Joanna nodded; color slowly began to come back into her face. Hugh gave her shoulder a reassuring pat, wondering for whom she feared, John or Llewelyn.
As eagerly as she awaited Llewelyn’s return, Joanna felt some anxiety, too, remembering her father’s rages, his dark, moody silences. But however violent Llewelyn’s initial reaction might have been, he had his temper well in hand by the time he got back to Aber, made no mention whatsoever of his Corbet kin. Joanna began to wonder if she had misjudged him; she’d been so sure he would take the marriage as a mortal affront. She had to know, at last asked him point-blank how he felt about it.
He looked at her with a faint smile. “My cousin Tom has ever been one for grazing on both sides of the hedge. That is his misfortune.” And Joanna saw that she had not misjudged him at all.
It was a mild October afternoon four days after their arrival at Rhosyr. Joanna was in no hurry to reach Tregarnedd, had covered the eight miles at a leisurely pace. She only hoped the Lady Catrin spoke some French. On the other hand, if she did not, that would be as good an excuse as any to cut the visit short. At least it was a delightful day for a ride. And she would confess to some curiosity about the woman Rhys had married, wondered if Catrin would be a mirror image of her handsome husband.
Tregarnedd was an agreeable surprise; it was much like a village, for Ednyved had a manor here, too, and, as in England, there were people who preferred to dwell, for safety’s sake, in the shadow of a lord. But the real surprise waited within, a smile of welcome upon her face.
“I am Lady Catherine, Madame. How good of you to come to me like this; in truth, you honor our house. I’ve so longed to meet you. For the first time in my life, I did regret that I know not how to write. Of course, I could have dictated a letter to our chaplain, but…”
Joanna stared at the other woman, astonished. It was not Catherine’s appearance that so startled her, although she was not the ravishing beauty Joanna had been expecting. She was a buxom, pretty woman with fair, creamy skin, thick golden lashes, and hair so blonde it was almost white. It was her speech, however, that riveted Joanna’s eyes upon her; her French was not only fluent, it was colloquial.
“You are Norman!” Joanna blurted out, and then blushed. But Catherine merely laughed.
“Indeed. Did Rhys not tell you? Ah, that man!”
On reflection, Joanna realized there was no reason for such surprise. Intermarriages were not that uncommon, after all; the Corbets were not the only Marcher border lords to see the advantages in a Welsh connection. It was just that Rhys, so proudly, defiantly Welsh, seemed the last man to choose a Norman wife.
As if reading her thoughts, Catherine said, “I know no people who value bloodlines as do the Welsh. But they have never balked at accepting foreign wives, for a woman takes on her husband’s nationality, and any children of such a union have full rights under Welsh law. It becomes rather more complicated when a Welshwoman does wed with an alltud…a man of foreign blood. But I expect Llewelyn has explained all this to you…”
Ushering Joanna into the great hall, she at once sent for wine and wafers, settled Joanna in the seat of honor by the hearth, and beckoned a nurse forward to show Joanna a small, dark-haired infant swaddled in folds of soft linen.
“My daughter Gwenifer. Rhys always does hope the girls will have my coloring, and always in vain. This is the fifth time I’ve been brought to childbed, and each one has hair black as sin.”
Joanna laughed. She’d all but forgotten how wonderful it was just to sit and talk, to make inconsequential, easy conversation. She had, of necessity, learned to tune out the disgruntled Blanche’s litany of complaints, and her encounters with Llewelyn were so fraught with sexual tension that she could take little pleasure in them.
“Now…do tell me how you like Wales. Llewelyn is well? I must confess that I’m half in love with him, do not know a woman who is not, in truth! My husband may turn all female heads, but yours is the one they’d run off with if…” Her words trailed off, for Joanna’s color had deepened, dark patches showing high on her cheekbones. Catherine realized she had trod amiss, but she was puzzled as to how. Surely the girl knew she was but joking? Unless…unless she knew about Cristyn? Catherine was now the one to be embarrassed, sought hastily for safer subject matter.
