Falls the Shadow: A Novel

by Sharon Kay Penman

  Edward nodded. “Sometimes clemency is not only an act of Christian piety,” he said dryly, “but also one of policy.”

  “But it is an exclusive privilege, your English clemency…no? How else explain that these men have been restored to favor whilst the Mayor of London, who neither went back on his word nor took up arms against you, still languishes in a Windsor dungeon?”

  Llewelyn saw at once that his thrust had hit home. Edward’s jaw muscles tensed, his fair skin darkening; his eyes of a sudden reflected the wintry, bleached blue of a December sky. Llewelyn had seen other men look at him as Edward did now, battlefield foes who’d just crossed swords, taken his measure as an opponent, returning to the fight with a greater wariness.

  “You are more like de Montfort than I realized,” Edward said, with a tight smile. They were both on their feet now, and Edward turned as if to go, then struck back, still with a smile. “Whilst you are pondering the mysteries of our laws, my lord Llewelyn, you might think on this. It was English justice that restored your brother Davydd to his rightful place.”

  Dusk was smudging the contours of the distant mountains, but Llewelyn could still see the walls of Montgomery, spreading out to the south of the castle. It was not a sight to give him pleasure, for Montgomery was an English town on Welsh soil, chartered by Henry forty years earlier.

  After returning to his chamber to prepare for the evening’s entertainment, Llewelyn had given Einion and Goronwy ab Ednyved an account of his midday conversation with Edward, sparking in his uncle and Seneschal an outrage to equal his own. Having finally exhausted all the abusive possibilities he could conjure up to describe Edward, Goronwy rose, but at the door he paused to deliver a final, cautionary verdict upon the English King’s son. “Do not let your guard down with him, Llewelyn. It sounds to me as if his comments were intended as more than a condescending pat on the head. I think they were also meant as a warning.”

  “I do not doubt it,” Llewelyn agreed. “You need not worry, Goronwy. Edward Plantagenet is no man to hold cheaply. Far better to take him at his own inflated estimation!”

  Goronwy exited, laughing, and Einion rose to pour mead for Llewelyn and himself. “Edward will not be easy to outwit, lad—not like Henry.”

  “I’m not worried about outwitting Edward, but about outfighting him. Any man who could outmaneuver Simon de Montfort—”

  When the knock sounded, they both assumed that Goronwy had returned. “I wonder what he forgot,” Einion said, starting for the door. As he reached for the latch, Llewelyn had a sudden premonition, and he swung away from the window just in time to see his brother framed in the doorway.

  Davydd sauntered into the chamber with his usual aplomb. He was, they now saw, trailed by a castle page, a youngster bearing a tray piled with fragrant wafers. “Set it down there, lad,” he said, and flipped the boy an English coin before turning toward Einion with a cajoling smile. “I’d gladly ask you to join us, Uncle, but there are three things best done in privacy: laying with a wench, confessing to a priest, and bloodletting between brothers.”

  The corner of Einion’s mouth quirked in spite of himself. But it was to Llewelyn that he looked for confirmation, not withdrawing until the latter nodded.

  “Thank God, you’ve got mead! They drink naught but noxious ales and sugared wines in England, as backward a country as I’ve ever encountered.” Appropriating Einion’s cup, Davydd slid the platter across the table. “Help yourself. The castle cook is Welsh, and he gave me the angel’s-bread baked for Henry. You do not want any?” Straddling a chair, he tilted it at a precarious angle to study his silent brother.

  “I missed you, Llewelyn. Did you not miss me—not even a little? No, I see not. So much for my fabled charm! And yet you must admit that I can be good company, for I have a cheerful nature, an inexhaustible supply of bawdy stories, and more sources for gossip than I can begin to count. I do not mean stale gossip, either. For example, I’m sure you know that Gloucester is pressing a lawsuit against his own mother. But do you also know that his estranged wife is sharing her bed with Edward?”

  Davydd paused for breath, took several deep swallows of mead, watching Llewelyn all the while. “I cannot keep this up forever. For Christ’s pity, Llewelyn, say something—anything!”

  “Is Edward truly coupling with Gloucester’s wife?” Llewelyn asked, and Davydd laughed in relief.

