“Of course you’ll not lose this babe! I’ve known women who birthed healthy babies until they were nigh on fifty. My own mother was older than you when her last was born. I want you to promise me you’ll not fret. That will do neither you nor this little lad any good,” Nell said, patting Elen’s abdomen and eliciting from Elen the flicker of a smile.
“I am glad you are here, Nell. It is good of Simon to spare you…”
“I’ll stay as long as you have need of me, dearest. I ought to warn you, though, that my Bran will have your household in constant turmoil!” Elen’s smile was sleepy, and Nell leaned over, kissed the older woman on the forehead. “Rest now, you and the little one…”
Descending the stairs into the hall, Nell took up pen and parchment, began a letter to Simon, explaining that she and their son would be delaying their return to France. She wondered if he’d gotten her other letter, the one informing him of Bishop Robert’s death. She hoped not, hoped he had a day or two yet ere he must grieve. Bishop Robert had been seventy-eight, in ailing health, and died in God’s Grace, but Simon had loved him well. She reached again for the quill. She’d tell Simon about the bells that the Bishop of London claimed to have heard on his way to Bishop Robert’s deathbed, bells chiming in a deep wood miles from any church. Mayhap Simon could take comfort in that.
“Mama!” Bran was gasping for breath, reeled to a stop before her chair. “Riders are approaching, and they’re Welsh, Mama, I could tell by their mustaches! Do you think it could be a raid?”
“Of course, darling. What could be more likely than that the Welsh would choose, after six years of peace, to ride hundreds of miles into England and attack the Bedfordshire manor of their own kinswoman?”
Bran grinned, unfazed by her sarcasm. “I did not really think so,” he admitted, “but I could always hope…”
Nell reached out, rumpled his hair. To her amusement, he quickly smoothed it back into place; at thirteen, he was suddenly showing an interest in his appearance. Moving to the window, she discovered that for once Bran had not allowed his imagination to embellish his accuracy; the riders entering the bailey were indeed Welsh. After a moment, she smiled, then glanced back over her shoulder at her son. “You’d best mind your manners, lad. We are about to entertain a Prince.”
“Elen shall be so joyful when she awakens, finds you here.”
Llewelyn smiled. “We have a saying amongst my people: Eilfam modryb dda; a good aunt is a second mother. Elen is very dear to me. Since my aunt Gwladys died, she is all the family I have. Save Davydd and Rhodri, of course.”
Despite Nell’s reputation for compulsive candor, she was not utterly without tact, and she made no mention now of Senena, Llewelyn’s very-much-alive mother, reputed to be residing in Owain’s half of Gwynedd. Instead, she looked across the hall, toward Llewelyn’s young brother. Davydd was restlessly swinging a shutter back and forth, but he came readily when she beckoned.
“Davydd, mayhap you’d like to go out to the garden, join my son and the Lady Elen’s daughters. Hawise and Joanna are just babes, but Anne and my Bran are near your age, and—”
“Madame, I doubt that I’d have much in common with children.” Davydd’s voice throbbed with such convincing indignation that it was a moment before Nell caught the gleam of laughter in his eyes.
“Alas, I have mortally offended you,” she murmured, with such mock remorse that Davydd conceded her the game.
“I would forgive so beautiful a lady right gladly,” he declared, mixing callow gallantry with a genuinely engaging grin, reminding Nell anew what a mercurial age fifteen was, so precariously balanced between child and man.
Davydd glanced at his brother. “When we passed through the village, I happened to notice a girl drawing water from a well. I think I ought to go back and offer her my help.”
“The soul of chivalry,” Llewelyn drawled, waving him on. Davydd’s grin widened; he was gone in a flash.
“He’s a handsome lad, your brother. But I’d wager he’s a handful, too. How long has he been back in Wales?”
“Five years. Your brother the King freed Rhodri and Davydd the year after Woodstock. And in truth, he is a hellion. But so was I when I was young.”
“And now you’re all of what…a staid twenty-four? An aged twenty-five?”
