Chapter Nineteen
Meg
“My tongue feels like the backside of a dog,” Goronwy said. I mopped his brow with a warm washcloth. He’d woken, ill as all the men were, and now lay sprawled on his back on one of the benches in the hall. He’d vomited when he’d tried to lift his head earlier, and both of us were loathe for him to try again.
“I believe it was the mead,” Llywelyn said.
“I did not over-drink last night!” Goronwy said, conscious enough now to work up the energy to thwart any aspersions on his character.
“I didn’t say you did,” Llywelyn said. “The healer believes it was poppy juice, which can cause deep sleep—sometimes too deep, but thankfully not in this case.”
“By the Saints! Who’s the witch who poisoned us?” he said.
“No witch, Goronwy,” Llywelyn said. “Merely a man who worked for Roger Mortimer against me. He has paid for his mistakes with his life.”
“You caught him, my lord?” Goronwy said. “Do we know him?”
“Mortimer removed his head from his body to show his displeasure at the outcome of the plot,” Llywelyn said.
“The whole thing wasn’t very well planned anyway,” I said. “Why did the man keep the gates open, when Roger Mortimer rode in from the north? He couldn’t even get into the castle from the north because both the towers are built to block access to the gatehouses from any direction but the drawbridges.”
“He could, actually,” said Llywelyn. “The ford of Rhyd Bernard is just upstream of the confluence of the Usk and Honddu. He didn’t think he needed it, though.”
“Because he had the gate in the undercroft.”
“Well, yes, but was he going to lead those horses through there one by one?” Llywelyn said.
“Okay, you’re right,” I said. “I was surprised at all those stairs for horses to navigate at Castell y Bere, but here—were they going to get up from the kitchen to the hall?”
“That’s the point, of course,” Goronwy said. “The stairs leading down to the postern gate at Castell y Bere are behind the stables as an added protection in case someone decides to enter that way. I confess, I never thought of putting the door in the kitchen.”
“Anyway,” Llywelyn said, “Mortimer said that his scouts saw Meg and me enter through the southern gate. They may have been close behind us when we went in, but as soon as we closed the portcullis, were forced to ride west to the nearest ford across the Usk.”
“A long way as it’s in flood,” Goronwy said.
“That they rode around is the reason we had enough time to do what we did,” Llywelyn said. “Luck, as Roger said.”
“Luck serves those who are best prepared, my lord,” Goronwy said. Llywelyn and I exchanged a look. Llywelyn settled himself on the bench at Goronwy’s feet and Goronwy lay back, his hand across his eyes. “It isn’t as if it hasn’t worked before.”
“Taking a castle by stealth, you mean,” Llywelyn said.
“You mean like the Trojan horse?” I asked.
Llywelyn smiled, his eyes alight. “You’ve read Homer?”
“Not in the original, but yes.”
“But you know the story,” he said, “how the Greeks built a giant horse to hold their men. The Trojans, thinking the offering a gift to their gods, brought it inside their city.”
“They had to tear down their own gates to do it, I believe,” Goronwy said. “Certainly a lesson to us all.”
I touched Llywelyn’s arm and spoke in a low voice. “They found the city. Six hundred years from now they uncovered the walls and the gold—much as Homer described.”
Goronwy and Llywelyn gaped at me.
“Sorry,” I said.
Llywelyn took in a deep breath. “Don’t be sorry, Meg. It’s disorienting to have you speak thus. At times, I don’t know what’s real and what’s not.”
“I know what’s real,” Goronwy said, “and it has to do with a man trying to assassinate you. It’s convenient for Mortimer, isn’t it, that the conspirators are all dead?”
“Mortimer knew what he was doing,” Llywelyn said. “What else does he have in store for us?”
“You really think there was only the one?”
“Two,” Llywelyn said. “Lacey’s body is in the kitchen. He must have gone north to Wigmore Castle to meet Mortimer, and then returned with a companion to implement their plot. I killed Lacey before I blocked the door to the passage.”
“Oh.” I looked away, unable to ask him how he felt about that—how he could take a life and then shrug it off—or appear to shrug it off. Was that what he was going to teach our son?
Goronwy read my thoughts. “You think it doesn’t bother him, Meg? You’ve never heard him talking in his sleep, words you might not understand? Shouting sometimes, even?”
“Goronwy,” Llywelyn said, a warning in his voice.
I kept my eyes on Goronwy. “I’ve heard him.”
Goronwy nodded. “Don’t let the bluff talk and the bravado fool you. If you think that our prince will not relive the moment he killed Lacey, or forget the light fading from his eyes, then you don’t know him, or any of us. We live with it every day. Too many men allow the drink to take them rather than admit how much they care; and it’s then that they cease to be Welshmen and become something less than human, which is of no use to me, in battle or otherwise.”
