Here Be Dragons

by Sharon Kay Penman

  Llewelyn’s eyes snapped open. “You would not dare!”

  “Ah, Llewelyn, how I wish you had not said that. Now I feel obliged to prove to you that I would!” She let the razor hover tantalizingly close to its target, laughing, and when he grabbed her wrist, sought to pull her down beside him, she wriggled free, defended herself with the pillow. Neither realized how close they’d rolled toward the edge of the bed, not until it was too late, until their struggle carried them over the side, tumbling down onto the floor rushes.

  Joanna was breathless but unhurt; in falling, Llewelyn had managed to twist away, to keep from landing on top of her. She rose to her knees, pulled her skirt down. “Are you all right?” she asked, stopped laughing when he admitted reluctantly:

  “No, I think not…”

  “Oh, love, you did not hurt your back again?” She leaned toward him solicitously, then gave a muffled scream when he pounced, rolling over and pinning her under the weight of his body.

  Joanna found herself utterly helpless, unable to move. “I should have known; you’re so untrustworthy,” she scolded, smothering her laughter against his shoulder. “Now let me up. Papa is awaiting us in the great hall.”

  “Make it worth my while and I might.”

  “If I were to say I was sorry, that I do love your mustache?”

  He considered gravely, shook his head. “Not good enough.”

  “Well, that was my best offer.” Squirming under him, she made an intriguing discovery. “When Gwenwynwyn and Maelgwn call you hard, they do not know the half of it, do they? So it’s not true, then, that when a man gets to be your age, his powers begin to wane?”

  “My age?” he echoed, with mock indignation. “I’m but six and thirty!”

  “That is, after all, twice as old as I am,” she pointed out gleefully, and deliberately shifted her hips to make the most of his erection.

  “Wanton,” he murmured, his mouth against her throat. “If you do not stop tempting me, we are going to bypass the great hall altogether, are going to continue this conversation in bed. So do not say you were not warned.”

  “Love, you know we have to be there.” Joanna sighed, with real regret. “Otherwise, I’d like nothing better than…conversing with you. You’re such a deep, penetrating conversationalist, after all,” she said, all but choked in trying not to laugh at her own weak pun.

  She’d never yet bested him at wordplay, and she waited expectantly to see how he would improve upon her effort. Instead he said, “Do come in, John.”

  “You’ll have to do better than that,” Joanna scoffed. “You played that trick upon me once before, remember? Looking up and saying, ‘Yes, Morgan?’ at a moment when we most definitely had no need of witnesses!” The memory made her laugh; Llewelyn did, too. But then he sat up.

  “I was not jesting, Joanna,” he said, and Joanna turned her head, saw her father standing in the doorway of the bedchamber.

  John’s face was impassive, showed absolutely nothing of what he was thinking. “I trust I’m not interrupting anything of urgency?”

  Llewelyn grinned, but he could see the embarrassed blush rising in Joanna’s face and throat; taking pity on her, he held his tongue, showed his amusement only in the exaggerated gallantry with which he helped her to her feet. Privacy was an unknown luxury, and Joanna had long since become accustomed to people intruding into their bedchamber at inopportune moments, surprising her on Llewelyn’s lap, in his arms, once in the midst of a soapily erotic shared bath. But never before had she felt as she did now, flustered and thoroughly discomfited.

  “The last of the Welsh Princes have arrived, and they are awaiting us now in the hall.” For the first time John looked directly at Joanna, his eyes opaque, utterly unreadable. “I thought we would enter together.”

  “We would be honored, Papa.” Joanna hastily snatched up her veil, crossed to her father. Laying a hand upon his arm, she looked searchingly into his face. She still thought him to be a handsome man, but she thought, too, that time was not treating him kindly. She knew he would not be forty-two until December, yet the ink-black hair was liberally flecked with grey; his eyes were bloodshot, shadowed by suspicions beyond satisfying, the mouth thinned, inflexible, not as open to laughter as Joanna remembered.

  What could she say, that she ached for him, grieved that he had so much and so little? “I love you, Papa,” she said, saw his mouth soften, and put her arms around his neck.

