Named of the Dragon

by Susanna Kearsley

  James called out, below us. "Lyn?"

  "Yes?"

  "Are you all right?"

  "I'm fine."

  "Who's that you're talking to?"

  Gareth answered, arrogant. "It's me."

  I heard James shuffle backwards, trying to see. "Gareth?"

  "Got it in one."

  "What the devil are you doing up there?"

  "I'm being bloody unappreciated, that's what."

  "Sorry?"

  Sighing, I raised my voice. "Never mind, James, we'll be down in a minute. I just want to look at the roof."

  Gareth lifted an eyebrow. "Oh, brilliant. A fall from up there would be much more impressive."

  "I'm not going to fall."

  "No, you're not," he agreed, "because I'm coming with you."

  From anyone else, I'd have found such concern for my welfare endearing—from Gareth, it rankled. I didn't know why. It might have had something to do with the way that he touched me, his hand holding firm to the back of my coat as I climbed to the top of the parapet. His touch didn't question its right to be there, it was simple possession. And the more I tried to break from it, the stronger it became.

  "That's far enough," he said. "You can see all you need to see from here."

  But in defiance I went one step higher, spreading my stance to the buffeting wind and enjoying the feel of achievement. I felt like I was standing on the prow of some great ship, with all the other towers bowed beneath me, supplicant. All round me, to both west and east, a muddy-bottomed tidal river flowed and pooled about the castle walls, the water slow and idle now, with nothing to defend.

  It made a calming contrast to the hurly-burly running through the Main Street in the opposite direction, where lines of miniature cars and people jostled past the tiny shops of Pembroke.

  I would have gone still higher—it appeared that from the rough-flagged inner wall-walk there was some way I could climb the outer dome and reach the summit of the tower—but the hand at my back was determined.

  "Good enough?" Gareth asked.

  "I suppose it will have to be." Looking straight down, I examined the warren of crumbling walls to the east of the keep. "What is that?"

  He glanced over. "The old halls and chancery. Why, did you want to climb them while you're at it?"

  I turned my head sideways. His eyes were unchanged, but I hadn't mistaken the thread of dry wit in his voice. "Maybe," I said.

  "Then I'd best show you round them myself. Swift won't be any help, he's got no head for heights."

  James, waiting at the doorway of the Keep, agreed. "Oh, God no, I have no great desire to go up any building that's falling to pieces." He seemed rather pleased to see Gareth. I found that surprising. From what I'd seen so far since coming to Angle, I wouldn't have thought either man had much use for the other. "No, you two go ahead."

  I held back. "I can go by myself, it's all right. I'm sure that Mr. Morgan doesn't want to waste his time."

  Gareth let go my jacket and shrugged. "I'm not in any rash."

  His tone was a challenge. He knew I wouldn't risk appearing rude in front of James, and with his eyes he let me know he knew it. Silently, I set my jaw. Fine then, I thought. If I couldn't stop Gareth from dogging my steps round the ruins, I could at least see that he didn't enjoy the experience.

  And my methods were effective. Nearly half an hour later, as I pulled myself on to the wall of the Northern Hall, Gareth began to unravel. "Is it really necessary," he asked, "to go up every bloody flight of stairs you see?"

  "What, getting tired?"

  "No." He sounded like a little boy, complaining, and I turned to hide my smile.

  "I've told you that you needn't bother trying to keep up with me. I never fall. And even if I did fall," I went on, "I don't see why that should worry you. It's not as though you like me."

  He considered this a moment "Do you know," he said, "you're absolutely right."

  Surprised by the change in his tone, I looked over my shoulder. "I am?"

  "Yes. The next oubliette that we pass," he said, firmly, "I'm chucking you in."

  He wasn't serious, I told myself, remembering the horror of that cramped hole in the dungeon tower, where prisoners were thrown to be forgotten. I knew he wasn't serious. But he played it so brilliantly, straight-faced and sober, that I wavered a few seconds, doubting. "You wouldn't dare."

  His smile was unexpected. He stood, hands on hips, planted square in the stairwell. "Are we going down, now?"

