Children of Clun

by Robert Nicholls

  However, sometimes having knowledge is less important than knowing where to find it. And a little rabbit of perception, on where to find such knowledge, was startled into view in Madeleine’s mind by a strange, late-in-the-afternoon occurrence.

  Anwen had been chattering on. “Wouldn’ you love to be able to tell fortunes, Maudie? I bet we’d know everything! If I knew everything, I’d . . .”

  At the mention of ‘telling fortunes’, a vision popped, unbidden, into Madeleine’s mind. It was a vision of the cart and horse she’d seen, two mornings ago, clip-clopping across the bridge from Wales – the one Maude had been so fascinated by. Her mixing hand fell still, her head dropped and her eyes glazed. Steam swirled about her, shoving a hot, wet breath up her nostrils. And in the steam, a face seemed half-way to resolve itself. At least there were eyes, so wide and imploring that Madeleine found herself leaning into the steam, as though to hear a whispered secret. The eyes were those of her shy and secretive sister, Maude! But the voice, a woman’s voice, was one she didn’t know.

  “He listens to his God,” the voice said. “He is at peace.” For the briefest of instants, she saw Owain Glyndwr – still not young, but ruddy, glad and powerful. The voice said, “He will always be thus.”

  At that point, Madeleine was roused by a concerned touch from Anwen. She sat back.

  “Maude?” she said.

  Chapter 23 - Homecoming

  Madeleine, Anwen and Brenton LeGros spent a full day, from dawn to dusk, walking beneath the cover of trees. They started off energetically, talking and laughing as they went. The girls expected to see the rock fall and the bodies of the slain wolves, but Brenton, not wanting to break the spell of their joy, led them well wide of the area.

  Most of the talk was about the astonishing closeness of the fabled Owain Glyndwr and the legendary ‘Children of Owain’. Brenton spoke wistfully of the ancient priory and of the valley’s perfectly peaceful seclusion.

  “Druids!” he declared. “That’s who would’ve found that place! Them folks could smell out all the magic places. An’ there’s magic there for certain! Healin’ magic – earth magic – ol’ magic. I felt it. An’ young Jack! I mean, I know youse worked some potions for ‘im, but he was mendin’ awful fast, don’t ye reckon?”

  Anwen had been laughing and skipping around Brenton, teasing and provoking him at every opportunity. The long pick-a-back journey to the priory, with its muted conversations, seemed to have roused a closeness between them. “Well,” she said, “if that’s so, Master Smarty – if there’s healin’ magic – why don’ it fix up whatever’s ailin’ wi’ Owain Glyndwr?”

  “Hmm,” Brenton answered thoughtfully and, fully five minutes later, he concluded, “maybe some wounds can’t be got at by magic. Maybe there’s wounds an’ there’s wounds.” He thought of his own wound and his near miraculous survival. “Occurs to me, we each of us maybe only get so much magic. Ye get it once, ye got no call to be ‘spectin’ another helpin’. Maybe Owain’s jus’ used up his share!” He looked at her momentarily earnest face and blushed deeply, ashamed to be caught turning over such deep thoughts. “I dunno,” he stammered. “Jus’ thinkin’. Too much, prob’ly.”

  Anwen smiled. She reached to touch him and, once the first touch was made, seemed to need his helping hand more and more frequently. Madeleine would soon lose patience with her. “Would you let the man alone and walk on your own feet, Annie! He don’ need to be carryin’ you out’ve the forest a second time, you know!”

  By mid-afternoon, Anwen and Brenton had settled into quiet talk that seemed to exclude Madeleine so she settled into her own concerns. For all the shocks and frights she’d received, her major pre-occupation now was with how she’d be received when she got back to Clun. Her father’s declaration that he’d wash his hands of her had barely touched her on the day. But the more she thought about it, the more it scalded. Could a father do that? Was that what God had done to Brother Bones and the monks – washed his hands of them? Or what Owain Glyndwr was doing to his own so-called ‘children’ – letting them mildew like stones in a forgotten corner of the Marches? Why did those people let that happen? Why didn’t they stop waiting and go off to their lives? It was different for her, being only a girl. But they were grown men!

