“I loved my father,” I said.
Bevyn snorted. “You’re a girl. It’s different with you.”
I was offended, but I also thought he was wrong and told him so. “It’s different but not as much as you think. It isn’t that he expected me to ever fight a battle, or lord my authority over anyone, but he had expectations for me that I failed to live up to, even as I knew my failure would sadden him.” I glanced at Bevyn, not sure he was capable of understanding.
“I would like to see Anna grown,” Bevyn said. “I’d like to know that she’s like you.”
“And this child,” I said, resting a hand on my stomach.
“Your son is going to be a great man. He’ll put us all to shame.”
“He’ll have to learn Latin,” I said. “Poor boy.”
Bevyn grinned.
We passed several huts whose occupants had left out pitchers of drink and plates of food to distract and satisfy the dead, so they wouldn’t bother the living. I hoped Bevyn was right. Maybe I’d misunderstood the glances and stares—that they were admiring, rather than fearful.
With the Christian Church overtaking Wales, Halloween was becoming incorporated into All Saints’ Day, a day set aside to honor all the Saints in the Christian calendar. Quite frankly, I was dreading having to sit in church for half the day tomorrow and was already planning my escape, pleading an antsy Anna or the onset of labor, even if it wasn’t true.
The drama the players had begun in the center of the green was one I’d seen before, depicting the life of St. David, the patron Saint of Wales. As he was conceived through the rape of a nun, and the players embellished his life with rather dramatic exorcisms of various exotic creatures, it was definitely rated R and I pulled Anna away before she could see more than a minute of it. She was only three, but the masks they wore were scary even for me.
On the other side of the green, I found my favorite stall—the one that made scented soaps. I wasn’t allowed lavender anymore, since it could induce miscarriage, but many other scents attracted me and it was a heady mix to stand under the tent and block out the rest of the market. I knew the soap-maker well, so I was surprised to see a new person, a young man, turn to me today.
“Madam,” he said.
“Good morning.” I looked hard at him, recognizing his voice but not sure from where. Then he tugged his hood back so I could see his face and put one finger to his lips.
“How may I help you today?” he said, in a loud voice
I stepped closer and lowered mine. “Humphrey! What are you doing here? Why are you disguised?”
“Where is the Prince?” he asked, tense and urgent.
“He left us four days ago for Bwlch, to meet Clare. The conference is set for this afternoon.”
Humphrey swore. “My grandfather believes that Clare will betray him.”
I sucked in a breath. “Why? How do you know?”
“We’ve had word,” he said grimly.
“I warned him myself,” I said. “It wasn’t that he didn’t listen, but he thinks everything is a trap and said he would take the usual precautions.”
“He may need more than the usual,” Humphrey said, “if my grandfather is right. It’s possible Clare brings an army against him.”
Feeling faint, I looked for Bevyn. Spying him, I gestured him closer and then turned back to Humphrey. “Why are you hiding? You could have walked into the hall to tell me this.”
“The tension among my grandfather’s allies in the Marche is such that he would rather nobody knew of our involvement.”
“And yet you came to warn us?”
Humphrey gazed at me, his eyes like flint, looking far older than his nineteen years. “You expected otherwise from me?”
“I didn’t know,” I said. “When you left us, you didn’t know yourself.”
“What is it?” Bevyn said. Then he recognized Humphrey and his face reddened. “What are you doing here?”
“The Prince is in danger,” Humphrey said.
“Someone must ride to warn Llywelyn.” I tugged on Bevyn’s sleeve. “Humphrey says that an entire army might wait for him in Bwlch.”
Bevyn studied Humphrey. “I don’t trust you.”
“You don’t have to trust me,” Humphrey said, “but you must ride for Bwlch immediately.”
“Bevyn, please,” I said. “We have few men in the garrison, but they could leave within the hour. I would go to him, but I can’t, not—”
“I can,” Humphrey said. “I have men waiting for me on the hills above Felinfach. The Prince will need them.”
