Crown of Passion

by Jocelyn Carew

  The man’s face was rugged, as rough-hewn as his own mountains, she thought dimly. His hair was the near red of autumn leaves. His eyes were deep under overhanging heavy brows,’but when he looked down at her, she could see that the color was blue as October skies.

  The Lord of the Western Marches was as regal as any Norman in the hall. He held himself with an air that spoke of power, the accustomed mantle of authority resting lightly on his shoulders. The rugged features, one by one, were unhandsome, but they fit together and — somehow — suited this man as though in wisdom they found harmony.

  A man of mental toughness, she decided, without knowing how she knew this, and a match for the Norman king. William would not easily teach this lord to lick his boots!

  But of more than that she was not aware. For the look that he gave her, to her great surprise, penetrated as though it were an arrow shot into her heart. She had sometimes wondered, during summer thunderstorms, how it would feel to be struck by lightning. Now, she thought vaguely, she knew.

  There was no time to think what this meant. She murmured something in response to the introduction of Rhys ap Llewellyn, and knew that surely her life had been changed and had moved in some direction she could not now see.

  Rhys ap Llewellyn’s gaze stopped for a heart-stopping moment on the slim dark-haired girl before him. Not Norman, he thought fleetingly, puzzled as to her presence in William’s court. The moment passed, and he all but forgot her as he followed Flambard to a place of honor next to the king.

  She was unable to move for a little while. Rhys was taken away by Flambard to greet the king, with all the ceremony granted in the ordinary way to a sovereign in his own land, as of course Rhys was.

  Dinner forgotten, Gwyn moved as though drawn by a magnet to the small troop of Welsh who were now dismounting and unpacking their equipment inside the courtyard.

  The men were dark, slight of build, and neat in their actions. They were bronzed by the wind, and their leather tunics and short leggings were of the same chestnut color. It was easy to see, as Henry had told her, that the Welsh troops turned invisible as they stood in plain sight. Of course, they had only to move slightly and become as one with the forest.

  She stood a distance apart, drinking in all the strangeness of the small army. The men for the most part worked in silence, but soon she saw them glancing appreciatively at her.

  One seemed to be in charge — a taller man, with fair hair and blue eyes, seeming more Saxon than Briton, as the Welsh were once called. Her gaze did not linger on him, for there was so much to see.

  Suddenly a great hairy brute of a dog detached himself from one of the men and walked majestically toward her. He was huge, she thought, even larger than Rainault’s hound Wolf. This dog, she thought fancifully, walked as lord of the earth — and in truth, she thought, he would be a match for any hound in Winchester.

  He padded to her and regarded her soberly. Her heart pounded. The great teeth showed momentarily, and she quailed inwardly. She felt, suddenly, as though he were waiting for her to speak — like any gentleman. She ventured a Cymric phrase, and the dog leaned toward her, bumping her hand with his massive head. Fearfully, at first, she stroked the head, the hard curly hair rough under her palm.

  Suddenly she looked up and found the soldiers clustered around her. “How did you gentle Maxen?” said their leader. “Trained for war, he is — but like any soldier, apparently tamed by a lady.”

  “Maxen?” she questioned. “Is that his name? He is a fearsome beast, but I think he is friend to the Welsh.”

  One of the soldiers, barrel-broad in the chest and with deep-set blue eyes gleaming from beneath a thicket of eyebrows, said, “The lady is then one of our people?” His voice suited him, deep and rumbling.

  “My mother was from beyond the mountains,” she told him.

  The leader, after Rhys, was blond Caerleon. His first glance told him that here was likely the only enjoyment he might derive from this visit to the Norman court, a visit he had not wished to make. Mistrustful by nature, and perhaps seeing others acting the way he would himself were he given the chance, he considered everything Norman with great wariness.

  “Good evening, lady,” he began. “What can I do for you?”

  She hardly knew where to begin. Had the men run like that alongside the ponies all the way from the mountains? How long would it take to get to the mountains? Could she make the long trip by herself, or with only a maid and perhaps a squire? Where was Port Madoc? Was it on the great ocean? And how would she cross the mountains?

