Crown of Passion

by Jocelyn Carew

  Cynan objected strenuously. “Get that woman back? She is far more trouble than benefit. If you wish to do South Wales a favor, lady, let her go to whatever fate she has asked for.”

  “You don’t understand,” said Gwyn. “It’s a matter of — of policy.”

  “Policy!” snorted Taran. But he said no more.

  Cynan was not so easily silenced. He waited until Daffyd emerged from Lord Rhys’s room. “I wanted to give you farewell,” began Cynan, “for we are leaving on the morrow.”

  “For Port Madoc?” exclaimed Daffyd. “And the lady?”

  “Does not go,” said Cynan. “Don’t look so satisfied, Daffyd, for she does not stay, either.”

  “I’d say the sun has addled your wits, if you had any to begin with,” snorted Daffyd. “Which is it — go or stay?”

  “Neither,” said Cynan earnestly, “and it’s that I want to talk to you about.”

  He explained Gwyn’s intentions. Daffyd listened with growing absorption. “Those two,” he rumbled at last. “My lord and the lady — daft they be about each other, but will they admit it like Christians? Never!”

  Daffyd thought for such a long time that Cynan believed he had forgotten the problem, but suddenly a beatific smile dawned upon Daffyd’s weather-darkened face. “Leave it to me,” he chortled, slapping Cynan on the back so hard he coughed. “I’ll see to it!”

  “You’ve got an idea?” cried Cynan.

  “That I have, boy, that I have.”

  His master was not fit yet to travel, Daffyd knew, but the evil of another separation between Rhys and Gwyn was strongly in Daffyd’s mind. “Sometimes a man is so stubborn he stands in his own way,” Daffyd ruminated, “and all suffer from it. But not this time.”

  He turned and went in to inform his master of the lady’s plan.

  2

  Rhys was as weak as Daffyd had said, and the struggle to get his clothes on, even with Daffyd helping him, was almost more than he could endure. But the need to talk to Griffith, to get Nesta back before she could be dishonored, drove him on. He was living on the edge of his nerves, and he had no energy left to think of anything but Nesta.

  Nesta was nothing to Rhys. She was a stupid woman, totally self-centered, with an interest in him only for what he could give her. And Rhys was not foolish enough to think that she would change after they were married.

  But personal feelings had nothing to do with the fact that her honor — and Rhys’s own — was at stake. The Normans could not be allowed to kidnap the Princess Nesta. It was that simple.

  Rhys made his way to Prince Griffith’s room, barely able to stand but insisting on walking unaided. Once he stumbled from weakness and nearly fell but for Daffyd’s strong arm.

  Rhys muttered, “I’m thankful, old friend, but let me go my own way. I would not have the prince know my weakness.”

  Daffyd fell a little behind then, but stayed close as a shadow.

  He followed Rhys across the courtyard to where Prince Griffith was nursing his wounds. Rhys, swaying dizzily, was astounded to behold Prince Griffith, a small bandage around his upper arm, surrounded by servants. Before him was a large table filled with food, the roast goose having been dispatched long before. Now there was fruit, and some of the special cake that Griffith was partial to. Griffith’s eyes met Rhys’s, then slid away. Griffith, guilty because he had ignored his ally Rhys, cried, “I see that you are not as ill as they let me believe. I stayed away, not wishing to burden you with my own problems.”

  Rhys said bluntly, “When are you going after your sister?”

  Griffith said nothing. He examined an apple with great care and then, with a sigh, set it down. “I think this is not quite ripe,” he complained, gesturing to one of the servants. The offending apple was removed, and Griffith waited for a replacement.

  Eyeing Rhys at last, Griffith said, “You should have married Nesta when you had a chance. None of this would have happened if you had done your duty. You agreed to marry her, and yet you go anywhere except to the altar.”

  Rhys’s voice was rough with indignation. “How could I have stopped Nesta from inviting the Normans to carry her off?”

  Griffith’s eyes sparked with impatience. “If you had married her —”

  Rhys interrupted him. “Nesta was a simpleton to stand out in the open, wearing Gwyn’s cloak. She must have expected the Normans to take her. Did she ever have a thought in her head?”

