Crown of Passion

by Jocelyn Carew

  Gwyn roused at the sound of the enemy’s triumphant laughter. She rolled away from him and scrambled to her knees. Her dagger was still in her hand, to her surprise, and she looked at it as though she did not know what it was.

  She must have been wounded — she remembered that — but she could not now recall anything except the glowing eyes of the man facing her from the ground not more than a man’s length away.

  They were the only two in the world, so he thought, and though he may have received a wound that laid him senseless for a time, yet before he died, his loins would be eased on this girl, this witch — for she had sauntered pertly through his dreams and capered through his days, until the sight of her wrought a fever in his blood.

  He struggled to his feet and took a step toward Gwyn. She faced him, dagger drawn, from her knees. She watched, alert to any change in him, trying to sense his next move. Neither of them saw a shadowy creature return from the trackway and stop to sniff the air, to see the threat to the lady he adored.

  Rainault’s forward lunge bore her to the ground, and she screamed. Her dagger flashed, but his heavy hand held her arm pinioned to the ground, and she could not strike. She closed her eyes, writhing and struggling against the Norman.

  He reached out finally and grasped her wrist. As his steel fingers tightened, her fingers became nerveless and the dagger dropped to the ground. This was apparently a signal that Maxen had been waiting for. He lunged forward, toward Rainault’s throat.

  Then — suddenly, with the abruptness of a bolt of lightning — Rainault was tumbled off her body, and she was free. The rest took seconds. She heard Norman curses, savage growls — and then the scream, high pitched, soaring up and up nigh to heaven before it stopped, abruptly, as though cut by a sword. She even thought she heard the crunch of bone just before the voice stopped, its echo quivering in the air after the scream had ceased.

  She did not know how long she sat by Rainault’s body. Her shoulder throbbed for a strange reason — she had forgotten she had been wounded — and strange pleasant scenes coursed before her open, unfocused eyes. Her mother, singing a little Cymric tune, and her father, throwing her up in the air. The pigeons flying in circles around their cote, as evening approached and they went to roost. Somewhere far off the men returning from the fields, with shouts and laughter …

  And Rhys and his men, returning with shout of triumph, seemed to melt into the childhood that this moment possessed her.

  Rhys turned to call over his shoulder, “Their leader must have gotten clear away —”

  Daffyd cried out, “No, lord, he did not. See there —”

  “It is clear enough,” said Rhys, shocked. “See, here the Norman came for the lady. There, see the tracks, the hound attacked. Killed him.”

  “Like a double ax cleaving his skull,” said Caerleon with a sick voice. “No battle ax could do better. See yonder, where the dog stands with blood yet on his jaws.”

  “But the lady —” began Daffyd.

  “Is wounded,” finished Rhys, dropping to his knees beside her. “Here, Gwyn, let me look.”

  She stared at him, her lips parted, her eyes wild and blank. “Wounded?” It was a plaintive question, before she fainted.

  The Normans were routed, their leader slain. The Welsh took one prisoner, Valdemar, who stood proudly erect with a noose around his neck. Only his eyes, darting restlessly around the clearing, and his tongue, licking his bloodless lips incessantly, betrayed his abject fear.

  Gwyn, sure of her safety now, let the pain of her shoulder and the sore shock in her heart overcome her, and she sank unconscious to the ground. When she came to, the battle had been sorted out. Her friends wore various marks of battle, red streaks down the cheek, one or two limping badly, and a number of them with marks on their faces that would tomorrow result in great blackened eyes. Caerleon said, “We are holding this caitiff for ransom. The king will give a good sum to get his knight back.”

  Rhys disagreed. “We are holding the man for his usefulness. And not for ransom.”

  They had intended to reach Ludlow Castle that very day, but with the interruption of the battle and the need for slow transport of the wounded, Rhys decreed a halt early in the afternoon. The river that they had been following all along was the Teme, which encircled the walls of Ludlow Castle. Camp was made that day in a more somber fashion than ever before. The men were weary with their battle, and sore limbs and muscles cried out for rest.