A sudden shriek floated in from the gardens, sending them both rushing to the window. Llewelyn smiled at sight of Elen’s daughters. Aged three, eight, and eleven, they so resembled their mother that it was as if he’d been given a magical glimpse of a young Elen he’d never known, at varying stages of her childhood. The girls were gazing up at a huge apple tree; only belatedly did Llewelyn notice the boy swinging from branch to branch, a good twenty feet above the ground.
“Bran! Get down ere you break your fool neck!”
Tree-climbing did not seem so great a sin to Llewelyn; he could not help laughing. “Speaking of hellions…”
“One I could withstand, but five?” Nell’s smile was rueful, and yet perversely proud, too. “Harry, my firstborn, is not as willful as Bran, but he’s just as reckless. And Guy, God love him, not a day passes that Guy does not get into trouble of some sort. Whilst my last two changelings…” Nell stopped, then laughed. “But I doubt that you’re waiting with bated breath for me to chronicle the woes of motherhood!”
“My lady, you could read from your steward’s account book and still hold my interest. Now…I believe congratulations are due you, for I seem to remember Elen mentioning that last year you gave birth to a daughter.”
Nell nodded. “A beautiful lass she is, too, if I say it who should not. Simon wanted to name her Eleanor after me, but I favored Isabella, after my sister. So we did compromise—upon Eleanor.”
“A variation, I believe, of Helen, no? Did you know that’s Elen in Welsh?”
Nell nodded again. “That is what we call her—Ellen. I never could brook Eleanor and we cannot have two Nells.”
“And your lord husband? He is not with you, then?”
“No. Simon is in Gascony…” Nell paused mischievously, before adding, “…fighting beside my brother the King.”
She got the response she wanted; Llewelyn’s jaw dropped. “I see that surprises you. I cannot imagine why, for my husband has a very forgiving nature.”
Llewelyn’s mouth twitched. “A saint, in truth,” he agreed, no less blandly. “Not being a saint myself, I can only guess at this, but I’d wager there must be enormous satisfaction in being begged for help by a man who so wronged you.”
For a moment, he thought she might take offense, but then she grinned. “Well, there is that, too,” she admitted. “But all jesting aside, when Henry asked my husband for help, Simon willingly gave it, and how many men would have done so in Simon’s place?” They’d resumed their seats, and Nell reached over, touched his hand. “So far the talk has been all of my family. What of yours? Do you have any children of your own yet? No? A wife, then? Why ever not? I daresay Wales is full of girls dazzled by those dark eyes of yours, but you truly ought to have a wife. I think—What? Why do you laugh?”
“Because,” Llewelyn confessed, “I cannot decide whether you are flirting with me or mothering me!”
Nell was taken aback; then she, too, began to laugh. “Both, I suspect! I suppose I could have a son nearly your age, for I shall be thirty-eight in December,” she said, hers the confident candor of a woman still sure of her allure. “And I’ve ever been a flirt, that I cannot deny.”
“And your husband, he’s not jealous?”
“Regretfully not. Which vexed me when first we wed, I admit. Not that I was ever so foolish as to try to provoke his jealousy, but I did feel slighted, nonetheless. Until I realized why. For a woman, there can be no greater sin than infidelity. To Simon, the very suspicion would be an insult, as if he believed me capable of such dishonor. And whilst such faith might not be as much fun as an impassioned fit of jealousy, it is a far greater compliment, do you not think?”
Llewelyn nod
ded. “What I think,” he said, “is that Simon de Montfort is a most fortunate man.”
“So I keep telling him! But no…I am the lucky one, Llewelyn, for I have been blessed with two good marriages, albeit as unlike as chalk and cheese. With William, it was a…a refuge, like being nestled before the hearth on a winter’s eve. I was very young when he died, and mayhap that kind of contentment might have palled in time, but I cherish my memories of William. Now marriage to Simon…well, that has been an altogether different experience, that has been bonfires and lightning bolts and shooting stars, and whatever you do, never repeat that to another soul!”
It had been a while since Llewelyn had laughed so much. For too long, his relationships with women had begun and ended in bed; he’d forgotten that conversation could hold pleasures of its own. “So, then, you’d choose tumult over tranquillity, passion over peace?”
