Crown of Passion

by Jocelyn Carew

  “Daffyd?” echoed Gwyn. “I had not thought he even knew me.”

  “Oh, yes, lady, he knows you well. He feared the others would not warn you.”

  “A warning? From the Welsh?”

  “The message,” said Hyrtha crisply, “from whomever it comes yet should be taken seriously. For the times are more than troubled — so the Welshman said. Time is short, lady, there is much trouble brewing, take care. That is the message.”

  “Take care? I wish I might! But I do not know of whom to beware, except the king, and I can do little.”

  Hyrtha frowned and stood silent for some moments. At length she ventured, “I do not know what he meant, lady. But he hears much, and it may be that there is meat in his words.”

  “Daffyd understands Norman?”

  “As I believe.”

  “I wish I knew what to do!”

  “The time is short, but even so, a way will open.”

  Gwyn did not know what Hyrtha meant. The Welsh were certainly due to depart soon, and perhaps that was what Daffyd had impressed upon Hyrtha. But she thought there must be more that Hyrtha had not said, although she could not ask.

  Gwyn contented herself with sending thanks to Daffyd, whenever Hyrtha might see him again. She already was suspicious, alert to danger, and Daffyd’s message told her little she did not know. But she was still without any prospect of saving herself, for she did not, even now, know the precise danger that threatened her.

  There was a commotion in the outer room, the heavy clump of male feet upon the wooden floor. Hyrtha sprang to the door and peered through. She gestured quickly to Gwyn, and Gwyn joined her at the door. It was FitzOmer, talking to Maud. Gwyn hurried through the door, Hyrtha directly behind her, to quiet FitzOmer before his heavy voice penetrated to the other room. She was too late.

  Jeanne no longer tossed in her sleep. She had wakened, and yet kept her eyes shut, as though fearing to open them on reality. She sat up in bed, pulling her coverlet up around her bare shoulders and staring at the door as though it opened to the pit.

  FitzOmer said, “I have come to tell the girl she is to make ready for her wedding.”

  “Oh, no!” shouted Gwyn. “You cannot wed her! She is but a child.”

  FitzOmer glanced her way, as though she were of no account, and said, “But her lands are not. And I need the money.”

  “How much did you give for the bride price?” demanded Gwyn. “Wouldn’t that buy all the equipment you need for your crusade?”

  FitzOmer said drily, “But that is not it. The moneylenders will lend me money on the lands, if they are mine. It is not the income from the land itself, but the loan I will be able to get.”

  “But then, wed her and go at once. Leave her with us,” suggested Gwyn, “if it is only her lands you covet.”

  “I will take the girl,” said FitzOmer, unmoved, “lest you women get her into bad habits. At last I have the king’s permission. The girl is to be mine at once — this day in the cathedral. I wish one night with my bride —” He smiled wolfishly, his lips stretched wide enough to show a broken tooth, turned brown from injury. “And then,” he resumed, “to the moneylenders in London!”

  Maud had seemed not to listen. But suddenly she cried, “Take my son with you!”

  FitzOmer raised an eyebrow. “But he’s a boy, and I need knights. I suppose he could go as a squire.”

  Maud said, “Take him as anything you please. I will even send him as a wagoner.”

  FitzOmer said, “The journey is hard, over rough terrain. You lad seems frail as a maid, and I doubt he could last the journey. You are sending your son to death.”

  Maud said gloomily, “Better than the way it is now. For I fear for his immortal soul, if he stay here.”

  FitzOmer’s eyes glittered. “I do not want the boy,” he said with contempt. “The Eastern vice is not mine, and he is useless otherwise.”

  “What is your vice, then?” demanded Gwyn. She was angry and afraid for Jeanne, and the frustrations of her own position made her uncaring about the consequences to herself. She might walk warily, as Daffyd warned, but FitzOmer was a wolf incarnate, and she threw herself before the door to the inner room. “Killing children?”

  “What does a woman know?” he countered. “I shall not kill her. But I wish to bring her the glad news myself. Stand aside!”

  “I shall not. That child is —”

  “Mine,” interrupted the Norman. “And I wish to see her.”

