Crown of Passion

by Jocelyn Carew

  Henry watched her as she mounted the palfrey led to her by a groom. Before he headed north, out of Winchester, he managed to ride, unobserved, close to her. He did not look at her, but she heard him say as he went by, “Trust me, Gwyn. Yet once more, believe in me. Wait …” He spurred his horse then, and rode on ahead.

  Gwyn knew she must trust Henry or give up, for the last time, all hope.

  Wait, he had said.

  7

  Rhys felt rough hands lift him and set him on a horse. Men rode on either side. Lest I escape? Rhys thought ironically. With my wrists shackled together like this? The horse had a hard gait, not like the rocking trot of the ponies Rhys knew. He could not hold himself in the saddle, and every step sent an agonizing pain up his spine.

  The knight who rode beside him halted once and gave swift instructions. Then someone unlocked the shackles, and for the rest of the long ride Rhys held on to the rim of the saddle. It was better.

  The day was far advanced, and Rhys wondered whether they could return to the castle before dark. Perhaps in the darkness he could find an opportunity to elude his guards. The chain hanging loose now from one wrist shackle, if used shrewdly, could dash a man’s brains out.

  Would they set him loose in the forest and hunt him, like a stag? Would they — as he had heard was sometimes done — set him in an arena to fight a pack of hungry wolves? If that were the case, he would deal a few blows with his chain before he fell beneath the jaws of the beasts, and he would not be particular about whether the smashed heads were canine or human.

  Gwyn rode in the rear of the cavalcade. Full circle, she reflected stonily. Here in the New Forest she had saved the life of the Saxon maid. Where were they all now? Hyrtha had found her brother and left England. Rainault was dead, killed long ago by Maxen. Falsworth rode ahead, near the king, and Valdemar had fled to Normandy. Of that long-ago day, only she and Falsworth remained — and Henry.

  At length they arrived at a clearing in the forest, possibly once the site of a village, now destroyed, its inhabitants sent away or killed — no matter which, according to William Rufus — in order that the king’s deer might roam freely.

  A tree stood in the middle of the glade. Rhys was helped down, roughly, from the saddle and now stood upright on the ground next to the huge beech bole.

  Flambard’s gross plan now unfolded. Falsworth brought Gwyn close to the inner circle around the tree. “So you don’t miss a bit of this!” he grinned. A guard moved close to her.

  Rhys’s wrists were shackled again, behind him. He struggled briefly, but the dozen men who seized him were more than he could overcome. The dungeon had sapped his power.

  Thongs bound his chest to the tree. Rough hands tied his ankles, spread his legs apart, and secured ankle fetters around the trunk of the tree. They tore off his tattered clothes, and flung them aside into the underbrush.

  Red scars crisscrossing his chest marked his scarcely healed wounds. His body was cut and swollen and bruised in every place.

  Gwyn sat her horse as though she had been turned to stone. She could not believe — or would not — that Christians could so torment another soul.

  Flambard cried out, “Is all ready? I see it is. Brian du Pré, where are you? Oh, here you are, right on the front row, I see. You have a grudge to settle with this — this savage, am I right? Remember the beating he gave you at Ludlow? Go to it, Brian!”

  The sound came, then, of a half dozen hard slaps. Rhys’s head moved with the force of the blows, but no whimper came. Flambard stopped Brian. “Slaps, Brian? Can you think of nothing better? I see I shall have to get some help for you!”

  Flambard’s evil eyes glittered. He glanced sidelong at the king, whose red face was intent.

  But Brian gave one more blow, and the ring on his hand cut Rhys’s face. Blood oozed out and trickled down into Rhys’s matted beard.

  Gwyn tried to move, to call out. But her voice would not come, her legs seemed paralyzed, and she could not move. Nor could she turn away from the sickening scene.

  The brightly garbed striplings of the court, summoned by Flambard, fell on their victim. The torture of a helpless victim stirred them. Gwyn could not think of these catamites as people, and in truth, they moved in a swarm, as though they were not human.