Bevyn came alive at that. “No Bohun is going to lead the rescue of my prince. Leave the soaps and come to the castle. Tudur needs to hear of this and he can decide who rides and who doesn’t.”
Humphrey tugged his hood over his face again. Bevyn hustled him down the road toward the castle, swerving in and among the other revelers until they were lost from view.
“Where’s Bevyn going?” Rhodri’s head was turned toward the spot Humphrey and Bevyn had been, and now made his way to my side, still carrying Anna.
“To the castle. The Prince is walking into an ambush,” I said. “We need to get back. Tudur is going to need you.”
Chapter Twenty-two
Llywelyn
The standing stones that peppered the countryside in Wales had always drawn my interest. Gwynedd had its share. Some of my people were afraid of them, but when I touched them, felt the stone underneath my fingers, I remembered my ancestors who’d placed them there, for reasons they’d not passed down to us. Only one standing stone stood on the hill at Bwlch, a forlorn thing, left to itself in a meadow, half way up a hill that was hidden by trees on every side.
Goronwy and I bent over a map, spread out on the table in the hall at our borrowed castle. The sun hadn’t yet risen, but he’d already sent out scouts to quarter the area. Tretower Castle was another ten miles on, and that was the direction, we presumed, from which Clare would come.
“It’s the mountains behind that worry me,” Goronwy said. “His men could hide in the miles of forest and rock up there.”
“Which will make the going rough,” I said. “We will take the proper precautions, listen to what Clare has to say, and be on our way.”
Goronwy grunted. “We can always take to the river,” he said. “The Usk is just on the other side of the road. We can follow it all the way home if need be.”
“So be it,” I said. “We’ve done what we can. I can hear Meg’s warnings in my ears, but this is a chance I feel we must take.”
We rode out an hour later at the head of a column of men, just as the sun peered over the tops of the peaks behind us. The trees grew more thickly on both sides of the road the further south and west we progressed. At Bwlch, we would leave the road, though it continued ahead to an old fort the Romans abandoned long ago another mile on. I hoped that my men had not been afraid to enter it, because it would be a perfect place to hide, if Clare had betrayal on his mind. Too late to tell them now.
As we approached the field which Clare had indicated we would meet, Goronwy reined in. Together we looked through the trees, up the slope to the meadow where the stone stood sentinel, guarding its meadow since before Christ was born.
“I don’t like it,” he said.
“You never do.” I spurred Glewdra up the hill. The thirty men behind us followed, milling around the stone uncertainly when we realized we were all alone.
Goronwy urged his horse closer. “What now?”
I shrugged. “We wait, I guess. I don’t—”
“My lord!” One of my men shrieked the words, an instant before a hail of arrows poured out of the trees above us. I flung up my shield instinctively and arrow hit it, just in the place my head had been a moment before. I spun Glewdra around to call to my men but they’d already broken apart and reformed around me, protecting me at the same time they made to charge towards the line of archers. Goronwy rode on my left, cursing steadily as he struggled to keep
close to my side.
Another hail of arrows hit us and three horses went down, causing the men behind them to swerve out of the way. Then a third barrage. By that time, however, we’d reached the crest of the hill and the archers broke ranks at our approach. I urged Glewdra to leap over the stakes they’d placed in front of their lines, intending to run the archers down, but as the fastest of them disappeared behind a thick screen of trees, a company of cavalry took their place, charging out of the woods directly at us.
“May God protect us!” Hywel said. He too had an arrow in his shield. He spurred his horse to the side and wove between the men, determined to position himself properly to stave off the first assault.
Then I lost sight of him as our enemies hit us, as unstoppable a force as a boulder rolling down hill. They tore into our lines—tore them apart—with their momentum and numbers. Goronwy disappeared in the roiling mass of men and horses and I yanked Glewdra sideways to avoid a fallen log that blocked my retreat. Another horse fell in front of me and a pike caught Glewdra’s leg. She stumbled and couldn’t right herself. I tugged my feet out of the stirrups and jumped free before she crushed me beneath her. She struggled and twisted, but her legs had failed her, probably forever.
