Falls the Shadow

by Sharon Kay Penman

  12

  ________

  White Ladies Priory Shropshire, England

  September 1241

  ________

  The guest house of the Augustinian nunnery lay to the north of the priory church. Elen’s maid was standing in the sun before their chamber; she smiled at sight of her lady, and they entered together. Aveline was making idle conversation about the delightfully warm September weather, but almost at once Elen signaled for silence. Surprised, Aveline complied, a little hurt until she saw Elen’s husband asleep on the bed.

  Rob had removed only his shoes and sword. He looked utterly at peace, and in repose, very youthful for a man in his mid-forties. Aveline smiled, thinking that if he were her man, it would have been fun to fluff his pillow, to tiptoe about the chamber whilst he slept. Elen, too, was smiling down at Rob, but with none of Aveline’s maternal solicitude. She was dressed in the Welsh style, wore a veil but no wimple. Reaching up, she unpinned the veil, let it flutter to the floor. “Help me,” she whispered, beginning to unbraid her hair.

  Although she obeyed without question, Aveline was shocked; lovemaking in the middle of the day seemed somehow sinful to her. Almost as if reading her thoughts, Elen laughed, gestured for Aveline to unlace her gown. These past six months had been a revelation to the younger woman. Marriage was an immutable fact of life, every woman’s fate, but until joining Elen’s household, Aveline had not known that a marriage could be like Elen’s, that a wife need not be beaten, that a man and woman could take genuine joy in each other.

  Elen dropped her dress into the floor rushes, slid into bed. When Aveline started to draw the bed hangings, she shook her head. “It will be too hot,” she said softly, and Aveline blushed, moved rapidly toward the door.

  Rob had yet to stir, but as Elen moved closer, breathing into his ear, molding her body to his, he sighed, buried his face against her breasts. “Rosamund,” he mumbled, and Elen nipped his ear lobe between sharp, white teeth. He laughed, rolled over on top of her. But almost at once, he jerked back, nearly falling off the bed, so abrupt was his recoil.

  “Jesú, Elen, for a moment I did forget! Are you all right, love?”

  “Aside from being squashed as flat as a water reed? I—Rob, I was but teasing! You must not treat me as if I am a frail flower, else I’ll start to take shameless advantage of my condition. Unless, of course, you would like to wait upon me hand and foot for the next six months?”

  He grinned, lay down beside her. “The next time I get the urge to pamper you, I’ll fight it,” he promised, and Elen rolled over into his arms, gave him a lingering kiss that was no less of a promise.

  “I know you’ve been impatient to get back to Essex, Rob, but it meant much to me, spending these weeks here. White Ladies holds special memories for me.”

  “You were here as a little lass, were you not?”

  She nodded. “During a troubled time in my parents’ marriage. John had just hanged the Welsh hostages, and my mother was seeking to come to terms with it. I was but five, yet my memories are still as sharply edged as your best sword. I remember my mother’s despair, my homesickness, remember the day my father came for us. Their marriage could have broken apart on those rocks, but they somehow managed to salvage it. They reconciled in this very chamber, probably in this very bed!” She grinned, slipped her hand into Rob’s shirt. “In later years, my mother always spoke of White Ladies with fondness, and when her eyes would meet Papa’s, they’d share a very private moment. I thought if I were to come back, that I’d feel close to them both, that it would be almost like telling them…”

  Rob reached over, laid his hand upon her abdomen. “Your belly feels as flat as your aforesaid water reed. Elen, you are sure…?”

  She understood his doubt; her smile was tender. “My flux first came at twelve, Rob, and in the years since, I’ve been as reliable as the lunar tides. Not once have I ever missed a flux, and now I’ve missed three. And then there is my morning queasiness. Not to mention the wonderful way my bosom has been swelling of late. I never did think I’d gotten my fair share, but better late than never!” She laughed, then slid her chemise down her shoulder, slowly baring one breast. “Lastly, see how the circle round the nipple has darkened?”

  “No,” he said, “I think I need a closer look,” and Elen’s chemise soon joined her gown in the floor rushes. Rob sat up to free himself of his tunic. Elen then took his hand, placed it again on her belly. He leaned over, kissed the soft skin below her navel. “Is it too early,” he asked, “to talk of names?”