  For all their secrecy — crossing the Severn above Worcester and avoiding the cities — Rainault had followed them, and caught up with them. It was only a matter of time, said Rhys, before another army would be sent after them, and they could not count on repelling the next attack, vanquishing the next army.

  Valdemar, a halter around his neck like a condemned prisoner, stumbled between Welsh guards. “This pace would kill a horse,” he complained once. “But savages would not know how to treat a prisoner.”

  Caerleon overheard him. “A good thing we are civilized,” he taunted with good humor. “Else we would find a Norman torture to try out on you.”

  Gwyn scarcely heeded her companions. She was feeling weak from the loss of blood. But she had seen a man killed, horribly, and it did not matter that he was bent on her destruction. She closed her eyes and could still feel the sunlight hot on her face and hear the crunch of bone as Maxen avenged her.

  She dropped her hand from time to time, when they halted for the night, to stroke the brute head and talked gently to him. He had saved her — and she trusted him more than she did Rhys or Caerleon, or even Daffyd.

  She was glad enough to rest against the blankets, piled up against a tree trunk. She drowsed, until Rhys came and knelt beside her. “Now let’s look at your wound,” he said. He cut away the cloth from her shoulder with his sharp dirk and looked at it, saying reassuringly, “Not so bad. Another two inches lower, though, and you would not be riding toward Ludlow.”

  His fingers were gentle, but there was soreness and pain that she felt, and she could not answer him. There were many thoughts crowding through her mind, but there was nothing she could say.

  Rhys said it for her. “You are a foolish lady. You know you would not have gotten to Winchester unharmed.”

  She nodded. “I know it, but if I had gone, you would not have that mark down your cheek. Nor would these others all be bearing the signs of battle.”

  He leaned back on his heels and looked at her, satisfied that the bandage would hold. “I don’t understand you. Any woman I know would have been very careful of her skin.”

  Gwyn said dully, over the pain, “Perhaps they have more to lose than I.”

  “You would really have given up and gone back with them?”

  Gwyn roused herself. “You have all been good to me, and it is poor repayment to thrust you into battle.”

  Rhys, surprisingly, chuckled. “You’ve had your own share in this,” he laughed. “I saw you facing down Rainault. And even if Maxen hadn’t come to your rescue, I doubt not that Rainault would still be lying dead back there upon the trail.”

  She shuddered, closing her eyes against the remembered sight of Rainault lying in his gore on the trail. “Is that all you think about, fighting?”

  Rhys, leaning back and surveying her with an enigmatic look in his eyes, said with a small smile, “No, I do think of other things than fighting.” There was something in his voice that roused her from her lethargy, and she glanced up quickly. That special note in his voice was reflected in his eyes, and she felt a tiny flicker of response warming her.

  “Did you mean it,” he asked with unaccustomed shyness, “when you said you had enjoyed these days on the march?”

  “Yes,” she said, “I meant it. I thought I would be dead in a few hours, you see, and I spoke only the truth.”

  “It has been a good time,” Rhys agreed, “for me as well. But it is over.” She was silent for so long that he reached to stroke her fingers. “You knew it would be over?”


  “Of course,” she said. “We will be in Ludlow Castle tomorrow. And then?”

  He did not answer directly. “There are men and women in the back valleys of Wales who do not sleep quietly in their cottages, lest the Norman invaders come to take their sheep and burn their thatch. There are men who sit up at night to guard their children and their women against the border raiders. There are valleys where grain is planted no more, for dry grain fields can be set aflame with one spark, and the harvest destroyed within an hour.”

  “You cannot stop this with one castle.”

  “I can take a stronghold and keep it, and bring the other tribes, the princes of South Wales, of Powys, Gwynedd, Clwyd, into one united force, and the Normans must retreat out of our lands.”

  “It can’t be done,” she said. “Even you and Caerleon cannot agree on the smallest thing.”

  His eyes glowed for a moment. “We agree on one thing,” he told her, his gaze traveling lightly over her. “You are without doubt a witch — and a very desirable woman!”