  “God’s truth! Oh, he’s being discreet about it. He always is, for he seems fond of his wife, does not flaunt his concubines at court. But he has even more reason for caution this time. Although it would take an act of God to get Gloucester into Alice’s bed again, I’d wager that he expects her to live as chastely as a nun till the end of her days, and if he ever found out…well, that’s something to think about, is it not?”

  Reaching for a wafer, Davydd tilted the chair back even farther. “Ere I forget to ask, how is my daughter doing?”

  Llewelyn slowly shook his head. Even after three years, the memory retained the vivid clarity of utter astonishment. The arrival of Davydd’s messenger was in itself not so great a surprise. Davydd’s fortunes had plummeted after Lewes, and although Llewelyn didn’t expect it, it was not inconceivable that Davydd might swallow his pride, seek a reconciliation. But when the messenger was ushered into Aber’s great hall, it was not an olive branch he bore, but a green-eyed baby girl.

  “Only you,” he said, “would have had the gall to send your bastard offspring to the brother you’d betrayed.”

  Davydd shrugged. “What else could I do? Mary—her mother—had died in childbirth, and Mary’s kin took her in…as long as I made it worth their while. But after Lewes, I could not be so free-spending, and they would no longer keep her. What could I do with a babe? I was on the run, remember! I was not going to abandon her, for she’s of my blood—our blood. Would you have had me deposit her at de Montfort’s door? You were the only one I could think of, Llewelyn.”

  He leaned forward. “Tell me…how fares she? Did you find a family to take her? Or did you keep her at court?”

  “I kept her at court,” Llewelyn admitted, and Davydd laughed again.

  “I knew you would!”

  Davydd’s laughter had always been contagious. It came as a shock to Llewelyn, though, to hear himself laughing, too, as if there were no shadows between them. He stopped abruptly, reached across the table, and grasped Davydd’s wrist. “Do you truly think I’d ever be able to trust you again?”

  The question was more than challenging; it was insulting—deliberately so. But Davydd seemed quite unfazed. “No,” he conceded, almost cheerfully, “probably not. Hellfire, Llewelyn, I doubt if I’d trust me, either!”

  By now, Llewelyn was well aware that his brother’s smile was a weapon in and of itself, dangerously disarming. But even so, he was not as immune to its effects as he would have wished. Releasing the younger man’s arm, he said with sudden bitterness, “I would to God I knew when you were being serious—if you ever are.”

  Davydd no longer looked amused. “For what it’s worth,” he said, “it was not personal. I never wished you harm, Llewelyn. I wanted only to free Owain and claim my fair share of Gwynedd.”

  “Understandable aims; some might even say laudable ones. But you were not very squeamish about how you achieved them, were you?”

  “Because I turned to the English for help?” Davydd set his chair back upon the floor, with a thud. “Jesú, Llewelyn, if the ends do not justify the means, what on God’s earth does?”

  “Honesty at last!”

  “I wish you did not sound so surprised. The truth is not an utterly alien tongue to me, even if I do not get much practice with it.” Davydd splashed more mead into his cup, did the same for Llewelyn. “I must say that you’re taking the return of the Prodigal Brother rather well…why?”

  “It is not as if you were sprung upon me at the eleventh hour. I expected Edward to make use of you. Few men are as skilled as he at sowing seeds of dissension, and with you, Little Brother,
he has a readymade Trojan Horse, does he not?”

  “He thinks he does,” Davydd said. “So…what happens now?”

  Llewelyn did not respond at once. “If I had a month to prepare myself for your return, I had four years to think about your departure, about what you did—and why. Would it surprise you if I said that I could understand?”

  “Yes—exceedingly.”

  “Well, I can. There is some justice in your claims, Davydd…and they are well grounded in Welsh law. I am the one who is in violation of it, not you. Under the old ways, you and Owain and Rhodri have an equal right to the governance of Gwynedd.”

  “Somehow I doubt that you’re about to recant, to offer to divide your crown into four equal portions.”

  Llewelyn’s smile was grim. “You’re right; a crown cannot be divided without destroying it. And that is true, as well, for a country. Wales must be kept whole, or England will swallow it all. If that means transgressing the old laws, so be it. I value Welsh sovereignty higher than Welsh tradition.”

  “A nicely turned phrase, but where are we going with this conversation? I’m gratified that you can see my side of things, but it does not sound as if you’re offering anything more tangible than sympathy. So what you’re saying, then, is that we go back to the way it was ere I rebelled, except, of course, that I’ll now be kept on a much tighter leash.”

