Crown of Passion

by Jocelyn Carew

  It shocked convention — a man in armor, his dagger raised against a churchman. The priest’s robe hung loosely from Flambard’s shoulders, a great black accent against the rainbow-hued young courtiers, squeezing into the circle around the combatants.

  Valdemar, as Gwyn remembered all too well, was inclined to let his strong emotions rule his head. Regret might come later, but the priest — if the dagger found its mark — would be just as dead by then, and the holy church swiftly excommunicated any priest-slayer.

  “I heard the king cared not for religion,” murmured Countess Maud, “but I did not truly believe it. Until now.”

  Everything happened suddenly then, faster than Gwyn’s eyes could follow. Valdemar made the first move. Apparently he thought better of using his sword against a priest, an unarmed man of God, and instead quickly flung out his forearm to catch the priest under his chin. The blow to the throat was unexpected and Flambard lost his footing.

  Flambard, guarding against the expected dagger, was not ready for the blow to his gullet. He swayed backward, staggered a couple of steps, and backed against a bench. The hush that surrounded the two spoke volumes of apprehension.

  Then, with a bellow like a stag surrounded by hounds, Flambard rose from the bench. Crooking his hands into claws and raising them above his head in an obscene malediction, he flung himself toward Valdemar.

  But Valdemar, clearly sobering fast, now thought better of giving battle to a priest. He neatly sidestepped the lunging Flambard. Flambard’s talon-like fingers closed on empty air. His victim had escaped, and he could not stop his onward rush. He landed with great force on Gwyn’s shoulder. The unexpected blow nearly knocked her off the bench, and within seconds Flambard was stretched out on her lap. A shout rose up from the other side of the room. Valdemar was the victor!

  There was one long moment, when Flambard looked up past Gwyn at Valdemar, and the expression in his eyes shocked her deeply. A glitter of meanness lurked deep in his eyes, like something obscene moving at the bottom of a slimy well. Gwyn barely repressed a shudder, and offered a momentary prayer of gratitude that she had not incurred this man’s loathing. This, she thought, was not an enemy to be dismissed lightly.

  The moment when she looked into Flambard’s soul was over quickly. Prince Henry and Brian du Pré helped Flambard off her lap.

  Once on his feet, Flambard regained his customary good humor. It was as though the moment of deep hatred had never existed. Flambard bowed to Gwyn and the Countess Maud, saying, “A very soft landing, I vow. I trust it may not be the last time!”

  Gwyn said, “It seems to me, on first acquaintance, that this court is not fit for a civilized lady’s attendance.”

  Flambard’s eyes flickered again, and Gwyn recognized the cold anger in them. But in a moment the look was gone, and she thought she might have imagined it.

  “You are quite right, lady. We have kept bachelor hall here for such a long time that we have quite forgotten our manners.” He glanced behind him, and then his eyes swept slowly over the assemblage. “We shall take steps to see that such an unseemly brawl does not offend your eyes again. But I wonder whether there was no violence in your father’s castle?”

  “Not in the great hall, my lord chamberlain,” said Gwyn, “nor was I ever personally felled by the battle, before.”

  Flambard bowed low, nearly to the floor. It was a mocking gesture, but his expression, when he straightened, appeared genial.

  “My apologies again, my lady. I shall make sure that no accident mars your stay at Winchester Castle.”

  Flambard’s eyes flickered again. If Gwyn had not already realized that she had gone too Countess Maud would have told her so. She snatched at Gwyn’s sleeve and started to pull her out of the hall. Countess Maud stopped only to say to Prince Henry, “Keep the dogs off till we get back to the keep!”

  It was Prince Henry’s solemn look, though, that alarmed Gwyn. But perhaps Flambard was too drunk to remember what he had said or done. With any kind of good management, she would not be in his company in the future.

  They crossed the courtyard in the dark. It was still raining a desolate, cold rain. Gwyn shivered in spite of her warm pelisse and thought with longing of the fire that she hoped would be burning in the grate in their rooms in the wooden tower. The rain fell in a heavy tattoo on the stone wall around the outside of the fortification, and on the hard foot-trodden ground within the circling walls. The silence was almost deafening after the brawling din of the dining hall. Even the pigs had ceased rooting in the wallows and gone to sleep in their sties.