  “Would we be tempting fate?” She shook her head, so vehemently that cascading black hair swirled upon the pillow. “No. It would be an act of faith, love. As soon as I began to suspect, I began, too, to think of names. If it is a boy, I want to call him Robert,” she said, saw by his smile how much she had pleased him.

  “And if it is a girl?” he prompted. “Joanna, I expect.”

  To his surprise, she shook her head. “After I awake each morn, Robyn, there is a moment when memory comes flooding back, when I think to myself: It is no dream; I truly am with child. And the wonder does strike me anew, as if for the first time. Who could blame me for doubting? As John’s wife, I was barren for nigh on fifteen years. And it has been four years since we wed. I’d long ago given up all hope. That I should conceive at last, in my thirty-fourth year…it seems nothing less than miraculous to me, beloved. What can it mean but that the Almighty has forgiven our adultery? I think, therefore, that if I have a daughter, we ought to name her Anne, after the mother of Our Lady.”

  “Anne or Robyn it shall be then,” Rob agreed. “And for the next one…”

  But to Elen, that was tempting fate. She hastily put her fingers to his mouth. “One babe at a time,” she murmured, and kissed him.

  They’d gotten rid of his shirt, were fumbling with the cords fastening his braies to his chausses when they heard the door open. Rob swore, raised up to jerk the bed hangings into place. At sight of his squire, he scowled. “For your sake, Gervaise, you’d best be here to warn me the priory is afire.”

  Gervaise shifted his feet. Rob was such an easy master to serve, so rarely riled that his household had little practice in dealing with his tempers. “I am indeed sorry, my lord, but I thought you should know that there is a youth out in the garth, demanding to see you at once. An impudent rascal he is, and I’d have sent him on his way with a few bruises to nurse had he not claimed to be your lady’s nephew. I do not believe him, in truth; as bedraggled and filthy as he is, he looks more like beggar than prince. Still, I thought it best to—”

  “Llelo?” Elen’s head poked through the bed hangings. Unable to reach her gown, she snatched up the chemise, instead, and a moment later tumbled out of bed. Brushing past Gervaise, she ran out into the garth, Rob following much more slowly. The men reached the door just in time to see Elen embrace a very scruffy-looking youngster, utterly heedless of her astonished, scandalized audience.

  Equally unfazed, Rob leaned back against the door and grinned at his squire. “I think, Gervaise,” he said, “that we can safely assume the lad spoke true.”

  “I once owned a mastiff who could bolt down a shank of beef at each meal and still look for more. I must say, though, Llelo, that he could not hold a candle to you!” No sooner were the words out of his mouth than Rob regretted them, for he did not know Llelo well enough to risk teasing him. For certes, the lad’s father had never been noted for his sense of humor! But Llelo glanced over his shoulder, gave him a quick grin between bites.

  “Pay him no heed, Llelo. You can eat a whole cow if you’ve a mind to!” Elen had deferred to propriety to the extent of putting on her shoes and gown, but she had not bothered to braid her hair, and as she leaned over to ladle more venison frumenty onto Llelo’s trencher, she looked far more like a young hoyden than the lady of the manor, so disheveled and yet so desirable that Rob found himself sorely lamenting Llelo’s sense of timing.

  This was Llelo’s second meal in
as many hours. He’d eaten a full plate of roast beef, an entire loaf of bread, and a fat carp from the priory fish-pond. After a desperately needed hot bath, he was now devoting all his attention to a generous helping of venison stew. Vowing she meant to burn his clothes, Elen had given him one of Rob’s tunics to wear; it was too big, of course, but did not dwarf him as much as she’d expected.

  To Elen’s surprise, Llelo was now taller than she, endearingly awkward, as if he’d not yet grown into this new body of his; the long legs he’d entangled under his chair were as cumbersome as any colt’s, but his shoulders had begun to broaden, and when she sought to wipe dirt from his upper lip, she discovered that the smudge was the first faint shadow of a mustache.

