Meg released my hand and darted toward the second gatehouse that guarded the crossing of the Honddu. She entered the gatehouse before I could catch her and dropped the portcullis with another loud crash. Meg reappeared and had the gall to look contrite. “Sorry. Someone left the castle wide open on purpose.”
“Next time, warn me first,” I said. “I’m going to keep you on a tighter rein than before.”
She made a face at me, but I took her hand again and we cat-walked up the steps to the great hall. As in the gatehouse, the scene that faced us in the hall brought us to a halt. My men had fallen where they sat at the end of dinner. At the time, I’d noticed that the meal had been less raucous than usual, but I’d attributed it to some hard riding during the day.
“Anna,” Meg said, and took off toward the staircase. She hiked her skirts and went up them two at a time. I caught her by the time she entered the hallway and we pushed open the door to our room together.
Our bed lay as we’d left it. The window to the right of the bed was still open, but with an arrow lodged at head height in the frame. That pulled me up short, but Meg pulled aside the curtain blocking Anna’s room and looked in.
She sighed. “Anna and Maud are asleep. I can see them breathing.”
I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding, and then spun towards the open window at the echo of pounding hooves. The wall of the castle curved west, away from the river, and I stretched out the window to see around it. A man appeared beneath the castle wall where it abutted the river and ran toward a dozen men on horses who rode towards Brecon from the north.
“Stay here!” I ordered Meg. Without waiting to see if she obeyed me, but thinking that with Anna close she would, I raced out of the room, down the first flight of stairs to the great hall, and then continued down the second flight to the kitchen. Like the rest of the castle, it was deserted, and I hurried across the floor to the pantry and the postern gate.
A curtain separated the kitchen from the pantry but once through it, I braked at the sight of a man standing in front of me. He’d been facing the other way, towards the vaulted undercroft that led to the postern gate. My footsteps had given me away and the man did a double take as he recognized me, and I him. “You!” Lacey said. He reached for his sword but mine was already in my hand.
I ran him through.
I pushed and shoved Lacey’s body past the doorway and onto the stairs beyond. With a final kick, I rolled him down it, and then slammed the door to the passage. I dropped the locking bar across the door. Fearing that I didn’t have time for this but had to take the time nonetheless, I wrestled one of the big chopping tables from the kitchen, through the pantry, and laid it sideways across the door. If someone had an axe, they could chop through the sturdy oak, but otherwise, they were going to have a tough time getting through it.
I raced back to the great hall and nearly collided with Meg in the doorway. “Where’s Anna?”
“With Maud,” she said. “She’s awake and well. Those men, whoever they are, are milling about in the field to the north. They’ve discovered that both gates are closed and don’t seem to know what to do.”
“Their man intended that they’d walk in unhindered. Come with me.” I led Meg through the great hall with its unmoving men, across the bailey, and into the armory in the back of the main gatehouse. “Can you shoot a bow?”
“No,” she said. “Are you kidding? Those things are so huge I don’t know if I can even stretch it six inches.”
“It needs to not just be me up there, so I’m going to dress you like a soldier and we can see who this is and what he has to say.” I fitted her into a mail shirt and dropped a helmet on her head. It had a hideous-looking feather on the top of it and I hoped whoever was out there would be so distracted by the bizarre presentation that he wouldn’t realize my companion was shorter than average—and certainly not Goronwy.
“Maybe there’s a box I can stand on,” Meg said, tugging a tunic with my colors on it over her head.
“Excellent idea,” I said and grabbed a wooden crate in which arrowheads had been stored from the storeroom. I dumped its contents on the ground. “Let’s go.”
We climbed the circular staircase up to the top of the gatehouse tower, Meg laboring a bit behind me under the unaccustomed weight of the armor. We popped out on the top of the battlements and I put the box on the ground so that Meg could see between the crenellations which were at chest height for me.
I didn’t like what lay before us.
