by Speer, Flora
She heard her cell door open and tensed, believing pain was imminent. A guard came in, the torch he carried adding to the light of the tallow dip they had given her earlier. The guard stuck the torch into a wall bracket.
“You have a visitor.” He moved aside to let Geoffrey enter the cell. “I’ll be at the top of the stairs, my lord. Call out when you are ready to leave, and I’ll come down and lock her in again.”
Gwenefer studied her former lover, seeing the deep new lines in his kind, honest face and the pain in the brown eyes that had once looked at her so tenderly.
“Have you come to punish me in person, my lord?” she taunted him. “Shall I bare my bosom for your blade?”
“I want you to tell me,” Geoffrey said, “why you betrayed me. You let me believe you cared for me, Gwenefer.”
“So I did. It was a Cymreig trick, my lord, in order to gain access to Afoncaer. You know how sly we Cymry, we Welsh, are, how untrustworthy. You should have been more careful.”
“There must have been some good reason for what you did. Tell it to me, and I’ll explain to Guy. He’s not a cruel man, and I know he hates the thought of hanging a woman. He’d revoke your sentence for just cause, I’m certain he would.”
“Hanging? Every one of us? That’s all?” When Geoffrey nodded, Gwenefer’s hands flew to her slender throat. “I had thought he’d want to give us some long and painful ending. When is it to be?”
“At noon tomorrow.” Geoffrey caught her hands and held them against his chest. “Gwenefer, it need not happen. Just give me a reason, some extenuating circumstance for what you did, and I’ll arrange for you to be sent to some secure convent where you may live out your days in prayerful peace.”
She pulled her hands out of his with a harsh laugh. She would tell him the truth, but not all of it. She did not want her parents’ names on Norman lips. She herself was no longer worthy to speak their names.
“I doubt there is a convent anywhere that could make use of my talents, my lord. You, who were the recipient of my skills, must appreciate that. So you want a reason, do you? I’ll give you one.” She fairly spat the next words at him. “You Normans have invaded my homeland. You build your castles wherever you can wrest enough land from us, and then you try to turn my fellow countrymen into your serfs. Normans do not belong in Cymru. We will fight you however we can until we drive you out again.”
“Gwenefer, please. Tell me something I can use to help you.”
“I’ll tell you this, Norman. If you save me from the noose and send me to a convent, I’ll find a way to escape, and I’ll join the next band of Cymry that’s planning to attack Afoncaer. I’ll be back to do as much harm as I can, so you had better kill me while you have the chance.”
She saw by his face that he believed her. She had deliberately left him no opening through which he could help her. It was what she wanted. She had never swerved for a moment from the path she and Emrys had agreed she would take, but the tenderness she had come to feel for Geoffrey was a betrayal of the Welsh cause and of her parents, whom the Normans had killed. For that dual betrayal she deserved to die.
“Will you kiss me?” Geoffrey asked.
“Why?” She made herself laugh at him, wanting his mouth on hers one last time, and denying herself the thing she yearned for. It was part of her punishment. That, and watching his face while she coldly destroyed his love for her. Considering what she had done to him, it was only right to set him free of her, but the pain of doing it was worse than that which the hangman’s noose would inflict on her tomorrow. “I never wanted to kiss you, Geoffrey. I certainly do not want to now.”
He looked at her with eyes gone cold and blank, and then he went out, calling to the guard to come and lock her door.
“A priest will come to you later tonight, Gwenefer,” he said from outside her cell. “None of you need die unshriven, and you will all be left unharmed until tomorrow.”
Gwenefer made no reply. She stood still, listening to his footsteps on the stone stairway until a heavy door slammed and all was silent once more. Then she sank onto the damp stone floor, weeping quietly, loving him and deeply ashamed of her love. Cymreig, Welsh, could not love Norman. But she did, and would until she died. She choked back hysterical laughter. Until she died. That would not be so very long. Less than a day. She could bear it until then.
