Crown of Passion

by Jocelyn Carew

  Gwyn agreed with Countess Maud. “I have been wondering myself, Hyrtha, how you managed to get through the great gates. They close at sundown, and I thought not a mouse could creep under them without being challenged by the sentries.”

  “There are Saxons inside the walls,” said Hyrtha. “The Normans think us fit to wash their filthy clothes and cook their meals.”

  Countess Maud said angrily, “Watch your tongue when you speak of your betters, wench!”

  “My father —” Hyrtha began hotly, but caught the slight shake of Gwyn’s head in warning, and the words died away.

  “I think,” interrupted Gwyn with an air of thoughtfulness, “that I do not want to know if strangers can come in and out at will. Let us allow the maid to keep her secrets. I know she means me no harm, and I will stand bond for her.”

  The castle itself lay beyond the inner drawbridge where the gates were heavily armored and fortified. That structure, atop the motte, within heavy walls, was the last stronghold in case of siege. It sat heavy and brooding, a constant reminder of the enemy outside the gates.

  The bailey, lying before the keep itself, held the tower residence of the king and his courtiers, the little tower, where William Rufus now housed his nunnery, and all the buildings and barracks and huts for the teeming menials and soldiers who served the king.

  Perhaps the girl already lived in the bailey. But then, reasoned Gwyn, in that case she would not have been fleeing through the forest, for the men would already have seen her inside the walls. The girl would not have had a chance.

  Gwyn turned to look at Hyrtha, willing her to answer Countess Maud’s question. But the girl merely looked back levelly at Gwyn and did not answer. Nonetheless, Gwyn trusted the girl. At least she trusted her to do no harm, and whether she was right or wrong, she could not turn the girl out on a night like this. The rain had started to pound against the walls of the tower again, and the wooden shutters that covered the slit windows were not proof against the rising wind.

  Gwyn made a quick decision. “Countess Maud, the girl will sleep with me. We’ll sort this all out in the morning.” She turned to the girl. “Does this please you?” The girl nodded.

  Gwyn smiled then, the smile that transformed her face into an expression entirely enchanting. She turned to Countess Maud and said, “I know the girl can be useful to us, for you know we are sadly short of help.”

  Maud grumbled, but she agreed. “Let us hope the girl is indeed a Christian and does not worship idols. I have no wish to be a sacrifice.”

  Maud left the room and went into the bedroom she usually occupied alone. But this night she called Tilda to spend the night with her. She shut the door firmly behind her.

  Gwyn and Hyrtha were left alone. Gwyn brought the girl a bowl of dark bread and cheese. The girl wolfed it down. Gwyn hoped the girl had not recognized Maud’s desire for protection in summoning her maid to sleep with her, but it was a false hope. Hyrtha, restored in spirit by the food and the warmth, and perhaps by Gwyn’s trust in her, said with a slight smile, “The lady fears me. There is no need.”

  Gwyn said, “Do not mind her. She is really kindhearted at base.” She watched the girl wolf down the bread and cheese. “You will sleep safely tonight,” promised Gwyn, leading her into her own room.

  “You do not ask the questions I see, lady, in your eyes.”

  “I do not need to strip your secrets from you to trust you,” Gwyn told her. “No more than you would make inquiry into mine.” She looked speculatively at the girl. There was only one small candle, set on the floor, to light the small room. The fitful wind sent the shadows of the two leaping and dancing in a mad capering, parting and joining, and then parting again. The girl watched the wild leapings of their shadows and then turned to Gwyn, superstitious fear glistening in her wide eyes.

  Gwyn repressed a shiver. “It’s only the wind, Hyrtha. You are Christian, and know that our saints protect us.” But yet she recalled Hyrtha’s first appeal in the forest — in her terror the Saxon gods came first to her lips. “Come and help me with this clasp.”

  Gwyn was no fool. She did not need to press Hyrtha into yielding up her secret, for the girl had already told her more than she knew.

  The hill was once a Saxon holding, no more than a generation since. It was more than likely that the Saxons, or some of them, still knew secret ways into the Norman fort. The foundations of the fort were Saxon, built upon Roman, built upon Celtic foundations. And the Normans, who disdained the conquered people, did not — so it seemed — know as much as they thought.