I’d lost my shield somewhere in the fray and wielded my sword with both hands, the sweat dripping in my eyes beneath my helmet. I tried to maneuver away from the main force of English soldiers, keeping to the high ground as I searched for men wearing my colors in the blur around me. I confronted a man equal in height to me, made all the taller by his high-plumed helmet. We struggled to find our footing on the grassy slope.
Then suddenly Goronwy appeared and hacked at the man from behind. As soon as he’d killed that man, he backed towards me as he tried to fend off the relentless attack. Hardly a man remained on horseback this far up the hill. A sea of red tunics surrounded us. As I slashed at the soldiers in front of me, a voice in my head cursed my stupidity more loudly with every second that passed. I should never have come. Dear God, how many men have we lost? I should have known better.
My strength waned, even as Goronwy and I stood back to back, fending off one attacker after another. My chest heaved with the effort and I flailed out with my sword, no longer under control. Beyond our immediate assailants, ten of Clare’s men formed a perimeter around us, having ceased to fight. Finally, the closet of Clare’s men took a long pace away from us. I still held them off with my sword, but no one challenged me. Goronwy and I had lost and had no place to run.
One of the men held up his sword, in mock salute, and pulled off his helmet. Gilbert de Clare stood in front of me, unmistakable with his mane of red hair turning prematurely gray.
He bared his teeth. “Now, the negotiations begin.”
I lowered my sword, speechless. Why didn’t he run me through and be done with it?
Then another man joined Clare, strolling out from under the trees into which the archers had run. “A Prince does not kill a Prince, cousin.” Edward pulled off his own helmet. “I just wanted your undivided attention.”
At his approach, I raised my sword again, needing to keep him, of all my enemies, at bay. “Does your father know of this escapade? We are at peace, are we not, with a treaty signed with your own hand?”
“Treaties are made to be broken.” Edward gestured at the carnage around us. “A few men is a small price to pay for a kingdom, is it not?”
“A few men,” Goronwy whispered from behind me in Welsh. “Good men.”
“What do you want?” I said.
Clare spread his hands wide. “My lands back. Castle Morcraig abandoned, Gruffydd ap Rhys back where he belongs, in Ireland where I put him, and the ability to build my castle at Caerphilly unhindered by you.”
“That is my land, not yours. The people support me and I claim it by right of treaty with England and through my grandfather, who won it at the point of a sword.”
“You forget your place,” Edward said.
I glared at him. “It is my land.”
Now Edward laughed. “Whose men are dying at his feet? Whose own life hangs in the balance? I assure you it isn’t mine. The moment you die, all Wales will fall to me.”
That was terrifyingly prophetic, but I firmed my chin and answered. “I am the Prince of Wales. Your father called me thus and what you do now violates every principle of God and man.”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” Edward said. “That is what you don’t appear to understand. You and your line are of the past. What is principle when the rule of a nation is at stake?”
“You have no honor,” I said.
Edward coughed and laughed at the same time. “Honor! I see now that you cling to the past. I am the Prince of England. I will rule my country and yours; you will bow to me. I am of the future and I tell you now, an independent Wales has no place in that future.”
I stared at him, finding it impossible to voice my horror at his words. He was a madman, and yet the most powerful man in my world. “Your father—”
“My father is not long for this world,” Edward said. “When I return from Crusade, I will take your country. God wills it.”
I shook my head.
“Give me Senghennydd,” Clare said, keeping to his main point, though he glanced at Edward, nearly as horrified as I. If there was no Wales, there might be no Marche. Is it only now that he realizes he is in bed with a viper?
“No,” I said. “We have the King’s peace.”
“You have no army; I see one man beside you, the rest are dead or wounded on the ground. Who’s to say how you die this day? I could kill you and no one would be the wiser. Why should I wait for all Wales to fall to me?”