  With only minutes to spare before the shadows became absolute, the fields of Clun opened before them. Anwen raced ahead, anxious to receive her full share of hugs, kisses, scoldings and lectures. She seemed able to cast aside her weariness as easily as a cap. Madeleine and Brenton hauled along more slowly. Though the time at the priory had served to refresh Brenton, his newly stressed wound was still pulsingly raw. And Madeleine’s wounds – those resulting from the rift with her father – hadn’t been touched by the valley’s healing magic.

  Before any of them reached the reeve’s house, villagers hailed them, crowded around them, reached to touch them and stopped them in the street. When finally they entered the alehouse, it was in the midst of a crowd and Madeleine was mercifully spared, at least for the moment, the ordeal of speaking with her father. Gwenith, though, beat her way through to embrace both her and Anwen, clasping their faces to her breast.

  The story they told was fabulous beyond belief – unsurprising, since it was almost entirely concocted. They told of the girls becoming lost, following wayward animals; of Brenton getting lost, following wayward girls; of all of them being found, by wandering monks, who had also lost their way – their way being to Bishop’s Castle, which lay some miles to the north of Clun.

  The threesome had resolved, early in the day, that they would not speak of Glyndwr or of his ancient protectors. Not to anyone. Nothing good could come from it. The thought of those quiescent old soldiers being hounded from their refuge was particularly repugnant to Brenton.

  Nonetheless, the story of their return and their strange adventures spread from the alehouse like flame through summer grass. By the time it flowed across the drawbridge into Clun Castle, it was fairly whistling with energy, hurling itself boldly into every work and living area in the castle.

  Only one hearer recoiled with suspicion and that hearer was the castle steward, Samuel Rowe. He alone, in stepping back from the tale, found himself treading on an assumption which, though not entirely accurate, was dangerously close to being so and it startled him just enough to send him scuttling directly to Sir Roland. The assumption was that the girls could shed some light on the purported clash between Sirs Cyril and Angus and the Plant Owain! The knights claimed, after all, that these ‘lost’ girls witnessed it! Was it fantasy? Or was it fact?

  Within moments of asking the questions, he found himself on a mission, hustling down the hill into the village, flanked by two of Sir Roland’s knights. The atmosphere in the village vibrated like a grasshopper’s wings in late summer and Rowe’s eagerness fed on it. These people, after all, were peasants and Rowe never doubted that their entire reason for being – like his own – was to serve. Also, he’d had dealings aplenty with the reeve – enough to know that the man’s position could be held over him – that he, most dependably, though he might argue, would ultimately acquiesce. Straight to the alehouse, Rowe dashed, pausing not at all at the door.

  His entry was cold water on the flame – a heavy foot on the back of the grasshopper. Talk and laughter were pinched back behind ale-flecked lips.

  Wordlessly, Rowe squinted into the gloom until at last his eyes locked on Madeleine and Anwen. Gwenith draped protective arms around the girls.

  “Your daughters have freed themselves from the rebels, we hear!” The use of the royal “we” was an affectation of Rowe’s when nobility of any level was in residence at the castle. Everyone in the village was aware of the man’s taste for posturing.

  “They are home, Mister Rowe. Praise the Lord,” Gwenith answered softly. “But from no rebels, it seems! Unless you count straying animals and lost monks as rebels.”

  Rowe’s expression didn’t alter though he laughed a light imitation of a
laugh. Both knew that mention of rebels, here in the Marches, was not a matter for jest.

  “That is not what we’ve heard,” he answered somberly, his eyes now locked on Madeleine, who refused to cower behind her mother. “Our information is that a certain, very dangerous . . . treasonous individual . . . has been involved in their so-called . . . straying!” Even Rowe was unwilling to repeat the infamous name aloud.

  Gwilym, mixed in with the crowd, found his mind turning to the remarks of Tom the sharpener, made in that very ale house, two nights earlier. The Plant Owain had been mentioned. More urgently, though, he remembered Gwenith’s warning from the fortuneteller. ‘The wounded one must stay free,’ she’d said. Neither of them had known what that meant at the time. But the limping, grey form of Brenton LeGros had summoned those words back to him as clearly as if his name had been spoken. The moment Rowe appeared at the door, he’d pressed Brenton to the floor and urged stillness upon him. Now he stepped forward through the crowd.

  “My daughters tell no such story, Mister Rowe,” he said. His smile was tense and didn’t touch his eyes. He gestured around the crowd. “We’ve all just heard it. Any o’ these people will vouch for that. An’ since my daughters were brought up to tell no lies, I’m thinkin’ your information might be . . . a little . . .”