It began to rain during the night, a drifting, misty rain to end the unusual stretch of sun and heat. The cool grayness settled over Afoncaer, matching the subdued atmosphere of the day. In the morning, those who had been killed in the Welsh attack were buried. The prisoners would be executed at noon. The entire population of Afoncaer, both castle and village, everyone above the age of twelve, was expected to attend both events.
Selene had existed for the last two days in a state of barely suppressed hysteria. She was certain Reynaud sensed that she had more to do with recent events than she’d admitted. Hoping to divert any blame that might be placed upon her, she had given Thomas a highly colored, truncated version of her brief friendship with Gwenefer. She believed he accepted what she had told him and would defend her against whatever suspicions anyone might hold toward her for that ill-fated association. She had confirmed her husband’s trust and devotion by flinging herself upon him in a wild paroxysm of sexual abandon. She had successfully convinced him that she had missed him terribly in his absence, and that she was as disappointed as he to learn she was not with child after all. Selene knew he imagined she was trying to conceive now, to make up for that disappointment, and so he cooperated willingly whenever she approached him, pleased and flattered by her frequent invitations.
But what Selene was really doing was drugging herself with Thomas’s body as she sought to forget her fear that Gwenefer, or Cynan, or Emrys, their leader, would speak her name in connection with what had happened at the castle and thus confirm Reynaud’s impressions. She was afraid to ask any questions aimed at discovering whether she had been implicated in the Welsh plot. Questions could arouse more suspicions.
She put on a black gown and dragged herself to the funeral service in the village church, pale and shaken at what she had helped to bring about. There she prayed sincerely for the souls of those whose deaths were partly her fault.
“I can’t go to the hanging, Thomas,” she said afterward. “I can’t.”
“We all have to go, Selene. Arianna will be there, and I’ll be right next to you.”
She could not tell him she feared one of the Welsh, or all of them, would stand on the scaffold and point her out and say she belonged with them, that she, too, should have a noose about her neck.
Guy had decided not to hang the Welshmen from the battlements, which was the usual punishment for prisoners taken in such an attack. Instead, in an effort to display solemn, measured Norman justice, a scaffold was erected outside the village walls, in a narrow field too rocky for farming that ran along the river. They all rode out to the spot, Guy leading them, followed by Thomas and Geoffrey, Benet and the other squires, Selene and Arianna, Kenelm and his men-at-arms, and lastly, on foot, the household staff. Reynaud had come in a horse-drawn litter. They all stood together, and behind them the villagers gathered in a crescent. Only Guy remained mounted. The wound in his thigh pained him badly, and he did not want to appear weak in public by needing help to get off and on his horse, so now he sat high above them on his huge black stallion, his face set in grim lines, watching the village gate, waiting.
The six prisoners came last of all, riding in a wooden cart and accompanied by the village priest, Guy’s sheriff, and a few armed guards. One or two wore bandages over wounds they had taken in the fighting, but it was perfectly clear that they had been fed and well cared for, and that no one had been tortured. The crowd fell silent as the prisoners were led to the scaffold.
It began to rain harder. Selene, forced by the press of people to move forward until she stood much too close to the wooden platform, saw Gwenefer lift her face to the sky, to the last Welsh
rain she would ever know.
The sheriff read the execution order he and Guy had stamped with their seals the day before.
“Have you anything to say?” the sheriff asked, and Selene swayed, holding her breath. Just a few moments more and either she, too, would stand condemned, or no one would ever know what she had done. Her fate depended upon the five men and one woman standing before her.
Emrys began a short, impassioned speech, declaring that the Normans would soon be driven out of Wales forever. While he spoke, Gwenefer looked straight at Selene, who thought her heart would stop in fear. Emrys ended his speech. Selene knew Gwenefer would speak next and condemn her. She knew it.
“Does anyone else have aught to say?” called the sheriff.