“My brother, Dafydd, would fight you.”
“Your brother is a weak man, vain and full of bluster. He leagues with you, he leagues with me. Has he shifted in the wind again?” Edward shrugged. “So he would fight, but he’s not strong enough to withstand my wrath.”
“My brother plots with you?”
“You are mighty slow, old man.” Edward said. “Your brother sent a report to me of a plan to ambush you in Gwynedd. I believe the Bohun whelp was in on it, along with Gruffydd ap Gwenwynwyn’s son. Obviously, they failed and your brother fears my response.”
“You’ve not heard from him since the spring?”
“Why do you harp on this issue? Do you not understand that before long I will bring the full force of my power to Wales? You stand here thinking yourself noble, but it will not last, not when I am King.”
Goronwy cleared his throat. “A Prince does not kill a Prince, you said.”
Edward smiled, a similar smirk to the one my brother often used, but backed up with eyes that glinted like steel, and a backbone to match. “Made to be broken,” Edward whispered. He raised his sword as did the men in the circle that surrounded us.
I raised mine. All was lost. I had a thought for Meg and the child she carried, and a hollow fear that they wouldn’t live out the day, if either Edward, or Dafydd, caught her. What was honor, when my life was lost? Perhaps Meg could answer me that, but I had no answers for her.
“Cymry!” The chorus echoed across the hills and no sound could ever have been more beautiful.
I couldn’t see them from where I stood, but Edward and Clare’s response told me all I needed to know. Fifty at least, I reasoned, pounding toward us down the road from Brecon. Edward and Clare glanced at each other. Edward saluted me with his sword, sheathed it, and walked to his horse which cropped the grass, so well trained that the smell of fear and sweat and blood of battle hadn’t discomforted it. By the time he was mounted, Clare and his men had melted into the trees, leaving Goronwy and me all alone on the hill.
I turned as my men rode up to us.
“Bohun. Tudur.”
Tudur was off his horse before he’d fully stopped to grab my shoulders. I hadn’t realized I was weaving on my feet. He eased me to the ground and I rested my arms on my knees and my head in my hands.
“Y
ou were just in time,” Goronwy said.
“Or far too late, depending,” I said, surveying the wounded and the dead. “Where’s Boots?”
“Here, my lord!” Bevyn crouched over a man half-way down the hill and raised his hand. “He’s alive but wounded.”
I turned to Tudur. “And Meg? Rhodri and Bevyn were to guard her.”
“It was she who sent us, my lord, upon Bohun’s news.”
“That’s the last time I assign the job of guarding Meg to Bevyn, as he’s abandoned his post both times,” I said, but I couldn’t be angry at him. I turned to Humphrey. “Thank you.”
“Are we even now?” Humphrey gazed down at me.
“Did you know that Prince Edward was going to accompany Clare?”
Humphrey gaped at me for a heartbeat before mastering himself. “Your lady spoke of honor and she was right to do so, but it comes to me that there’s very little of it left in this world. Very soon, honor will be replaced with expediency. You might want to make sure you’re not on the losing side when it does.” He bowed, more deeply than he ever had, and turned away to join Bevyn in caring for the wounded.
“That one bears watching,” Tudur said.
Chapter Twenty-three
Meg
I paced the battlements at Brecon, looking east. I felt like a seaman’s wife, watching and waiting on a widow’s walk for the ship that would bring her husband home. I waited through All Saints’ Day, and the next, for Llywelyn’s return. And he did come, he and Goronwy, leading a much diminished company of men. Humphrey was not among them.
I met him at the entrance to the hall; he didn’t speak, just put his arms around me and rested his head on my shoulder. I looked past him to Goronwy, who met my eyes, just briefly, before looking down.
“Tell me,” I said.
“We lost half our men,” Goronwy said, “and the other half wounded. Those who could ride, or for whom we had horses are here. The rest we left at our borrowed castle to await aid and their women.”
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