  Gwyn’s rainy-weather clog began to slip on her foot and she paused, reaching down to straighten the thong where it cut her ankle. Maud had gone on ahead and was already inside the door to the round tower.

  The servants, Margit and Tilda, disliking the rain as heartily as cats, hurried on with Countess Maud to gain the shelter of the tower.

  Gwyn’s fingers slipped on the wet leather, and the task took long. Her thoughts ran swiftly, though, telling her that her tongue would be the death of her. A bad choice of words, she reflected. She had never had to guard her tongue at Ramsey Castle, and the learning of it came hard now.

  The smallest of sounds came then to her ear, out of the rainy dark, and if it had not been that Gwyn was already anxious, she might not even have heard it.

  It was the ghost of a sound. Gwyn could not put a name to it, whether it was a breath, the sound of leather rubbing against stone, or an inadvertent footstep on the hard, wet ground. She stood straight, looking around her, and saw no one. Ahead of her lay only a few short steps to the door of the round tower. But the door itself lay in shadow, and her instinct told her that within that shadow lay the person who had made the sound.

  Fearfully, she called into the shadows, “Who’s there?” She was pleased to hear that her voice did not quaver. She was not precisely afraid, but she was alone, and the king’s household was not a gentle one. She called again.

  A shadow moved. Gwyn sensed it, even though she could not quite see it.

  “Come out!” she ordered. “Let me see who you are.”

  Slowly, fearfully, a slim figure stepped into the faint light reflected from the torches at the gate. The figure spoke then, in a frightened, feminine whisper. “Lady.” The Saxon girl stood before her.

  “Saints in heaven!” cried Gwyn.

  “You — you know me?”

  “Of course. What are you doing here? Do you seek your friends in the bailey?”

  The Saxon spoke quickly. “I dare not!” She drew a deep breath. “I come from afar, lady. No friends have I here. I seek …” She seemed dazed, possibly from privation, from the time she had spent hiding somewhere, likely in the wood. Yet Gwyn suspected the girl’s troubles lay deeper even than that.

  “Seek?” prompted Gwyn gently.

  “Seek — seek only to serve you, lady.” Gwyn was convinced that the girl had not spoken true. But Gwyn would not pry anymore. Her sense of humor offered a lighter touch. “You think I am a witch, don’t you? Do you want me to make you disappear? I fear I have not the power.”

  The Saxon maid shook her head impatiently, her long golden hair shaking with the gesture. The rain had soaked her hair so that it hung in long tresses around her shoulders, and with the movement of her head the curls coiled like live things. “I have no place to go, lady,” she breathed. “The enemy is everywhere, and —”

  “By the enemy, you mean the Normans,” Gwyn summed up. “They are no friends of mine either, as it happens, but that is another story. I do not know how I can help you —” She broke off as she remembered her suggestion to Prince Henry, only three days before, when he had rescued her in the forest. Could I have the girl as my maid? And here she was! “Will you serve me?” she demanded in an altered tone of voice, urgent and purposeful.

  “With my last breath!”

  “Wait, let me think …”

  The girl stirred uneasily, but she was obedient. Gwyn took her wrist in the d
arkness. She could feel the frightened pulsing of the girl’s blood under her fingers. “Hush,” she said.

  The rain began to fall more heavily. The sentries at the far gate ducked under the sheltering overhang of the wall, and — thought Gwyn with scorn — an army could have passed by before they would have left their haven.

  She knew that as soon as the sentries at the gate saw the girl, the hunt would be on again, and this time Gwyn would not be able to save her. She gave thought, for a moment, to how the girl had got inside the stone walls that surrounded Winchester. But there was not time to ask. She clutched the girl’s arm and pulled her as far as the door to the round tower.

  “I wonder if I am doing the right thing,” said Gwyn. There was a faint light from inside the open door, and she could see the expression on the girl’s face. Immediately she was reassured. “Come in, quickly. Let me close the door. I have naught to fear from you.”

