“Let regrets go, Owain. We must think on the good times.” She brought his hand to her lips and kissed his knuckles, cracked and dry and riddled with scars. Then she pressed his fingers to her cheek.
“But it seems they were so long ago. Another life,” he said.
“They will come again.”
“No, never again. I know now. Slowly, the dream is dying. I see it as if from a distance. And as I look back, I think on how different things might be for us... if only... if I had not...” His voice trailed off. “But after everything that has happened, it will be Prince Harry who will be my undoing. Do you know why?”
“Why?”
“Because he understands what his father never could. He is no bully, like Henry. Once, he was reckless, yes, but no more. His soldiers love him. And all of England will love him one day. He knows how to balance ruthlessness and kindness. For those things, Wales will bend to him—softly, willingly... and with relief.”
“Will you make me one last promise, Owain?”
“Anything.”
“Promise me you will never, ever give yourself up. As long as you walk free, Wales will live on.”
It was so much to ask. Too much. But she did believe in him. She always had. He had simply been too blind to see the toll it had taken on her.
“I promise,” he said.
Iolo Goch:
A great host of English soldiers enveloped the land surrounding Harlech Castle in the ensuing days. An entire city sprang up, enclosed behind a flimsy, yet effective stockade, complete with everything including taverns and prostitutes. Behind the cover of the high-topped palisades, carpenters buzzed like insects, erecting the siege engines which, when completed, would stand as tall as the castle walls themselves.
The surrounding fields, pregnant with provender, were put to the torch. Cattle were rounded up and penned to serve as fare for the English camp throughout the duration of the siege. The decimation suffered by the Welsh peasants nearby drove them into the mountains, where the elderly and ill succumbed to famine. Others froze to death from lack of shelter.
The caltrops, which had been so stealthily scattered by our men-at-arms in the tall grass surrounding the castle grounds, were painstakingly plucked up by Englishmen, some of whom fell to the accuracy of our Welsh arrows. But every shaft launched from within the walls was one less at hand for when they would be truly needed, if and when an all-out assault ever came.
Meanwhile as winter settled in, all the inhabitants of Harlech could do was watch, wait and pray that the storms battering the coast would take their toll on the besiegers. And yet the attacks, in sundry forms, began. Half-rotten carcasses of cows were catapulted over the castle walls—their stench and decay augmenting the illness already festering within. Not only did livestock serve as ammunition, but human corpses, as well.
It was not Prince Harry who made the first demand to surrender, for he was still finishing his business at Aberystwyth, but Sir Gilbert Talbot. The demand was resolutely refused by Edmund Mortimer from the wall above the main gate. My lord Owain, for reasons I did not wholly understand, was reluctant to make his presence known.
Talbot then gave the orders. Under cover of a spate of arrows, pioneers surged forward, furiously mapping safe ground. The traps and trenches that the Welsh had riddled the ground to the east of the castle with were numerous, but in the end they only served to delay the inevitable. The English pioneers filled them in to make safe routes for the roofed mantlets beneath which the miners could carry out their work. Later, the siege engines, with which the engineers and soldiers would batter the fortress, would be rolled across the solid earth. The burning fagots and red-hot bundles of iron discharged from the castle were minor deterrents, like flies that buzz about the ears of a horse.
When the English drew close enough, their soldiers scurried forth with ladders. Those that were able to make it as far as the top of the outer wall without being skewered by a Welsh arrow found themselves face to face with their foes.
All in all, our prospects were abysmal. The English, wholly aware of that, began their first direct assault on Harlech two days before Christmas.
52
Harlech Castle, Wales — December, 1408
In the silver wash of dusk, Owain crouched behind a merlon, waiting silently as the stifled grunts of an English soldier making fast progress up the ladder reached his ears. Holding his breath, Owain gripped his sword in his right hand and in his left he clutched a small taper axe. The ladder creaked as the invading soldier grappled at the stone block lying across the crenel to pull himself over.
