Crown of Passion

by Jocelyn Carew

  She could still hear Brian’s cries of outrage, cut short on a high note, as the ultimate horror descended upon him. Gwyn’s thoughts shied away from such details as she might have guessed, but the cruel bestial laughter left little to the imagination. It was an evil place, where the innocent could be ravaged, and the weak thrown without compassion to those savage beasts that would rend the helpless.

  Not all the Normans were cruel, she remembered. Her father, for one. Not a gentle man, of course — for no Norman could afford to relax his constant discipline — but not meaninglessly harsh. Even Prince Henry, a sharp contrast to his evil brother, yet dared not stand against the king to shelter the unfortunate victims.

  Hyrtha did not return until the night was far advanced. The faint first light of false dawn showed in the east and far away a mistaken rooster crowed before Gwyn heard the telltale creak of a board that indicated someone had stepped inside the door. There was a soft swish of the cloak dropping on the floor, and then Hyrtha was beside Gwyn in the dark.

  “How is she?” asked Hyrtha.

  Gwyn shook her head and then realized she could not be seen. She whispered quietly, “I am worried about her.”

  Hyrtha squeezed Gwyn’s hand in understanding and whispered, “She sleeps now. We can leave her alone.”

  The two tiptoed out into the other room, where Hyrtha stirred up the embers in the grate. She threw a small piece of wood on the fire, watched it burn, and then threw a second one on. “It’s cold outside,” she said.

  “Did you find your brother?” asked Gwyn. She expected an affirmative answer, for the light on Hyrtha’s face, now that she could see it in the firelight, was kindled from within. Clearly the girl had good news of some kind.

  “I’ve had word,” she said, “that my brother lives. And beyond that, I dare not say. Even the walls of this tower have ears.”

  Gwyn pressed Hyrtha’s hand in unspoken sympathy. It was good that one person, of all those in the tower, was happy this night.

  Gwyn spoke at last, slowly, marshaling her thoughts. “I wonder what will happen to Jeanne. She holds FitzOmer in such loathing, and rightly so. How could any man be so cruel, so unnatural — she’s naught but a baby!”

  Hyrtha said, “You know, the Normans call us Saxon swine, no better than our pigs. But even pigs do not lust so against nature as our lords do!”

  “I shall try to forget my Norman blood,” said Gwyn, striving for a lighter note in the somber dark.

  “For me, lady,” said Hyrtha in simple sincerity, “you have never been one of them”

  Gwyn laughed. “Only a witch in the wood!”

  Hyrtha smiled back. “I wish I may have such another witch in case of need!”

  The two girls sat silently for a few moments. The second log caught the blaze, and the heat stole out into the room. Gwyn realized that she had been chilled since yestereve. She had started to shake when she came in from looking for Brian, and she had been more numb than cold. But now with the heat reaching her outstretched hands, she began to shiver again. But for once Hyrtha did not notice. She was intent upon her own affairs of the evening, and they clearly were a source of satisfaction to her.

  “Has the Pope sent his messenger to send the king away?” suggested Hyrtha hopefully.

  Gwyn shook her head. “It’s mostly a matter of money.” Seeing Hyrtha’s interest, she told her all she knew. “The king borrowed money from the Pope and can’t repay it, and now the Pope is pressing him for it. The king fears he will lose much if the Pope does excommunicate him for not repaying the loan, and so he is searching everywhere to get the money.”

  “Then,” said Hyrtha, “that explains something. They have been told that they must be cautious and not raise the king’s anger against them. They even say that the king might kill them all and pretend they never arrived here. That is why they are quartered outside the walls.”

  “So that fewer people see them? It does not seem possible.”

  Hyrtha yawned suddenly. “Many things do not seem possible, lady. But if the king needs much money, then I fear for us all.”

  A cool shaft of wind came through the slit window, heralding the morning, and Gwyn shivered. Shadow across my grave, she thought.

  She said aloud, “That is why I think he will not marry me to anyone right away, for he is using all the revenues from my father’s land. He will not give up such an income very quickly. So it is also with Jeanne.”