“Who is it?” Meg said.
“My cousin, Roger Mortimer,” I said. “He’s one of the few Marcher lords who remained faithful to the crown throughout the Baron’s war. Humphrey de Bohun the elder spoke of him to me just the other day.”
“So we’ve got Bohun, who’s gone home; Clare, who’s defying you in Senghennydd, and now Mortimer, here in Brecon. I thought the Bohuns had owned Brecon?” Meg said. “Or at the very least, Clare, from whom you took it. Have the Mortimers ever had it?”
“No,” I said. “Though Roger appears to be putting in a claim. I defeated his men two years ago before he could reach this far into Wales. The battle became such a rout that I’d heard he’s been unable to raise another army.”
“It seems he’s trying stealth instead.”
“Coward.”
“And it’s his sons who kill you,” she said.
“Have a heart, Meg!” I said. “I’m not dead yet.”
“No, no! I didn’t mean that! You’re just taking this so well.”
“He can’t touch us up here,” I said. “No archers.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Have a little chat,” I said. I lifted my chin and raised my voice. “Cousin! What brings you to Brecon so early in the morning?”
Roger pushed his helmet to the back of his head. “So it is you. I shouldn’t be surprised. You always did have the devil’s own luck.”
“Life is full of surprises,” I said. “I live, no thanks to you, it seems.”
Roger tsked through his front teeth. “It was you, then, who entered not long ago through the southern gate?”
“You saw us?”
“From a distance,” he said. “Apparently, our efforts here were for naught.” Roger spun his horse around, effectively ending our conversation. I’d expected more.
He called words to the other men-at-arms who rode with him, words in English that I didn’t understand, and pulled his sword from his sheath. He spurred his horse and galloped towards his men. As he approached the lone man standing, the one who’d run out of the passage to greet him, he swung his sword and severed his head from his body. The man hadn’t a chance. His body fell and Roger continued on without looking back.
Meg stepped away from the wall, ripped her helmet from her head, and vomited on the stones at her feet.
“Cariad.” I wrapped my arms around her waist. “It’s all right.”
“It isn’t.” Tears streamed down her face. “How can it be?”
I scooped her up and carried her down the stairs and across the bailey to the hall. As we entered, several of my men stirred. Some had even gotten so far as to stagger onto a bench in order to rest their heads in their forearms on the table. I put Meg in my chair and crouched in front of her. Her face was wet from tears.
“Is this what it’s going to be like for our child if we have a son?”
I studied her, not completely sure what she was asking, but knowing at the same time there was only one answer. “Yes.”
“I love you, Llywelyn,” she said. “I want to have a child with you, but I’m afraid to raise a son here. I don’t want him to grow up to be like Roger Mortimer.”
“What if he were like me?”
She gazed at me, tears still leaking out of the corner of her eyes. “You are who you are because of a childhood that is not one I would wish on any boy. What you have done—what others have asked of you—is not what I want for my son.”
“He will be wha
t God makes him,” I said.
Meg shook her head. “He will be what we make him, and what the world makes him. Look at Humphrey de Bohun. He’s struggling to find his way in a world in which the rules keep changing and he’s not strong enough inside to withstand pressure from men like your brother.”
I think I finally understood what she was saying, and had an answer for her. “Our son will be what he needs to be because you will make him that. He will be smart and strong, loving and courageous, because you are all those things. Our son will be the Prince of Wales, and they will call him Fawr, just like my grandfather.”
“Everyone will ask too much of him.” Her tears had dried and her gaze was steady on my face. “And so much of me. They already ask too much of you.”
“Only because I am what they need,” I said. “I can think of no one I would rather have as the mother of my son. If anyone will be capable of facing down Edward and England at my side, it’s our son.”
Chapter Nineteen
Meg
“My tongue feels like the backside of a dog,” Goronwy said. I mopped his brow with a warm washcloth. He’d woken, ill as all the men were, and now lay sprawled on his back on one of the benches in the hall. He’d vomited when he’d tried to lift his head earlier, and both of us were loathe for him to try again.
