The Reckoning

by Sharon Kay Penman

  When it was time for him to go, he found himself delaying his departure, reluctant to leave her alone with her grieving, her ghosts. The King’s brother and his lady were often in France, he told her, and when next they came to their lands in Champagne, he would seek them out, beseech them on her behalf. The Lord Edmund had a good heart, and if he and his lady spoke up for her, the King might heed them, might hasten her release. “And once you are free, Lady Elizabeth, you will have a home in Angoulême with Caitlin and me, for as long as you like.”

  “You are the one with the good heart, Hugh. But I cannot accept your kind offer, for I cannot leave England. You see,” Elizabeth said, “the King might relent. He might let me see my children.”

  Hugh nodded wordlessly and kissed her hand, marveling that she had somehow held on to a few shreds of faith. But as he reached the door, she said suddenly, urgently, “You take care of Caitlin, Hugh. Keep her safe. Keep her far from Edward’s England!”

  The rain had ceased, but not for long. November was always a wet month in Wales. The nights were cold now, the grass silvered with frost, the valleys and glens adrift in early morning fog, and the bracken mantling the hills was brown and sere. But those hills were still snow-free. Hugh hoped they’d stay that way for a few more days, time enough for them to get back across the border.

  He still could not quite believe that they’d ventured into Wales, for that was the last place in Christendom he’d have chosen to be. When Caitlin first broached the idea, pleading that she wanted to thank the Aberconwy monks for her deliverance, he’d been appalled, for he was convinced that Caitlin was far safer in England than in Wales, where she was known. He could not forget that Davydd had been betrayed by men of his own tongue, and argued that all it would take was one craven wretch eager to earn English blood money, just one. But Caitlin had persisted, and for the first time in their marriage, they could find no common ground.

  It was Trevor who’d made peace between them, Trevor who understood Hugh’s fear and Caitlin’s need. Let him go first into Gwynedd, he offered, let him see if the abbey was safe. While he was gone, Caitlin reluctantly nerved herself to cut her hair again, for she knew Hugh would insist upon cowled camouflage. But she never wielded her scissors, for Trevor returned to Chester with shocking news, news that ended her hopes of seeing Gwynedd one last time.

  The English King wanted to build a great castle on the west bank of the River Conwy, Trevor told them, but the site he had in mind was already taken—by Aberconwy Abbey. And so he meant to move it—the entire monastery—seven miles to Maenan. The first construction order had been issued that past March, even before Davydd was captured, and in September he’d secured the consent of the Cistercian chapter-general. The abbey was overrun with English, he reported, was in a state of chaos and confusion, was for certes no place for Davydd ap Gruffydd’s daughter to be found.

  Hugh was vastly relieved, but Caitlin was devastated. Aberconwy was their Westminster Abbey, royal tomb to their princes. If Edward could uproot it at his will, what could he not do to her downtrodden countrymen, her conquered homeland? How could she turn away from their suffering? Hugh would give her Angoulême, would give her his heart, his world. But what of Wales?

  Hugh had shared Caitlin’s grieving in the past, had consoled her as she mourned for her uncle, then for her father. But now she mourned for her country, and he did not know how to help her. Again, it was Trevor who came to their aid. She needed, he explained, to say farewell. By then, Hugh’s good nature was being rubbed raw by his frustration, and he’d snapped that he’d not known Trevor was one for belaboring the obvious. How could she lay her dead to rest at a distance? Trevor was untroubled, though, by Hugh’s unwonted sarcasm. Gwynedd was indeed too dangerous, he agreed. But Lady Caitlin had never been in Maelienydd, did not risk recognition there. Hugh had been puzzled. What was in Maelienydd to give Caitlin comfort? And Trevor had said gravely, with just a trace of triumph in his voice, “Cwm-hir Abbey.”

  And so they left Chester behind, rode south again into Shropshire, and when they reached the border castle of Ludlow, they turned west, followed the sun into Wales. They were deep now in Maelienydd, the Welsh lands of the de Mortimers, and Hugh sensed a change in his wife, a change for the better. Just crossing the border seemed to have lifted her spirits, and he began to hope that this mad quest of theirs might truly recover the Grail, help her to heal.