  “Then Jeanne’s marriage to that man will not happen right away?”

  Hyrtha was clearly worried. Gwyn tried to reassure her also, but in good truth she could not offer much hope. “FitzOmer is going to the Holy Land, and when he returns, he will wed the girl. He has already paid a betrothal price, so I have heard,” Gwyn explained.

  “Then he already does own Jeanne,” said Hyrtha.

  “In a way of speaking, I suppose he does.”

  “Then what he did to her he had a right to do.” Hyrtha sat looking into the fire for a long time. “It’s not natural, that’s all there is to it, that men should have such sway over all of us, and we have nothing to say back.”

  “The way of the world,” said Gwyn. She could not help but think that God had forsaken His people, or He would not have allowed certain things to happen.

  In the morning, to Gwyn’s dismay, Jeanne was worse. Her broken night had resulted in a rise in her fever, and she tossed restlessly all the day. Maud called Brian up to sing to her, as a last resort. Brian always was able to calm the child, and Jeanne looked upon him as an older brother. But, surprisingly, Brian would not come. He sent word that his lute had been broken and he could not sing. Gwyn sent

  Margit out with instructions to find another lute. Eventually the girl returned. The lute was not so fine an instrument as the one Gwyn had stepped on in the night, but at least it was an instrument.

  “I gave the lute to him,” said Margit with a toss of her graying head. “Much good may it do. He’s always been a disappointment to my lady, and hasn’t changed any.”

  “But Countess Maud could not help him,” objected Gwyn, “even though she thinks it’s her fault.”

  Margit pursed her lips. Lowering her voice confidentially, she said, “The lad may not have looked like much, but he’s all she had. And I say he didn’t need to show himself off, singing and playing his lute.” She spoke the last word like an obscenity.

  “But the chancellor —” At the look of disgust on Margit’s face, Gwyn broke off. Gwyn suddenly remembered Falsworth’s long, measuring examination of Brian across the crowded hall, and knew now that that moment had marked Brian’s fate. For the king, it was said, looked most kindly on those who brought new faces to his court.

  By late in the afternoon Brian began to sing his little songs to Jeanne. The two of them, Gwyn thought, looked more like children than like persons maturing too fast, and not happily. Each of them had such a heavy burden to bear, and neither could confide in the other. By nightfall Jeanne was better, and during the next couple of days she seemed almost recovered. Brian too found in her the healing that his sore mental wounds needed. He still avoided Gwyn, almost as though he knew she had witnessed his disgrace. His mother was still in her remote mood, but she watched Brian with the eye of an eagle.

  Gwyn slipped into Maud’s room. She was as worried about Maud as she had been about Brian, but there was even less she could do for the countess. Countess Maud lifted puffy-lidded eyes to search Gwyn’s face. “One thing, Gwyn,” she said, her voice husky with tears still unshed. “Who did this to the boy? Who ravaged his body, blasted his mind? Who did this?”

  “Dear Countess,” said Gwyn swiftly, falling to her knees before the old woman. “Do not worry yourself to death over it. What’s done is done.” She guessed what lay behind the countess’s mood. “Brian’s soul is not lost, for he did not submit easily — you saw his broken lute. They tore it out of his grasp!”

  “I will kill him. The man who did this — who soiled my pretty baby!” Gwyn drew bac
k in rising pity. The countess was mad, sent into lunacy by the heinous crime, a horror too obscene for her to understand.

  The countess clutched Gwyn’s shoulders with painful fingers. “Who did this?” she demanded huskily, drawing her face so close that her eyes bored crazily into Gwyn’s. Gwyn steeled herself not to pull away, but she was fearful — afraid of the kind woman who had welcomed her into her keeping.

  “You dare not avenge Brian’s wounds!” cried Gwyn in anguish. “Forget who did this to him! There were many, and you must not endanger your soul by murder!”

  “Many? But one marked him. And that one I will kill. Who, Gwyn?”

  Desperately, she strove to ease Lady Maud’s sick heart. “I do not know. Besides, Brian is now singing. Could he strum his lute if he suffered grievously? We must have been mistaken.”