  Griffith blazed away then. The two men were at swords’ points, but the prince gave no word about any expedition to rescue his sister. Finally, Griffith said, “It is the Lady Gwyn who made all the trouble. If it had not been for her, the Normans would never have come this far.”

  Gwyn, crossing the yard, watched Rhys disappear through the door of Griffith’s hall. She had not thought he was well enough to stand, let alone to walk almost unaided for even the shortest distance. Some great event must have come to pass, to bring Rhys so far from his sickbed. Hesitating for only a moment, she abandoned her errand and drifted closer to the door of the great hall. She dared not invade the meeting lest she be barred. But she could not stay away.

  The scales fell from Rhys’s eyes and he saw truly. The sight that came to him was more than a foolish, selfish, indolent idiot, rejecting an apple and vaunting his small scratches under the name of battle wounds. He saw, at last, the truth of Aidua’s prophecy — that the time for his dream was not ripe. The time of greatness would not come while there lived petty princes with petty thoughts, unable to conceive of nobility and sacrifices such as Gwyn’s.

  For the likes of this excuse for a man before him, he himself had thrown away years of his life, his men’s lives. He had caused Gwyn untold wretchedness. And he had lost her.

  He said, more to himself than to Griffith, “I wish I had never brought Gwyn here.”

  It was unfortunate that Gwyn joined Daffyd, listening outside the door, only in time to overhear Rhys’s last remark. Daffyd had the advantage of knowing all that had been said before. He said, “Lord Rhys did not mean that the way it sounds, lady.”

  Resentfully, Gwyn said, “You are his man, Daffyd, and I admire your loyalty, but I heard what I heard. And if I had any feeling of regret at leaving this place, I have none now.”

  She gave up on Dewi, for his heart yearned only for Port Madoc. Instead, she approached Cynan, Daffyd’s good friend, and a trustworthy man. Somewhat to her surprise, Cynan was almost eager to go with her. She did not know that Daffyd had coached him. She was merely grateful for his loyalty.

  Gwyn joined her men at dawn. Without any noise, without being more visible than shadows against shadows, Gwyn, Cynan, and half a score of others slipped through the gates and moved toward the east.

  She rode ahead of her men, wrapped in a silence they dared not breach. Cynan rode directly behind her. He reflected on his instructions from Daffyd — to keep the lady traveling on a certain track, and to leave such a broad trail behind them that anybody coming after could follow it. He had his work cut out for him, he thought darkly, if he were to tell the Lady Gwyn what she should do. Gwyn was obsessed with the idea of leaving Brecknock behind, of putting enough distance between the fort and herself on the first day that she would not be tempted to return.

  Late that day, after they had made camp, they heard the sound of galloping hooves. She glanced at Cynan, but he seemed unconcerned. She rose to her feet. Recognizing the arrivals, she commented bitterly, “I should have known that Rhys would not take no for an answer.”

  Here he was, swaying in his saddle. Daffyd hurried to help him down. Rhys was stiff from riding, in great pain from his wounds, and angry as a wounded beast.

  Cynan, sturdy as usual, stood between Rhys and Gwyn. He said, “It is my fault, Lord Rhys. I should not have allowed the lady to come.”

  “Cynan, that is nonsense,” said Gwyn. “You know I would have come by myself. Rhys, if you have to blame someone, blame me. Although I truly fail to see that it’s any of your affair what I do.”r />
  The others moved back then, leaving Rhys and Gwyn to talk alone. The two faced one another warily, neither smiling, each looking to the other for some sign of capitulation.

  Rhys said gruffly, “I’ll take you back with us.”

  “In what a lordly fashion do you dispose of me, Rhys! However, I shall not return.”

  Rhys had traveled long and had been in an agony of pain since he had bawled for his horse and set out after Gwyn. Nesta was long forgotten in his worry over his dear love. His temper was short and dangerous.

  “You run after Henry, then? The princess is only an excuse? I have long suspected that you cherished the thought of Prince Henry’s regard for you.”

  “Nonsense.”