  “No, I’m not saying that. If it did not work four years ago, why should it work now? Our grandfather faced this very same dilemma; he could not resolve it, either, could find no way to reconcile the claims of his two sons. Our father died because of that failure. There has to be another way. I do not want to kill you, Davydd, or to see you shut away from the sun and sky—like Owain. But neither do I want to spend my days wondering how long you’ll be loyal this time.”

  Davydd was watching him warily. “And have you a solution? If so, you’ve gone Merlin one better!”

  “Not a solution—not yet. A possibility. Very simply put, I need an heir. Owain could no more govern Gwynedd than he could walk on water. But you, Davydd, you could. God knows, you’re clever enough; too clever by half. No one has ever questioned your courage. All you seem to lack is scruples…and that never excluded any claimants for the English crown. Prove to me that you can be trusted, and I’ll consider naming you as my heir.”

  “I thought you might dangle a carrot in front of my nose to keep me in harness. But I never expected such a gilded one. I need a moment to think on this. Why should you not wed and beget a son? You’re only thirty-nine; time is still your ally.”

  This next was not easy to admit, but it had to be said, for it alone could give legitimacy to his offer. “I ought to have had sons by now,” Llewelyn said reluctantly. “In these past twenty years, I’ve taken my share of women into my bed, but not a one has ever gotten with child. It may happen yet; I’ve known men who fathered children after giving up hope. But if it does not, I would be willing to give you serious consideration.”

  “But no promises?”

  “None whatsoever. If it be God’s Will that I have a son, I shall. But it is not God’s Will that shall determine your future; it is mine.”

  “That’s honest enough, and more than I expected, I admit. We have a pact, Llewelyn, and you, my lord Prince and brother, have a newly loyal liege man. I shall seek earnestly to mend my ways, not the first to be seduced by the golden glimmer of a crown.” But beneath the surface sarcasm, there were unmistakable undertones of excitement. Davydd was raising his cup in a mock salute. “To trust, an admirable virtue I shall be taking very much to heart. Now…what say you that we give Edward a scare by entering the hall arm in arm, the very image of brotherly devotion?”

  Llewelyn burst out laughing. “Damn you, Davydd, but I did miss you.” And Davydd’s startled smile would long linger in his memory, for it was utterly free of mockery, a smile of unguarded and genuine delight.

  The chapel was small, but starkly elegant, its white-washed walls and marble altar silvered by moonlight, splashed by rose tints filtering through windows of stained scarlet glass. Llewelyn paused before a stoup of holy water to bless himself, then raised his lantern and moved into the chancel, with Davydd following a few steps behind.

  Kneeling before the altar, Llewelyn offered up a winged prayer for the soul of the man he’d most loved, the man who’d entrusted him with a vision, one that had never burned so brightly as it did in this twilit border church. Rising, he used his lantern to light a candle for Llewelyn Fawr.

  “Who is the candle for—your grandfather?”

  Llewelyn nodded. “Our grandfather. I wish you’d known him, Davydd. Llewelyn Fawr—he well deserved such praise, deserved the title, too. He was in truth the first Prince of Wales.”

  Davydd was surprised by the emotion that now surfaced, one closely akin to envy. For a moment, he wondered what different roads he might have taken if he—like Llewelyn—had been following the map bequeathed by Llewelyn Fawr. And then he shrugged, said flippantly, “If you mean to abdicate, Llewelyn, I’d as soon you did it in my favor, not a dead man’s.”

  Llewelyn laughed, not taking his eyes from the candle’s shimmering, luminous light. “Ambition alone is dangerous, Davydd, if not coupled with a vision.”

  “I’d say it is dreams that are dangerous,” Davydd objected, only half in jest. “It was a dream that led to Evesham, was it not?”

  Llewelyn turned, dark eyes capturing the candle’s glow. “Yes,” he said. “But it was also a dream that led here, to the Treaty of Montgomery.” Picking up his grandfather’s taper, he sought to kindle a second candle. The wick sputtered, but then caught fire, shot upward in a clear white flame.

  “In Nomine Dei Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti,” Llewelyn said softly. “May you rest in peace, Simon.”

  Afterword

  Walter de Cantilupe, Bishop of Worcester, died on February 4, 1266. The other prelates who had supported Simon de Montfort—the Bishops of London, Lincoln, Winchester, and Chichester—were suspended by the Pope, and three of the four endured years of exile, one dying in Italy, two not returning to England until King Henry was dead.