  Maud cocked her head. Softly, as from a great distance, the throbbing notes of the strings came to them. “He is better, then,” said Maud. Listening to Brian’s mournful tune, and a word or two that spilled into the air from his overwrought brain, Gwyn kept her doubts to herself.

  Quiet, my broken lute!

  Nor ever one as sweet will sing.

  Sleeping, my heart cries, but

  Better that than waking!

  Later Hyrtha’s happy song told of sunshine and stars, meadows sweet in spring, and the tang of quiet autumn days, a song that no doubt healed Hyrtha’s deep hurt as much as it helped the child to whom she sang.

  At length, needing to escape from the gloom of Maud’s heavy mood, Gwyn wrapped herself in her fur-lined cloak, slipped out of the tower, and hurried across the courtyard. She wondered at the unusual quiet until she realized that William was out on his daily hunting trip.

  The gates stood open against William’s return. She went through them unchallenged and turned to her right, stumbling over the stones of the scree beneath the thick walls of the bailey, and angling down the slope to a place she had found once, where she could watch the shining ripples on the Itchen, some distance away. Hidden from the castle by the height of the stone wall, she spread her cloak on the low grass. She sat in the sunlight and let the breeze rising from the river soothe her thoughts.

  She did not know how long she had sat there, when she looked up to see the Welsh lord standing before her.

  “May I sit?” said Rhys, in his uncommonly deep voice. For answer, she gestured with her hand, and he dropped to sit nearby, just out of reach. He might be unschooled, she thought, and rough in courtesy, yet he did not wish to frighten her, and she appreciated his thoughtfulness.

  They sat in companionable silence, in the sun, until Gwyn stirred restlessly. “Why aren’t you out with the hunt? I would expect you to be guest of honor.”

  He glanced sidelong at her. “I suppose I should be,” he confessed. “But I have hunted many a stag in my time, in wilder country than this. The Norman hunt is not to my liking. The hunters stand in a line, out of sight, and then the foresters drive out the stags, frightened to death and full of panic. It is hardly a sport.”

  Gwyn corrected him. “Not a sport, truly. This is how we have meat on the table, you know.”

  “Don’t tell me about meat on the table, lady. There was enough wasted last night in the great hall yonder to feed an entire village in the mountains for a week!”

  “That may be true,” said Gwyn, urged by an unreasonable desire to compel the Welsh leader to stay with her, to hear his deep voice, musical as singing waterfalls. “But is it wrong to enjoy the wealth of our land? The king provides well for his people!”

  “Say you?” Rhys quirked one eyebrow upward to show his clear skepticism. “At any rate, it is not for me to quarrel with a lady. But, mark you, I am not a huntsman for your king’s table. I leave that to the lackeys that fawn on his boots!”

  Gwyn, unwilling that he leave, reached a hand out to stop him.

  “You hunted in the Welsh hills?” said Gwyn. “I wish you will tell me about Wales, for I am longing to know.”

  Rhys’s lips tightened. “You are like many another Norman lady, seeking to hear about the savages?”

  Gwyn stirred indignantly. “I certainly am not! I am half Welsh myself.”

  He turned to look full at her. “I should have known,” he said at last. “You do not look Norman. Much too pretty. That dark hair, those green eyes — What is your name then? Lady-in-the-moon?”

  Gwyn laughed, a silvery sound that fell like fairy bells on his ear. “No, for I am not lost in the bog.” She could have said nothing that would reach him more quickly, she realized. She was not sure why she wanted to reach him at all. But yet she was gratified. “My name is Gwynllion Ramsey. I am the king’s ward.”

  The Welshman frowned, looking almost frightening with his black brows drawn together. “How does this happen? I would not think a Welsh lady would be found here in a Norman court.”

  Gwyn told him about her mother, about her father’s recent death, and how William had sent for her to come to court. Something in her story did not please Lord Rhys. Finally, he said, “I have heard of your king’s greed. I mistrust him.”

  “No more than I do,” agreed Gwyn vigorously. “But I know not what to do, for I cannot on my own go back to Wales.”

  “You wish this?” he countered quickly.