  But then the moment was gone. Rhys got to his feet, and looking down at her, he said, “I’ve got a job to do, just now. But in the meantime, don’t do anything foolish, like running back to the Normans.”

  She looked up at him, her eyes shining, and he nodded once, satisfied with what he saw. He touched the top of her hair and said in a very low voice, “Sleep well, for I can’t have you suffering like this.”

  Then he called the great dog Maxen, said a word to him in Welsh that she recognized as meaning “Guard!” and went off into the camp.

  She slept almost immediately, but she was awakened once by voices nearby, low but very urgent. She lay without moving and listened. Valdemar was talking to someone. Even though he spoke hardly above a whisper, there was menace in his voice, and she strained to hear.

  “You’re Savages. You think that the king would send out only a handful of men like this? We don’t consider you a real army, only a small raiding party of barbarians. We are only the van of the army. There are many more coming behind us.”

  It was Caerleon he was talking to. “You can’t have it both ways, Valdemar. Either we are a worthy foe, in which case you may easily have an army behind, or else we are not worth your trouble and you are not merely the van. Now which is it to be?”

  “Let me loose and we’ll settle this!” exclaimed Valdemar. “One Norman is worth two savage Celts, any day. The only way you can win is to overpower us. You see you keep a guard on me, three men is it?”

  “Only to keep your lying tongue in check,” shot back Caerleon. “Not for fear you will harm anyone!”

  Valdemar said something in an undertone that Gwyn could not hear. But Caerleon merely laughed and said, “You can’t offer me enough to turn my loyalty! Not a petty, arms-carrying lackey like you!”

  A note in Caerleon’s voice fell jarringly on Gwyn’s ear. Another time, perhaps, a man with more to offer — would Caerleon then yield? She thought, troubled, I could not be sure of his faithfulness. However, Valdemar seemed to have run out of insults, for all he could think of was to repeat his worn-out epithets — savages and brutes.

  At length Caerleon had had enough. His always-short temper flared up. She heard the flat sound in the night of palm against face. Valdemar jeered, “That’s just like you savages! To strike an unarmed man, one with his hands behind his back, that’s the Welsh way of it. If you untied my wrists, I’d show you —”

  Gwyn was not the only one awakened by the exchange. For Rhys came, his voice rough with sleep. “What rouses even the night birds? You want the world to know we are here?”

  Valdemar snarled, “He struck a man already unarmed and bound! Let me loose!”

  “Take care what you say,” shouted Caerleon. “I did not strike you!”

  “You lie in your teeth! By the splendor of God, I’ll make you pay for that!”

  Rhys, awakened fully now, said peaceably, “Let me not hear your Conqueror’s oath on your lips again! For you demean his memory in such way. Caerleon, the prisoner says you struck him?”

  Caerleon said furiously, “You listen to a lying Norman rather than your own captain and countryman?”

  After a long moment Rhys turned to Valdemar and said, “Let me hear no more lies from you. Nor another sound this night. I would get some sleep and will deal hardly with any caterwauler!”

  Gwyn knew that Caerleon had lied when he denied striking the prisoner. But — she had seen nothing. Before she could decide whether to speak or remain silent, she became conscious again of pain throbbing in her shoulder, and Caerleon and his lie were forgotten.

  They moved ahead, at a swifter trot now, for Rhys was most anxious to get inside the strong walls of Ludlow Castle before reinforcements arrived.

  “For look you,” he pointed out. “Some of Rainault’s men survived, and they will shriek the news to William — it is only a matter of when the Norman army comes, for come it will. We must take the castle from de Lacy at once, or not at all.”

  Caerleon was still sulking from his encounter with Valdemar the night before. “If de Lacy does not cede the castle, then we shall take it by force. I long to see the Norman eat dirt.”

  The little cavalcade moved slowly upstream beside the River Teme. Somewhere beyond the forest the River Corve ran southward, between the high ground of Brown Clee Hill and Wenlock Edge, to join the Teme. Where the two rivers joined, skirting the bottom of a cliff, Roger de Lacy, some thirteen years before, had begun to build his castle, which looked out toward the blue hills of Wales.