  Not having seen Llelo in the seventeen months since her father’s funeral, Elen had missed the day-by-day changes, and she felt cheated somehow. Do not grow up so very fast, lad, she wanted to say. She did not, of course; instead, she watched Llelo gulp down a goblet of strong cider. In just seven short months, he would be fourteen. Too young, she thought, too young to take on the burdens of manhood, and she hoped suddenly that the child she carried within her would be a girl.

  Llelo put down an apple-filled wafer, half-eaten. “I cannot eat as much as I thought I could. You knew, then, that I was missing?”

  “Of course we did. Your mother had men out scouring the entire countryside for you, lad.” And it seemed inutterably sad to Elen that the boy should look so obviously surprised.

  “That did not occur to me,” he admitted. “But I did fear the King’s men might be in pursuit, that they might even send lymer hounds after me. So I waded in Meole Brook to throw them off the scent, and at first, I traveled only at night, stayed hidden during the day.”

  “Hidden, indeed! It was as if you’d vanished into blue smoke. Where have you been all these weeks, Llelo? How did you fend for yourself? What did you eat?”

  “Whatever I could find,” he said, and grimaced. “After my food ran out, I foraged where I could. I found blackberries and elderberries in the woods. I caught a few fish and frogs. One time I came upon an orchard, though the apples were so green I got a right sharp belly ache! I roasted chestnuts, once even snared a rabbit, and whenever I could find them, I plundered English gardens. Of course I had to watch out for dogs, and—”

  “But how?” Ellen was astonished by the matter-of-fact tone of his voice. “How could you make fires? Or catch fish? Or hunt? How could you manage without proper weapons?”

  Llelo looked quizzically amused. “I had my knife,” he pointed out patiently. “What more did I need? I made fish hooks from thorns, and fishing lines from vines; what could be easier? A rabbit snare is simple to make; you need only watch for tracks, then set the loop along the trail. As for making a fire without flint, I’ve known how to do that since I was eight years old. You find a hard stone like agate or quartz, hit your knife against it till you strike sparks. With shredded birchbark for tinder, it flames up right quick. Were you never taught such tricks, Aunt Elen?” he asked, in some surprise, and she slowly shook her head.

  “The different worlds in which men and women live,” she marveled. “But I suspect it could not have been as simple as you make it sound, lad. And I should like to know where you’ve been all this time. White Ladies is no more than twenty-five miles from Shrewsbury, if even that. It should not have taken you a full month to get here.”

  “I got lost,” Llelo confessed. “Aunt Gwladys said it was to the north, so I headed north. But she was wrong, Aunt Elen. White Ladies is east of Shrewsbury, not north! I’m just lucky I did not end up in Scotland.”

  Elen laughed, then reached across the table, took his hand. “Tell me,” she said, “the good and the bad. Were you never scared, Llelo?”

  Llelo hesitated only briefly. “All the time,” he said softly. “I was scared that the King’s men might find me. I was scared that I’d not find you, that I’d not get to White Ladies in time, that you’d be gone and I’d have nowhere else to go.” He slumped back in his chair, the role-playing forgotten, no longer the hero of his own adventure saga, just a thirteen-year-old boy out of his depth.

  “Being hungry was not so bad,” he said. “I got used to it. The worst was the loneliness. Once I was well away from Shrewsbury, I thought I could risk asking people how to get to the priory. But I could find no one who understood French.”

  It had been fun to swagger a bit, to gild his exploits with what he fancied to be adult bravado. But it could not compare to the utter relief of speaking the truth. “Do you know what my greatest problem was, Aunt Elen? Lack of water, for the drought has dried up so many of the brooks and ponds. Sometimes I even had to put pebbles in my mouth. And one day I could not find any streams, any ponds at all. Finally I came upon a hamlet, just a few houses and a church. I waited till dark, but the village dogs were loose, and I could not risk approaching their wells. At last I went into the church.”

  He looked down into his goblet, back up at Elen. “I suppose it was a sin to steal from gardens, but I thought God would understand. I am not sure, though, that he would understand what I did in the church, Aunt Elen. I drank from the font, drank holy water.”

  Elen fought back a smile. “Darling, if that is the only sin you ever have to answer for, you’ll never even see Purgatory, will go straight to Paradise!”

