Uneasy Lies the Crown

by N. Gemini Sasson

  How desperately he wanted to forget. Needed something, someone to help him forget.

  It’s not fair to you, Owain, Margaret had said. If you strayed from our vows, I would not —

  The girl’s delicate hands worked their way up to his shoulders. He turned himself over, curved his fingers behind her slim, young neck and pulled her down to devour her with hard, needy kisses. Even as he made love to her, this firm-bosomed girl from the hills whose name he didn’t know or care to ask, the echo of dying men’s screams rang in his ears.

  Owain stretched and yawned, his eyes still closed. Sweating from the late morning warmth, he bunched the sheets across his torso. Muffled voices reached his ears and he rolled over on his side. A wave of nausea from too much wine gripped him.

  “I had not expected so pleasing a sight, m’lord,” chimed a sweet voice.

  His eyes flew open. “Margaret?”

  He shot up so suddenly that the sheet fell away, leaving him naked. His heart thumped wildly. The girl was gone—thank God.

  “It was... it was hot... last n-n-night,” he stuttered.

  Margaret glanced at the two empty goblets on the table and then at her husband’s clothing strewn about. “I saw Rhys when I arrived. Like everyone else here, it appears, he was in no state to be easily roused. I noticed your horse outside and took the chance that I would find you here. And I have.”

  She bent to pick up Owain’s braes and handed them to him. Her wide cuffed sleeve fell away from her slender wrist. After all these years, eleven children, and a wealth of hardships since Henry had come to the throne, she was still exquisitely elegant and the thought of her lying dead on a mountain road somewhere sparked his protectiveness.

  “Marged... I told you to stay.” Standing, he pulled his braes on.

  “You don’t want me here?”

  “That’s not what I meant.” As she turned toward the tent flap, he caught her wrist. “You were safer where you were. The English have been scouring the land looking for us. If they had come across you...”

  She arched an indignant eyebrow at him. “Meanwhile, you appear to have made yourself very evident. If they wanted to find you, they would have had no trouble. Anyway, I had grown weary of hiding. I wanted... needed to see you. It’s been months, Owain. When I heard of your recent successes, I thought the time was never better. I couldn’t stay where I was a day longer. A kind old man named Llywelyn ap Gruffydd escorted us here—without his help we would have been wandering in the mountains for days. I brought the children with me. Sion has been asking for weeks when we would see you again. All I could tell him was ‘Soon, soon.’”

  Owain fumbled with the cord on his leggings. As he turned to snatch his shirt from the floor, he bumped the table and the goblets toppled.

  “Owain?” She touched his forearm. “My love, what troubles you?”

  His eyes did not leave the pile of clothes at his feet.

  She wrapped her hands around his neck and pressed her cheek to his bare chest.

  “I didn’t expect you, that’s all,” he finally said, encircling her waist.

  “Should I leave, then?” she asked laughingly.

  He had forgotten what comfort there was in her arms, even though the physical nearness of her was bittersweet. “Stay awhile, Marged, won’t you?”

  Her arms slid down to his back, holding him tight. “Awhile, yes. We’ll make the best of it.” Her voice, already low and plaintive, softened even more until it was no more than a breathy whisper. “Who knows how long our days together will last?”

  For a time there was peace at Plynlimon. Bards’ songs filled the long days and starry nights. There was wine and food aplenty. Owain’s children plucked wildflowers from the meadows and wove them into crowns. Gruffydd and Maredydd were young men now, proud soldiers boasting of their battles. Catrin, golden-haired Catrin, caught the eye of many a soldier, but simply went on with her sewing as they came to her with garment after garment for mending.

  Owain wanted to draw strength from Margaret’s presence, to confide in her as once he had, but the nightlong conversations of long ago were no more. Margaret talked briefly of the children’s lessons and the goods Lowarch brought home from the market at Dolgellau each week. Owain, in turn, spoke of his plans to thwart Henry and drive the English from Wales, but Margaret had little to say in response, at first merely nodding and then later making it known she didn’t want to hear about the war. But what else could he share with her? It was his life, the means to an end, the path to their future. Each day, the awkward pauses lengthened until finally, as they lay side by side at night, he turned from her, the silence as hurtful and baffling to him as it must have been to her.