  Without warning the expression in his eyes darkened and he stepped toward Gwyn. She stood her ground, her heart beating so loudly in her ears she could hardly hear his words.

  With one motion of his mail-clad arm he swept her out of his way and opened the door into Jeanne’s room.

  Jeanne shrieked, “Get away from me! You are Satan! Call the priest! Don’t come near! I’ll kill myself!”

  “Now then, child, is this any way to greet your intended husband?” said FitzOmer in a voice he must have thought was soothing.

  But it failed of its purpose, for Jeanne, her shrieks unending, told the listeners in the outer room more than she knew. They could tell that she was moving away from

  FitzOmer, and they could hear the metallic clang of his mailed foot as he took one step, then another toward the child. The two outside, Gwyn and Hyrtha, stood rooted to the spot, unable to break the spell of horror that surrounded them. Then, suddenly, Gwyn was able to move and darted swiftly to the door into the inner room. Flinging the door open behind FitzOmer, she gazed upon a spectacle that she would never forget.

  Jeanne, still clutching her blanket to her thin chest, backed away from him, until she reached the wall and could back away no farther.

  Jeanne, unusually tiny for her age, stood before the window embrasure. The slit was narrow, and high, and the ledge was only a hand’s breadth wide. There was nothing outside beyond the girl but blue sky, a faint cloud passing swiftly far out over the river, and a lark singing.

  FitzOmer’s breath came in noisy, unnatural gasps. Gwyn hurled herself on him, holding his sleeve with desperate fingers.

  “Let her alone!” she screamed, but FitzOmer flung her away as though she were no more than a bothersome gnat.

  She hit the wall squarely, gasping for breath. Then she saw with a silent scream that Jeanne had climbed up the window, clinging to the sill.

  The blanket fell away, leaving her with only the clean shift that Hyrtha had dropped over her head that morning. The shift came down only to her hips. The gash on her thigh gleamed red and ugly in the light.

  Jeanne looked over her shoulder, through the window. Gwyn heard the tiny intake of breath and knew that Jeanne had seen — the long, long way to the ground, the upreaching rocks at the bottom.

  FitzOmer halted for a moment. “Jeanne, get down here! That is foolish. I shall not harm you.”

  Until after the wedding, thought Gwyn sourly. After the legal transfer of the lands — the money in FitzOmer’s hands and his wedding night behind him — then his bride could do as she wished. For FitzOmer’s unnatural desire would be slaked, and he could atone at leisure on his way to Jerusalem.

  Jeanne was leaning precariously out over the void beneath, and Gwyn realized with horror that the child was totally demented. FitzOmer, startled, was uncertain what to do, but with the sure instinct of the bully, he did the wrong thing. He started toward the child, saying, “Come away from there!”

  Gwyn flung out an arm to stop him, but she was too late, nor could she have held him, she thought later, if she had been closer. For on the first step that FitzOmer took toward Jeanne, the child shrank away from him. She lost her balance, teetered once on the sill, and vanished from their sight.

  It was over in a second. Gwyn covered her face with her hands and began to shiver. She thought she would never stop, never be warm again. She was hardly aware of FitzOmer’s marching past her in great disgust, and she thought she heard him say, “The Jews will stop my loan. If only she had waited until we were we
d …”

  Gwyn could not even feel revulsion at FitzOmer’s callousness. She was scarcely aware of Hyrtha, wrapping her in her fur-lined cloak, trying to lead her to a chair. She was rooted to the spot as though carved from a block of wood, and Hyrtha gave up.

  Gwyn thought she could never move again, but the blood returned to her limbs in a great tingling flood, and she shook off the cloak and was after FitzOmer, screeching as she went through the door of the sitting room.

  The dark stairs, after the bright sunlight, nearly blinded her, but she flew after the dark shadow ahead of her as surefooted as if in a meadow.

  “You murderer! You killed her!”

  FitzOmer’s heavy footstep thudded below her, and he reached the bottom of the stairs. The door stood half open, and beyond in the sunlit courtyard could be heard the pounding of many feet, approaching the round tower. The murmur of oncoming voices rose to a tumult, but Gwyn and FitzOmer were caught within the shadowy quiet in a timeless confrontation.