  Mercifully, their bodies hid their victim from her eyes. She could see only their backs — rose, gold, pale green. But her ears were not stoppered. She remembered the cries that night when Brian first met the fate he later embraced. The cries, the hooting laughs, were the same now. Exclamations rose to her ears.

  William soon tired of the sickening fluttering of his minions. It turned his stomach. He decided that the nausea was a result of the foul dish he had eaten the night before, that had turned his insides out all night long. He beckoned to Wat Tirel, and the two of them rode out of the clearing, in pursuit, said William, of some honest hunting.

  She slid to the ground and buried her face in her mount’s mane. The horrible voices kept on and on.

  “Let’s try this on him! Who has a knife? Get the knife!”

  Then for the first time Rhys called out. In clear, agonized Cymric, he shouted, “Gwyn! Kill me! If you love me, kill me!”

  The last words dissolved into a long bellow of rage and pain. She saw the knife glinting in the fading light. Two of the men struggled for it, each claiming the right to it.

  Then, at last, Gwyn’s paralysis lifted. Her guard’s attention was on the scene before him, and Gwyn seized the lance from his slack grasp before he could stop her.

  The lance was more than she could handle. Even grasping it with both hands, the point slid downward until it touched the dirt. Making a valiant effort, she lifted it and threw it with both hands, all her body behind it. The lance missed its mark, as she might have expected, but the shouts that heralded its passage caused a great deal of confusion.

  Gwyn fled. There was nothing more she could do for Rhys, except perhaps to draw his tormentors after her. She had a confused hope of getting far enough away that their taste for this sport might be weakened in favor of capturing her.

  She fled through the forest, zigzagging as she knew wild boars did. Now she really had returned to the beginning, to when she had first seen Hyrtha running from the Normans.

  Finding a little place where a great tree had been uprooted, she hid. The hunt went past, in full cry, and she gave thanks. But her relief was premature, for she emerged from her hiding place too soon and one of the dogs gave tongue. She could hear the hunt circling back, and she ran in the only direction she could. She heard the cries of her pursuers coming closer all the time.

  She came upon a spring in a clearing. The ground around it was wet and soggy. She paused to gather her breath, to ease the stitch in her side, and saw behind her the clear marks of her shoes. There would be no escape, for even a child could follow her tracks. She remembered again, as she had that other day, an old trick of the fox. She found a stream and waded in it as far as she could go before she left it. At last, running again, sagging with every step, she arrived at a clearing.

  But somebody had reached the glade before she had. A figure was leaving on the opposite side. There was something furtive about the man’s steps, and she was newly frightened. There in the middle of the clearing was a sight that clutched her heart in a cold fist.

  William Rufus, an arrow through his fat chest, lay on his back in the clearing. He stared at the sky with lifeless eyes.

  Her tormentor was dead.

  Instinct told her not to follow the man she had seen leaving the clearing. If he had, in fact, killed his king, he would certainly have no mercy on her, for she was a witness. She took another turn to the left and stumbled out of the clearing directly into a man standing in the track.

  It was a lowly priest, one she had seen at court. She had noticed him back at the clearing where Rhys was tortured. He had not dared to stop it. Rightly so, she had thought, for if he had protested he would simply have joined Rhys spread-eagled agai
nst the tree.

  Now, seeing his king dead, and perhaps seeing a new life opening for him, the priest grew brave. He handed her a dagger and told her, “Go back. Not the way you came, but back in the direction I have just come from. You will find Lord Rhys at the end of the trail.”

  She said, “I have been traveling for so long …”

  But the priest said urgently, “You have traveled in a circle, and Lord Rhys is just beyond.” He gestured and sent her on her way. She had circled, she found, and William had not been far away from the clearing when he was killed.

  Stumbling into the clearing, she found Rhys alone, sagging against his leather bindings. All the others had fled. With the dagger the priest had given her, she cut the leather thongs. As she severed the last thong, he fell headlong onto the grass before her. Was he dead? She gave a cry and dropped to her knees beside him. His eyes were closed, but he was breathing.