  “Have a care, Gwilym!” Samuel Rowe interrupted levelly. The hands of his accompanying knights drifted toward their sword hilts. “This information was given by a knight of the realm – one of the king’s knights! And corroborated by a second! The word of a knight, given to his lord, is a great thing in the world.”

  “So it is,” nodded Gwilym, looking down at his feet. Ordinary men could easily find themselves split by a long sword for questioning a knight’s honesty. “So it is. I give ye that.” He drew a deep breath and Gwenith, knowing the recent strain he’d been under, began to pray in her heart that he would stop speaking – would not show his infamous obstinacy. Her prayer went unheard.

  “Still,” he mumbled and then, gaining strength, continued; “I tell meself . . . a daughter’s word, spoken to ‘er father, should also be a great thing in the world, Mister Rowe.” He turned his gaze on Madeleine. He hadn’t yet spoken directly to her but now, through the midst of the crowd, he did, turning directly to face her. “Everyone knows my girls. Quarrelsome . . . difficult – been like that since the cradle. I spent years tryin’ to . . . to trim the tricky edges off ‘em – make ‘em fit a bit better – into the village, like. Tryin’ to protect ‘em, I guess. Keep ‘em safe. These past few days, I fin’ly figured out that . . . well, that I’d rather ‘ave ‘em ‘ere, as they are, than gone somewhere else, an’ different. More’n anything, I jus’ want ‘em safe . . . an’ ‘appy. An’ I’ll learn to put up wi’ ‘em bein’ ‘emselves. I’ll not doubt their words.”

  It was the closest thing to an apology that Madeleine had ever received in her life.

  “Maddie,” he went on, turning to face Rowe, “. . . she’s my first born. I’ve not always been . . . patient wi’ Maddie. Too quick to ignore what she sees. But I do know that she ‘as a good ‘ead – better one than I got, prob’ly. She’ll tell ye now what’s ‘appened. An’ then I’ll ask ye to . . . ”

  He was about to ask Rowe to leave, but the opportunity wasn’t quite sufficiently large as Rowe interrupted again, insisting on his own slippery little show of authority.

  “It is not for you to ask, Reeve! Or to be asked!” His voice rose and his eyes blinked in the gloom. “The girls are the ones to be asked! Along with Brenton LeGros who, it seems, has brought them home! And Sir Roland is the one to do the asking. To that end, I am here to escort these girls into his presence. Even now, LeGros is being collected from his home.”

  Clearly, the eagerness with which he’d first sought out Madeleine and Anwen had blinded Rowe to the big man’s presence at the back of the dim, crowded room. He gestured toward Madeleine and Anwen. “Ye’re to come with me now.”

  Madeleine drew back, looked toward her father, to whom she’d not yet spoken.

  “Don’t let’s anyone be foolish, now!” Rowe warned. “It is a great honor for such as these to meet with a man of Sir Roland’s importance.”

  He looked to Gwenith and drew back his lips in a thin semblance of a smile.

  “And,” he drawled, his eyes showing all the compassion of a hawk looking down on a wounded vole, “they’ll be safe in the castle! Surely that’s what we want for ‘em Gwilym! Rather than in the hands of forest-bound rebels?”

  Chapter 24 – Maude’s New Position

  When Sir Roland had dragged Maude from the Great Hall, he’d told her nothing of the job he had in mind. Instead, he hauled her to the kitchen and told Jenny Talbot what was to happen. “The girl”, he instructed Mrs Talbot, was to be washed and put in clothes that would be suitable for a serving girl in the chamber of Lady Joan de Beaufort. She was to be brought to Lady Margaret as soon as she was available for inspection.

  Consequently, Maude’s head was unceremoniously dunked in a bucket of icy water and given a brisk scrub with a bar of lye soap. Then her dress was yanked over her head and she was made to stand, naked and trembling, in a tub while more icy water was sluiced over her and Jenny Talbot bruised her from head to foot with a coarse brush. In the midst of the process, Sir Roland and Lady Margaret’s chambermaid, Susan, strutted into the kitchen with an extra dress of her own.

  “Lady Margaret’s sent me wi’ a dress for the girl, Mrs Talbot,” she said with as superior an air as she could muster. She cast an appraising eye up and down Maude’s dripping torso. “What’s she cryin’ for?”