“I believe it was the mead,” Llywelyn said.
“I did not over-drink last night!” Goronwy said, conscious enough now to work up the energy to thwart any aspersions on his character.
“I didn’t say you did,” Llywelyn said. “The healer believes it was poppy juice, which can cause deep sleep—sometimes too deep, but thankfully not in this case.”
“By the Saints! Who’s the witch who poisoned us?” he said.
“No witch, Goronwy,” Llywelyn said. “Merely a man who worked for Roger Mortimer against me. He has paid for his mistakes with his life.”
“You caught him, my lord?” Goronwy said. “Do we know him?”
“Mortimer removed his head from his body to show his displeasure at the outcome of the plot,” Llywelyn said.
“The whole thing wasn’t very well planned anyway,” I said. “Why did the man keep the gates open, when Roger Mortimer rode in from the north? He couldn’t even get into the castle from the north because both the towers are built to block access to the gatehouses from any direction but the drawbridges.”
“He could, actually,” said Llywelyn. “The ford of Rhyd Bernard is just upstream of the confluence of the Usk and Honddu. He didn’t think he needed it, though.”
“Because he had the gate in the undercroft.”
“Well, yes, but was he going to lead those horses through there one by one?” Llywelyn said.
“Okay, you’re right,” I said. “I was surprised at all those stairs for horses to navigate at Castell y Bere, but here—were they going to get up from the kitchen to the hall?”
“That’s the point, of course,” Goronwy said. “The stairs leading down to the postern gate at Castell y Bere are behind the stables as an added protection in case someone decides to enter that way. I confess, I never thought of putting the door in the kitchen.”
“Anyway,” Llywelyn said, “Mortimer said that his scouts saw Meg and me enter through the southern gate. They may have been close behind us when we went in, but as soon as we closed the portcullis, were forced to ride west to the nearest ford across the Usk.”
“A long way as it’s in flood,” Goronwy said.
“That they rode around is the reason we had enough time to do what we did,” Llywelyn said. “Luck, as Roger said.”
“Luck serves those who are best prepared, my lord,” Goronwy said. Llywelyn and I exchanged a look. Llywelyn settled himself on the bench at Goronwy’s feet and Goronwy lay back, his hand across his eyes. “It isn’t as if it hasn’t worked before.”
“Taking a castle by stealth, you mean,” Llywelyn said.
“You mean like the Trojan horse?” I asked.
Llywelyn smiled, his eyes alight. “You’ve read Homer?”
“Not in the original, but yes.”
“But you know the story,” he said, “how the Greeks built a giant horse to hold their men. The Trojans, thinking the offering a gift to their gods, brought it inside their city.”
“They had to tear down their own gates to do it, I believe,” Goronwy said. “Certainly a lesson to us all.”
I touched Llywelyn’s arm and spoke in a low voice. “They found the city. Six hundred years from now they uncovered the walls and the gold—much as Homer described.”
Goronwy and Llywelyn gaped at me.
“Sorry,” I said.
Llywelyn took in a deep breath. “Don’t be sorry, Meg. It’s disorienting to have you speak thus. At times, I don’t know what’s real and what’s not.”
“I know what’s real,” Goronwy said, “and it has to do with a man trying to assassinate you. It’s convenient for Mortimer, isn’t it, that the conspirators are all dead?”
“Mortimer knew what he was doing,” Llywelyn said. “What else does he have in store for us?”
“You really think there was only the one?”
“Two,” Llywelyn said. “Lacey’s body is in the kitchen. He must have gone north to Wigmore Castle to meet Mortimer, and then returned with a companion to implement their plot. I killed Lacey before I blocked the door to the passage.”
“Oh.” I looked away, unable to ask him how he felt about that—how he could take a life and then shrug it off—or appear to shrug it off. Was that what he was going to teach our son?