  Every day, he strode about camp and cheered his archers as they shot at their butts made out of haystacks. Afraid of growing soft with idleness, he frequently traded sword blows with young soldiers.

  When rumors stirred that King Henry had blackmailed enough funds out of his lords to raise an army, Margaret left Plynlimon to return the children to safety—and in that, Owain found some relief. Soon, his attention returned to the brown haired maiden who had shared his bed. Many times, Owain wondered if Margaret had noticed the longing glances that the young woman had bestowed upon him.

  Still, though, he did not know the girl’s name and when she came to him again, he did not ask, although it was Margaret’s face he envisioned in the darkness as she unclothed herself and Margaret’s name he said as he spent himself inside her.

  24

  Glyndyfrdwy, Wales — September, 1401

  Beneath the sprawling roots of the fir trees that stood sentry on the mound above the house at Glyndyfrdwy, the bones of long-ago wariors rattled. On the earth above them, a secret gathering had commenced. Men huddled in a loose semicircle, nodding their heads and scratching at their whiskered chins as their eyes swept from west to east and back again along the river’s course. Looping through the deep ravine below, the Dee murmured its conspiracy. The leaves upon a great oak that clung fiercely to its banks were mottled with the first brown of the harvest season.

  Among those gathered were the Dean of St. Asaph and his two nephews Ieuan and Gruffydd from Powys. Their outspoken neighbor, Madog ap Ieuan, upon catching wind of the meeting, had left his scythe in the barn where it lay and raced northward with nothing more than the handful of coins he had received from the recent sale of his bull. His friend John Astwick, while chancing upon him in the darkness of a roadside tavern as he stopped in for a swallow of ale, offered to join him in any fray that involved the disturbing of the English. Robert Puleston, the often-drunk husband of Owain’s older half-sister, who herself was the product of a youthful tryst of Gruffydd Fychan’s, was on this rare occasion quite sober and coherent.

  Sympathetic to their distant Welsh heritage, two of Margaret’s brothers, Philip and Griffith Hanmer, were in attendance, although John, the oldest, would have no connection to this insurrectionist lot. He had, with fiery vehemence, warned them against any such affiliation. But Owain’s charisma was far more appealing to them than John’s patronizing. Since the death of Sir David Hanmer a year past, they had flocked to Owain like lambs to the shepherd. But of those there, only Owain carried a weapon. The English had forbidden any Welshman from bearing arms outright. To do so was to invite instant death upon discovery.

  “Grey will come again,” Tudur said, entering the ragged circle’s center. The fingers of his left hand worried at the hem of his tunic. “It’s only a question of time.”

  “Then we will prepare ourselves,” Philip said. Griffith, at his side, nodded his agreement.

  In two long strides, Tudur was before him. He locked his hands on Philip’s angular shoulders. “Prepare for what? I tell you, we are marked, every one of us. Lord Grey will bring a hundred men and if that will not rid him of us, then two hundred, or three hundred. And mercy, we all know, is not a virtue he possesses. He will raze our homes and then he will hunt us down. How does one prepare for that?”

&n
bsp; “We prepare ourselves,” Gruffydd, shining with youth’s boldness, spoke, “to fight.”

  Turning to him, Tudur threw his hands wide. “And how many soldiers do we number, Gruffydd? You are barely old enough to grow a beard. What of you, Robert? Could you fight if you had to? Your head is ever drowning in a barrel of ale. Hywel? You were born to the Church. Your hands will never seek a sword.”

  “Perhaps.” Hywel shrugged. “But even soldiers need their blessings.”

  Once again, they all nodded in agreement. Only Owain stood silent. The September breeze pulled at his long hair as he studied the men around him. They were a flock without a shepherd, a clan without a chieftain.