“Poetically put, but yes, of course! Who would not?” Nell leaned across the table, propped up on her elbows, her face cupped in her hands, a pose of calculated charm. But it was with genuine curiosity, not coquetry, that she said, “And what of you? I am not talking of bedmates now; what man does not have his share of those? But has there never been a woman who mattered to you? A woman to haunt your memory?”
Llewelyn set his wine cup down. “Yes…there was one. But we were very young, and what drew us together did not prove strong enough to keep us together. Mayhap if we’d had a child…” He shrugged, then raised his eyes to Nell’s. “You did take a great risk, Lady Nell, in marrying for love, a foolhardy risk…”
“Yes…I suppose I did.” And then she flashed a vivid, impish smile. “But what is a thing worth, Llewelyn, if it comes with no risk?”
“How long must you stay abed?”
Elen grimaced. “Lord pity me, the midwife says at least a week! So your company is indeed a godsend, Llewelyn. Sit beside me on the bed so we may talk. I’m surprised that Davydd agreed to accompany you; I very much doubt that Senena ever spoke kindly of me!”
“I daresay you’re right, but whatever Davydd’s opinion of you, Aunt Elen, he’s not shared it with me. I would that he did, would that I knew what goes on in his head. He’s quick to laugh, quick to jest, but not to confide. We’ve never once talked about his years as a hostage. If he nurtures a grudge, blames our mother for making that Devil’s deal with Henry, none but Davydd knows it. He divides his time betwixt my lands and Owain’s, comes and goes as he pleases, the way a cat does—always on his own terms.”
Elen smiled. “A cat…I like that. It fits Davydd well—independent and beguiling and inscrutable. Your grandfather played a game like that as a lad, matching people and animals, and I often play it with my lasses. Now Henry would be…what? A peacock, resplendently feathered, yet unable to fly very far. And his Eleanor, a swan—beautiful, but bad-tempered, and oh, so vain. Owain? There you have me, lad. Your brother has ever been an enigma to me. I’d have wagered a king’s ransom that he’d war on you after Woodstock, so sure was I that he’d seek to claim your share of Gwynedd.”
“So was I,” Llewelyn admitted. “Remember, though, that he was content to dwell all those months in Cheshire, not returning to Wales until your brother died. You ask what beast Owain might have been? What of a cob? A hardy breed, with strength and endurance, but happiest in harness, not one for forging ahead on its own.”
Elen laughed, but Llewelyn was in earnest. “I’ve come to believe that, if left to his own devices, Owain is content to amble along at a sluggish pace. But that may well change, for I fear he has found a rider to apply the spurs—our mother.”
Elen’s smile faded. “Tell me.”
“When Davydd turned fourteen last year, he reminded us—prompted by my mother, I daresay—that under Welsh law, he was entitled to a share in the governance of Gwynedd. Owain agreed to cede to him the commote of Cymydmaen on the Lln peninsula. But he is no longer content with that. He now argues that he deserves no less than a full third of Gwynedd. And Owain has agreed to this madness. Mayhap he truly believes it is just, most likely he seeks merely to spite me, but whatever his reasons, he is adding fuel to a fire that might well engulf us all.”
“For you cannot agree.”
“How could I? Wales has never been so weak, so vulnerable to English conquest. If we were to split Gwynedd into three separate, petty principalities, Christ Jesus, but we might as well cede Wales to the Crown here and now!” Llewelyn drew a sharp breath. “But Davydd is too young to understand that. I love my brother, do not want to see him estranged from me. Yet I very much fear it may come to that. If only—Aunt Elen? What is it?”
Elen had gone grey; sweat suddenly stood out on her forehead, her upper lip. “Fetch Nell,” she gasped, and doubled over, her body contorting. “Hurry…”
Bran wandered over to the stairs, gazing up at Elen’s bedchamber door. It seemed to him that his mother and the midwife had been closeted with Elen for an eternity. How utterly, eerily quiet it was! He glanced uneasily at Elen’s husband, slumped in a chair by the hearth. How could the man just sit there? Bran was not sure what Rob ought to do, but he felt certain his father would have taken action of some sort.