  These were all questions that she could ask, but the one that throbbed in her head was, what of the man who had disappeared into the dining hall? Who was Rhys ap Llewellyn? Lord of the Western Marches, she knew, but what kind of man was he?

  She must have asked one of the many questions, for Caerleon was explaining that the common soldiers were indeed Welsh tribesmen, and had in fact jogged all the way from the mountains just as she had seen them coming up the slope.

  “My mother was Welsh,” explained Gwyn. “She came from Port Madoc. Do you know where that is?”

  “Far over the mountains, on the sea. A long way for a lady to go,” said Daffyd, the barrel-chested man.

  “But we could take her, could we not?” exclaimed Caerleon. “Old Prince Madoc would be glad to have one of his people back.”

  Gwyn stood a little straighter, in unconscious dignity. “Prince Madoc is my grandfather,” she said quietly, and Caerleon slapped the heel of his hand against his forehead.

  “I should have known!”

  “Why? Simply because I speak your language? That does not tell you who I am.”

  “No, but I fancy there is a resemblance between you and the old Prince. And,” said Caerleon, “something of his regal manner.” He smiled, without amusement. “As though the rest of us were dirt under his foot.”

  The rough soldier cleared his throat, obviously a signal. “Has the lady seen the mountains of Gwynedd?”

  “No,” said Gwyn, turning with a smile of relief to the burly man. “My father was Norman, and I am the king’s ward.”

  The plan formed instantly in her mind — these men could take her to her grandfather, away from this distasteful court. She would need the king’s permission, but perhaps that would be obtained more easily if Prince Henry were to act as her advocate. Remembering certain things the prince had said, she was not sure he would help her escape from his clutches. She would have to move cautiously.

  Like an echo, Brian’s voice came in her ear. “Aren’t you ever going to move, Gwyn? I am starving. Mother sent me back for you.”

  “I’m sorry, I had no idea the time had passed so quickly.” She turned and gathered all the soldiers, including their lieutenant, he of the fair hair and bold eyes, in her warm smile.

  She walked away with Brian, toward the king’s great hall. Brian swung his lute vigorously, so that the cut in the neck where his knife had slipped when he carved it from the virgin wood, caught the light.

  Her mind scarcely registered the food that she ate. Her eyes watched Lord Rhys where he sat next to the king. But even as curious as she was about the Welsh prince, her mind was full of even more impressions. She could think of nothing but the wildness of the Welsh ponies, the clear, untrammeled fierceness of the Welsh soldiers. They were silent, unloading the pack animals and going about the camp chores with speed, as though they had done this many, many times.

  She was curiously unsettled, feeling that she had glimpsed the untouched earth when it was new. These men had come out of the mountains and bowed their necks to no man. It was a wildness that belonged to the old time, the days of the old religion, the days of dragons and the old magic. Now, seeing these alien men, and trying to envisage the mountains they came from, the kind of life they must lead, she found that she could truly believe in the Three Butterflies, captured by a magician’s spell and forced to do his bidding, and she could even believe in the Hag-of-the-Mist.

  The H
ag-of-the-Mist was an ugly witch from olden times, her mother had told her — a witch who had stolen a princess and held her until the right man came to seek her. All the suitors, until the last one, Wil, were turned into rocks adorning the entranceway to the Hag’s cave.

  Gwyn had not told Jeanne this fairy tale, lest the hag stalk her dreams, as she had Gwyn’s for many a long night, long since.

  She longed after dinner to talk more with Lord Rhys, but Countess Maud hustled her and Brian out of the dining hall at the first possible moment and shooed them before her across to the round keep. Margit was waiting inside the door with a torch, and she burst into speech the moment she saw them.

  “I don’t know, my lady! The child is so ill! I fear she will die!”