  “I love you, too, sweetheart,” John said gently, for a moment held her in a close, comforting embrace. But he was not looking at his daughter, was gazing over her shoulder at the man she’d married.

  Joanna watched as Llewelyn knelt before her father, did homage to John as his King and liege lord. The hall was quiet; Llewelyn’s voice carried clearly to all, his matter-of-fact tones revealing none of the distaste Joanna knew he must feel.

  John was now making the obligatory response, promising to do all in his power to guarantee Llewelyn’s peaceful possession of Gwynedd, raising his son-in-law up to give him the ritual kiss of peace. Llewelyn then declared, “In the name of the Holy Trinity and in reverence of these sacred relics, I swear that I will truly keep the oath which I have given, and will always remain faithful to you, my King and seigneur,” and then it was over, and Joanna took more comfort from the ceremony than she knew it warranted, tried to convince herself that there could indeed be a true and abiding harmony between the two men she loved.

  Gwenwynwyn alone was absent, a prisoner of the crown for the past twelvemonth. But Madog ap Gruffydd was there, Prince of Upper Powys, Llewelyn’s first cousin and ally. So, too, were the Princes of Deheubarth, of South Wales, Maelgwn and his brother, Rhys Gryg, and one by one they followed Llewelyn to the dais, knelt to do homage to the English King. After them came the younger Welsh lords, Llewelyn’s cousin Hywel and Maelgwn’s estranged nephews, Owain and Rhys Ieunac; all three were in their mid-twenties, and all three were Llewelyn’s sworn men. It was Hywel who was to give a deliberate and dramatic demonstration of where his loyalties lay. No sooner had he done homage to John than he crossed the hall, knelt before Llewelyn, and swore oaths of homage and fidelity for the lordship of Meirionydd.

  The Welsh system of inheritance did not promote family unity; all too often it fostered fratricide, set brother against brother in a bitter battle for supremacy. So it had been with Llewelyn’s father and uncles. So, too, it had been in the South, where Maelgwn and Rhys Gryg were the survivors of a long and bloody war of succession. Owain and Rhys Ieunac were a rarity, therefore, brothers who were not rivals, who acted as one. In the silence that settled over the hall after Hywel’s acknowledgment of allegiance, Owain and Rhys exchanged wordless looks of perfect understanding. Then they, too, crossed the hall, did homage to Llewelyn for Ceredigion.

  A man could, and very often did, owe allegiance to two or more liege lords. In choosing to do homage to Llewelyn, the Welshmen were well within their legal rights. But Joanna wished fervently that they had not done so, had not acted to tarnish her father’s moment of triumph. Maelgwn was standing just to her right, close enough to touch. He was a striking-looking man in his early forties, no taller than John, with a thick head of tawny hair and the blue eyes of the true Celt; those eyes were the coldest Joanna had ever seen. She watched his face as his nephews did homage to Llewelyn for lands once his, and shivered, suddenly and uncontrollably.

  “Did Llewelyn plan that?” a voice murmured at her ear. When she shook her head, Richard swore under his breath. “Papa will not ever believe he did not, Joanna,” he said somberly.

  Richard took a seat as inconspicuously as possible, not entirely comfortable to be in the company of these men, the most powerful lords of his father’s realm. As he glanced about the table, it was with a distinct shock that he realized how few of them bore his father no grievances, how few were not in some sort of disfavor.

  Chester seemed to have weathered John’s earlier suspicions. And his Uncle Will, of course, still stood high in Joh
n’s favor. So, too, did John’s mercenary captains, Falkes de Breauté and Robert de Vieuxpont. Richard thought them to be men without honor, men who whored for the lord who’d pay the most, but their very practicality would keep them loyal; none could pay better than the King. Peter des Roches had proved his loyalty even to John’s exacting satisfaction, remaining in England despite the Pope’s Interdict. The same could not be said, though, for the others.

  William de Ferrers, Earl of Derby, had the bad luck to be a nephew to William de Braose. The northern baron Eustace de Vesci was suspect because of his links to the Scottish crown; he was wed to a bastard daughter of King William. The Earl of Huntingdon’s predicament was even more acute; he was the Scots King’s brother. Richard de Clare, Earl of Hertford, was twice damned in John’s judgment; he had welcomed John’s accession to the throne with less than wholehearted enthusiasm, and his daughter was wife to William de Braose’s eldest son.