  She searched for, something to hide his nakedness, and found her own cloak, still hanging by a thread to her shoulders. Taking it off, she covered him gently, then sat beside him. His poor face still bled, cut from Brian’s ring. She wiped the blood away with her long hair. She lifted his head into her lap and sat, not knowing what else to do. She could hear, far off, the hounds still baying on her track. If they emerged into the clearing, they would certainly find the king’s body.

  But all of that seemed to be happening in a world far away. Just now she had Rhys’s head in her lap, and that was enough to content her, until she could think what to do. She had seen the wounds on his body, the cuts in his groin where they had tried to emasculate him.

  Rhys moaned, his torn lips moving mindlessly against her thigh. She did not know whether or not he was dying. But he was alive this moment, in the free air of the cool, leafy forest. Birds called high overhead, and nearby a squirrel pawed vigorously in search of beechnuts. She could abide Rhys’s death now, here, away from the dungeon. Abide it, if it had to be, knowing that she would follow him soon.

  She did not know how long she sat there before the enormity of what she had seen in the clearing behind her finally penetrated. King William Rufus was lying slain, dead by the hand of one of his own men. The figure she had seen leaving the clearing was familiar to her. She could not swear to it, but he looked like Wat Tirel. And if it had indeed been Wat Tirel, then she was sure Prince Henry was not far away.

  He had said he was going to another part of the forest in order to hunt. As any general might do, he had made sure that, whatever happened, there were people with him who knew that he could not have been near William at the time of the murder. And she remembered the odd exchange of glances between Henry and Wat Tirel, Henry’s hints.

  England, that poor bruised land, had suffered under William Rufus as much as she herself had. This was a day of liberation for everyone, and she would not question the ways of providence.

  Rhys stirred and moaned. He turned his head slightly and buried his face in her thigh. His breath came regularly now and was not quite so shallow. She felt it, close against her skin, as though the man and the woman, alone in the glade, were one being. This, then, was the end of their long journey.

  She did not know how to get help for him, nor what to do next. She had been buffeted by forces outside her for so long that now when she needed her wits, they had fled.

  She knew later that she had drowsed, for shadows had crept across the clearing. Then she recognized the hurrying sound of horses’ hooves, at a gallop. They were coming closer. She watched the track into the clearing, and soon saw Henry. He was coming from the direction opposite from where William Rufus lay slain. Henry reined up sharply when he saw her and exclaimed, “What is this? What has happened? Is that Rhys? Why are you here alone?”

  Gwyn said, “They all chased me, and I came back.”

  As an explanation, it lacked any coherence, but Henry seemed satisfied. He said, “I was having a cup of milk at the far end of the forest, when the peasant woman there suddenly said, ‘I see that you are king.’”

  His horse shook its head and the harness jingled. Gwyn said, “It is true. Your brother is dead.”

  Henry appeared thunderstruck, but on closer examination, Gwyn thought he was not so surprised. Either he had believed the peasant woman with her second sight, or else he had secretly known about the murder.

  He dismounted and came across the clearing to look more closely at Rhys. Henry said softly, “Does he still live?”

  Gwyn nodded and then on impulse took away her cloak and showed Henry the grievous cuts on Rhys’s body.

  The look of horror that spread across Henry’s face was genuine. “I would not have had this happen.”

  Gwyn said, “Could you have stopped it?”

  He said, “One way or another, it is stopped. I can do something about it now, and I shall.”

  The two grooms with whom he had left the clearing now multiplied into a larger group. She knew these men. They were not the ones King William had kept around him. These were men of substance and honor. It seemed to her that the whole world now knew that King William was dead, and that Prince Henry was the new king. Henry turned to some of his men and said, “Take care of these people.” To Gwyn he added, “I must be sure he is dead.”

  Gwyn said, “I saw him.”

  Henry said, “But I must be sure —”

  Gwyn interrupted him wearily, “That the job is done?” Quickly ashamed, she said, “It doesn’t matter how it happened.”