  “Lordy,” Jenny Talbot muttered aloud. “Haven’t I got enough to do wi’out ‘avin’ to scour servin’ girls an’ answer fool questions?” She dashed the brush in the water and struck out at the ingrained dirt on Maude’s knees.

  “My my!” Susan continued, trying her best to mimic Lady Margaret’s haughty tone. “She do be a scrawny bit o’ business, don’t she? Got barely enough skin to cover all her bones with!”

  Jenny Talbot seemed then to notice Maude for the first time, standing in a half crouch, trembling like a new borne rabbit. Her little hands struggled and strained, trying at once to cover her nakedness and the terror in her face. Tears coursed down her cheeks and she gulped and hiccupped, on the verge of wailing out loud.

  Mrs Talbot said to Susan, “Leave the dress and fetch me the bucket o’ warm from near the fire.”

  Susan, who’d been enjoying her newfound sense of importance, was momentarily taken aback. “Missus Talbot!” she cried. “I don’t be one of the kitchen girls, to be fetchin’ water for you! As ye know, I am personal maid to Lady Margaret! And as such, am only needin’ to do her biddin’!” She flounced onto a stool.

  Jenny Talbot dropped her brush into the water, groaned to her feet and placed her fists on her hips. “So you are,” she said. “An important young lady, to be sure. And what a pity it would be if ye were to fall into an awful bout o’ sickness because maybe, p’rhaps, a dog might’ve pissed in your porridge one mornin’! Then someone else’ud have to be found to be Miss High ‘n’ Mighty who does Lady Margaret’s biddin’, wouldn’ they!”

  Susan swallowed visibly. “Leave the dress,” said Jenny Talbot. “Fetch the water.”

  Susan rose, flushed with embarrassment, clinging to what dignity she could muster. “Lady Margaret’ll hear o’ this!” she spat. She threw down the dress and marched out.

  “Lady Margaret hears of everythin’ from that one,” Jenny Talbot told Maude in exasperation. “Somethin’ for you to remember, hear? Now get yourself dried and into this dress. And stop your snivellin’! What’s your name again?”

  “Maude, Missus.”

  “Well, Maude. You’ve nothin’ to fear here. Jus’ keep your ‘ead down an’ speak when you’re spoken to is all. Sir Perceval’s a lovely gentleman, ‘e is, an’ ‘is lady wife is a refined an’ quiet bit of a snippet of a French girl – prob’ly not much older than yours
elf. They ain’t all full o’ themselves, like some of our English nobility. When you meet ‘im, you say, ‘Beggin’ yer pardon, Sir Perceval, but Mrs Talbot in the kitchen says to tell ye she’s baked you a nice pie an, when ye like, ye can send me to fetch it’. Can you remember that?”

  Maude nodded, still choking back the last of her tears. “Good,” continued Jenny Talbot. “An’ remember what I told you about this Susan. Don’t be trustin’ ‘er at all! She’s a usin’ little cow, her, an’ ye don’ want to give ‘er anythin’ to use against ye. Understand?”

  A second nod was all she could muster. What she understood was that, in the space of four torturous days, her world had been turned inside out. Not only was she isolated from her family but, waking and sleeping, she’d been assailed by nightmarish visions of wolves and walking skeletons; images of her lost sisters, confounded by lurking senses of fear, malevolence and, oddly, a muted peacefulness. At times, she felt she was being drawn out of her body. At others, there was a familiar, yet unfamiliar, presence in her mind, seeming to hold her still. She longed to return to the company of dreary, sweat-stained farm folk.

  “Good, then,” said Jenny Talbot. “Wait over there by the door. When the warm comes, we’ll give your hair another rinse. Meantime, stay outta me way while I get on wi’ me work!”

  * * * *

  Within the hour, Susan, with a superior, self-satisfied arrogance, would present Maude to Lady Margaret who would inspect her as though she were a suspect vegetable, then dismiss her into Susan’s care. And Susan would then lead her away, ticking instructions on her fingers as she went: “Keep the fire stoked. Fetch from the kitchen when they tell ye. Empty the chamber pots when they tell ye. Fetch from the laundry when they tell ye. An’ keep yer mouth shut, no matter what they tell ye. Got it?”