  William de Braose was casting a long shadow indeed, Richard thought bleakly. Even the faithful, upright Earl of Pembroke had stumbled over it, had foolishly taken pity on the fugitive de Braose family, had briefly given them shelter on his Irish estates, for which John had yet to forgive him. The truth his father did not want to face was unpleasantly clear to Richard, that there was a growing groundswell of sympathy for de Braose among his fellow barons, not because he’d been liked, but because he’d been so powerful, so apparently invulnerable. There was not a man in this chamber, Richard knew, who had not thought to himself: The same thing could happen to me, to mine, should the King ever turn against me as he did de Braose.

  This was the first council meeting since they’d departed Woodstock for John’s hunting lodge at Silverston. Richard knew what his father wanted to discuss: his coming campaign in Ireland, with its dual purpose of capturing the de Braoses and punishing those lords who’d dared to harbor them, an expedition he meant to finance with the fifteen thousand marks he’d extorted from the King of Scotland.

  The council meeting began on an entirely different and discordant note, however. Eustace de Vesci leaned across the table, said with poorly concealed relish, “I’ve news Your Grace should know. The Pope has given the order for your excommunication.”

  Suddenly the chamber was very quiet. The Interdict was causing no small degree of suffering for John’s subjects, but so far it had not had the effect the Pope desired, had not undermined the allegiance of the English. A large majority still supported John’s position, that it was the King’s right to choose an Archbishop of Canterbury, and not for the Pope to force his own man upon them. It was only to be expected, therefore, that the Pope would resort to excommunication, which made of John an outcast among all men of faith. No Christian was to break bread with an excommunicate; he was to be shunned as a moral leper, as a man doomed to eternal damnation.

  John looked at de Vesci for a long moment, then smiled coldly. “‘When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child, but when I became a man, I put away childish things.’”

  Richard heard more than one indrawn breath, and looking around, he saw that his father had profoundly shocked most of the men. Even the cynical de Vesci seemed taken aback.

  How much bravado was there in John’s blasphemy? Richard did not know. The sentence of excommunication had come as no surprise to John; he’d been privately warned days ago by Peter des Roches that the decree was imminent, had time enough to come to terms with it. Richard knew, of course, that his father was not the most pious of men, but what man could contemplate damnation forever and aye without recoil, without an inner shudder of the soul?

  It was the pragmatic Chester who at last ended an acutely uncomfortable silence, saying calmly, “Have you thought, my liege, of the problems this will pose for you…for us? How the common people will react?”

  “The common people are not likely even to know. Let the Pope proclaim it from now till Judgment Day—in France, Brittany, Normandy. But who’s to proclaim it for him in England? My lord Bishop of Winchester is the only prelate still on English soil.”

  Peter des Roches smiled imperturbably, confirming what all already knew, that he’d chosen his King over his Pope, ambition over obedience. “Your Grace is, as ever, quite right,” he said blandly. “Shall we speak now of Your Grace’s Irish expedition?”

  “Not yet.” John signaled for wine, said, “I’ve had word from Shrewsbury. Gwenwynwyn is offering no less than twenty hostages for his freedom, as a pledge of future loyalties.”

  That was of little interest to de Vesci and the Earl of Derby; theirs were not Marcher lands. It was of enormous interest, though, to border lords like Chester and de Clare. And to Richard, for altogether different reasons.

  “Do you intend to release him, Your Grace?”

  “I expect so…sooner or later.”

  “You do know that will mean war?” Chester’s eyes were suddenly speculative. “Once Gwenwynwyn is free, he’ll seek to regain what was his.”

  “You think he can?” John asked, and Chester considered, shook his head.

  “Against Llewelyn? No, Your Grace, probably not. Not unless he does get help.”

  “I agree with you,” John said, no more than that, but Chester was sensitive to nuance, to the unspoken.

  “You would aid Gwenwynwyn, my liege?” he asked, and John acknowledged his percipience with a faint smile.