“Yes, Goronwy.” He was right. I’d chafed at Llywelyn earlier about the fate of our son, but I should have known better who Llywelyn was. I had heard him in the night.
I’d also seen the young men, pale and stammering after the skirmish at the Gap, and seen the vomit mixed with blood on the road. What scared me was how human they all still seemed, even though their daily lives were full of what no man should have to bear—and what he couldn’t bear and remain the person he was before the killing. That’s what I feared for my son, and didn’t know how to deal with, despite Llywelyn’s reassurance.
I’d had a friend who’d joined the National Guard in college and was sent to Kuwait during the Gulf War. His tank was one of the first to cross into Kuwait City. Seven hundred years later, men talked about war in the same way men did here: in public, bravado and beer; in private, hollowness in their voices and vacancy in their eyes when the emotion they held tight inside their chests threatened to overwhelm them.
Too often in the twentieth century, we thought of war as not unlike playing a video game. Killing was mostly from a distance, with our bombs and our long-range mortars. But not my friend. His tank had killed hundreds of men, he said, and there were nights he lay awake, reliving the deaths of every single one of them. Just like Llywelyn.
Goronwy was still looking at me and I met his gaze. He nodded. “If you really are who you say you are, Meg, I can’t imagine what your world must be like.”
“I almost can’t either, anymore,” I said.
“What else might be in store for us?” he asked. “Can you tell me?”
“I don’t know of any coming battles. Not for a long while, but I’ve been wrong before.”
“That history of yours, Meg,” Goronwy said, fingering his lip. “I’m not sure that very much of it is right.”
“Quite honestly, I don’t either,” I said.
“Are you sure about what happens at Cilmeri?”
“Yes,” I said. “That I’m sure of.”
Then Llywelyn put a hand on Goronwy’s shoulder. “By the way, Meg and I have some good news, my friend.”
“Do you now?” Goronwy looked from Llywelyn to me. A grin had split Llywelyn’s face and he punched the air. I tried hard not to smile, but I couldn’t keep it suppressed in the face of Llywelyn’s joy.
“Really? Do you mean . . . a baby?”
“Yes!” Llywelyn clapped a hand on Goronwy’s shoulder.
It was a bit different from Trev’s reaction when I’d told him I was pregnant with Anna. He’d been mad at first—understandable in retrospect, given how young we both were, me especially at not even eighteen. We’d gone for a walk in a park—the best way I could see to tell him—and he’d driven off without me after I told him. I’d walked home, crying. I’d already told Mom, and when I’d informed her of Trev’s reaction, her face had taken on a calm expression, instead of anger.
“Well then,” she’d said. “We’re on our own.”
But then Trev had called and apologized and I’d forgiven him. Mom said that if someone had told her what he’d become after Anna was born, she wouldn’t have been surprised. But we hadn’t known, either of us.
Llywelyn, however, was having a hard time containing himself. “We aren’t going to tell anyone else, not for a while, not until it becomes obvious,” he said, bouncing up and down on his toes. The two men grinned at each other and I wouldn’t have been surprised if their heads had come off and floated around in the great hall all by themselves.
“Your brother won’t be happy,” Goronwy said.
“Ha!” Llywelyn said. “You have the right of it!
“I hate to rain on your parade,” I said, “but it’s going to be an impossible secret to keep. Do you imagine Maud doesn’t know already? Or the maidservant? Everyone within a hundred mile radius of Brecon is counting the days until they’re sure I’m late.”
“At least there won’t be any questions about paternity,” Goronwy added, “not with as close as you’ve kept her.”
I narrowed my eyes at him for speaking of it so openly. Men.
* * * * *
We were half-way through May when King Henry of England responded to Llywelyn’s letter in which he requested that either King Henry intervene in the dispute with Clare, or he allow Llywelyn to go in himself. Henry’s response was one of placation and equivocation. Llywelyn read me the letter, and then mocked it.
“Oh me, oh my! What’s to be done with that Clare fellow? The man writes as if he didn’t rule the most powerful kingdom on earth!” Llywelyn said. “It’s his fault this is happening in the first place, since he was the one who told Clare during the Baron’s War that he could keep whatever lands he took from me. It set a bad precedent.”
Llywelyn swung around to me as I sat on a cushion on the window seat in his office. I set down the guitar I’d been playing, trying to work out the melody for one of the Welsh ballads, and paid attention.
“The King has always been weak. Such was the complaint of the barons in the first place,” said Tudur, who’d brought Llywelyn the letter.
“And Clare’s letter?” I said.
“Now there’s a piece of subtlety,” Tudur said. With my pregnancy, he’d softened towards me somewhat, but didn’t trust me.