  For the look Gwyn had seen on the girl’s face, in the faint light, was one she had seen before. She was reminded of a small puppy she had owned. Badly hurt by a bigger dog, it had come whimpering to cower, terrified, at her feet.

  5

  Inside the round tower the noises from outside died away, as though they had never been. Even the sound of the rain diminished. Gwyn and the Saxon girl were alone. A faint light shone down the stairway as proof that Countess Maud and the others were on the floor above, and automatically Gwyn hushed her voice.

  “How did you get here?” demanded Gwyn. “How could you get past the sentries?”

  It occurred to her that the word witch was applied to the wrong girl — for if the Saxon had passed the guard dogs and the sentries, even in the storm, then she could make herself invisible. She would then have no need of Gwyn’s help.

  “I cannot tell you,” said the girl simply. But the comparative safety of the keep, away from the rain and the wind, and the Norman soldiers, little by little calmed her. “I have been sworn not to reveal the way, except to one of ourselves.”

  Gwyn understood her — only Saxons were to know Saxon secrets. A conquered people, they clung to each other as their only hope.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked. She still clung to the girl’s wrist as though afraid she would vanish before her eyes.

  The girl seemed numb with fright. She stared wildly into the dark corners, as though expecting to see monsters. A wave of compassion suddenly came over Gwyn. She had never been as frightened as this, and please God she never would be. She dropped the girl’s wrist and placed her arm around the quivering shoulders. Much more gently, she said, “What do you want from me?”

  “You saved me, and you were the only one I could think of.”

  “But what can I do?”

  “Don’t let them get me. They be devils, and I be Christian.” The girl’s eyes rolled. Suddenly Gwyn realized that the girl was near collapse from exertion, from fear, and perhaps from some other emotion. Gwyn decided that this was not the time to ask more. For one thing, they were still too vulnerable to the outer courtyard. Only an oaken door stood between her and the court, and who knew when William’s men would boil out of the dining room seeking further amusement?

  Gwyn decided quickly. “Come with me,” she said, grasping the girl’s wrist once more and pulling her up the wooden stairs to the upper floor.

  The second floor was devoted to Countess Maud and her two charges. Gwyn had a room off the main room which she shared with young Jeanne. Gwyn was relieved to find Countess Maud alone, unloosing her long black hair. Her gold circlet was on her lap, and she shook her hair out as Gwyn entered the room. Countess Maud barely glanced up. “I’ve sent Margit away, Gwyn,” she said. “After an evening like this I didn’t want anyone fussing over me. You may call her back if you want her.”

  “Where is Brian?” Gwyn asked.

  “I don’t know. Upstairs, I think. He left the hall before we did. I heard his lute when I came in.” Slowly she ran a comb through her hair. “I do not look forward to this stay at Winchester. The king will soon leave the hunting and go to Gloucester to wear the crown. He is to be there at Whitsun.”

  Gwyn hardly listened. She needed Countess Maud’s help for the Saxon girl, but she was uncertain as to whether she could count on her.

  “It was exciting, wasn’t it?” exclaimed Gwyn. She kept her voice low so as not to awaken the sleeping child in the next room nor arouse the curiosity of the maids. She did not know quite what was going to happen, but she believed that the fewer people who knew about the Saxon girl at this moment, anyway, the better off they would all be. “But, my dear Countess, we have not yet finished with this day. See what I have brought.”

  Countess Maud looked up then and examined Gwyn with some care. Then she caught sight of the Saxon girl, taller and broader than Gwyn’s elfin figure.

  Countess Maud’s jaw dropped, and Gwyn realized for the first time that the lady was much older than she pretended. The lines in her face were darkened by the light from the fire, and the flickering light picked out the gray in the waist-length dark hair.

  “What on earth —!” Countess Maud stared. “Where did you get that?”

  Gwyn dragged the girl forward. “Your hands are cold,” she said to the girl. “Warm them here at the fire. I will bring you something to drink.”

  Maud said, “You can’t have that girl here!”

  Gwyn said calmly, “Why not?”

  “She’s a Saxon!” Maud rose from her stool and backed away almost as though the girl’s skirts might contaminate her. “Who knows what she will do to us in the night! She may even open the door downstairs to her people!”

