Crown of Passion

by Jocelyn Carew

  Footsteps pounded behind her on the hard dirt, but she kept on, resolutely. If it were Caerleon, or Dewi, she would say, kindly, that she wished to go back to Winchester. If it were Rhys himself, she would not speak to him at all.

  It was Rhys.

  He grabbed her arm and swung her around to face him. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “Just exactly what I said I would do!” she retorted, shaking off his grip.

  “Of all the rabbit-brained ideas! I can’t let you go alone, like this.”

  She thought she saw a softening expression in his face, but she stiffened against it. “Why not? You can’t spare the men!”

  There was no gentleness in his expression now, for his eyes blazed with sudden anger. “You provoke me beyond endurance! I swear you are a witch — you’ve cast a spell on my men that makes them worthless.”

  Sensing an advantage, she said, “Not on you?”

  He seemed about to reach for her, to grab her and perhaps shake her into sense. She waited hopefully. She would far rather sit at Rhys’s campfire than brave the long days’ journey back to certain death. And he knew it. “That will be the day to mark well,” he said dryly. “It is bad enough that Caerleon lusts after you with his hot eyes, but I cannot afford to lose Daffyd.”

  She looked behind him then and saw Daffyd, the huge shadow as always at Rhys’s back, his jacket over his shoulders and ready to march — with her. He looked disapprovingly at his lord from under his bushy red eyebrows.

  Rhys’s expression turned rueful. “I cannot, you see, spare the man.”

  Suddenly Gwyn smiled, the rare smile that lit up her elfin face, and — so Rhys thought, grudgingly — brought sunshine to the shadows. “Nor will I separate loyal friends,” she promised. “Let us hurry on, then, to Ludlow.”

  Gwyn mounted and felt her sore muscles find their accustomed place on the pony. She rode on, with Daffyd and Rhys behind her, the great dog trotting at her knee, following the other Welsh who were ahead of her. They hurried on, Gwyn still bemused by Rhys’s sudden change of heart, and unaccountably cheered by his smile. He was a testy man, prickly as a hedgehog, and cared nothing for her. She knew that, and yet the memory of his smile lingered for a long time.

  Caerleon said, “If we hurry, we can get to Ludlow Castle. We can take the castle, then we will have a stronghold to keep you safe in. Like the Lady in the Moon!”

  Gwyn said smiling, “But the Lady in the Moon made her escape at last.”

  Caerleon laughed, a strong sound in the fair air. “So she did! And so you have!”

  They marched on, north by east, through broad, flat land. The river lay still on their left, and Worcester, too, where the bishop was building his cathedral and had commandeered all the Saxons within leagues to do his bidding. They skirted villages, deserted save for a lone dog or two, which, even on their own territory, took one look at Maxen and fled incontinently.

  After two days they reached the river’s edge. Cledog had traveled this way before, and he knew of a ford where they could take their ponies across, swimming, without peril. While he searched the banks for the ford, Caerleon sat down on the grassy bank and challenged Rhys. “For what good reason, I wonder, has our great lord decided to keep the writ which orders his execution?” he said ostensibly into the leafy branches overhead.

  Rhys didn’t bother to look at him. He watched with narrowed eyes the erratic search of Cledog, peering over the stream, testing the current, and then moving upstream out of sight.

  “Can it be,” continued Caerleon, “that the writ is to serve some sinister purpose?”

  Rhys roused himself long enough to say, “I told you what we will use it for, to take the castle if de Lacy can be persuaded that the writ gives us the authority. If not, then —” Rhys shrugged his shoulders eloquently. “Here comes Cledog. He’s found the ford!”

  Caerleon’s real fear emerged later that night. They had forded the stream, with wet discomfort but no harm, and made camp two leagues beyond in the forest. The fire burned brightly, and sodden garments were carefully tended and turned to dry.

  Caerleon crouched on his heels near Gwyn, as was his usual practice. “What he wants that writ for,” he told her, “is not the purpose he says. He dislikes me, you know. Jealousy possibly. For my men outnumber his, and rightly, I should be the leader of this troop. But he keeps the writ for his own use.”