Llywelyn picked up Clare’s letter and waved it at me.
“I don’t understand,” I said, peering at the paper. Clare hadn’t written anything on it.
“It is of the finest parchment,” Llywelyn said, “but it says that he doesn’t care about diplomacy; he’s not even going to bother with appeasement or carefully crafted lies. The page is blank.”
“He’s saying,” Goronwy said, “that he doesn’t care to talk to us. He’s going to continue with his building project and the devil take us, damn that whoreson to hell.”
“Goronwy,” Llywelyn said.
“It’s okay,” I said. “I’ve heard it before.”
“When do we move?” Goronwy said.
“I’d like to be in Senghennydd by mid-June,” Llywelyn said. “No foot soldier is going to want to leave his planted fields or herd animals, but I can’t allow the work at Caerphilly to continue without a show of force.”
“I’ll send out the word,” Goronwy said. “It’s going to be a long summer.”
* * * * *
So Llywelyn left Brecon with an army. For the first time in my four months in Wales, I was alone, with just Anna. At first, I didn’t know what to make of myself. There seemed everything and nothing to do. Anna and I could entertain ourselves well, and a certain part of every afternoon required a nap for both of us, but the absence of Llywelyn in my bed left me with an ache in my heart I couldn’t assuage. More than one evening, I found myself sobbing after I put Anna to bed, sure I would never see Llywelyn again and I would be forever lost in the thirteenth century.
Anna, at least, was a delight. She would be three years old in August and time was passing more quickly than I could have imagined. We played in the kitchen garden, walked along the river, and tried not to get underfoot. Because Llywelyn and I weren’t officially married, I was not the mistress of the castle—that role belonged to Tudur and a man named Madoc who ran things when Llywelyn was somewhere else. That left me at loose ends, with no real tasks.
The castle was also on the edge of a war zone, so few women and families lived there, as at Castell y Bere. The good part of that was I didn’t have to spend time in the women’s solar, sewing. The bad part was there wasn’t anyone to talk to. Not that I had anything in common with thirteenth century women anyway.
Well, that wasn’t entirely true. I was pregnant, and that fact alone was enough to prompt comment from everyone at every turn. I found it strange to be pregnant, and yet have no ultrasounds, no blood work, no monthly visits to the doctor. I just lived as I had before, but with a growing life inside me.
What made me the most uncomfortable was the idea of having the child without a doctor or midwife. Anna’s had been a natural birth in a birthing center with no drugs, but the hospital had been only seconds away and I’d felt safe. Here, it was up to me to make sure everyone washed their hands and boiled whatever instruments they might want to use. I’d talked to the midwife, Alys, already. She’d raised her eyebrows at what I’d said, but not disagreed. Carrying the future Prince of Wales had it uses, after all.
A c-section, though, was not going to be possible. Whenever I thought of it my mind shied away. I’d brought it up with Llywelyn, though, before he left.
“I’m scared,” I said, flatly. “Scared for you, right now, scared for me later.”
We lay in bed together and he’d pulled me to him and tucked me under his chin. “I’m scared too, not so much for me. This adventure with Clare isn’t without peril, but not of great concern to me. But you . . .” he stopped.
“The birth with Anna went well. I’ve no reason to think I’ll have a problem, and yet . . .” I stopped too, as afraid to articulate our fears as he was.
“You’re afraid you’ll lose the baby,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper. “You’re afraid you’ll die and leave me and Anna alone.”
“Yes,” I said, releasing a breath. “It isn’t so much dying itself that worries me, though I surely don’t want to. I don’t want her and you to have to go on living without me. I’ve left too much undone.”
“Every man feels that way,” he said. “When I raise my sword and order my men to charge, my last coherent thought before the fire of battle overtakes me will be of you, and what I lose if either of us doesn’t survive the year.”
“And as always, in your case especially, what Wales loses,” I said.
“Yes. Always that.” He paused. “The priests tell us that we should pray for the Will of God. That’s hard to do, when so often what comes out is, ‘Please Lord, I need to live.’”
* * * * *
As my pregnancy became more obvious, which it did far sooner than when I was pregnant with Anna, I received more and more attention for it. On one hand, I was protected at every moment, most especially when I left the castle, which only happened when Anna and I walked across the drawbridge into the town for the weekly fair. On the other hand, every person I passed wanted to touch my belly (for luck it seemed) since I was carrying a child that the Prince—and all of Wales—never thought they’d see.
Llywelyn and his army had been gone two weeks and should have reached his lands in Senghennydd, when Dafydd appeared on the doorstep. He arrived just as the evening meal was finishing, striding up the hall as if he owned it.
“My lady,” he said, bowing. He straightened, his eyes blatantly traveling from my face, to my breasts, to my not quite protruding belly.