  “You always put the prince first in your talk of the court — always Henry, who saved you from this and that. But he could not save you from yourself!”

  Gwyn, stung, cried out, “That’s not true! I have no regard for Henry except gratitude. He was never first in my heart. Rhys …” She almost told him that, even in the worst times with Caerleon, Rhys had always been first in her love. But she stopped herself.

  “It is my affair! A damned harebrained scheme to think that Henry will give Nesta back just because he has you. He will merely have two hostages then instead of one.”

  She had almost melted, realizing that he had come after her at great pain to himself. But now she saw that Nesta was really at the heart of his concern.

  Rhys realized that she was determined to continue. He could not let her go alone. So he said, “Without the Princess Nesta there is little hope for a united Wales. I shall go with you.”

  Surprisingly, she didn’t take this up. She had enough on her mind without getting into the thorny problem of Nesta. She had decided what she must do, at a cost that she could not even now assess, and her newly built protective shell had not quite hardened. She must do nothing to cause the fragile structure to crack. She was not sure her determination was strong enough to withstand another assault. They would go together, but he was going because of Nesta.

  To her surprise tears stung the back of her eyelids. She had never cried for the massacre at Port Madoc. She had not cried from the time she saw Caerleon’s fist coming toward the side of her head.

  It was as though her real self had stood aside and watched the barbarities. Even at the sight of her people, strewn in attitudes of death around the grassy square of the village, she could not cry.

  But the tears came now. They came like a flood, like a tidal wave. The great storm of her emotions shook her, and she turned, with a deep instinct, to Rhys. He gathered her in, and she cried her heart out on his wounded shoulder. The pain made him grimace, and yet he held her tight, giving her what comfort he could, holding her fast against the demons of her imagination. At length, totally exhausted, she fell asleep where she was, encircled in his arm, her head on his shoulder. Someone brought a blanket, and Rhys tucked it in around her. He kept her warm, all through that night, against the bleak chill of her desolate thoughts. But in the morning she was alone again, she was numb again.

  She was scoured clean — and barren, like a heath upon which the storms have raged and the winds have trumpeted and no living thing grows.

  Rhys, remembering the warmth of her in his arms, her instinctive turning to him for comfort, melted in his anger. She was his only love, and he hoped it was not too late to tell her.

  “We will turn back,” Rhys said. “Perhaps not to Brecknock, but north to Powys.”

  Gwyn dared not let him renew his hold on her. Too many times she had believed him, and as many times as she had believed, he had turned away. She could not risk offering him her love again. She was afraid to yield. “My route lies toward Winchester.”

  “It was Henry, then,” he said leadenly, “all the time.”

  “But you can console yourself with the princess, Lord Rhys, and we will each gain our heart’s desire.”

  She saddled up and clattered out of camp, leaving her men to follow as best they could.

  3

  They rode without speaking for several days, but each was painfully aware of the other. Their one night huddled together, after Gwyn’s terrible sobbing had ceased, had forged a new and tender bond between them. Because of that one night, they could not deny their feelings — at least not to themselves. To one another, they managed only cold courtesy.

  Daffyd insisted upon stopping for one day at a place where people had talked about healing waters since Roman times and even before. Covering Rhys with a thin blanket, Daffyd gently lowered him into the waters and then left his lord in the care of his lady, while he and the other men attended to their camp.

  Rhys sat, eyes closed, aware of Gwyn’s nearness. Neither spoke for several minutes. Then she asked, “What are you thinking about?”

  He had been watching her beneath half-closed lids. He saw the emotions play across her face, and was content just to look at her. He felt suspended in time, much as his body was suspended in the green waters.

  He laughed. “Primarily I was thinking that I have no clothes on.”

  A look of mischief stole across her face. “It’s not the first time!”

  He said, “Nor the last.”

  But she retreated then and said quickly, “Oh yes. It’s the last.”

  Finally, the silence fell between them again, and he broke it. “Why are you going back to Winchester?”

  She looked startled. “I thought you knew. It’s all my fault — what has happened to all of us. To you, to my people, to Nesta. All my fault, and I must atone dor it.”