  “There is more,” he said. “You see, after I drank the holy water, suddenly it began to rain—for the first time in months! I knew God was telling me something, but what? I stayed in the church, waiting for the rain to stop and then I fell asleep. When I awoke, it was morning and the priest was standing over me.”

  Llelo smiled suddenly. “That was not the best way to begin my day! He was very wroth at first, too. I think he suspected I was a runaway serf,” he said reluctantly, frowning in recollection of such an insult. But once I spoke French to him, he realized that I was no peasant, that I must be of good birth. Unfortunately, he knew no more than a few words of French. Is there anyone in this blessed country who does speak that language?”

  They laughed, and Llelo ate the rest of the wafer before resuming. “The priest fed me, gave me a bed in return for doing chores. I passed a few days with him, days I could ill afford to spare. Then on Sunday, he said Mass for the villagers, and I realized how foolish I’d been. But I’d never thought to try Latin. I could scarcely wait for Mass to be done. Only…only he did not truly speak Latin, did but chant from memory.” Echoes of remembered disappointment crept into the boy’s voice, and bafflement, too, for the only priests Llelo had known were cultivated chaplains of the Welsh court, princes of the Church like Bishop Hywel.

  “He did understand, though, that Dominae Albae meant White Ladies, and it finally dawned upon him that I sought the priory. It was only then that I learned White Ladies lay to the east of Shrewsbury, that I’d long since passed it by. The priest gave me a sack of apples and some bread, drew a map for me on the sack, and I set off again. It took me another six or seven sunsets—I lost count—and I had no adventures worth recounting, but I got here.” He looked from Elen to Rob, back to Elen again, and said, with quiet yet intense satisfaction, “I got here.”

  Elen had so often wished that Llelo could have been her son and not Gruffydd’s, but never more so than now. “I am so proud of you, lad.”

  “Aunt Elen, there is something I must ask you, and I must have the truth. I heard the English King swear that he’d never harm a child. Are my little brothers safe with him? Did he speak true?”

  “Yes,” she said, “I do believe he spoke true.”

  There had been no hesitation before she spoke, and Llelo took heart from that; Elen was one of the very few people whom he did not believe would lie to him. “I pray God you are right,” he said. “I’d have taken them with me if only I could, hope they’ll understand that one day. My mother will not understand, though…not ever. She’ll never forgive me for running away, for putting her plans in jeopardy.” He caught the look, quick as it was, that flas
hed between Elen and Rob, and stiffened, throwing his head up as a colt would, scenting danger. “What is it? What has happened?”

  Elen looked very troubled, but she did not mince words. “I’m afraid your mother’s plans did go awry, Llelo, but through no fault of yours. A fortnight ago Davydd was forced to surrender to the English, to turn Gruffydd and Owain over to Henry. But Henry then broke faith with the Welsh. Instead of freeing Gruffydd, he sent Gruffydd into England, to the Tower of London.”

  “Jesú…” It was little more than a whisper; Llelo’s teeth had bitten into his lower lip. For a long moment, he stared at Elen, then pushed away from the table, so violently that his chair tipped over, clattered to the floor. Elen rose to her feet, too, but then she hesitated. Llelo had turned away from them both. He was standing by the window, shoulders hunched forward, head down, and Elen found herself at a loss, unable to decide which was greater, his need for comfort or his need for privacy.

  “Llelo?” He did not respond, and as the minutes trickled away, it seemed to Elen that the last of his childhood was ebbing away, too. And as she watched him, she remembered a conversation she’d long since forgotten, remembered his plaintive request on the day of her father’s funeral, that he be called by his given name, his grandfather’s name.

  “Llewelyn?” she said huskily, and he turned to face her.

  He had lost color, and his lashes were wet and tangled, but his eyes were dry. “Will you take me to my father?” he said.

  Even after more than a fortnight, Senena was not yet accustomed to the splendor of her husband’s prison. Until recently the great chamber and hall in the White Tower had been the King’s residence. But with the completion of the magnificent, octagonal Blundeville Tower, Henry had no need for the keep’s great chamber. Moreover, he did feel some genuine conscience pangs for having so betrayed a lady. In consequence, Gruffydd and Owain found themselves in a very gilded cage, indeed.