—“they would never suspect me of bending the ear of a Welshman. Here.” He delved beneath his opulent folds of clothing and produced a coin, then pressed it into Owain’s palm.

An old coin with a mottled patina, Owain flipped it between his fingers. “Roman,” he remarked with great interest.

“I found it on the beach at Milford Haven before we set sail. Have it.” The king scanned about him. “Be cautious, my friend, the man will turn against you as well one day.” The ship’s captain and sailors were beyond earshot, but Richard appeared not to trust that supposition. Thomas Mowbray, the Earl of Nottingham, was wisely below deck and his uncle Gloucester was on another vessel altogether. Richard huddled against the mast, rain pelting down on him. His teeth chattered and he pulled his blankets as tight as a mummy’s wrappings. Suddenly, he gripped Owain by the collar. “The time is nearing for those who have tried to subvert their king to pay for their crimes. Near. So very, very near. But the moment... it must be exact. They will learn they cannot treat me like a child forever. God, I have waited too long already.”

His eyes were fixed wide, like the mouse that freezes beneath the shadow of a hawk, knowing it is marked as prey and is doomed to feel the piercing of talons. How piteous to see a king trembling for fear of his life. But his words were not those of a madman. Richard’s uncle, John of Gaunt, had ruled during his minority in a steadfast manner. But in regards to Gaunt’s son Henry of Bolingbroke, the Earl of Derby, Richard was not in admiration of his cousin. The mistrust was known to be mutual.

Owain may have resented his obligations to the English crown, but perhaps it was because of Richard’s appreciation of him that he felt some degree of loyalty to him. “Know this, my king,” he swore, “if there is but one man in this world to stand behind what is God’s wish—that you are to sit upon the throne of England—that man is me.”

Richard gazed blankly at him for a long time, as if weighing the allusion. His smooth fingers rubbed at the ruby broach at the base of his slim neck.

“Land ho!” came the captain’s shout.

“Waterford,” Richard heaved in relief, flashing a meek smile. “Have you ever been to Ireland before, Welsh? As beautiful as it is uncivilized, I regret.” He stumbled toward the railing. “I shall send some of the others inland to wrestle with the scoundrels. You will accompany me to Dublin. My back needs watching.”

“Have we arrived yet?” A boy of nine or ten peered above the ladder to below deck. He craned his head around, wind whipping his auburn hair across his face, and scrambled over the last few steps to stand above deck, hands on hips, impervious to the storm.

“Nearly so, Cousin. And none too soon,” Richard answered with obvious relief. Then, he motioned Owain in close again and, indicating the boy with an incline of his head, said, “A clever lad, my young cousin Harry of Monmouth, unlikely son of that ingrate Henry. I do think he seeks to emulate me. There is promise in the boy, despite his father.”

“Who are you?” Harry said, approaching them on a sturdy pair of sea legs.

“Owain Glyndwr, my lord,” Owain answered with a swift bow.

Harry studied him with intense hazel eyes that shifted in hue with every tilt of his head.