“Should you like, my lady, to hold Gwenifer? You do know, I’m sure, that you have all our heartfelt prayers that you may soon have a babe of your own. It must weary you, in truth, to have the women ever measuring your waistline, whispering if you so much as miss a meal! But it is always so with newly wedded wives, and when your husband is our lord Prince…”
Joanna came to her feet so abruptly that she knocked her wine cup onto the floor. Would she never learn? This woman was even more malicious than Maude de Braose and Gwenllian, for they at least had pretended no friendliness. But Catherine drew blood with a smile, and for that, Joanna would never forgive her. “Your jest is little to my liking,” she said, all the more furious that her voice was not as steady as she would have wished.
“But Madame…what have I said? How have I offended you?” Catherine, too, was on her feet now. Her distress seemed so genuine that Joanna felt the first glimmer of doubt.
“The entire court does know. Surely your husband would have told you…”
“Rhys never gossips,” Catherine said simply. “I do not know of what you speak, my lady, I swear I do not.”
For a long moment, Joanna stared at her, and then sat down again. “If I did missay you, I am indeed sorry. You see, I thought you were mocking me. Llewelyn and I…we do not share a bed, and there is not a soul at Aber or Rhosyr who does not know that…”
“I did not know, Madame,” Catherine said, after some moments of silence. “That is not something Rhys would think to mention. It is not that unusual, after all, when the wife is quite young and her husband some years older than she.”
Some of Joanna’s shame gave way to gratitude. Whether Catherine believed that or not, it was kind of her to say so, and she was very much relieved when Catherine began tactfully to talk of other matters.
Joanna was never able to pinpoint the exact moment when she let her defenses down. For the first time in five months she had a sympathetic ear, and it was perhaps inevitable that she would find herself confiding in Catherine, Catherine who spoke her own tongue, who knew what it was like to be a bride in a foreign land, Catherine who offered friendship. She did not lower all of the barriers, spoke of Llewelyn in only the most conventional, cautious banalities. But she did speak of her loneliness, her homesickness, spoke of the utter isolation and the cries of wolves on the wind and a forgotten fifteenth birthday.
There was a great relief in sharing; hers were secret sores much in need of healing balm. But there was unease, too, once she realized just how much she’d revealed. Isabelle was the only confidante she’d ever had, and entrusting a secret to Isabelle was rather like toting water in a sieve. Very thankful that her tongue had not completely run away with her, that she had not betrayed the one secret that truly mattered, Joanna watched as Catherine bathed Gwenifer, then turned the child over to the wet nurse for suckling. She’d always nursed her own, Catherine admitted, although the Lady Gwenllian and others mocked her for it, would have suckled Gwenifer, too, had her fever not dried up her milk.
Catherine was emerging as more and more of an enigma to Joanna. She was, by her own admission, not educated. She’d made a self-disparaging remark about marriage portions when their conversation had turned to Margaret Corbet and Gwenwynwyn, laughing and saying she’d brought Rhys naught but headaches. Joanna had been distinctly taken aback; it was almost unheard of for a Norman lord to take an undowered wife. And if she was, in truth, no heiress, how in the name of Heaven had they even met, much less married?
“Catherine…would you think me rude if I asked how you came to marry Rhys?”
Catherine smiled. “I’d not mind in the least, Joanna. That is a story I never tire of telling. My first meeting wit
h Rhys goes back some thirteen years, to the autumn of the year after King Richard was taken captive on his way home from the Holy Land. My father was bailiff on Lord Fitz Alan’s manor of Middleton, in Shropshire. I was the youngest of six, the only girl. My mother died when I was four, and my father made rather a pet of me; so, too, did my brothers. That spring I did turn fifteen, and it was more or less understood that, come winter, I’d be wed to a neighboring knight, Sir Bernard de Nevill. He and my father were talking of a betrothal at Martinmas, a wedding after Advent.”
“Were you willing, Catherine?”
“I was not offered a choice, Joanna. I felt it was my duty to do as my father bade me. And it was indeed an advantageous match. Sir Bernard held his own manor of Lord Fitz Alan; I’d be lady of the manor, with my own household and servants. And since Sir Bernard had no children by his first marriage, a son of mine might one day inherit the fief; not many second wives could say as much. Moreover, he seemed to be a good man, a devout Christian, well thought of by all. But…he was also nigh on fifty, and balding, with breath rank enough to stop a mule in its tracks. So I’d not say I was counting the days till the marriage!”
“What prevented the marriage?”