  The Saxons knew a secret way into the fortification. This was a sobering thought, and Gwyn thought seriously about informing someone. Her first thought was of Prince Henry, but she had a strong suspicion that he would merely laugh at her fears. Besides, the girl had given her trust, and Gwyn would say nothing to betray the girl.

  Gwyn took a leaf from Maud’s book, nevertheless, and settled Hyrtha for the night on a pallet next to the sleeping Jeanne. Gwyn herself lay before the door to the inner room. She was a light sleeper, and if Hyrtha were to stir, no matter how stealthily, Gwyn would rouse.

  In spite of the long day she had had, in spite of the sound of the rain, a monotonous drumming that would ordinarily have sent her dreaming, she could not find sleep.

  There was much to think about. Her thoughts ran without ceasing over the incidents of the evening. Her first impression of William’s court was daunting. It was a man’s court, lacking the refinement that a lady would bring. Nor, she thought with a touch of mischief, would any lady long tolerate the victims of quarrels being hurled into her lap!

  She recalled Prince Henry’s second visit to the lodge where Countess Maud and the two royal wards lived, three days after he had brought her safely home. She had run downstairs to greet him.

  “How gracious, my lord,” she told him, after Countess Maud’s greeting, “that you come to beguile our hours again. We see hardly any visitors, in the ordinary way.”

  “That is why I have come,” said the prince, dismounting and tossing the reins to his squire. “Let us go inside, and I shall tell you the news.”

  He had pointed out to his brother, he told them, that the lodge was not a safe place to house such a valuable prize as the royal wards. Were the Saxons — or even certain dissident barons — to conceive the idea of taking the wards hostage, “these wooden palisades wouldn’t hold up for one turn of the hourglass. So he is making a place for you at court.”

  “Winchester?” echoed Maud. “Is he not going soon to Gloucester? And then what of us? Must we drag along in his wake?”

  “He likes the hunting,” Henry pointed out. “He will not leave at once. But I have convinced him that the danger to you is imminent —” He smiled at Gwyn. “As it is. For I am sorely tempted to carry you off myself.”

  Three days later they had started for Winchester — this very morning in the rain.

  There was such a contrast in her mind between the court of King William the Red, and her father’s court at Ramsey Manor. Her father had been an easygoing man, as far as Normans went, but he did not allow tumult and riot in his castle. The men on the manor worked their proper tasks and, truth to tell, there was little time for high spirits. And even the younger men, the Normans that Baron Ramsey brought with him, were not encouraged to indulge in such boisterous activity as prevailed in William’s court. Her father was a peace-loving man, strangely enough for a northland Viking, and he laid a heavy hand on those who broke his truce.

  Gwyn longed for her father. It was not so much that she missed him personally — for she had not known him well — but she now feared for her future. She wished her father had betrothed her before his death, but of course he had not expected to die. For the first time she began to worry about the king’s intentions toward her. What kind of lord would he give her? There was no chance for her to control her own life. She was nothing more than a ward of the king. He was her liege lord. She owed him her loyalty, and he owed her a go
od marriage. But she was not at all sure that he would see her plight in the same light as she did.

  As the night wore on and the rain drummed insistently, she remembered all the stories she had heard about the great Conqueror’s son. Rufus was said to be greedy and brutal and without compassion. Although she suspected that every Saxon would say that every Norman fit the description, nonetheless she lay awake with a sinking heart, pondering her future. When at last she did fall asleep, she dreamed of a great masked monster who pursued her through mountain and valley, relentlessly. The dream wavered … somehow a scarlet dragon was fighting on her side. The vanquished monster lost his mask, and she recognized the face of Ranulf Flambard.

  She woke with the strange sound of laughter in her ears and quickly recognized Jeanne’s voice. Jeanne, the only daughter of Baron de Guilbert, had been left an orphan some months before Gwyn’s father was killed. Jeanne had been brought from her manor in the forests of Sussex to take up residence at the lodge, with Countess Maud as her companion and guardian. Only six, but already William had found a husband for Jeanne. She was betrothed to Reginald FitzOmer. Since Jeanne was still a child, there was no hurry for the marriage to take place, and Jeanne was blissfully happy with Countess Maud, who spoiled her outrageously.