Goronwy read my thoughts. “You think it doesn’t bother him, Meg? You’ve never heard him talking in his sleep, words you might not understand? Shouting sometimes, even?”
“Goronwy,” Llywelyn said, a warning in his voice.
I kept my eyes on Goronwy. “I’ve heard him.”
Goronwy nodded. “Don’t let the bluff talk and the bravado fool you. If you think that our prince will not relive the moment he killed Lacey, or forget the light fading from his eyes, then you don’t know him, or any of us. We live with it every day. Too many men allow the drink to take them rather than admit how much they care; and it’s then that they cease to be Welshmen and become something less than human, which is of no use to me, in battle or otherwise.”
“Yes, Goronwy.” He was right. I’d chafed at Llywelyn earlier about the fate of our son, but I should have known better who Llywelyn was. I had heard him in the night.
I’d also seen the young men, pale and stammering after the skirmish at the Gap, and seen the vomit mixed with blood on the road. What scared me was how human they all still seemed, even though their daily lives were full of what no man should have to bear—and what he couldn’t bear and remain the person he was before the killing. That’s what I feared for my son, and didn’t know how to deal with, despite Llywelyn’s reassurance.
I’d had a friend who’d joined the National Guard in college and was sent to Kuwait during the Gulf War. His tank was one of the first to cross into Kuwait City. Seven hundred years later, men talked about war in the same way men did here: in public, bravado and beer; in private, hollowness in their voices and vacancy in their eyes when the emotion they held tight inside their chests threatened to overwhelm them.
Too often in the twentieth century, we thought of war as not unlike playing a video game. Killing was mostly from a distance, with our bombs and our long-range mortars. But not my friend. His tank had killed hundreds of men, he said, and there were nights he lay awake, reliving the deaths of every single one of them. Just like Llywelyn.
Goronwy was still looking at me and I met his gaze. He nodded. “If you really are who you say you are, Meg, I can’t imagine what your world must be like.”
“I almost can’t either, anymore,” I said.
“What else might be in store for us?” he asked. “Can you tell me?”
“I don’t know of any coming battles. Not for a long while, but I’ve been wrong bef
ore.”
“That history of yours, Meg,” Goronwy said, fingering his lip. “I’m not sure that very much of it is right.”
“Quite honestly, I don’t either,” I said.
“Are you sure about what happens at Cilmeri?”
“Yes,” I said. “That I’m sure of.”
Then Llywelyn put a hand on Goronwy’s shoulder. “By the way, Meg and I have some good news, my friend.”
“Do you now?” Goronwy looked from Llywelyn to me. A grin had split Llywelyn’s face and he punched the air. I tried hard not to smile, but I couldn’t keep it suppressed in the face of Llywelyn’s joy.
“Really? Do you mean . . . a baby?”
“Yes!” Llywelyn clapped a hand on Goronwy’s shoulder.
It was a bit different from Trev’s reaction when I’d told him I was pregnant with Anna. He’d been mad at first—understandable in retrospect, given how young we both were, me especially at not even eighteen. We’d gone for a walk in a park—the best way I could see to tell him—and he’d driven off without me after I told him. I’d walked home, crying. I’d already told Mom, and when I’d informed her of Trev’s reaction, her face had taken on a calm expression, instead of anger.
“Well then,” she’d said. “We’re on our own.”
But then Trev had called and apologized and I’d forgiven him. Mom said that if someone had told her what he’d become after Anna was born, she wouldn’t have been surprised. But we hadn’t known, either of us.
Llywelyn, however, was having a hard time containing himself. “We aren’t going to tell anyone else, not for a while, not until it becomes obvious,” he said, bouncing up and down on his toes. The two men grinned at each other and I wouldn’t have been surprised if their heads had come off and floated around in the great hall all by themselves.
“Your brother won’t be happy,” Goronwy said.
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