  “Nonsense!” exclaimed Countess Maud. “Margit, close the bar on the door, and Brian, see to it that there is wood brought up for the fireplace, for if the child is ill we may be up all night with her.” But as it happened they did not stay up this night. For Hyrtha was singing a little Saxon tune to the child, and while Countess Maud looked at Jeanne with some apprehension, yet she seemed no worse.

  Gwyn undressed slowly and lay down on the pallet next to the window. She fell asleep at once, to dream of mountains and ponies, and the wild sound of Cymric in her ears.

  *

  The next day William entertained at what he considered a state banquet for his visitor.

  Silver trumpets called the diners to the hall, the banners had been unearthed from the chests and strung from the walls, and the great arras had been found, and while there were holes in some, testifying to William’s lack of housekeeping care, yet they made a brave display against the dark gray of the smoke-blackened walls.

  Again Rhys sat on the dais, next to the king. His bearing was more regal than William’s, for he had not the great paunch that William carried before him. Rhys was a hardened, muscular, fighting man, a fit prince to lead his followers, and wore his serious dignity like a cloak, except that, Gwyn thought, it was not something he put on as the occasion demanded. Rather, it came from inside the man, a seat of authority and dignity that was as much a part of him as the heart that sent the blood through his veins.

  She noticed, too, that he ate sparingly — the roast goose, the hare, even the venison seemed not to tempt him at all. But when he did eat, it was with single-minded concentration, as though a lifetime of short meals, with an army constantly on the move, had placed food into the category of sustaining life, and not of palate tempting.

  Rhys took the tribute that William laid at his feet, in the form of flowery words and phrases, as his due. Then he rose and spoke in his turn, first in Cymric and then in flawless Norman. Gwyn noticed many a raised eyebrow, in surprise at the Welsh prince’s social grace.

  But still Gwyn felt indignant, although she took pains to hide it. For she had been tutored by long familiarity with the Norman philosophy. The glances exchanged by the courtiers in William’s dining hall, the undertones and the speeches that were flowery to excess, spoke a contempt that was apparent only to those who were privy to the Norman ways. She hoped that Rhys did not understand, but she surprised a glance from under his heavy eyebrows that told her he knew well the undercurrents that eddied around him.

  Then a surprising highlight of the banquet became apparent.

  “We have a great treat for you tonight!” cried Flambard. “A new sweet singer! Even the black singers of the mountains” — bowing gracefully to the Welshman — “may well fall silent when they hear — Brian du Pré!”

  Countess Maud cried out, “But the lad is unschooled! I pray you, sire …”

  Her voice died away when she caught Flambard’s cold eye on her. She fell again into the brooding silence that had so concerned Gwyn up to this point. Now Gwyn began to realize that Countess Maud had a deep trouble eating away inside her.

  Gwyn hardly heard Brian singing and strumming his lute, for all the world like a traveling minstrel. Maud muttered in Gwyn’s ear, “My sins have come upon me! I felt he was too fragile for a knight’s training. I allowed him his little songs, and now look!”

  “Hush,” whispered Gwyn, “lest Flambard hear you!”

  But Maud still had one more thing to say, even though she did lower her voice so that only Gwyn could hear. “Better he mingled his Norman blood with the Saxon maid, as I feared he might at first, than this.”

  “Hyrtha?” exclaimed Gwyn in an undertone. “I have not seen him attending the maid.”

  “No more have I,” agreed the countess. “I wish I could say otherwise. But look at the boy, where he sits singing — like an angel in hell.”

  She listened, then, and understood what the countess had meant. Brian sat on a high stool behind them on the dais. He plucked his lute occasionally, merely to give emphasis and contrast to the pure flutelike tones of his voice, raised in a trivial lay of young, innocent love. Around him, below the dais, the crowds hushed for only a moment, and then the talk began again, the wooden trenchers scraping, the cups slamming sharply on the tables. But Brian, enraptured by his own music, scarcely heeded.

  Gwyn overheard someone asking Flambard a question. “How did you know the boy could sing?”

  “Simple,” said Flambard. “He carries that lute everywhere he goes — of course he is a singer!”