  Jeanne’s laughter, falling from a high note in a series of tinkling sounds, like water falling down a series of ledges, brought Gwyn to a good humor even before she opened her eyes. She sat up on her pallet and saw Jeanne already getting dressed, with Hyrtha to help her. Gwyn clutched the fur coverlet to her chin against the cold air coming through the wooden shutters. Jeanne turned quickly to Gwyn and said, “Oh, you’re awake! I was just wishing I had the Three Butterflies, and Hyrtha never even heard of them.”

  “No,” said Gwyn, “the Three Butterflies are Welsh.”

  “Oh, please tell Hyrtha! Perhaps it could help her, to ask the Butterflies —”

  “You know the story, Jeannetot, you can tell it.”

  “I like to hear it.” Jeanne’s bright eyes sparkled.

  “We won’t have time for it all,” teased Gwyn.

  “Start anyway. Please?”

  “Once upon a time,” Gwyn obliged, “there was a young man named Ifan who went to seek his fortune. It was a long, long way to the city where the king lived —”

  “Farther than we came yesterday?”

  “Much farther. And when Ifan came to the city, where he was to become rich, you know — the first thing he saw was —”

  “The king!” exclaimed Jeanne. She knew the story nearly as well as Gwyn herself, but she longed to hear it again and again.

  “And then, he saw the queen! And after the queen, he saw the princess. She was as fair as the day and as sweet as new milk —”

  “I wish her to have long black hair, like yours, Gwyn,” urged Jeanne.

  “But she didn’t, you know. She had long flaxen hair, like — like Hyrtha’s.”

  “Maybe Hyrtha is a princess in disguise!” suggested Jeanne eagerly. “Are you, Hyrtha?”

  Gwyn glanced at Hyrtha and was astounded to see the pain deep in the girl’s eyes. Clearly there was more to Hyrtha’s unhappiness than the simple wish to escape the arrogant hands of the knights of King William’s court.

  Gwyn turned to Jeanne. “Come, Jeannetot, we’ll finish the Butterflies later. Just now I’m so hungry. Could you ask Brian to find something for us to eat?”

  Not until after Jeanne had danced out to find breakfast did Gwyn look interrogatively at Hyrtha. The Saxon girl knelt on the pallet and pleated her gunna with restless fingers. When at last Hyrtha spoke, her voice sounded faraway with a strain of intolerable tragedy running through it, like a dark thread on the loom.

  “She reminds me so much of my little sister,” began Hyrtha. “That was just before the Normans came, when she was laughing — just like the Lady Jeanne. She got in their way, and so did all the rest of us. The whole manor, Alfred the lord, his son Eldred, all of us.”

  “Alfred? How came your lord to be Saxon?”

  “It was not a rich holding, lady. That is the only reason I know. They had just not noticed us before.”

  Hyrtha was silent for such a long time that Gwyn stirred at last and prodded her gently. “They were all killed? No one lived?”

  “No one,” said Hyrtha, but suddenly Gwyn had the idea that the girl was not telling the entire truth. She waited for Hyrtha to explain, but when she did not, Gwyn said, “This is not quite true, is it?”

  Gwyn knew that she must find out all she could at this point because she must justify Hyrtha’s continued stay to Maud. She needed to know whether or not Maud had any justice in her fear of the girl and her possible treachery. “It’s really better to tell me now,” insisted Gwyn.

  There was a hush in the little room. The light through the narrow window came from a sky that held the promise of still more rain. Outside the window there were faraway shouts of men and horses, of a blacksmith’s hammer on the anvil, of running feet, and of scolding women from the cook huts, the ordinary sounds of any morning, in any castle.

  Over the far-off sounds Hyrtha’s sigh came heavily laden with unshed tears. “They had no mercy, the Normans. We had not harmed them, never lifted a club to them. They simply came in and killed, and killed — after they raped the women they could find.”