  “Why would he?” she wondered. “It calls for his execution, and if a Norman reads it, then …” She left the sentence unfinished.

  “Who is to say that he cannot use it for my execution?” said Caerleon. “If he needs authority — he can show it to my men, who cannot read. I do not trust this.”

  She said stoutly, “But he wouldn’t do that. Your men wouldn’t believe him, to begin with.”

  Caerleon said, bitterness welling up in his voice, “They made him leader, didn’t they? Just because the Old Man of Powys backed him!”

  She turned the subject deftly, as Dewi came to restore her jacket, now dry and warm, to her, and she thought Caerleon had forgotten the writ. It was later that night, having slept heavily from sheer exhaustion, that she woke, knowing something was different, wrong. Overhead was darkness, total, complete, starless. From somewhere came a faint light, and softly, carefully, she turned her head in that direction. It took a moment for her sleep-fogged mind to recognize Caerleon, kneeling at the fire. He took something from his inner tunic and tossed it on the coals. While she watched, he looked furtively around him, and then crept away from the campfire, moving out of the light and into the outer shadows.

  She wanted to rouse Rhys, for his captain’s stealth made her uneasy. But Rhys, beyond the campfire, slept like a dead man, knowing that Caerleon was keeping watch.

  Curious, she inched to the fire. In the middle of the coals, not yet caught on fire, lay the parchment roll — the precious writ that would, if they were in luck, bring them Ludlow Castle without bloodshed. Even as she watched, the thin edges of the scroll glowed red, as tiny flames licked around it. She snatched her dagger from her belt and flicked the scroll out of the embers. She kicked the writ away from the fire to the shadows — fearful lest Caerleon return too soon. She stamped on the reddened corners of the calfskin until the fire was out. Then, after a moment’s thought, she rolled it up again and thrust it down the neck of her tunic, feeling the dying warmth against her skin.

  The next day they hurried on toward Ludlow, because Caerleon feared that de Lacy would not give up the castle without a fight. Rhys agreed, but thought that perhaps the writ might make things easier.

  Gwyn did not reveal that she held the writ in her own garments. She did not know when would be the right moment to produce it. How had Caerleon obtained it? She held her tongue.

  But all the haste that drove them northward and westward across the river Teme toward Ludlow was in vain.

  They heard once again the chilling sound of hoofbeats behind them. And since they were so close to Ludlow, and there was no other crossroad between here and the castle, so Rhys said, Gwyn knew that this time William’s men were riding after the Welsh, none other.

  Rhys had, as usual, lagged behind to keep watch over their rear. “We’re followed!” he announced, as he trotted up to them, even in his urgency keeping his voice low. “The king’s men this time. I recognize their leader’s device.” He glanced at Gwyn. “Do you smear your face a bit with mud, and for God’s sake don’t say a word!”

  To be so close to safety and then to fail — she thought she could not bear it! Panic seized her, and nearly wrought her undoing. She held onto the saddle with one hand, while she smeared mud into her fair skin with the other. The mud was a comfort against stinging insects, and now, she knew, it would make her appear like another of the smallboned soldiers. Her hand on the saddle girth held her against the nearly overpowering wish to flee into the forest behind her and lose herself in the undergrowth, where no man would follow. Even to be devoured by wild boar, as the night fell, woul
d be better than William’s wolves.

  Rhys cast an experienced eye over the disposition of his men and turned to wait for the pursuers. He had not long to wait. Half a dozen men in full armor, sunlight glinting off the points of their lances, rode into sight. Gwyn, obeying Rhys’s instructions, watched them come over the back of the pony that hid her. By the device on his shield, she recognized the leader, Rainault. Her heart sank. Rainault was a formidable warrior, of great repute, and although he was a member of King William’s court, yet he had not smirched himself with the filth that lay in William’s great hall. And Valdemar was just behind him.

  Rainault reined up and looked arrogantly down at Rhys, Lord of the Western Marches, standing on the ground. Even though his attitude was proud in the extreme, yet when he spoke, his words were mild. “So, at last I have caught up with you, Lord Rhys,” he said. “You have ridden far and fast.”

  Rhys said, without emotion, “A Welshman is always anxious to return to his mountains. This flat land makes us uneasy.”