  Hugh and Caitlin were in agreement that they owed Trevor more than they could ever repay. But the quiet Welsh youth was to do them one last great service, for when they finally reached Cwm-hir Abbey, it seemed for a time that their pilgrimage was to end—unfulfilled—there in the Abbot’s parlor. He received them with the utmost courtesy, but when they confided their mission, he responded with polite puzzlement. He was indeed sorry that they had traveled so far in vain, but they had been misled. The Cwm-hir monks knew naught of Llewelyn ap Gruffydd’s grave. And nothing they said could shake his certainty. Caitlin’s impassioned claims of kinship were not denied, but neither were they heeded. The Abbot smiled upon this unknown young woman and her English husband, sadly shook his head. They were mistaken. What more could he say?

  But it was then that Trevor joined them in the Abbot’s lodgings, Trevor who had helped to dig his Prince’s grave. The monks remembered him well, embraced him in heartfelt welcome, as one of their own, and only then were they willing to admit that they were, indeed, keepers of the flame.

  Abbot Cadwgan at once offered them his own hospitality, promising that on the morrow Brother Madog would guide them to the grave. That night at dinner he explained, quite unapologetically, that they dared not take people on faith alone, not when the sanctity of their Prince’s grave was at risk. There were many amongst the English, he said, who would deny Prince Llewelyn a resting place in hallowed ground, just as his enemies had once done to Simon de Montfort.

  The Archbishop of Canterbury had even authorized an investigation, rumors having reached him of the burial at Cwm-hir. In fairness, though, to the English prelate, he’d been trying to ascertain if there was reason for lifting Llewelyn’s excommunication. The Lady Maude Clifford had pleaded with him on Llewelyn’s behalf, and a brave act that was for the wife of John Giffard. But the Archbishop had concluded, not surprisingly, that Llewelyn could not be absolved unless it could be proved that he showed true repentance ere he died. And so, the Abbot said with a thin smile, we are baffled by the persistent rumors of a burial at Cwm-hir, and we can only tell the English to seek elsewhere for the grave of our Prince.

  The Abbot held to his word, and the next morning Brother Madog led them into a grove of trees, within sight of the river. As soon as they stepped from the sunlight into the shadowed stillness of the clearing, Caitlin saw the grave, for although it bore no cross, it was sheltered beneath a blanket of flowers: golden gorse blossoms, fragrant yarrow, a scattering of red campion, and even a funeral wreath of glossy green holly, adorned with berries as bright as blood.

  Brother Madog shook his head ruefully. “The worst-kept secret in Wales! We keep clearing them away, and people keep bringing more.” Glancing at Caitlin, he saw the sudden shine behind her lashes, and said, “You need not fear, my lady. Men will remember Llewelyn ap Gruffydd.”

  As Caitlin moved forward, the men stopped, let her go on alone. Kneeling by the grave, she touched the wilted grass, the last autumn flowers, and she could not help thinking that even this small comfort would be denied to Elizabeth. Slowly she made the sign of the cross, and then she began to pray for her uncle, her father, Ellen, Elizabeth, Gwenllian, her little brothers at Bristol Castle, her sisters in distant English nunneries, for all on both sides of the border who’d come to grief in God’s Year, 1283.

  Trevor had leaned back against a gnarled, ageless oak, and although his face was in shadow, Hugh thought he caught a glimmer of tears. “Coming back could not have been easy for you,” he said quietly, “for at this time last year, you were here with Lord Llewelyn.”

  “I am
still here with Lord Llewelyn,” Trevor said. “Last night was the first peaceful sleep I’ve had in nigh on a year, for I’d come home.” He was quiet for a moment, his eyes moving past Hugh to the kneeling girl, the flower-strewn grave. “When you depart on the morrow, I will not be going back with you,” he said. “My place is here.”

  Although they’d never discussed it, Hugh had known Trevor would not be leaving Wales. “I was expecting as much,” he admitted. “But does this mean you’ll not be returning to Gwynedd? You’ll be staying in Maelienydd?”

  “Here…at Cwm-hir. I talked to the Abbot last night, and he agreed to let me find out if my need is a true one, strong enough to last a lifetime. I should like a chance to serve God. I know,” he said flatly, “that I could never serve the King of England.”

  “Ah, Trevor…we shall miss you. But our loss is God’s gain.”

  “Hugh…when you return to England, take ship from Southampton. Do not bring Lady Caitlin back to Bristol.”

  Hugh was perplexed for a moment or so. And then he remembered that Bristol was one of the English cities to claim a portion of Davydd’s butchered body for public display. He nodded bleakly. “I’ll take care of her, Trevor. I would die for her if need be.”