  At long length, just before noon, they broke out of the heavy forest and stood amazed. Stone walls and square towers stood starkly outlined against the blue sky, seeming to touch the small white clouds scurrying from the Welsh mountains across the valley. Perched on top of a high cliff, bordered at its feet by the swift-flowing streams, the castle looked far too massive and secure for an army to breach the walls. Gwyn looked around her at her companions.

  The great impregnable walls lay before them, and all Lord Rhys had at hand was a score of leather-clad mountain men with longbows and a quiver of arrows.

  3

  The castle rose from its surroundings, dark and menacing. At their feet, as they stood on the edge of the forest, stretched a flower-dotted meadow. The river that lapped the walls of the castle made a great bend to the south. It was a fair site, for those on the watchtower could see in all directions, and no enemy could surprise them.

  The fort had been built along the Western Marches ten years before by Roger de Lacy, at the order of William the Conqueror. William had licensed castles throughout his new realm, and only toward the end of his reign had he felt secure enough to have castles erected along the border. The Welsh by that time had made themselves felt, and William knew that the mountain folk must be subdued, or there would never be peace in England.

  The castle seemed like a brooding beast, facing toward the west. Arrow slits looked out to the mountains, and Gwyn knew that watchful eyes constantly searched the hills for movement.

  Erom this stronghold of the conquering Normans, so Rhys had said, emerged the raiding parties that set the Western Marches aflame in the night, the brigands that harried the mountain folk and drove away their stock, leaving the owners to starve.

  Gwyn reflected, abruptly, that she was looking at a castle of the Normans, one her father might have built had he lived, through Welsh eyes, and seeing only the need to liberate the Marches from the oppressors.

  The small Welsh army camped there, without a fire, along the edge of the forest, as the shadows began to lengthen across the meadows and dapple the stream with darkness.

  Caerleon, often impulsive, cried, “Let’s storm it!”

  Rhys said, without humor, “With what? Twenty men with leather jerkins?”

  “Their bowmen cannot match ours,” Cledog pointed out, “for they set more store by hand-to-hand fighting.”

  Caerleon said impatiently, “Let us pick off their sentries and show them
we mean business.”

  Ifan was a man of few words. But when he did speak, he usually made sense. Now he said, “But they don’t know what business we mean, unless we tell them.”

  Rhys nodded approvingly. “We’ll send a herald and tell them we have the king’s writ.” He began to search the pack on the saddle of his lead pony. “I should like to sleep this night within walls, but perhaps it is better to wait till morning. I cannot find the writ!”

  “The writ?” answered Caerleon. “The one that says you are to be executed without a trial?”

  “Aye,” said Rhys absently, pulling the pack to the ground and unrolling it. “It is needful, if de Lacy cannot read the Latin in it — we agree on this.”

  “I did not agree,” said Caerleon, a hard edge to his voice. “As a matter of fact, you will not find the writ.” Rhys stared at Caerleon and misliked what he saw. He kicked the pack to one side and took a step toward his captain. “You took the writ?”

  Caerleon, hands on hips, smiled in triumph. “You will not find it. Suppose de Lacy lies to us — it is like the Norman dogs to treat falsely with us. And suppose then they clap you into the dungeon, leaving us outside the walls. What then?”

  “Where is the writ?”

  Caerleon said finally, with an air of flinging down a gauntlet, “I burned it.”

  Rhys took a step toward his captain, his face dark with wrath. “You dared to steal the writ —”

  “Rhys —”

  Whether Rhys would have throttled Caerleon, no one knew. Daffyd stood in an arrested position, nearby, watching the two leaders. Cledog and Dewi moved involuntarily toward Rhys, and Gwyn heard the low growl in Rhys’s throat …

  A shout came from the tower then — and they knew their presence had been discovered.

  In the end it was Dai of the stentorian voice who was sent as herald. Crossing the meadow, with flag of truce upheld, he advanced to within a few yards of the wall and summoned the castle. There was activity along the top of the walls, and eventually Roger de Lacy himself arrived. Dai summoned him to give up the castle, for the king’s writ ordered it.