Selene waited, transfixed by Gwenefer’s dark eyes. There was a long, long silence. Or so it seemed to Selene, but when she blinked the nooses had been placed about six necks and Guy sat sternly on his horse, his right hand raised.
Gwenefer never took her eyes off Selene’s face and it seemed to Selene that she could read the Welsh woman’s thoughts. Gwenefer had decided not to speak. She would leave Selene to the guilt so plainly written in her expression, and to the possibility of further betrayal in the future. For how could Selene ever be certain Gwenefer had not told someone else what Selene had done, someone who might use that information as Gwenefer had used it, to make her help the Welsh? That, Gwenefer’s dark eyes seemed to say, would be Selene’s lifelong punishment.
Gwenefer smiled at Selene with a deep, secret amusement. The smile lasted only a moment before Gwenefer sought out Geoffrey, and there her gaze remained.
Guy’s raised hand began to fall, and when it came down, the six Welsh rebels were no more, and Selene hung limply between Thomas and Arianna, supported only by their entwined arms.
Part IV
Arianna
A.D. 1117 – 1121
Chapter 13
Just as Guy had anticipated, Meredith came home the day after the executions, in time to help Arianna nurse Selene through a month-long illness.
Selene had spoken to no one since she had fainted in front of the scaffold, and she showed no interest in anything except Deirdre. Every morning either Arianna or Linnet brought the child, now ten months old, to Selene’s bedchamber. Selene would touch her daughter, as though reassuring herself Deirdre was safe, perhaps smile at her, then sigh and close her eyes and push the little girl away and ignore her until someone took her back to the nursery.
“Selene has no fever,” Arianna said, “no rash or pain, no signs of any bodily ill. What is wrong with her?”
“I don’t know,” Meredith admitted. “Perhaps the shock of all she witnessed during the raid has affected her. You said she was terrified for Deirdre’s sake.”
They could think of nothing else to cause such an illness, and nothing that might cure it save the passage of time. Each day they fed and washed Selene and combed her hair, talking to her on pleasant subjects all the while, trying to lift her spirits. Beyond that, they could only pray she would recover soon.
“It was the hanging,” Thomas said to Arianna. “I should not have forced her to go to it. She was unwilling, she begged me to let her stay behind, and I refused. The fault for this is mine.”
“It pains me to see you so unhappy.” Arianna put one hand on his arm. They stood in the great hall, where he had come after one of the visits he daily made to Selene’s bedside. “Thomas, if you continue to grieve so over Selene’s condition, and to blame yourself, you will only make yourself ill, too. Then what will Selene do when she is well again and you are ill?”
“Do you really believe that she will ever be well?” Thomas asked. “I’ve nearly lost hope.”
“I have not,” Arianna declared firmly. “And when she is recovered, she will need you, Thomas. Please, for her sake, and your own, don’t give up.”
“She’s right, you know.” Guy had come into the hall with Reynaud, and now he joined Arianna and Thomas. Reynaud, who walked more slowly, lagged a step or two behind him.
“Support me in this, Guy,” Arianna urged. “I think Thomas should go hunting with Kenelm. Take Cristin and those two goshawks she’s been helping the falconer to train. Ride a bit, and come back tired and hungry, and eat a hearty meal for once.”
“And tomorrow,” Guy added, “come with Reynaud and me. We are going to mark out a new town wall to enclose all those houses that are springing up on the other side of the moat. They are brave folk to build there after what has just happened, and they deserve better protection from their lord.”
Reynaud joined them. He stood next to Arianna and spoke to her under his breath.
“I’ll take Thomas’s mind away from his wife’s condition. I know how to catch his interest.” Raising his voice, the architect added, “I thought a high wall with several watch towers. As for the gatehouse, something clever, to stop would-be invaders at several places before they can get inside. Your uncle has told me, Thomas, about a castle he saw once in the Holy Land, and I’ve made a sketch from his description.”
“May I see it?” Thomas was plainly interested, and Arianna sent Reynaud a grateful look. She did not have time to thank him in words until later, for her attention was claimed by one of the new serving girls who needed her advice.