  “You are not to blame,” he said. “I too, must bear some of the blame. I had such a vivid dream … of all Wales uniting, and of redressing our grievances, wiping out the shame that was inflicted upon you.”

  She raised her hands and dropped them on her knees. “What happened to me was nothing. What happens to the people in their own valley, who dare not go to bed at night without fearing they will be murdered by morning? It is they who need Wales.”

  He agreed. “I was wrong in thinking that Wales would unite. We are all too set on our own injuries, our own rights, our own pride. I have fought a losing cause. The Normans will divide us, and with us divided, they can pick us off like pigeons on a rooftop.”

  Gwyn told him, the bitterness still strong in her voice, “We need not fear the Normans so much as our own people.”

  Rhys said softly, “I have not asked what happened to you, but that is not because I do not wish to know.”

  Gwyn responded, “There is nothing to tell. You loved me less than I thought, that is all.”

  “But I loved you more than I thought.”

  Gwyn said, “Then what of us? What happens to us?”

  Rhys raised an eyebrow and said, “You mean you and me?” She shook her head. “You mean the Welsh. All I can do is keep the border. I am the Lord of the Western Marches. I have been elected by those of my kinsmen, by those of the Welsh tribes which do say, at least in words, that there is such a country as Wales. It is my job to keep the Normans out. When that job is done, then I am finished.”

  She said sadly, “Then it’s constant warfare.”

  Rhys said, correcting her, “Not warfare. In warfare we would lose, for we do not have the heavy armor, the horses, the weapons. But it’s constant raiding, darting out of the mountains and fading away, and trying to hold on to what is ours. This is our Cymric genius, to keep what we have, not to conquer new land.”

  Gwyn said, “Then we will never be free of the Normans.”

  Rhys said, “You remember the priest’s prophecy. It is not for our time. But in the end we will prevail. Our job, and a hard one it is, is to keep alive the spirit of freedom, the knowledge that we have a destiny, and not give in to the conqueror.”

  Gwyn knelt on the mosaic floor beside the pool. She was lost in her own thoughts. “What happens to Nesta?”

  Rhys made a grimace. “She was my terrible mistake. But I do have to get her back, for it w
as my fault that she was taken.”

  Gwyn shook her head. “Henry was after me, not you. And I will get her back for you.”

  Rhys said, “How?”

  She shrugged her shoulders expressively. “Exchange. It’s that simple.”

  He shook his head. “Exchange? You? I will not allow it.”

  Gwyn said impishly, “There is no way you can stop me.”

  With unexpected vigor, he reached for her. She had thought him yet weak, and she was caught off balance. He pulled her to him. His arms and chest were wet still and dampened her thin tunic as he pulled her into his arms. He groaned softly, seeking her mouth with his own. Without hesitation she lifted her arms to lock them behind his neck and pulled his head down to meet her lips. The wet stone beneath them was slippery.

  With a sigh she relaxed in the strong grasp of his arms and moved closer to him. She slipped on the stone, putting them both off balance, and they slid into the water.

  It was not deep. She pulled herself up on her knees and turned to Rhys, laughing.

  She followed his intent gaze and saw that her tunic was soaking wet, clinging to her thin body like a second skin. Her small breasts were outlined boldly, and she caught her breath. The look in Rhys’s eyes, dark with mischief and glowing with hunger for her, found a response in her.

  He stretched out his arms to her and she came to him, floating. He gathered her into his arms, then, fitting his body to hers. Then he carried her with him to a greater ecstasy than either of them had ever known.

  At length they returned to the camp. Daffyd had been worried, and a frown still creased his forehead. He looked relieved when he saw his master and the lady returning, clearly satisfied with themselves, and he thought quietly that at least one of their problems was now solved.

  Gwyn, in spite of the day’s fatigue, could not sleep. There was perhaps danger, and yet she felt safer than she had felt in months. Rhys stood by her side. The future, which had been more than grim, was grim no longer. She had found her love again this afternoon, and this time it was forever. She and Rhys belonged together. He had said, as they reluctantly left the pool, “We will wed. This time, I swear the first priest we see shall bind us together so that no man can come between us.”