  I followed him warily, not really sure how to handle a Gareth in good humour. At the bottom of the newel stair we found James, waiting patiently and smoking, looking small against the lofty arching ruins of the Northern Hall. He glanced at us, friendly. "Well done," he said. "The only thing left to see here is the Wogan."

  "She likes to go up," Gareth told him, "not down."

  But he went with me anyway, into the Wogan—a huge limestone cavern set under the hall. Carved by nature, die ceiling soared over our heads, descending, into darkness at its outer edges. The great yawning mouth of the cavern was sealed by a stout wall, with windows and arrow-slits over an iron-grilled Watergate.

  "This was used as a boat store," said Gareth.

  "Was die water higher in those days?"

  "Probably not."

  "Then how did tiiey get the boats up here?" I asked.

  "Well, they wouldn't have carried the bloody things on their backs. I'm sure they knew enough to build a slipway."

  "Oh." I looked at his silhouette, black and unyielding against the cold light creeping through die thick bars of the Watergate. "Now, this place," I told him, "would make a great setting for drama." When he didn't dispute me, I pushed forwards, braver. "I'm told that you're writing another historical?"

  I watched his head turn, heard the pause. "Maybe."

  "Is it set here, at Pembroke?"

  "It might be."

  I lifted my guidebook and leafed through the pages that detailed me castle's long history, trying to spot who his subject might be. "William Marshal?" I named the great earl who had been the right arm of the first Plantagenets, and who'd nearly outlasted the lot of them, surviving three kings and standing Regent to the fourth.

  "A good one, but no. Guess again."

  I bent to die guidebook a second time, straining to read in die dim light. Now, who, I wondered, would appeal to Gareth? The last play he'd written had been about Owain Glyn Dwr, a soldier, a leader, a man who had battled great odds...

  "Henry Tudor," I said.

  Gareth watched and said nothing.

  "That's it," I said, "isn't it? Henry VII." The first Tudor king, born at Pembroke, who'd struggled through exile and intrigue to capture the crown in the battle of Bosworth and end England's War of the Roses by joining in marriage his own house of Lancaster with the rival house of York. He'd make a fitting hero for a Gareth Morgan play.

  I closed my guidebook, very sure. Gareth, an unreadable shadow against the grey light, took a step back from the Watergate, and as he turned I caught the fading corner of his smile. "We'd best get on with it," he said. "There's still a lot of castle left to see."

  I didn't let him shake me off so easily. As we strolled along the pathway that would take us through the curtain wall and back into the Outer Ward, I looked at James, pure innocence. "Wasn't Henry VII born here?"

  "Yes, in that tower, there," he said, pointing ahead to the place in the fortified wall. "His uncle, Jasper Tudor, was the Earl of Pembroke, then. It paid to be related to the King."

  My history lessons flooded back. I had nearly forgotten the tale of how Katherine of Valois, the widowed Queen of Henry V, had risked her neck in secret marriage to the Welshman Owen Tudor, and had given him two sons— half-brothers to the boy King Henry VI. Jasper, I thought, would have been one of those sons. And the other, the one who'd fathered Henry VII, his name was ...

  "Edmund," said James, when I couldn't remember. "Edmund had the luck of marriage on his side—his wife had royal blo
od, as well. I think Henry's claim to the throne came from her family, somehow."

  "I'd like to see the room where he was born," I said, and made a point of looking at my watch. "Perhaps we ought to go there next. We're running out of time."

  Beside me, Gareth calmly turned his head and showed me, in a glance, he wasn't fooled. "I have a feeling you'll be disappointed."

  James agreed. "There's nothing there to see." But he indulged me, all the same.

  The ascent from the Outer Ward into the tower was simple and straight, and the tower itself had been fully restored—James appeared to have no problem climbing the stairs to the sturdy first floor. It was here, he informed me, in this close round chamber, that the first Tudor king had been born. "Not the nicest of rooms," he said, looking around from the narrow rectangular windows that faced outwards, over the town, to the large fireplace opposite, its reconstructed chimneypiece bearing a plaque to commemorate "the birth of Henry VII in this castle on the 28th of January 1457."