  “Yes, for I have people at Port Madoc.”

  He frowned. “You do not understand how hard a life it is in Wales,” he said. “A delicately nurtured lady like you, fresh from your comfortable manor, will not be able to endure the hard life.”

  “And yet,” she persisted, “life here in the confines of Winchester Castle is not easy.” Her thoughts dwelt on the victims of Norman cruelty — three of them this moment within the tower. Four, she amended quickly, for she must count Maud among the wounded.

  “You would then, lady, find our Welsh ways too savage. I must imagine your mother felt the same; else she would not have journeyed to wed a Norman!”

  She realized he had a touchy temper, and it matched her own. But it was no part of her nature to argue where there was no reason, and she quickly changed the subject. To divert him, she suggested, “I wonder why you stroll in this direction. Surely there are other more scenic views than this scrubby hillside.”

  Rhys suddenly, unexpectedly, chuckled. A pleasing sound, she thought, perhaps because so rare — as though a somber mountain stream had deigned to play around spray-wet rocks in momentary delight before continuing on a purposeful descent to the sea.

  “A simple reason, lady,” he said, amused. “I could not breathe in the bailey. I am not used to swine rooting at my feet, and I wonder at the stomachs of the Normans, to eat heartily while the Very air turns the stomach.”

  “The Normans do indeed suffer privations, then,” she agreed demurely.

  He shot a suspicious glance at her, wary of her ridicule, but her wide green eyes looked back at him, guileless, and he was satisfied.

  “Besides,” said Rhys slowly, “I do not like the New Forest. It is the old Jettenwald, so I think? Yes, the Giant’s Wood. The Normans do not know it is mischancy to meddle with the old ways.”

  “How do you know this?” she asked, genuinely interested.

  He refused to meet her eyes. “We crossed the New Forest on our way here, and I felt it reaching out, an unkindly feeling. I shall breathe more easily when we have left it behind us for good.”

  She could have added her own feelings about the New Forest, for it had boded ill for Hyrtha, and for herself, until Prince Henry had come to her rescue. She herself would not have ventured far in the New Forest, although not for the Welsh lord’s reasons.

  Gwyn longed to talk further with Rhys, but there was no chance. Around the corner of the stone wall came a figure that, as it drew closer, she recognized. It was Caerleon, Rhys’s second in command. Catching sight of the two, he hurried toward them, waving urgently as he came.

  Muttering a word in Cymric, Rhys leaped to his feet and watched his lieutenant approach. “What’s on his mi
nd?” Rhys asked, obviously of the air. Caerleon drew closer and called across the intervening space, “The king has been asking for you. You must go to him.”

  “You think so?” Rhys countered. Caerleon’s eyes narrowed, in some way taking up an unseen challenge.

  “Yes, if our journey here is not to be a dismal failure. You convinced the old man of Powys that an alliance is the best thing, but you seem to care little about accomplishing it.”

  “The Prince of Powys agrees to an alliance,” said Rhys heavily, “because it is the best for Wales. We’ve been over this before, Caerleon.”

  “I myself cannot bear their arrogance,” whipped out Caerleon, “and no alliance can bear the burden of these Normans and their pride.”

  “We have a little pride, too,” suggested Rhys. “But peace we must have, and for peace I will do anything. Anything, mark you. We cannot build castles like the Normans to guard the Western Marches, and so we must get a castle of our own. How better than with Norman goodwill?”

  Caerleon, for answer, only made a gesture of futility with his hands. Then, with a wry smile, he said, “The goodwill of this king of theirs is fast vanishing, unless you ride to meet him in what they call the forest!”

  Rhys stood a little below Gwyn and let a smile creep over his face. His eyes nearly crinkled shut with amusement, and while many another man would be shaking, Gwyn realized, with an urgent summons from the king ringing in their ears, this Lord of the Western Marches stood at his ease and spoke to Caerleon. “I suppose I must humor him. I will go, if you will see that the lady returns to the fortress safely.”

  “That I will!” said Caerleon, and he and Gwyn watched Rhys move unhurriedly back toward the gates, to find his pony.