  Never one to keep his thoughts to himself, Madog, who kept his head clean-shaven and went about bare legged even in the dead of winter, raised his voice above the muttering. “I will fight him! I will fight for Owain and I will fight for Wales!”

  Cries of ‘For Wales!’ and ‘For Owain!’ rang out. Raising imaginary weapons, they shook their fists at the heavens.

  “How?How?!” Owain shouted.

  They all looked at him questioningly, except for the doubtful Tudur, who rolled his eyes, as if relieved that someone there possessed a shred of sanity.

  With Tudur still in the middle of the circle, Owain ringed him, his steps slow and purposeful. “How will you fight him? With hoes? With hammers? With pot-hooks? Will you lie waiting day after day, night after night, waiting for him to come to you? Wondering whose house he will burn first? Whose wife he will rip from her bed to rape while you drown in a pool of your own blood? Do you all think that merely rising in anger, fighting madly against all the wrongs that have been dealt to you and your kin will give you the means to stop him? Do you? I tell you, your anger serves nothing.” He paused before his son. Only the rustle of leaves answered. Nose to nose with Gruffydd, he screamed, “Do you know how you will fight him?!”

  Gruffydd recoiled against the forceful wind of his father’s words. He closed his eyes for a moment, as though summoning courage from somewhere deep inside. “Tell us,” he whispered, opening his eyes, straightening himself. Then louder, “Tell us and we will do as you say.”

  Owain clutched Gruffydd in his arms and then stepped back. “It will be a long fight... and a hard one. You cannot even begin to imagine the agony of it. Such causes have great allure to men whose souls are starving, and dreams are the food of the soul. But you must weigh the price of something you can only imagine with the sound of bones crushing around you and the smell of blood. You must decide if the sacrifice is worth the lives of your brothers and sons. You must know, in the deepest chasms of your heart, that your life is all that you have to give and give it you will. You must believe that someday... someday, your children’s children will live freely because of you.”

  He gazed at each man in turn. “I cannot promise any of you glory, or justice, or vengeance, or even freedom. I can only lead you to a chance at these.”

  Parting from the others, Philip reached a hand toward Owain. “Then lead us, Owain.”

  Owain clasped Philip’s hand briefly. “Your trust in me is blind, dear brother, for I do not myself yet know where it is I’m going, but if you follow me... I will show you when, and how, to strike the first blow.” With a roar, he pulled his sword from his belt and plunged it into the earth, both hands wrapped over the pommel. “Fight with me. Fight for Wales!”

  Gruffydd placed his hand over his father’s knuckles and soon hand after hand was laid on top. Even Tudur’s—although Owain knew his brother would forever doubt not his courage or conviction, but that either of them should live to tell about this at all.

  25

  York, England — September, 1401

  Sir Dafydd was en route to Scotland to deliver letters from Owain, with orders to give them up to none but the hands of King Robert himself. Other letters had been sent with all haste and secrecy to Ireland. They were offers of alliance. Owain was now looking beyond Wales to further his cause.

  When he made it all the way to York, Sir Dafydd was certain he would achieve what he had been sent to do. He made it through the town gates just before they were shut for the night and rode through the muddy streets until he found an inn that was not already full. Before bedding down, he went to a tavern called The Red Bull. He ordered an ale, paid for it with coin that had been taken from New Radnor and found himself a dark corner. Perhaps it was because he had come so far with so little trouble that he felt uneasy, but he couldn’t help but notice two cloaked men near the door passing glances between each other after he caught their eyes. Dafydd nursed his drink well into the evening. When the two men finally left and the tavern keeper ushered him out, he skulked along the alleyway toward the inn.

  As the alley opened up to the main street, shadows blocked his path. The two men from the tavern had been waiting—like wolves stalking the straying lamb. Desperate, he threw his bag of coin at their feet and spun about in retreat. A fast set of hands snagged his mantle and he crashed to the ground. In the darkness, he saw only an upraised arm above him. Then, he saw no more.