  Rainault looked back over his shoulder. “Flat land? The hills we have ridden over seemed far from flat.”

  Rhys permitted himself a smile. “But not mountains, merely hills.”

  “Our men,” interrupted Caerleon, “had grown uneasy at the proximity of their accustomed enemy. No offense, Sir Rainault, but we like to feel the mountains at our back.”

  Valdemar reined in his horse to stand near Rainault. His eyes searched the faces around him, haughtily and with scorn in his sneering face. More than one of Caerleon’s men — always readier to fight than those who followed Rhys — reached with meaningful deliberation toward his longbow.

  Rainault said, “One might expect you to ride this fast if you, in fact, had the king’s ward in your company.”

  Rhys frowned. “I have given you my reasons.”

  “That edge on your voice makes me suspect I have struck near the mark,” suggested Rainault.

  “You doubt my words?”

  “All barbarians,” said Rainault, with deliberate insult, “are overly touchy about what they call their honor.”

  “This is not to the point,” said Rhys. “Any man will fight if it is necessary. But if you come to take back the king’s ward, then I suggest you look elsewhere. When I left the court I rode alone, with only my friend Daffyd.”

  Rainault agreed. “But it seems strange to the king, or rather to Flambard, that your men had already ridden out. But enough of this fencing, for neither of us wishes to waste time. Do you have the girl?”

  Rhys said, “If I did, do you think I would tell you?” Rainault said, “You owe allegiance to the king —”

  Finally Rhys exploded. “I owe allegiance to no man! I am not the king’s vassal, nor am I beholden to him for anything. And if the king calls me traitor, he had best look to his defenses.”

  Rainault suddenly decided to soothe this prickly antagonist. “No matter, Lord Rhys. Whatever lies between you and my king is not my affair. But the girl is, and I have been especially charged to bring her back. Monfichet has been strangely silent, and perhaps with reason, my sovereign grows suspicious. Hence — my errand. I dare not return, you know, without her.”

  Gwyn, still hiding behind the pony, looked around her at the men who had become her friends. Her vivid imagination showed her the outcome of any battle that might take place on this ancient trackway. Rainault and his men were fully armored, and proof against mere daggers and short swords. She could see, in her mind’s eye, the faces of her friends Ifan, Dewi, Daffyd, and even Rhys, covered with blood, or lying lifeless on the ground. The prospect was more than she could stand, and she stepped out from her shelter. Conscious of her appearance in the leather trousers and heavy homespun shirt, yet she moved with a dignity that gave her identity away with every step.

  Steadily she eyed the leader of the Norman troops. “Sir Rainault, I am Gwynllion Ramsey. I am ready to go back with you. On one condition — that you spare my friends.”

  Rhys, still simmering from Rainault’s insult, exploded once again. “Can’t you do anything you’re told to do? What kind of idiotic scheme is this? Do you think that Rainault will get you back to Winchester in five days on the road?”

  “You impugn my honor, Welshman!”

  “Don’t bother to deny my accusations,” countered Rhys. “You have no honor.”

  Gwyn added with vigor, “You have not forgotten that you would have attacked me in the forest that day? I would not trust you one moment. But,” she added, turning to Rhys, “your men do not owe me their lives.”

  She heard Rainault’s indrawn breath, but if Rhys heard the warning implicit in it, he paid it no heed. His attention Was totally on Gwyn, and he said, “Rainault or one of his men — or all of them — will have you before you get back over the hills.” He added, “Are you too proud to be a Welsh bride?”

  “You offer me marriage?” screeched Gwyn. “Never in this world will you touch me!”

  Rhys, oblivious to all but the fiery woman glaring at him with those green eyes set aslant in her fair face, shouted, “No need to fight me! I tilt not for women! But I do not let a Norman take one of my people! Mind that!”

  “You were not so determined when I stood unprotected on that platform!” she raged. “Where was your Welsh honor then?”