  That elicited one of Trevor’s rare smiles. “Better you should live for her,” he said.

  Caitlin had risen, and they started toward her, only to stop at sound of her voice. When she turned, Hugh said, “We’re sorry, lass. We thought your prayer was done.”

  “It was. I was talking to Uncle Llewelyn, telling him how it broke my heart to see the English King’s banner flying over Wales. But I then told him what you’d said to me, that beneath his banner, people were still speaking Welsh. And I told him, too, how that reminded me of a story he’d liked to tell, one he’d gotten from his grandfather, Llewelyn Fawr of blessed memory. It seems that an English King once asked a Welsh sage if he’d win his war. The old man said that on the Day of Direst Judgment, no race but the Welsh would give answer to the Almighty for this small corner of the earth.”

  A silence fell after that. Caitlin bent down, picked up a sunlit gorse bloom, and then she reached for Hugh’s hand.

  Trevor watched them go, lingering a few moments more by Llewelyn’s grave. “She is right, my lord Prince,” he said softly. “Wales will endure. Scriptures tell us so, tell us that one generation passeth away, and another generation cometh, but the earth abideth forever. We must remember that in the dark days that lie ahead.”

  Afterword

  Edward I continued to rule England and Wales for another twenty-four years. He was devastated by the death of his Queen, Eleanora, in November 1290, and did not marry again for nine years. Despite the vast difference in their ages—he was sixty, his French bride was just twenty—his second marriage seems to have been a successful one. Edward grew increasingly autocratic in the remaining years of his reign. In March 1284, he issued the Statute of Rhuddlan, which imposed English law upon the conquered lands of Wales. In July 1290, he ordered the expulsion of all Jews from England. In February 1301, he conferred the title Prince of Wales upon his eldest surviving son; it has been reserved ever since for the heir to the English Crown. Edward died of dysentery on July 7, 1307, at age sixty-eight, while campaigning against the Scots, and was succeeded by his ill-starred, inept son, Edward II.

  Edmund, Earl of Lancaster, died on June 5, 1296. His wife, Blanche, survived him by seven years. Their eldest son was accused of treason during the political turmoil of Edward II’s reign, and beheaded in 1322.

  The grandson and namesake of Roger de Mortimer achieved lasting notoriety as the lover of Edward II’s Queen, Isabella of France, and as the man responsible for Edward’s murder in 1327. He was executed by Edward’s son in 1330.

  Maude Clifford died in the same month as her cousin, Llewelyn ap Gruffydd, soon after she’d courageously pleaded with the Archbishop of Canterbury on Llewelyn’s behalf. Her husband, John Giffard, lived long and prospered.

  In 1283, the Pope appointed Guy de Montfort as captain-general of the papal forces in Romagna. But on June 23, 1287, Guy was captured during a sea battle with the Aragonese admiral, Roger Loria, and cast into a Sicilian dungeon. His family and friends offered the vast sum of eight thousand ounces of gold for his release, but all attempts to ransom him came to naught; it is believed that Edward I exerted influence upon the King of Aragon. Guy never regained his freedom. He was dead by March 1292; one Sicilian chronicle reported that he’d committed suicide. While Guy was imprisoned, his wife, Margherita, took a lover, whom she subsequently married; she was eventually to wed no less than five times. Guy’s daughters, Tomasina and Anastasia, married into the Italian nobility. Guy was to have a dubious immortality conferred upon him by Dante, who consigned him to one of the outer rings of Hell for the murder in Viterbo.

  Amaury de Montfort sued Edward’s brother, Edmund, in the Court of Rome for the return of the earldom of Leicester, a suit as futile as it was audacious. He moved permanently to Italy in 1286, and died between 1292 and 1300. One chronicle claimed that he renounced his priestly vows and took part in the same battle in which Guy was captured, but the truth of this cannot now be substantiated.

  Llewelyn’s uncle, Einion ap Caradog, disappeared from the Welsh records in 1277, which seems to indicate that he either died or was incapacitated by illness prior to the outbreak of the war in 1282. Goronwy ap Heilyn and Llewelyn’s Seneschal, Dai ab Einion, died fighting the English Crown. Llewelyn’s nephews, Rhys Wyndod and his brother, died in English prisons. His other Welsh allies were imprisoned and then impoverished, forfeiting all but their lives. The once-proud Lords of Ceredigion were among the five thousand Welsh who fought for Edward’s wages during the war in Flanders.