  But it was Will who answered him, saying with some indignation, “No, he would not! Llewelyn is his daughter’s husband, my lord Chester. Moreover, he has proven his loyalty in answering my brother’s summons for war against the Scots. I grant you he erred in disobeying John, in attacking Powys, but what’s past is past, forgiven and forgotten, and he—”

  “Whatever makes you think I’ve forgiven him, Will?”

  “Why, because…because you made him welcome at court, John, showed no sign that you bore him any ill will—”

  “I do not ever forget a wrong done me, Will. Not ever,” John repeated softly, and again Richard heard someone catch his breath. Only the men whose swords were sold to the highest bidder, Falkes de Breauté and Robert de Vieuxpont, appeared unaffected by the threat. Every other man in the room seemed to have taken John’s ominous admission to heart. Will looked troubled, Chester inscrutable, de Vesci grim, expressions of unease flickering from face to face, the awareness that John’s warning was meant as much for them as for his Welsh son-in-law.

  “You were all at Woodstock, saw what happened, saw what he dared to do.” John’s color had deepened; there was in the low, precise voice echoes of remembered rage. “For those of you who are not that well acquainted with Llewelyn ab Iorwerth’s predatory past, he seized power from his uncle at twenty-one, and in the intervening fifteen years has steadily increased his holdings—always at someone else’s expense. He’ll eventually swallow up all of Wales…if left to his own devices.”

  Richard bit his lip, much disquieted. He knew Joanna had spoken privately to their father, had left for Wales confident she had convinced John that Llewelyn had not known what his young allies meant to do. It bothered Richard that John had not been honest with Joanna, bothered him that John had been nursing a grudge for more than a year, bothered him that the other men were so quick to nod agreement. He knew he owed it to Joanna to object, to defend her husband. But he knew, too, that he was there only on John’s sufferance, that there was no voice in council for the King’s twenty-year-old bastard son, and that silenced him, that and an instinctive reluctance to move from the sidelines to center stage, to abandon the protective coloring developed during a solitary, introspective childhood, the unquestioning, fatalistic acceptance that had enabled him to look upon his father’s darker side and neither approve nor condemn.

  It was Chester who unexpectedly did what Richard felt he could not—offer a measured, unimpassioned protest. “You understand the Welsh quite well, my liege, better than your brother ever did. And making use of one Welsh prince to checkmate another is indeed a shrewd a
nd proven strategy for dealing with Wales.”

  John, too, was responsive to insinuation. He frowned, said challengingly, “But not this time?”

  “Llewelyn ab Iowerth is an unusual man, Your Grace. He is exceedingly ambitious, just as you say, but he is intelligent, too. I think he understands the limitations of power…of Welsh power. And because he does, I would prefer to keep him as an ally, even if it means giving him a free hand in Wales. I fear that if we do not, we risk pushing him into open rebellion.”

  “And what if we do? Are you saying a Welsh rebel could prevail against the English crown?” John’s voice was scornful, but Chester refused the bait.

  “No, Your Grace, of course I am not. He could not hope to defeat you. But I am not sure you fully realize what victory might cost. It is too late, you see, to use a Gwenwynwyn or a Maelgwn to rein him in; the balance of power has already shifted too far in his favor. If you do not come to terms with him, it would not be enough to defeat him. You’d have to destroy him.”

  Chester paused, waiting. But John made no response.

  “As I said, Your Grace, I do not doubt the eventual outcome. But it would be a drawn-out, bloody, and brutal war. Wars with the Welsh always are. They disappear into inaccessible mountain retreats, phantom foes we cannot find. But they have no trouble finding us, my liege; they excel at ambush, at surprise attack and counterattack upon the morrow. There is no glory in wars against the Welsh, only blood-spattered rocks and shallow graves, and once you win, you find precious little for the plundering. I would not undertake such a war merely to rid myself of a man I could more easily befriend, Your Grace.”

  “Would you not? And if I were to order you to do just that, order you to lead an army into Gwynedd, what then? Would you balk, beg off from a duty you find so distasteful?”

  The sarcasm was savage, utterly undeserved, and Richard winced. Chester had gone rigid in his chair; Richard was close enough to see how the muscles clenched along his jawline, how the tendons tightened in his throat. “I serve the King’s pleasure,” he said, quite tonelessly. “When Your Grace commands, I obey.”