  Brian was singing with concentrated pleasure, his high voice rising sweet and clear. She glanced at Rhys and saw his grave look on the boy. Whatever lack of manners William’s court had, it did not affect Rhys. He was as courteous as though he were listening to one of his own Welsh bards. Gwyn failed to notice that Caerleon, the man who was the prince’s lieutenant, had eyes only for her. There was a dark, inscrutable look in the blue eyes that Gwyn could not have read even had she noticed. She did notice that Daffyd, her good friend from the wagon train, stood behind Rhys, almost as though he were protecting his master’s back against an assassin’s dagger.

  Gwyn had nearly forgotten the Pope’s emissary, who had come to Winchester only a day or two before. But the leader now stood with upraised hand in the doorway, and Brian, catching sight of the soberly clad monk, faltered in his song and fell silent.

  The leader of the Pope’s embassy wore a friar’s dark robe. A greater contrast could not be imagined between this quietly garbed churchman and the priest Ranulf Flambard, in his scarlet surcoat.

  The court, becoming one by one aware of the dark figure in the doorway, fell silent. Belatedly, the florid-cheeked king noticed the visitor.

  “Sire,” said the priest from the door, when all was hushed, “I beg leave to complain.”

  “Complain? What about?” roared the king, angry over the interruption to the banquet. “I didn’t ask you to come to England, and I’ll be sent to the pit before I’ll allow a sniveling Pope’s man to live inside my castle, to sniff around.”

  “I did not come to complain about the meadow provided us to raise our campfire.” The priest’s face flushed. “Although it is damp under our feet from the proximity of the stream, and the food allowed us is barely enough to keep our souls in our bodies.”

  “Then let your souls go back to Rome — or better yet, your bodies, too! I have no need of any churchman to tell me how to manage my realm!”

  The king stood up now to his full height. For a long moment he was the embodiment of royalty, a figure of power and strength — and then he spoiled it. Turning to crimson-clad Flambard, he said, his voice sinking into a whine, “Rid me of this monk, I pray you!”

  Flambard dutifully rose and crossed to the priest at the door. “What troubles you, brother? Make it short, for as you see we are entertaining a great prince!” He glanced from the corner of his eye at Rhys, whose expression, grave and curious, never changed.

  The priest, invited to lower his voice, nonetheless let his clarion tones fill the hall. “Our camp has been ridden over, destroyed, by Norman knights on horseback! Knights, mind you, sworn to uphold the holy church! I petition — nay, I demand — punishment for the impious and resti
tution to our injured!”

  “Injured?” said Flambard in surprise. “I had not heard …”

  Too late he realized he had given himself away. Already he had heard word of the devastation of the camp — and, so it appeared, given tacit approval.

  He drew the priest into the dining hall. “Come and tell me,” he coaxed. “Warm yourself at the hearth. I shall see what is to be done.”

  But while the old priest stretched his shaking hands out to the fire — shaking, not with feebleness, but with un-priestly rage — one by one the king’s minions vanished out of the great hall. Even Falsworth, hesitating at the door, abruptly struck the hilt of his short sword with his hand in a gesture of decision and left. Were they all guilty? Certainly they did not linger to be identified, if they had indeed wrought destruction on the Pope’s men, traveling under a useless safe conduct.

  Suddenly the state dinner was over. Brian was dismissed with a wave of the hand and disappeared into the crowd. The rest of the courtiers left the dining hall in a group, and Gwyn had a hard time to keep from being trampled. Her immediate concern was Maud. Countess Maud was peering anxiously about the dining hall, saying, “Where is Brian?” She wrung her hands, completely distraught. “I’ll kill them if anything has happened!”

  Gwyn said soothingly, “But what could happen? We’re inside the fort. I’ll go look for him for you, but first let me get you back to the keep.”

  Gwyn was truly worried now because Countess Maud’s reaction seemed so out of proportion. Brian was simply lost in the throng, she was sure, and would soon rejoin them. They waited, however, at the door of the dining hall for some time before Gwyn finally said, “He is probably already back at the keep, waiting for us, and we’ll find him there.”