  "Oh, I don't know," I countered, liking the warmth of the wooden plank floor, and the stout ceiling beams overhead. "It's really rather cosy, I think. Once you put a bed in here, and draperies ..."

  Gareth interrupted my imaginings. "Henry's mother," he told us, "was fourteen years old, with her man two months dead, and a baby that wanted to fight his way out of her. I doubt that she cared about draperies."

  I thought about this, stepping back to make way for a trio of tourists who'd just tumbled in from the wall-walk. Young and laughing, reddened by the cold, they peered through the windows and glanced at the fireplace, exchanging comments in a language that might have been German, then whirled past us into the dark narrow gallery linking the tower to the neighboring gatehouse.

  I felt the air stir in their wake, felt it brush me, as soft as a whispering gown. Looking down, I consulted my guidebook. "Did he live here very long?"

  "Who, Henry?" Gareth shrugged. "Not really. When he was four or five his uncle Jasper lost this castle to the Yorkists, and the boy was taken too, as hostage. It happened all the time, in those days," he said, seeing the look on my face.

  "How long was he held hostage?"

  "Ten years or so."

  It seemed barbaric, really, and I said as much. "To take a woman's child away ..."

  "I know," said Gareth.

  James was less affected. "Oh, she got him back eventually. And then his uncle took him to the continent for safety, brought him back in time for Bosworth Field." He looked up at the chimneypiece. "We're meant to be descended from him, Christopher and I. Supposedly when Henry marched through on his way to do battle with Richard HI, he stopped the night with a family near New Quay and took a special liking to the daughter of the house. My mother's family trace their line from Henry's little accident."

  "Is that a fact?" Gareth studied him with interest.

  "Mm. Mind you, I'm not sure Tudor blood is something one would want. Henry VIII with his wives, you know, and Bloody Mary ... not the most lovable characters, were they?"

  The breeze blew again, very cold, and I moved to get clear of it, colliding with the door frame and losing my grip on the guidebook. It fell to the floor in a scramble of pages. And as I bent to pick it up I saw that it had opened to the portrait of a woman, set beneath some famous former Earl of Pembroke.

  The portrait—an old painting—had been photographed in black and white; I couldn't tell the colour of her gown. And the woman was no longer young. But there couldn't be any mistaking that long, solemn face, nor the rings on her fingers. This was, without question, the woman in blue of my dreams.

  And now, of course, now that I knew who she was, I knew just where my subconscious mind had acquired her. Only last year I had handled a book about women who had figured in the life of King Henry VIII, and her portrait had been in that book.

  I didn't think it strange that she had turned up in my dreams—at least, no stranger than the other things I'd dreamed of. But I thought it rather weird that I had found her portrait here, while I was standing in this room.

  Because the woman in the portrait was the Lady Margaret Beaufort, who, as a frightened girl of fourteen, with her husband dead and strangers all around her, had in this tower brought a baby boy into the world, named Henry Tudor.

  XX

  And when the dragon saw that he was cast

  unto the earth, he persecuted the woman which

  brought forth the man child.

  Revelation, 12:13

  I'm not angry," said Bridget, arranging the overstuffed freezer to make space for one more container of ice cream. She straightened, looked round to be sure there was nothing left over, then gathered the crinkling carrier bags in a wad that she thrust in the bin. Bridget never saved anything. "I just wish that I'd known he was there."

  "Well, short of running a flag up the Barbican tower, I really can't see how I could have alerted you." Cradling my mug of hot coffee, I followed her through to the warmth of the dining-room, taking a chair by the glittering tree. "At any rate, I doubt that even you'd have found his company absorbing. He was in a mood."

  "He's always in a mood," she said. "He broods, you know. Like Heathcliffe."

  "Heathcliffe," I told her, "was never my type."

  "No? He's certainly mine."

  It was a catch-all category, I thought—Bridget's type. So long as a man didn't come when she called him, she found him attractive. "You'll have to shop faster, next time.

  You just missed him by minutes. James did try to persuade him to stop and have tea in the Main Street, but—"

  "James did?"

  I nodded.

  "How very peculiar. He doesn't like Gareth."