  The recalcitrant rebels, John d’Eyvill, Nicholas Segrave, and Baldwin Wake, received royal pardons. Baldwin Wake wed Hawise de Quincy, Elen and Rob de Quincy’s youngest daughter, before February 1268; their great-granddaughter, Joan, the Fair Maid of Kent, wed Edward Plantagenet, the Black Prince, and her son ascended the English throne as Richard II.

  Thomas Fitz Thomas, London’s memorable Mayor, was kept in prison until April 1269, when he was finally able to gain his freedom upon payment of five hundred pounds. But his properties had been confiscated, and his sons were burdened with debt. Fitz Thomas’s health suffered during his long imprisonment; he was dead by 1276. His widow, Cecilia, later married John de Stepney, a prosperous London fishmonger. Fitz Thomas’s colleague, Thomas Puleston, was not released from prison until 1275; he died within two years.

  The subsequent histories of Eleanor (Nell) de Montfort, her children, Edward Plantagenet, and Llewelyn and Davydd ap Gruffydd will be related in my next novel.

  Popular veneration of Simon de Montfort continued into the early years of the fourteenth century. So strong was public sentiment in Simon’s favor, so many miracles were alleged to have occurred, that it is conceivable he might eventually have been canonized by the Roman Catholic Church had it not been for the unrelenting hostility of the English Crown. Simon’s son Amaury succeeded in winning the Pope’s support, and Simon’s body was reinterred before the High Altar in the abbey of Evesham. The abbey was demolished in the sixteenth century by Henry VIII, but in 1965—the seven hundredth anniversary of Simon’s death—a memorial was erected upon the site of his grave, dedicated by the Speaker of the House of Commons and the Archbishop of Canterbury. The stone, brought from Simon’s birthplace, Montfort l’Amaury, was engraved with the words: “Here were buried the remains of Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, pioneer of representative government…”
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br />   Author’s Note

  Falls the Shadow was originally intended to be the shared story of two men, Simon de Montfort and Llewelyn ap Gruffydd. But I soon discovered that I’d set myself an impossible task, for the scope and breadth of their lives could not be compressed into one volume. My solution was to yield Shadow to Simon, and to devote my next book, The Reckoning, to Llewelyn.

  The very least that can be said of Simon de Montfort’s life is that it was eventful, often improbable, so much so that I feel I should attest to a few of the more unlikely occurrences. Simon truly did remind Henry that an addled French King had been confined for his own good, an insult Henry never forgave, for twenty years later he could recount Simon’s words almost verbatim. Some of their heated exchanges in the course of Simon’s Gascony trial come straight from the pages of medieval chroniclers; Simon did indeed dare to warn Henry that, were he not a King, it would have been “an evil hour” for him. Henry actually did accuse Simon of seducing Nell, a charge made before Henry’s entire court. Simon’s contemporaries reported that he wore a hair shirt, a gesture of piety as natural to the medieval mind as it is alien to ours. The wild thunderstorm that broke over Evesham field during the battle was not a novelist’s dramatic indulgence. So violent a storm was it that men invested it with a superstitious significance out of all proportion to an act of nature; one chronicler even compared it to the tempest that raged over Calvary as Jesus Christ was crucified. And Simon’s son Bran did arrive at the battlefield in time to see his father’s head upon a pike.

  Although Shadow is my third book, I still find myself torn between two faiths. The novelist’s need for an untrammeled, free-flowing imagination is always at war with the historian’s pure passion for verity. I do try to keep fact-tampering to a minimum, but it occasionally is necessary in order to advance the story line. The Welsh Princes met at Ystrad Fflur Abbey in October of 1238; I changed the date by several weeks to accommodate the birth of Simon and Nell’s son Harry. For the sake of convenience, I referred to Henry’s “Painted Chamber,” although that term did not come into use until some years later. And I chose to call Henry’s half-brother, the Earl of Pembroke, by his family name, William de Lusignan, rather than by the name by which he is generally known to history—de Valence—that of his birthplace. As in my novel Here Be Dragons, I used Welsh spellings and place-names wherever possible, although I chose the slightly Anglicized “Llewelyn” over the pure Welsh of “Llywelyn,” and I used the medieval v for phonetic reasons, as in Davydd and Ednyved.