Hawise and Joanna were in bed, but on the settle Anne sat very still, hands clasped in her lap, head bowed so that Bran saw only a spill of dark hair, as shining-black as his own. He wished she would go upstairs like her sisters; pity was not an emotion he knew well, and he averted his gaze, not knowing what to say to her. Moving back to the table, he occupied himself in scraping his thumbnail through the wax splattered around a brass candelabra. When Davydd joined him, they passed some moments in silence, eyeing each other warily.
Bran made the first overture. “If you are the Lady Elen’s nephew and I am her cousin, does that mean we are kin, too?”
That had never occurred to Davydd. If he was Bran’s cousin, did that make him a kinsman, too, of the English King? “I suppose it does,” he conceded grudgingly. “But of course you do not have Welsh blood.”
Bran raised his chin. “Who’d want it?”
But they’d forgotten Llewelyn was within earshot. “You are just jesting, of course, for neither of you could be so ill-bred as to be squabbling at a time like this,” he said, with enough ice in his voice to send shivers up two youthful spines. They were mumbling hasty assent as the bedchamber door opened.
Rob sprang to his feet. “Nell…”
Nell came slowly down the stairs, holding onto the railing as if she needed the support, and even before she stepped into the light, they knew. “Rob, I am so sorry. But we could not stop the bleeding. She lost the babe…”
Rob flinched and his eyes closed; after a moment tears began to squeeze through his lashes. Nell, fighting back tears of her own, put her arms around him, but he pulled away, moved toward the stairs.
No one spoke until the midwife emerged onto the landing; at that, Anne began to sob. Nell drew the child to her, held her as she wept. When Anne would have started for the stairs, though, Nell shook her head.
“No, darling, not yet. She…she is very distraught, Anne, needs to be alone now with your father.”
Bran was hovering helplessly at his mother’s elbow, standing so close he was almost treading upon the hem of Nell’s gown, standing close enough to hear her whisper. It sounded to him as if she said, “It is a dreadful thing to lose a child,” but he wondered why she called Anne by her sister’s name, why she called her “Joanna.”
Nell’s dream was muddled, lacking coherence, but disturbing enough, nonetheless, that awakening was a relief. The chamber was dark, dawn still hours away. She started to sit up, remembering just in time where she was. As Stevington had only one bedchamber and a small loft for the children, the women were sleeping in Elen’s chamber while the men bedded down in the hall. Nell’s eyes were adjusting to the shadows, and she could distinguish now the sleeping forms of their ladies, stretched out on pallets by the bed. Elen was having a restless night, too; Nell could feel the bed shifting under her we
ight.
“Elen?” she said softly. “Elen, I’m awake. Would it help to talk?” There was no response. Elen had flung the covers off, although the room was chilled. Leaning over, Nell drew the blankets up over Elen’s bared shoulder.
“Merciful God!” She gasped, staring down at the other woman in horror, for her fingers still throbbed with heat. Elen’s skin was searing to the touch.
A doctor was urgently summoned from nearby Bedford, and he did his best, but Elen’s fever did not abate. As the infection spread, she grew progressively weaker, drifting in and out of delirium, responding neither to herbal potions nor sponge baths. Nell had often suspected that Elen was the core, the very marrow of the de Quincy family, and now Rob was like a ship without a rudder. He spent every waking hour at his wife’s bedside, and the burdens of Elen’s illness fell not upon him, but upon Nell. It was she who kept the household functioning, who gave instructions to the stricken servants, who nursed Elen and comforted her terrified children. And it was Nell who finally sent for the village priest.
He was very young, this his first parish, and exceedingly sorry to have been summoned, for the dying woman was not just the lady of the manor, she was the niece of the King. What if she did not regain her wits? She could not be shriven if she could not confess her sins, answer the Seven Interrogatories. But if she did not receive Extreme Unction, she would be damned. If he so failed the King’s kinswoman, what would be his fate, his punishment?
All day his little church had been pealing passing-bells, alerting his parishioners to pray for the soul of a sister Christian in her hour of need. But at dusk, Elen stirred, and to his heartfelt relief, her dark, feverlit eyes held a spark of recognition.
“Rob…”
“Here, love.” Shouldering the priest aside, Rob bent over the bed. When Elen reached out to him, her fingers twitched, but then fell limply back upon the blanket, and she looked at her hand in bewilderment, as if puzzling why it no longer obeyed her brain.
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