  "Well, you'd never have known it this afternoon. Mind you," I said, "James would probably have been friendly to anyone who'd taken me off his hands. I don't think he was quite so keen to see the castle, really."

  "No?" She was only half-listening now, abstracted.

  I smiled and changed the subject. "So tell me, what happened with Christopher?"

  I felt safe enough asking—he'd gone off upstairs for a nap before dinner, exhausted from two hours of shopping with Bridget. And James was securely holed up in his writing-room, well out of earshot. We might have been alone in the house.

  Bridget settled herself rather grumpily. "Not much. He went all discreet on me, damn him. Although," she said, losing her frown for a moment, "he did tell me one thing of interest."

  "Oh, yes?"

  "Gareth gives Elen money. A cheque every month. Don't you think that's suggestive?"

  I shrugged, and sipped my coffee. "What I want to know is why you seem so eager to prove Gareth fathered the baby. I'd have thought you'd be jealous."

  "Of Elen? Be serious. No, it's the intrigue I like, Lyn. The mystery. Aren't you even the slightest bit curious?"

  "No," I replied, very firmly. However much I might admire Gareth's talent, I didn't want to know his private business.

  "Oh, well," Bridget said. "At least my day wasn't a wash-out. I did get my shopping done."

  "So we're all set for Christmas lunch?"

  "Mm." She considered the tree with a critical eye. "Everything but the veg. I can buy those fresh, here, from the shop in the village. And I wondered, you know, if you wouldn't mind doing that thing that you do with smoked salmon ... ?"

  "With the cream cheese and horseradish? Certainly."

  She sighed. "I shall have to start slimming."

  "Nobody slims over Christmas," I said. "That's why I packed all my expandable clothes." The thought of food made my stomach grumble, and I tried to judge time by the darkness outside the long windows. I gave up. "What time is it?"

  "Only five-thirty."

  "Oh. What are we doing for supper?"

  "That's supposed to be my line," she said with a smile. "I don't know what we're doing. The pub, I'd imagine. You think you can hold out till seven o'clock?"

  "I'll try." Something light-coloured flashed at the edge of the garden, the br
iefest impression of movement.' 'Is that Owen, outside?"

  She twisted in her chair. "I don't see anyone."

  The flash came again, by the viburnum. "There, going round the back way, towards Elen's." But when Bridget's gaze found the right place, there was nothing to see—just the ragged black plume of an evergreen branch blowing back and forth, back and forth, raking the gravel. Losing interest, she looked back at me. "I suppose it might be Owen, though I didn't think he worked this late. More likely it's one of the cats, or—"

  "Shh," I said, and cocked my head, to listen.

  Bridget hated being shushed. I saw her frown, and shift position, drawing breath for some retort, but then she paused, and I knew she had heard it, too.

  It came faintly, at first—shuffled footsteps and murmuring voices that faded in places because of the wind. Then the murmuring stopped and from out of the darkness a sweet sound began, not quite steady, and started to swell. It was singing. The voices of children, a little off-key, but so simple and pure as they sang that most lovely of all children's carols, Away in a Manger.

  Bridget's face shone, beautiful. "Oh, Lyn, listen ... carol singers! Quick, where's your wallet?"

  It was typical, I thought, that she would want my wallet at a time like this, but she looked such a child herself that I indulged her, sorting the coins as I followed her into the shadowed back passage. "Here, is two pounds enough?"

  "Thanks." She opened the door.

  There were five of them, ringed round the long slab of warm light that spilled from the wide kitchen window. Red-cheeked from the cold, they bent over their songsheets, their breaths making soft puffs of mist in the air. The oldest could not have been more than eleven. When they saw we were looking, they elbowed each other and straightened their shoulders and sang louder still. "... but little Lord Jesus, no crying he makes ..."

  I looked at their small, earnest faces, and blinked back the dampness that started to well round my eyelashes. It wasn't sadness, really—just the beauty of the night, and those five voices raised together, bright with innocence.

  For all I sometimes wondered at the blunders of the human race, we had, I thought, created some remarkable traditions. And carolling from door to door—what people in a more poetic time had called "the waits"—was one of those rare things that made me feel distinctly warm towards my fellow man.