  Llewelyn’s daughter, Gwenllian, lived out her days as a nun at Sempringham priory in the Lincolnshire Fens; she died in June 1337, just before her fifty-fifth birthday. Her cousin, Davydd’s daughter Gwladys, died at the convent of Sixhills in 1336.

  Llewelyn’s brother Rhodri lived on in quiet, safe obscurity upon his English manor, dying in 1315. But his grandson, Owain Lawgoch, achieved fame as a battle commander in France, and was assassinated by an agent of the English Crown in July 1378.

  Nothing is known of Elizabeth de Ferrer’s subsequent fate. One historian contends that Edward eventually allowed her a portion of her first husband’s dower lands. She is said to have been buried in the ancient church of St Michael’s in Caerwys, Wales, in the shadow of the castle that had once been Davydd’s. That seems to argue against her having married or taken the veil after Davydd’s execution. It is not known whether she ever saw any of her children again.

  Her eldest son, Llewelyn, or Llelo, as he is known in The Reckoning, died in captivity at Bristol Castle in March 1288; Edward paid for his burial in the Dominican church at Bristol. Davydd and Elizabeth’s second son, Owain, survived into the reign of Edward II. In October 1305, Edward I dispatched a chilling order to the constable of Bristol Castle: henceforth, Owain was to be kept at night in a wooden cage bound with iron. According to the Bristol Record Society, Owain was still alive in August 1325, still a prisoner of the English Crown.

  Author’s Note

  As I have continued to write about people who led highly improbable lives, once again I feel the need to reassure my readers that I’ve been following medieval chronicles, not a Hollywood script. Edward’s dramatic encounter with a would-be assassin comes from contemporary accounts of the time. For those of you who are familiar with the legend that Eleanora sucked the poison from her husband’s wound, I’m sorry to say it is just that, a legend, with no basis in fact. According to an English chronicle, Bran de Montfort did make a reckless, secret pilgrimage to Evesham in 1271. And Davydd really did have his rebellion “rained out” by the Candlemas storm that kept Owen de la Pole’s assassins from reaching Llewelyn’s court.

  Above all, I want to vouch for the historical accuracy of the “pirate” episode, the capture of Ellen de Montfort by Tho
mas the Archdeacon. It is not surprising that Edward’s contemporaries were so convinced he had God on his side, not with luck like this. The chapter was great fun to write; I suspect that even if they won’t admit it, most writers secretly harbor a wayward desire to do a pirate scene! And as proof that governments have changed very little down through the centuries, the Calendar of the Close Rolls contains an order from Edward to the sheriff of Cornwall, instructing him to reimburse Thomas the Archdeacon the sum of twenty pounds, for expenses he incurred “about the expedition of certain of the King’s affairs in those parts, as the King has enjoined upon Thomas by word of mouth.” Who, upon reading that, would ever guess it referred to a kidnapping on the high seas?

  As always, I like to utilize the Author’s Note to alert my readers to any historical liberties I’ve taken with known facts. I’m guilty of geographical tampering in chapter 26. Amaury de Montfort had already been moved to Taunton Castle at the time of the scene I set in Sherborne. But I did not discover this until after I’d done a considerable amount of research on Sherborne, including a brief inspection of the castle ruins, and I just could not bring myself to see all that labor go to waste. As for Ellen de Montfort’s purported visit to England in early 1281, historians cite as the source for this Mary Anne Everett Green’s Lives of the Princesses of England. I’ve concluded that Ms. Green was in error on this point, attributing to 1281 a safe-conduct that actually refers to January 1278, while Ellen was still a prisoner at Windsor Castle. By the time I reached this conclusion, however, I already had the chapter firmly rooted in my imagination, and after some soul searching, the novelist’s need prevailed over the historian’s misgivings. And in an attempt to avoid unnecessary confusion in a book that—like a Cecil B. deMille movie—had a cast of thousands, I changed the name of Llewelyn ap Gruffydd’s last Seneschal from Davydd to Dai, the latter being a form of Davydd in South Wales. For the same reason, I renamed Llewelyn’s steward at Buellt; the man who died with Llewelyn that December day near Llanganten was Rhys ap Gruffydd, temporarily christened Rhosier ap Gruffydd so as not to confuse him with Llewelyn’s enemy of the same name.