Owain swung his sword in an arc and severed the thumb from the soldier’s left hand. Muted by shock, the soldier flailed himself forward, his short sword scraping the stones as he attempted to position it for a counterblow. Owain shot up from his hiding place, pinned the soldier’s sword against the stones with the flat of his blade and smiled slyly.
“I don’t believe you were invited,” Owain mocked. “Go back to where you came from.” And with that he buried his axe in the meat of the soldier’s neck.
With a gurgle, the soldier’s eyes rolled back into his skull. A bubble of blood foamed from his crooked mouth. He leaned backward and then went limp.
Owain reclaimed his weapon with a forceful heave and nudged the cleaved soldier away from the wall. The body toppled, taking with it the next soldier in line a dozen rungs down.
Before the incursion was ended, Owain snatched away the lives of four more Englishmen bent for glory. The act of placing himself in the forefront of the castle’s defense lent heart to his beleaguered garrison, but Owain was painfully aware that no amount of courage could deflect the torment of starvation which could eat away at the most stalwart soul.
The following night, on the solemn eve of Christmas, Owain, who had as yet granted no indication to the besiegers that he was actually present at Harlech, summoned his son-in-law to the constable’s chamber. A sorely depleted store of arrows lined the walls. It was nigh on midnight, but Owain meant to determine the extent of Edmund’s resolve before declaring his plan to anyone else. A single candle on the table in the center of the room provided a small circle of light.
Bleary-eyed, Edmund stepped into the light. The square set of his shoulders was gone. Clearly, he could not stand unsupported for long.
Owain was sitting on the edge of the table, his feet swinging beneath him. A few rolls of tattered maps lay in a pile beside him. He had brought them out, perused each one cursorily and then pushed them aside, for their contents were branded on his memory, so countless were the times he had pored over them.
Edmund wiped the perspiration from his forehead with his sleeve. He pulled out a stool tucked beneath the table and settled himself with obvious weariness upon it.
“Are you unwell?” Owain probed with concern.
“I have been better, but it will pass. A slight fever, nothing more. A little ache in my marrow. These things seldom last more than a day... two at best.” Edmund planted his elbow on the table and propped his head against a fist. “This must be serious business for you to forego sleep on the one night we might be granted peace.”
“What I am going to ask of you, Edmund,” Owain said, “I do so with both trust and reluctance. Reluctance, in that I must. Trust, in that I hold great faith in your leadership.”
“Ask anything, m’lord. There’s nothing I would not do for you.”
Owain pulled air into his lungs and held it a moment before speaking. “Are you certain of that, Edmund?”
Pink-rimmed eyes betraying his weeks of sleeplessness, Edmund looked at Owain and nodded. “Has it not always been so?”
As the click of a sentry’s boots rang out from the gate passageway, Owain glanced toward the door. The footsteps diminished.
“Good then. I grant Harlech to your charge. Defend it as long as you can. But see that my family is not harmed. Do you understand?”
Edmund was obviously taken aback. “No, I don’t.”
/> “I mean hold out as long as you can. But if you must surrender to keep them well and safe, then do it.” Owain hopped to the floor and paced just beyond the perimeter of the candle’s power. “Tomorrow night, when there is no moon to betray us and the English are drunk on ale and stuffed to their collars, myself, Maredydd and a few others will steal away and once beyond —”
“Leave here? In God’s name, my lord... Father, if no one can manage to get in, how are you to get out?”
Halting, Owain crossed his arms loosely and shrugged. “It will be treacherous. I don’t deny that. Many, many times this past year, as Aberystwyth lay under siege, I roamed the beach, rowed up and down the length of the outer walls in the bay below Harlech, and studied the rocks from every angle. There is a way, just beyond the upper gate on the west front, but I regret that only the strongest may pass. The children and women... they shall have to stay behind.”
“Nothing but sheer rock and the sea below.”