  It was not long before the letters to King Robert of Scotland found their way into Henry’s palm. He read, with angry curiosity, the words that Owain’s own hand had penned there:

  “Humbly, I beseech you, my lord, upon my knees, that if it please you to send me a number of your men-at-arms, with the help of God, I may withstand your enemy and mine, a pretender, the one who falsely calls himself Henry, King of England...”

  Plynlimon, Wales — September, 1401

  “It cannot be,” Owain’s brother-in-law John Hanmer said. “His treasury hasn’t the funds. Parliament forced him to cancel.” Although John had been reluctant to openly side with Owain at first, he had been pressured by Henry to reveal Owain’s whereabouts, which he refused to do. Eventually, it became clear he would either have to betray Owain or be declared a traitor himself. Blood had won the battle and when he arrived at camp a few days ago Owain had welcomed him with open arms.

  “Yes, they did.” Gethin wrung his leather riding gloves. Putting a foot up on one of the logs that ringed the fire pit, he rested an elbow on his knee. Another month had passed at Plynlimon and by now the men, Gethin included, were growing restless. “But there are plenty of others who have the money and it would appear that they are with the king on this matter.”

  “Their numbers?” Owain was standing closest to the fire. Around him were gathered his most trusted advisors and his two oldest sons. The first chill of the season had settled over the mountains. Dark, wet clouds, promising rain, blotted out the stars.

  “Forty or fifty thousand English troops already at Worcester,” Gethin reported, “and that many more called to assemble there.”

  Maredydd, his hands tucked tightly into his armpits, was the first to express his shock. “Why so many?”

  “He means war, son,” Owain said flatly. “We have at last been deemed worthy of his full attention.” Doubt began to gnaw at the pit of his stomach. He had expected Henry to return at some point, but not so soon or in such force. “I can only assume my message to King Robert was intercepted. Someone followed Sir Dafydd, took the letter from him and went straight to Henry. He means to crush us before Scotland can be stirred to action.”

  “Owain?” Tudur scanned the orange-lit faces around him and then looked at his brother with concern. “How are we to hold up against so large a force? How? It’s impossible.”

  “You assume numbers are an advantage.” Rhys Ddu’s eyes beamed through the darkness. “They are many—and slow. They come with not only fletchers and bowyers, but priests and physicians, carpenters, gunners, cooks, and musicians. Perhaps we should call on Henry’s minstrels to do battle with our bards.”

  “He would lose sorely then,” Iolo proclaimed from the other side of the fire.

  Owain sat down on the log next to where Gethin stood. Lost for an answer, he rubbed at the back of his neck, but nothing came to him. Without help, they could not s
tand against such a force. The heat of the flames licked at his face. He leaned back, sweat pooling on his breastbone. Then it came to him.

  “Perhaps we should take a lesson from our Scottish kinsmen, my friends,” Owain said. “The English fight by formal rules. They are numerous, well drilled and organized. But time after time they have ventured into Scotland only to be defeated by the land itself. Let them come looking for us, here, in Wales. They will spend their lives figuring out which mountain to look behind.”

  Gruffydd’s upper lip curled in disgust. “So back to the caves?”

  “My prince?” Gethin stepped boldly in front of Owain. “What if, rather than a spy, we sent someone to The Pretender who promised to lead him to us?”

  “I don’t quite follow you,” Owain said.

  Gethin smoothed his neatly trimmed beard. “Someone to guide him through the mountains. You spoke of the Scottish wilderness. Surely, the longer the English march through these mountains, the more they will be convinced this is an unforgiving, hostile land.”

  “And they would never find us,” Owain said.

  “You’re asking someone to forfeit their lives,” said Rhys.

  “We all potentially do that every time we ride from here, do we not?” Gethin replied.

  Owain paced a few steps, weighing his options. “Do you know of a man who would do this, Gethin?”

  Gethin nodded. “I know just the man. He was the one who brought your wife and children here.”

  Margaret had spoken kindly of Llywelyn ap Gruffydd. He had a son or two, even a grandson, serving under Owain. There were many men who would have volunteered for the chance to set Henry awry. But he trusted Gethin’s choice in this. “Find him. Have him sent to me.”