  Henry stood looking down at her and said in a soft voice, “You won’t reconsider? I see you won’t. But I must get to Westminster, and to the Exchequer. There are things I must do.” He turned to the men around him and said, giving orders in a regal fashion, “Take these people to the keep at Winchester, where they will be safe. Lord Rhys —” he indicated the wounded man with one hand, “Lord Rhys is our friend. Treat him so.”

  The rest went by as in a dream. Careful hands lifted Rhys and conveyed him and Gwyn to Winchester. Passing by the round tower that she knew so well, Henry’s men carried Rhys’s litter across the drawbridge to the great keep. Attendants, warned by a man dispatched ahead of the slow-moving procession, were already scurrying to bring some comforts to the austere structure. A cheering fire blazed in the hearth.

  Gwyn gave a passing thought to the question, is Henry keeping us in, or keeping our enemies out? Rhys was delirious, shouting alternately for Daffyd, for Gwyn, even for the great dead hound Maxen. But never for Nesta. Later, after Gwyn saw an apothecary famed for his wisdom hastening to Rhys in a room below hers, she permitted herself to sleep.

  Gwyn stayed by Rhys’s side all that next day. He began to recover. In the afternoon she tried to rouse him to take a little broth. She spooned the broth into Rhys’s mouth until it was half gone. Then, suddenly, he struggled to sit up. “I can feed myself. You don’t have to feed me like a baby.”

  His eyes shone as she realized that he was coming back to her.

  He finished the broth and looked at the empty bowl wistfully. She snatched it away and ran to ask for more. When it came he wolfed it down. She realized then that he had not tasted food since they had been captured at the Roman baths.

  He would have eaten more, but she said, “Wait, don’t overdo your first meal.” He nodded reluctant agreement and settled back. “Now, Gwyn, my love, tell me where we are.”

  She told him as much as she could of all that had happened to them both since they had left the Roman baths. She did not tell him of the fate William had prepared for her. Nor could she tell him yet about Nesta.

  His first question was for her own safety. “What happened to you?”

  She was able to look him in the eye and say truthfully, “Nothing. We were saved in time.”

  Then she had to tell him about what had happened in the forest. He remembered only fragments of the torture, and did not remember her saving him at all. He remembered nothing of the ride on the cart from the forest to the castle.

  He was astounded to hear that K
ing William, the enemy, was dead at last. He asked her about it more than once, apparently unable to take it in. Finally, he said, “Then why are we here in this jail?”

  “I have not asked. Certainly all our wants are met, and it is far more comfortable than the straw below ground.”

  Rhys could only agree, and then he asked her the question she had been dreading. “Where is Daffyd?”

  Gwyn shook her head sadly. “I saw him fall but I don’t know what happened after that. He was surrounded by Normans. It is hard to believe he could have escaped. But I did not see him killed.”

  It was little enough hope, but it was all she could give him.

  At length, Rhys said, lowering his voice, “Do you think Henry was in on what just happened?”

  “I really don’t know. He knew about it. He claimed that a peasant had told him that he was the new king. And yet he could not have shot the arrow, for he came from the opposite direction. I truly don’t know.”

  Rhys said generously, “Let us not ask any more questions. Prince Henry, if he did, had every right on his side. And I for one will not bite the hand that saved me.”

  Rhys was not as strong as he had thought, for soon he drifted back into a sound, healing sleep. Gwyn sat looking out the slit window across the river. The meadows beyond, peaceful and quiet, were restoring in themselves. She reflected upon the timely death of King William. The fatal arrow had had a great deal of force behind it. Not everyone could draw a bow that strongly. There were only a handful of men with such power. For she was sure the assailant had stood across the clearing. William would not have allowed anyone that close with a bow and arrow. Besides, he had not run, but had fallen where he was hit. Then she remembered the looks between Wat Tirel and Prince Henry, and Prince Henry’s hints that she would be saved. And the priest had not seemed surprised by the murder. Had they all been in on the conspiracy? And Henry, riding out to slay the wolf, had ridden alone with two grooms. Had the “wolf” in fact been his brother?