  Gwyn covered the girl’s hand with her own. “You?” she whispered gently.

  Hyrtha did not look up. Her voice was almost unintelligible, and Gwyn leaned closer to hear the whispered words. “Not me. I was at the edge of the village. But my sister — my baby sister! Only six, she was!”

  The time between them stretched into an eternity while Hyrtha lived alone with her grief. Her strangled sobs, finally, came less often,- and at length she looked up, her eyes swimming with tears, her cheeks blotched with weeping. “I have not told you all, lady. One other escaped the killing. My brother. He escaped to the woods and the Normans never found him.”

  “But what happened to him?”

  Hyrtha shook her head sadly. “I do not know, but I think he got away and is still alive. I must search for him, and that is why I came to you for shelter. My brother Godric is a learned man, the priest taught him his letters. He is the only kin I have, and there is no place else to go.”

  Her voice sounded so sad, and so desolate, that Gwyn reached a hand out in pity. Hyrtha looked up with sudden hope leaping in her eyes. Gwyn was moved to say, “I’ll do what I can. In the meantime, you must stay here. I’ll see to it.”

  She had no idea how she would accomplish this, for she recognized that Countess Maud would have the last word.

  But in the end it was not Gwyn who saw to it that Hyrtha was allowed to stay. It was Jeanne, who had taken such a fancy to Hyrtha that Countess Maud, who could deny Jeanne nothing, did not even try to send Hyrtha away.

  “Please, Countess,” insisted Jeanne earnestly, kneeling before the countess, “she must stay with me. I need her. She knows all kinds of stories that she will tell me. Please?”

  “You know, don’t you,” said Countess Maud, her rough voice gentling when she spoke to Jeanne, “that Hyrtha must stay out of sight here in the tower, and you must tell no one she is here?”

  “Yes, I know that. I shall never never tell.”

  Countess Maud sighed, and relented. She could not deny Jeanne anything, she told Gwyn later, “Even against my better judgment, for the girl will bring us trouble, I know it in my bones!”

  The decision had hardly been made, Hyrtha’s face glowing like the sunrise with happiness, when a visitor was announced. There was a banging at the door of the keep below, and it seemed as if the whole door must fall in with the force of the blows. Upstairs Gwyn and Maud looked at each other with apprehension. Maud was the first to recover. Quickly she said, “Get into the other room, Hyrtha. You, too, Jeanne. Who knows who’s down below! We can’t afford to have visitors we don’t know. Now, Jeanne, you must not make a sound. Do you understand me?”

  Jeann
e said, “Oh, yes, I understand. It’s our secret.”

  The banging on the door began again, and Maud sent Margit hurrying down the stairs to lift the bar and open the door. Maud and Gwyn looked uneasily at each other. The voice of the man pounding up the stairs was unfamiliar to Gwyn but Maud clearly recognized it and, judging from the quick pursing of her lips, did not welcome the visit.

  “It’s the king’s chancellor!” she whispered. “Watch your tongue as though he were the devil himself!”

  A greater contrast physically to the king could hardly be imagined. Ranulf Flambard edged into the room almost humbly, his lean body curved as though in the habit of bending over his sovereign’s chair to whisper evil counsel in the royal ear.

  But he spoke with insolent authority, without the simplest courtesy. It was almost as though he thought he owned the keep, the fortification built on the small hill, and, in fact, all of England. And it seemed quite likely that he must feel so, since his influence on King William was reported to be overwhelming.

  Gwyn eyed him apprehensively, remembering that this man had sprawled over her lap at the dining hall last night. And, again uneasily, she remembered her more than outspoken criticism of the king’s court. What was his reason for coming today?

  Countess Maud said all the things needful for a courteous welcome for the man she so clearly wished at the other end of the land.

  Gwyn took the opportunity to take a good look at this man who had risen from a lowly clerk’s position to a position of such power and such wealth. She was aware that there was a very shrewd mind working behind his bland expression.

  He tried to give the impression of being simply another roistering courtier, but nonetheless he could not always hide his great intellect, twisted as it seemed toward eternal malicious conniving.