“Yes.”
“Suicide.”
Owain went to Edmund and placed a hand on his drooping shoulder. “It is the only way... the only hope of salvation.”
Edmund slid from his stool. On his knees at Owain’s feet, his face downcast, Edmund shook his head in denial.
Owain settled upon his haunches and raised Edmund’s stubbled chin with a finger. “As long as you can, Edmund. As long as you can. I’ll find Rhys and Gethin, gather a relief force... and free Harlech.”
The candlelight was waning to near darkness as Owain helped Edmund to his feet, up the dark stairs and back to his bed where Catrin slept. Beside her, their son Lionel, who had been roused by a nightmare, slumbered beneath the protection of her arm.
53
Harlech Castle, Wales — December, 1408
Whereas in the years before, the tables at Harlech and also at Sycharth had been steeped in abundance, this year the Christmas feast was merely a few rolls more than the day before. The wine was watered. The salted meat, dry and sinewy. Song was forced. Even Iolo’s strumming on his harp was brittle: the rhythm irregular, the pitch strained, his fingers foreign visitors to the strings which once had echoed his heart. There was no Yule log to light the hall, no mince pie or pudding to delight young stomachs, nor holly to garnish the rafters.
Only the children were mindless of the doom that was sure to commence at dawn. Sion and Mary, now both fourteen years old, led the games with their nephew Lionel and little nieces Angharad and Gwladys with an authority well beyond their years. Mary had endured the hardships of the previous year with her mother’s dauntless courage, developing into a young woman whose countenance promised a rare beauty as yet to blossom. Sion, though he had been rarely in the company of his oldest brother Gruffydd while growing up, was in every way like him: moody, pensive and passionate to a fault. When Lionel, brimming constantly with the urge to move, would not stand precisely where Sion commanded him, Sion erupted into a tantrum and demanded of his sister Catrin to make her unruly son mind. Catrin merely cocked her head and admonished her younger sibling for expecting too much of a little boy. Then she flattered Sion by adding, “He is not a man yet, like you.”
On the far end of the head table, Dewi and Tomos joked. The veteran of a handful of raids and the unavailing campaign that ended at Woodbury Hill, Dewi shared his vast knowledge with Tomos, who was more than eager to gut an English soldier.
“Ah,” Dewi began, clasping Tomos by the shoulder with his left hand and brandishing an imaginary weapon aloft in his other, “you will yet have your chance, my little brother. Soon enough. The English have bellies soft as a hare’s.”
Tomos grinned and scooped up his tankard. He slurped down the remaining ale as an act of his manhood.
As Owain reached for his drink, Margaret grabbed his wrist.
“Sooner or later you will have to tell me,” she said.
It was never any use hiding his thoughts from her. She could read him by the way he stared either into his drink or out the window. Into his drink meant hesitation over troubles. Out the window indicated that his mind was a maze of plots taking shape.
He stared at his cup as he pulled it into the circle of his fingers. Then he rose and offered a hand to his wife.
Margaret clasped her fingers over his as they went from the hall. The uninterrupted song of the children followed them out into the ward until a servant scurried to close the massive door. The stars winked at them from above, but neither took notice, as once they did every night while they were young and intoxicated with each other. Now they were older, heaped with responsibilities and living life like mice in a cage. One step beyond and the cat would sink its teeth into them and then swallow them whole.
Although the chill of December was sharp in the air, Owain strolled toward the chapel, an array of sentries watching with sleepy curiosity from the battlements. He wanted to feel the warmth of her hand one more time and memorize the curve of her outline in the starlight. Once inside the chapel, where three tall candles illuminated the altar, he led her toward it. Taking up both her hands, he raised his chin.
“Tonight, I...” He urged the words from his mouth, but they were firmly lodged in the back of his throat. Abruptly, he pulled her into his arms, crushing her against his chest. A shudder ripped through him. “Ah, dear God, I cannot do this. I cannot leave you and the children.”