  “I did not kill her,” gritted FitzOmer between clenched teeth. “I never touched her. You will bear witness to that, you hear me?”

  “I saw you send her out of the window!” screamed Gwyn, half mad with grief and rage. “I wish I had an ax! I’ll kill you myself!”

  “I have lost everything!” shouted FitzOmer over her screams. “Perhaps she still lives!”

  “Nothing could live after that fall!”

  “Then I am undone!” said FitzOmer.

  He flung the door wide and stepped out to face the gathering crowd. Still in command of his wits, he gestured at Gwyn behind him. “Ask her what happened. I must see the king!”

  The men parted to let him pass, although one or two noted that he did not go to the great hall, but instead made haste toward the stables. Within moments he clattered through the gates and was out of sight.

  Gwyn, anguished that her enemy had escaped, fell upon the first man to reach the round tower and tried to wrest his sword from his girdle.

  Powerful hands plucked her away from the sword and set her on her feet. She looked up, then, and saw the grinning face of Rhys ap Llewellyn.

  “A true daughter of the Cymry!” He laughed. “But do not waste such heat on a mere Norman dog!” He spoke the last words softly enough to reach only her ear. Then, in a raised voice, he added, “What happened?”

  She took a long breath and closed her eyes. When she could speak again, she told him. The shock in even the most hardened faces around her lent sympathy to her, and at last she could turn blindly back into the tower, and seek out those who would mourn most.

  Even William was hurrying, surprisingly, across the courtyard, his great paunch bobbing before him. Flam-bard, hovering by his side like an evil genius, yet had an eye to directing what was to be done. There were people running around to the outside of the keep and lifting the lifeless body of the child, with a certain pathetic compassion, onto a hurdle. There was very little mourning, for all were numbed by the shock of the sudden tragedy. Only FitzOmer at least had not appeared to grieve for the life cut so short. Perhaps he feared to face those of his fellows who must suspect the truth. Surely he could not be callous if his sovereign, as might well be the case, accused him of killing the girl. Even though he had not laid a hand on the child this time, yet he was as guilty of murder, Gwyn believed, as though he had pushed her through the window slit.

  Maud stood beside Gwyn, muttering under her breath, “I’ve given birth to a milksop. The fool is lying in a swoon upstairs.”

  Gwyn said, “I think of us all he truly loved her the best.”

  Surprisingly, Maud agreed. “But he need not give away his thoughts to everyone and give rise to more suspicion.”

  After a while, as Jeanne’s body was taken away to await burial and a priest was summoned from a nearby church, it was Flambard who put the final cap on the day’s tragic events.

  He came close to Gwyn and said to her in a voice low enough so that no one else could hear, “I will expect you at the dining hall tonight. Cut your mourning short, for this court does not need long faces.”

  Gwyn protested angrily. “Give me leave to mourn the child in my own way!”

  Flambard said, “Now that is what I cannot allow. You will be at dinner tonight, else I will send my men to drag you thither.”

  Mercifully, the procession led by the priest summoned from Winchester Cathedral passed by out of Gwyn’s sight. They would bury Jeanne the next day, a messenger from the king told them, before the same altar where FitzOmer had planned to wed her.

  10

  Dinner in the great hall that night was frenzied. It was almost as though the mad gaiety, engendered by the festive food and much drink, the incessant strumming of the lutes, and the continuous songs of the minstrels, would overlay the tragic death of the child that day and make all as it had been before.

  But not to Gwyn.

  It was as though William — or his dark genius, the chancellor — had decreed that heartbreak did not exist, that life and death were alike fleeting and pleasure was the only virtue.

  There was even a roast swan with gilded beak, served in its plumage on a sea of green grass, brought in proudly by the steward and presented to the king. At his nod it was served to the rest of the dignitaries on the dais, but nary a bit of flesh was sent down to the trestle tables below the dais. A swan was a dish fit only for a king and those whom he sought to honor. Silver trumpets heralded the king’s every gesture, until with the blare of the horns, the thrumming of the lutes, the wild songs of the troubadours, and the incessant shouting and jostling and noise of benches being pushed back and dogs yapping as they rooted for scraps and bones in the old straw on the floor, the din was outrageous. Gwyn’s head began to throb, and she knew she was in for a headache that would not subside until she laid her head on a pillow.