More people were housed in the castle these days. Guy had added to the number of his knights and squires while visiting his English properties, and some of the knights had brought their ladies and children to live at Afoncaer. Meredith had made still more additions to the household staff, bringing with her from Kelsey and Adderbury half a dozen serving women and several pages, young lads away from home for the first time, nervous and needing both reassurance and instruction in their duties to the ladies of the castle.
Kenelm’s new wife had come with Meredith, too. A plump, pale blonde, aptly named Blanche, this daughter of Adderbury’s seneschal had brought along four female attendants of her own.
She and Kenelm had been given two rooms on the third floor of the keep, granted so much space because of Kenelm’s rank as Captain of the Guard.
The castle was fairly bursting with the crowd, and the presence of all these new and attractive young people enlivened life in great hall and kitchen. Arianna, observing various pairings-off with an amused eye, suspected several of Guy’s currently unwed knights and men-at-arms would take wives before winter was over.
By early October the necessary repairs had been made to damage done during the Welsh raid, both in castle and in village. The harvest was well under way. And Selene was finally showing signs of recovery. She had begun to speak again, and she was out of her bed, though she still kept to her room. One morning she surprised Arianna by asking for parchment and quill pen. Once she had the writing supplies, she sent everyone away and spent the rest of the day locked in her chamber. She emerged at day’s end with a thick sealed packet and a second, thinner letter. More importantly, she had dressed herself and appeared ready to join the evening meal for the first time since her collapse.
“Could you next courier to King Henry’s court in Normandy take these also?” she asked Guy, handing him the letters. “My father will see they are given to my mother, and she will have the packet sent on to Lady Elvira in Poitou.”
“Only a small note to your mother, and such a long letter to a friend?” Guy joked, turning the two folded parchments over as though weighing them.
“I haven’t written to Elvira for a long time,” Selene countered.
“But you have,” Reynaud said, fixing Selene with his pale blue gaze. “If I remember correctly, you sent her a letter just after you and Thomas returned from Tynant last spring.”
“What could you possibly know, Reynaud?” Selene’s voice was louder and sharper than she intended, but the man irritated her so, watching her closely when she came into the hall just now, as if he knew something about her and was waiting for her to make a mistake. “What could you know of the things dear girlhood friends write to each o
ther? So much has happened recently. I wanted to tell Elvira all of it, and the telling has helped to make me well again. I’ve put it all behind me.” It was in fact Isabel to whom Selene had told all, in sentences carefully phrased lest someone else should read the letter. But Isabel would understand and approve what Selene had done. Now, if only the too-curious Reynaud would turn his attention elsewhere and forget his suspicions of her, she could begin to feel safe.
“Indeed,” he said, still watching her closely, “you do look much improved, Lady Selene.”
“It is no concern of yours how I look,” Selene snapped. Ignoring Reynaud’s expression of surprise and Guy’s raised eyebrows, she went on, “Have I no right to send a letter to a friend if I chose? It will be no inconvenience to you, Guy. You told Thomas yesterday you had a letter to go to my father.”
“I did, and there is no difficulty in adding these to the packet,” Guy assured her.
“There, you see?” she said triumphantly to Reynaud. He did not respond, but later, after the meal was over, Arianna took her aside.
“Selene, treat Reynaud more kindly,” she advised. “He would be your friend if you would let him.”
“I don’t need him for a friend. I can’t bear to look at him with his crutches and that missing leg. He’s a dreadful sight.”
“Selene, he’s not at all disfigured, thanks to Meredith’s good care. However he appears to you, never forget that he saved your life, and Deirdre’s, by using one of those crutches you so disdain.”
“And now he stares at me all the time, as though I have done something wrong. Why doesn’t he leave me alone?”
“You are imagining it,” Arianna said. She watched sadly when Selene turned her back on the assembled company and left the hall, murmuring, “You are not recovered yet, my friend. What ails you?”