“A sunlit September day,” Catherine said and laughed. “My brother Adam was taking an oxwain into Blanc Minster, had a load of wool skeins to deliver to Will the weaver. Blanc Minster was only three miles away, but I was never allowed into town without one of my brothers. On that particular day Adam agreed to take me along, and so it happened that I was sitting out in the oxwain at noon as Rhys rode by. The Welsh often came into Blanc Minster to trade for goods, and even in war I never saw a merchant turn down their money. I did not know then, of course, that Rhys was Welsh. I knew only that he was the handsomest man I’d ever hoped to see in this life!”
“He is that,” Joanna agreed generously. “What happened then?”
“He drew rein right there in the street, stared at me, and when he smiled, I…I fell in love. But then he dismounted, and I realized he meant to speak to me. At that I panicked. If Adam had ever seen me talking with a stranger, I’d have been beaten black and blue. As for Rhys, Adam would have run him through…or tried to. You can always tell if a man be handy with weapons, and Rhys had that look about him. So when he started toward me, I scrambled off the oxwain, fled into the weaver’s. I was terrified that he might follow me in. He did not, but he was still there when Adam and I came out. Fortunately, he did not say anything; he just looked at me. I could feel his eyes on me all the while Adam was joking with Will, was never so aware of anyone in all my life as I suddenly was of Rhys.”
“Yes,” Joanna said softly. “I do know the feeling. When did you see him next?”
“Adam had to return the following day, and I coaxed him into letting me go with him. I did not truly expect Rhys to be there again, but he was—almost as if he was waiting for me. Much later I learned he was; Will had told him Adam would be coming back that afternoon. What followed was the most unnerving, exciting hour of my life. I knew what a dangerous game we were playing, for at any moment Adam might take notice. But I could not help myself. I sat there on the cart, and each time our eyes met, it became harder and harder to look away. And then Adam’s business was done, we were on our way home, and I knew I’d never see him again. I did not even know his name, had never exchanged a single word with him, but I cried half the night. Does that sound foolish to you?”
Joanna shook her head.
“I thought of him every waking moment in the days that followed. What I did not know was that he was keeping a close watch all the while on Middleton, waiting for the chance to find me alone. He later confessed he’d even thought of riding up to the manor house, asking my father for me. Thank Jesus he did not, for there’d have been a killing for certes.
“I gave him his opportunity at week’s end. It was a Saturday, just at dusk, as hot as Hades, and I decided that, whilst the light held, I’d walk to the spring, wash my hair. I brought my towel, hairbrush, and a sliver of soap, sat down in the grass to unbraid my hair. I never heard a sound, not even a twig snap, not until he was behind me, put his hand over my mouth. I’ve ever been an utter coward, Joanna; I made it very easy for him, fainted dead away!
“When I came to, I was all trussed up in a blanket, being held before him on his saddle.” Catherine’s smile faded; she said quietly, “I was terrified, and with reason. It is common enough to abduct an heiress, to force her into an unwanted marriage. What woman does not know that?”
Joanna nodded. “Even so great a lady as my grandmother, Queen Eleanor, was held to be fair game. Two such attempts were made upon her after she divorced the French King.”
“But you see, Joanna, I was no heiress. I was a bailiff’s daughter, had nothing to offer a man except my body. And yet, if he had rape in mind, why did he not just take me there by the spring? The more I tried to make sense of it, the more fearful I became. I must have made some sound, whimpered or sobbed, for he realized I’d recovered my senses, at once sought to comfort me. He knew my name, called me Catrin, swore he’d not hurt me, that I had no cause for fear. That might have helped some, had it not been for ‘Catrin.’ For as soon as I knew he was Welsh, I was even more terrified; all knew the Welsh were half-wild, capable of any madness.
“It was full dark by then. Not that I could see a blessed thing; I could barely breathe, wrapped in that blanket like a cocoon. I’ve no idea how long we rode; after a time we stopped and he lifted me from the saddle. Know you what a hafod is? It is a summer hut, used by the Welsh herdsmen when they move their flocks to higher ground for pasturing. It was to a hafod that he took me, empty now since it was September, a most convenient place for a…a tryst. It was too dark inside to see much; I just lay there shivering on the blanket. He’d already laid in firewood, and it took but a moment to get a fire going. He lit a candle from the flames, carried it back to me, and for the first time, I saw his face.”