  The fires were burning on green wood, and black smoke billowed upward from the hearths along opposite walls of the great hall. The wind, rising late in the day, gusted through the slit windows — like the wraith of a small child — and blew the smoke into twisting coils over their heads. Like the anteroom of hell, thought Gwyn somberly, complete with devils in residence.

  Gwyn could not forget the dear, lifeless body, borne on a hurdle around the foot of the bailey walls, into the town, and into the welcoming arms of the church. At least Jeanne was safe now.

  Maud sat beside Gwyn, wrapped in gloom like a stone cloak, and Brian, only a ghost of his former self, sat beyond Maud, for Flambard’s invitation, forceful as it was, extended to Brian.

  But the sharp contrast between the gloom of Jeanne’s friends and the gaiety of the court was only the beginning of the nightmare. Dinner had been eaten and then removed from the tables. A dish of figs had been placed before the king, and spiced fruits and gingered dates from the Mediterranean had been placed in wooden bowls before the other diners at the main table. At a signal from Flambard, everyone became quiet, for the king was about to speak. The trumpets went into a frenzy of silver notes, the trumpeters blowing so hard that the clear tone was lost in sheer volume. The king rose to his feet and made a sharp gesture and the trumpeters fell silent.

  Rhys, sitting on the other side of the king, kept his features impassive, so that no one knew what he was thinking. Gwyn’s eyes, as though a lodestone, were drawn to hint as to the true north. His thoughts seemed far away, and Gwyn wondered whether there was a woman in the mountains of Wales whose image drew Rhys. The thought did not cheer her.

  Maud interrupted her thoughts. “Have you noticed?” she whispered. “Hardly anybody is here.”

  Gwyn glanced at the overfull room. “Only a hundred,” she guessed.

  Maud frowned impatiently. “No, no. I mean, where is Prince Henry? Where is FitzHamon? Or Breteuil? The great barons are all missing. I do not like it.”

  “Only chance, Countess,” Gwyn replied. “Prince Henry has been gone some days, and FitzHamon, you remember, was called home to his land.” But she looked around her, with Ma
ud’s comment in her ears, and she grew uneasy. The great men of William’s realm were all, for one reason or another, absent She was not sure what was the significance of their absence, but along with Maud, she misliked it without knowing why.

  The king rose in the silence and said, “I have an announcement to make. It is one which will delight many of us, a great treat that I have prepared for you.”

  Gwyn scarcely heard him, her thoughts busy of themselves, but when she heard her name, all else faded away.

  “The Lady Gwynllion Ramsey, whom you all know, is my loyal ward. She has turned her lands over to me as a faithful vassal, and I will dispose of them as suits my fancy.” The king looked around, beaming, venison grease shining on his florid features. A murmur of comment followed his announcement. “I have already decided about Ramsey Manor,” announced the king.

  “Who gets them?” came a cry from somewhere near the foot of the table. “Ranulf the Torch?”

  The king ignored the anonymous cry. Flambard — the Torch — scanned faces, but could not surprise guilt on any.

  “Now for the surprise,” crowed William, “the Lady Gwynllion is without dowry, and therefore her fate becomes very close to my heart. I wish to tell you what she said to me in our conference this morning. While her lands were at my disposal, since as king of this realm I own all the land therein, yet this lady was so loyal that she worried about her bride price.”

  He turned his smiling face toward Gwyn, but the glint of evil in it chilled her to the bone. He had taken her words of the morning and twisted them to suit his own advantage. She felt as helpless as a bird watching a serpent writhe his way up the tree toward her nest

  “It grieves me,” continued the king, “to see my ward in such distress, concerned that she might be worthless to me without her lands. But I have the solution.”

  Gwyn noticed that Flambard was toying with his goblet of wine, and a satisfied smile lingered at the corners of his mouth. This then was what Flambard had whispered in the king’s ear this morning. And although Gwyn did not know what appealling fate was to be hers, yet her heart sank within her, and her eyes grew round with fright