From his place beside me, Tudur leaned toward him over the table. Llywelyn’s chair, on my right, was empty.
“Dafydd,” he said, not according him any title, least of all ‘prince’. “Why are you here?”
Tudur and I still weren’t getting along that well, but I’d never been happier to have him by my side. From his tone, he at least preferred me to Dafydd. I might be a witch or a spy who’d captivated his Prince, but Dafydd was a traitor and a killer, and not to be tolerated.
“I’ve come to throw my full support behind my brother,” he said. “We seek shelter for the night, and then we’ll be off south.”
Tudur leaned back in his chair and gestured toward a seat to the left of him at the high table. “Of course. Sit yourself. We would have news from the north.”
Dafydd signaled to his captain, who’d waited in the doorway of the hall for approval. Within minutes, Dafydd’s men began finding seats next to the twenty or so men that were all that was left of the Brecon garrison. Madoc exchanged glances with two of his men and they got to their feet, ostensibly to offer their seats to another, but I didn’t think that was it.
It looked like they were quartering the room with their eyes, determining sight lines and defensible positions. They ended up in opposing corners of the hall. Madoc leaned casually against the wall to the left of the fireplace. Another man stood by the great front doors, and the third propped his shoulder near the spiral stair up to our apartments, his eyes only half on the game of dice being played by the men closest to him.
“I don’t like this,” I said, keeping my voice low.
“Nor I,” Tudur said. “We’re vulnerable and outnumbered, and having Dafydd and his men here is like inviting a wolf to dinner.”
“Surely his men are loyal to Llywelyn?”
Tudur gave me a pitying look. “Who pays them?” Then he answered his own question. “Prince Dafydd. They will do his bidding, just as did the men who attacked our lord at Coedwig Gap.”
I realized how insensitive I’d been to one of the sources of Tudur’s animosity towards Dafydd—it was Dafydd who’d indirectly caused Geraint’s death. How could I have forgotten that? I put a hand on his arm. “I’m sorry.”
Tudur nodded, his eyes watchful. Dafydd took his seat and helped himself to the remains of the meal. Tudur signaled to a servant, who cleared our places and brought several fresher dishes for Dafydd.
“You look well, my lady,” Dafydd said. “Certainly no worse for having gone for a swim in the best waters Wales has to offer.”
I stared at him, shocked that he would bring up his attempt to abduct me and kill his brother—and brazen out his criminal behavior. I leaned forward so I could see past Tudur to answer him, but Tudur put his hand on my arm to shush me. I sat back, not knowing what else to do. I wanted to berate him, but was afraid of him too, and afraid to make things worse or say something that Llywelyn wouldn’t want. Tudur must have felt the same thing because we sat together in silence.
As it grew longer, Dafydd’s amusement became palpable. “I hold the best interests of Wales always in my heart,” he said.
Tudur couldn’t hold back a snort and I couldn’t hold my tongue. “Dafydd, dear,” I said, trying for a sickening sweetness that he couldn’t mistake, “you certainly have an odd way of showing it.”
“Oh, that,” he said, waving a hand dismissively. “All in fun. You made it clear at Criccieth that you belonged to Llywelyn. I was merely having a joke with him, like we did when we were boys. It was an amusing game, that’s all.”
“You know what they say about men and jests.” I stood to leave, unable to sit one second longer at the same table with him.
“What do they say?” Dafydd said, as I hoped he would.
“Jests are the last recourse of a man with a small dick.” Tudur was in the middle of taking a swallow of wine, which he proceeded to spew onto the table in front of him. I patted him on the back. “If you’ll excuse me.” I walked away, shaking so badly by now that I was sure they could see it.
Tudur followed right on my heels.
“My lady!” He wiped his face with a handkerchief as we rounded the corner into the stairwell. “I haven’t laughed so hard in a long time. Well done.”
“I had to do it,” I said. “I don’t want to rile him, but I hate that self-satisfied smirk he always wears.”
“Our lord has expressed a similar sentiment. My concern now is that you have angered and humiliated him in front of others.” He glanced back at the high table, and then raked his eyes around the hall. “Hywel is worried too. Our men ceased to drink the moment Dafydd and his men entered the hall, and none will sleep tonight.” Tudur took my elbow and escorted me to my room. “Bar the door and don’t open it until you see Dafydd’s banners, riding away from us south.”
“I will,” I said. “And thank you. I trust that even if you don’t like me, you seek to serve Llywelyn.”
Tudur’s gaze was measuring. “I distrust everyone. In truth, you less than most.” And with that, he turned on his heel and disappeared down the stairs.
Well. That was unexpected. But Tudur was right. What I’d said was funny, but not smart.