  Gwyn felt her anger rising from her toes and flushing her cheeks. Out of the corner of her eye she could see that Daffyd was appalled at his lord’s fury and indiscretion. But suddenly the interruption from the Normans broke the mood that lay between Rhys and Gwyn. Rainault laughed, a high musical sound that startled the birds in the nearby trees. He was genuinely amused, and he explained. “She is too good to be Welsh, with that temper. And I guarantee her arrival at Winchester, perhaps not as pure as she is now, but she will get there. And my king’s orders will have been followed through. For you must know that my king said only bring her back. He did not say how. Or in what condition.”

  It was too good to be true. Gwyn had feared so all along, riding with the Welsh over the hills and down into the valleys, enjoying every minute of it even though her muscles were stretched and her bones were sore. She was realizing now that for the first time in her life she was truly content, at one with the world around her, and living the way her forebears had lived for generations. It was a hard life to give up, but she knew what she had to do. It would be a poor return to her friends, who had accepted her, helped her, and whom she loved, to turn them over to the vicious Normans. “After all,” she said to Rhys, “this will be no worse than what happened to me at the auction, for sooner or later I was bound to be the possession of some Norman. So I cannot put you in more danger. Believe me, I am grateful for these few days.”

  She put out her hand in an oddly appealing gesture. “I have loved these days, marching with my people through the forest and over the meadows. Only these days have I truly felt alive, felt that I had at last come home to my own heritage. I shall remember.”

  She reached her hand up to touch his cheek, and he caught her wrist and held the palm of her hand against his face. She looked deep into his eyes and saw there a light that told her he was more than angry, more than proud. She turned away, feeling something catch in her throat, but willing herself not to cry before the enemy. For no matter how much Norman blood flowed in her veins, now she could not consider the Normans as anything but foe.

  In a much altered voice she said with sharp warning, “I am ready to go with you back to the king’s court, Rainault, if these men may go free. But whether both you and I reach Winchester alive — that is another question, and we must await the outcome.”

  She started toward the Normans, but suddenly the great dog Maxen stood before her. He put his great body at right angles across her. And one look at him told her that he was not prepared to let her pass. The laugh behind her that rose into the air began with Caerleon and was echoed by the rest of the men. Caerleon’s voice rang out, “The Welsh dog knows his own!”

  Suddenly Rainault�
�s thin veneer shattered. The mockery of Caerleon ripped the last shreds of control from him.

  As they had approached, the Norman soldiers must not have known how close they were to their quarry, for most had not yet donned their heavy mail. Rainault even had taken off his helm, because of the heavy heat of the day. His leather coif fitted tightly enough, but his face was bare, and she could see the play of emotions on his features.

  There was not time to call for his hauberk, nor did he think of it. His fury rose at once, and he stood in his stirrups and lifted his lance at the same moment. “Vile hound!” he roared and hurled the weapon at Maxen with all his force.

  But his aim was hasty. Gwyn felt a sharp blow on her shoulder, and with a startled cry she fell backward to the ground.

  With a mighty shout Rhys sprang at the leader of the Normans, grasping him by the knee, and with his great strength pulling him off his horse. Rainault fell to the ground with a great thud and lay immobile. The other Normans, seeing their leader fallen, spurred their horses into the Welshmen. But Rhys was not alone, for his lieutenants, Ifan, Dewi, and Daffyd, sprang into action behind him, followed by the rest of the Welsh soldiers.

  Gwyn was stunned, the wind knocked out of her. She lay on the ground listening, vaguely, to the sounds of battle around her, loud at the beginning, and then fading away. Only the heavy hooves of the Norman war horses shook the earth. She looked about her once and saw not one Welsh soldier. They had deserted her, she believed, and fell back to the ground. Tears trickled from her eyes, tracing tracks through the dried mud, and dropping, one by one, into her ear. She did not bother to move her head.

  Vaguely in the distance she heard wild cries of battle. She did not know that the Welsh had faded away into the forest and now were attacking the unsuspecting Normans from the flank, shooting their deadly arrows and vanishing before the Normans could even see from whence the shafts came.

  But Rainault, on the ground, had seen the tide of battle wash over him, and the Normans and Welsh were fighting back along the ancient trackway. He rose on his elbow to listen and saw Gwyn lying nearby. “By Our Lady! Your protectors have all gone!”