  Gwyn said, “How would they get past the sentries at the gate? Please, Countess Maud, don’t be foolish!”

  “I’m far from foolish!” cried Countess Maud. “Think you that the Saxons bear us any good will? Too many of the pigs have defied us, so that we cannot ride along our own forest paths in safety — and now you calmly bring the girl here!”

  “What of your own maids, Countess?” suggested Gwyn silkily. “Saxon, are they not?”

  “Bred on my own lands,” said Countess Maud repressively. “I know them all.”

  But Gwyn had a lurking doubt as to what the Saxon girl really had in mind. She had already saved the girl from the three lustful knights of King William. But that was days ago, and where had the girl been in the meantime? Why had she not left the area as swiftly as she had flown from the clearing? She might now be safe with some of her people, across the river into the forested land beyond.

  She could not ask the girl until she had been fed and warmed. She knew from her own experience with the serfs on her father’s manor that the Saxons, as a matter of self-preservation, were prone to dumbness just when one wanted to find out something. Gwyn knew she must bide her time and gain the girl’s total confidence. She already seemed to have the girl’s trust, but she was at a loss as to what to do with it.

  Maud muttered, “I’m going to get the guard.”

  Gwyn ran to the door and threw herself against it so that Maud could not leave. “Pray do not do any such thing. I must tell you I know this girl, and this is why she has come to us. She trusts me, and I will not betray that trust.”

  Maud said, unbelieving, “You know her?”

  Gwyn thought quickly. She owed the girl nothing, truly, except a nearly fatal encounter with Rainault and his friends. Now the girl was begging even more from her. But Gwyn could not, for her life, turn the girl away. She knew only too well what fate lay in wait for a Saxon illegally within the walls of the king’s castle.

  Her decision was simple. “Yes, Countess, one of the girls from my own manor. I know her — as well as you know your maids.” She watched the fear fade from Maud’s eyes, to be replaced by a tinge of doubt. “I am allowed my own people around me, you know, by the terms of the king’s custody. And” — she spoke the wholehearted lie easily — “I could say I have sent for her.”

  “Without my knowledge,” Maud muttered.
“I am loth to say I do not believe you, Gwynllion, but I shall call the guard.”

  The girl watched fearfully from the shadows. She made a jerky gesture as though to intervene, but thought better of it.

  “What is her name, Gwyn?”

  Gwyn was caught. She had not thought this far ahead, but she said, “Maida,” at the same time the Saxon spoke her own name, “Hyrtha!”

  “Aha, Gwyn!” said Countess Maud. “You are fairly trapped. The girl is a total stranger to you. And,” she added, turning to the Saxon, “you speak Norman, I see. Tell me yourself —”

  Hyrtha turned in silent appeal to her benefactor. “Please, lady …”

  Gwyn smiled gently. “You are cold, Hyrtha. Warm yourself at the blaze. No one will hurt you.”

  She turned to the countess. “I shall tell you, and speak the truth. I have seen her before, only one week ago.”

  Countess Maud uttered a sharp exclamation. “You have? Where?”

  “Yes, you remember the day that Prince Henry brought me home? The girl had been fleeing from the Normans that day, you know the way they do, chasing girls instead of deer? And you know what would have been her fate had they caught her.” Gwyn shuddered. “It almost happened to me, except for the prince.”

  The girl looked up from where she knelt by the hearth, her hands outstretched to the blaze. “She saved me, and I will not hurt her. Please, lady, do not send me away.”

  Maud began to relent. But she had not yet given up. “Just one question,” she said, addressing Gwyn, as though the girl were not there. “How did she get inside the fort?”

  The Norman fort at Winchester was newly built, but the foundations were as ancient as the chalk hills surrounding the town. The invaders sealed their control over the area by tangible evidence of their might, and the Norman fort atop the old Wessex capital was eloquent testimony to Norman power, and Saxon defeat. For it was the Normans’ belief that if a Saxon lifted his eyes and saw the physical evidence that their conquerors were within chastening reach, the Saxon would not get ideas above his station.