“You had not known it was Rhys?” Joanna interrupted, startled, and Catherine shook her head.
“No, not till he lit the candle; how could I? He sat beside me on the blankets—you’ll find no proper bed in a hafod—and touched my hair, very gently. Then he began to talk. He told me he’d known from that first moment in Blanc Minster that I was his and only his, but I must not fear, for he did not mean to dishonor me, would have me for his wife, had taken me by force only because he’d known no other way.”
Catherine’s voice had softened. Her eyes were no longer acknowledging Joanna, were gazing into a private vista of her own. Joanna suddenly had the fanciful thought that, if she but leaned forward, she could see captured in the pupils of Catherine’s eyes the firelit image of a fifteen-year-old girl and a nineteen-year-old boy upon a pile of blankets in a summer hafod.
She hesitated; as candid as Catherine had been, it somehow seemed wrong to question her now, an unwelcome intrusion into a past not for sharing. At last she said shyly, “Catherine…when did you stop being afraid? Do you remember?”
Catherine’s eyes shifted to her face, no longer clouded, remote. “Oh, yes, I remember—when Rhys first struck that candle.”
She glanced down at her wedding ring; it was of an unusual, almost primitive design, a heavy gold studded with gemstones. “We sent the priest who married us to my family. My father swore he’d never forgive me. But within a year Llewelyn had won that brilliant, bloody victory at the mouth of the Conwy, had laid claim to half of Gwynedd, and Rhys was ever at his right hand—was his right hand. My father died nigh on ten years ago, but he lived to see his first grandson. And my brothers come often to Tregarnedd.”
“You’ve been very lucky,” Joanna said slowly.
Catherine’s smile was radiant, innocent. “I know,” she said.
Joanna found herself looking, too, at Catherine’s wedding band. It did not surprise her in the least that Catherine should have been so easily seduced. What girl would have chosen an aging, ungainly neighbor over a reckless
, lovestruck youth with the nerve of a highwayman and the face of a dark angel? But beneath the undeniably romantic appeal of Catherine’s tale, Joanna felt the tug of common sense. What if Catherine had, indeed, cared for her greying knight? If she had resented being carried off as a prize of war? What might have happened then?
No, for all that Catherine had obviously found all she’d ever wanted in that deserted hafod, Joanna could not but think Catherine’s luck had been stretched to the very limit and then some. And yet she was aware of an undercurrent of envy. For Catherine had one treasure beyond value, had what she’d have given anything in the world to have herself—the rare and precious certainty that her husband loved her, not for what she could bring to his coffers, not for castles or bloodlines or connections, but for herself alone.
18
Rhosyr, North Wales
November 1206
“Catrin, my love!”
Llewelyn turned, swept Catherine up in a lover’s embrace, then gave her a chaste kiss on the forehead. Laughing, she hugged him back.
“Have you some moments to spare? I need to talk, Llewelyn.”
“For you, always…day or night.” As he led her toward the window seat, it occurred to Catherine that her relationship with Llewelyn—teasing, affectionate, mildly flirtatious—was one an insecure, jealous young wife might possibly misconstrue. She would, she thought regretfully, have to strive for greater decorum. A pity, for as much as she liked to flirt, that was a game she dared play with Llewelyn alone. Having led an all but cloistered life prior to her marriage, she’d then made the belated discovery that it could be fun to talk and tease and coquet—a little—with other men, to her an innocent diversion that did not in the least diminish her love for Rhys. But she’d also discovered that her husband was intensely possessive, begrudged her any and all male companionship, no matter how innocent…save only for Ednyved and Llewelyn. Ednyved was little inclined to flattery, even less so to gallantry, but in Llewelyn, Catherine had found a kindred spirit, and they’d established a rapport from their first meeting. In the beginning, an unsettling misgiving had imperiled Catherine’s peace, the suspicion that if her husband tolerated Llewelyn’s banter and familiarity while bristling if another man so much as glanced in her direction, it must be that Rhys trusted Llewelyn but did not truly trust her. That was so disturbing a thought, however, that Catherine had swiftly buried it deep; hers was not a nature to probe for that which she’d rather not know.
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