“Leave?” Struggling against his desperate embrace, Margaret stepped back. “What do you mean?”
He traced the sloping curve of her neckline with great tenderness. “I had made plans to descend over the cliffs and escape along the shore. To join Gethin in the mountains, seek out Rhys and bring relief. Marged, Marged... only hours away and I can’t. I can’t leave you. Not for any reason or cause.”
She caught his hand and pressed it to her heart. “You must go.”
No, she spoke madness. He shook his head. “I must stay to protect you. They will starve us out, Marged. Eventually, we will have to surrender, because I cannot sacrifice my family for the sake of pride. I can only pray for mercy, for you, for Sion and Mary, for little Lionel and Angharad and —”
She covered his mouth with her hand. “You said yourself, when we were alone at the beginning of the siege, that there was a trace of kindness in Harry of Monmouth. When Rhys gave up Aberystwyth, Harry allowed the entire garrison to walk free. He will relish the return of Harlech. And if you are not here, I do not think he will explode in retribution. If he puts us away it will only be for a little while. If you were him, the perfect trap would be to set your family free and wait for you to come. We’ll be safe. Safe. Do not fear for us.”
“No, I won’t go from here and leave you in danger. I must stay and fight.”
“If you stay and fight... you will die. Either in defense of this cold, heartless place you have tried to fashion as your home, or by the amusement of an executioner while all of London jeers. Leave, Owain. I beg of you—leave. For as long as you live, there is hope.”
The truth was bitter. He swallowed with difficulty, turning away from her.
“My love,” she said, her arms encircling him from behind as she pressed her cheek to his back, “do not abandon that which you gave so many reason to believe in.”
He turned around and pulled her so tight that he felt her heart beating in rhythm with his.
Then he lifted her chin with his fingertips and pressed his mouth to hers. The kiss they shared was not long, but it singed them both as they ripped themselves away from one another.
A few hours later, Owain and the others were ready. A heavy blanket of clouds began to blot out the starlight as an insistent wind pushed in from the Irish Sea.
The five men crept low across the open ground. All they had with them were the clothes they were wearing, a sword and a dagger each and a length of rope. Maredydd had spent the last two hours scanning through the darkness for English scouts and when he deemed it safe he gave the signal. Maredydd descended the rope first. Having scaled his share of castle walls, he carefu
lly selected the best path down toward the sea. Iolo, trembling and white as alabaster, went after him. Dewi and Tomos were close behind.
Feeling her eyes still upon him, Owain turned and shared with his wife one last look. One look that said more than a thousand words could. Then he began his descent. Each footfall brought them closer to the furious sea, each handhold further from the walls that had housed them and kept them safe. The rope burned his hands raw. He had forgotten his gloves. Every now and then a loose stone slipped beneath his boot and tumbled down the steep rock face. It might have been an hour or the whole night, Owain would not look down or up, only as far as the next step. Then, quite suddenly, he found himself on a thin landing where the waters of the bay beat against the rock on which he stood.
He looked at Iolo, who was nursing his own bleeding hands, and his sons, who were fueled by the danger of their adventure, and nodded. One by one, they slipped into the water and began to wade and then tread southward.
The last to enter the water, Owain tried as hard as he could to focus on the place where he had parted with his beloved—the place where he had left his heart behind. But all was gray above. Beyond, the black sea. When he at last submitted to the fate of the sea, the cold sucked his breath away. The tide beckoned him toward deeper waters. In the darkness, Tomos called softly to him. Owain, his thoughts going numb, followed his son’s voice.
The waves created by the vigorous wind tugged at Iolo. The bard’s head slipped beneath the dark surface. Owain was imbued with a surge of strength and purpose greater than the mad sea. He swam to Iolo, draped his friend’s arm over his shoulder and pulled him along through the water. Iolo coughed and fought for breath.
Uneasy Lies the Crown Page 30