Suddenly sensing she was no longer alone, she looked up, saw Llewelyn standing in the doorway. “I did not hear you come in. Have you been there long?” She gave him a self-conscious smile, for she did not like to be watched unaware. “I finally had to give Elen a mild sleeping draught, the pain was so—Llewelyn? Llewelyn, what is wrong? What has happened?”
“What was bound to happen. Your father is gathering a large army at Chester.”
She came to her feet with a choked cry, and he said bitterly, “You cannot be all that surprised. It has been obvious for months that John wanted war.” But even as he spoke, he saw that her shock was unfeigned, that she’d somehow managed to convince herself the inevitable could be defeated merely by refusing to acknowledge it.
“No, it must not come to that, it must not! Llewelyn, please, you must act whilst there still be time. Go to my father, seek his pardon. Oh, please, I beg you!”
“Seek his pardon?” he echoed, incredulous. “For what, putting him to the inconvenience of an invasion?” He swung about, too angry to risk remaining, but she was already at his side, clutching frantically at his arm.
“No, you do not understand! I’m not saying Papa is right. He’s not, he’s not! But there cannot be war between you. When I think of you and Papa facing one another across a battlefield, I—Llewelyn, please, please do not let it come to that!”
“Joanna…Joanna, I cannot lie to you, cannot pretend this is just one more border skirmish. John wants as much of Gwynedd as he can conquer, wants my head on a pike.”
“No, Llewelyn, no. He’d not go as far as that, not if he loves me. And he does, he—”
“I know you love him, Joanna, but do not defend him. Not tonight, not to me.”
She stared at him, her eyes slowly filling with tears. “My God, Llewelyn, what are we going to do?”
He reached out, traced a tear’s path with his thumb, brushing it away before it could reach her mouth. “I do not know if it will comfort you any, Joanna, but you need not fear a battlefield confrontation. I have no intention of taking the field against John.”
She drew an audible breath, and her hand tightened upon his arm. “Oh, my love, my love, thank you!”
Although the temptation to lie to her was overwhelming, he shook his head. “I do not do it for you, Joanna. John can call upon all the resources of the English crown, has the support, as well, of most of the Welsh Princes. He can put ten, twenty times as many men under arms as I ever could. I’d have to be out of my wits to engage him on the field in open battle.” Llewelyn paused. “And if he thinks I’m that big a fool, thinks my pride will utterly vanquish my common sense, he’s made the greatest mistake of his life.”
The night was so unseasonably warm that no fire had been lit in the hearth. But Joanna had begun to tremble. “I’m so cold…” she said, and when Llewelyn turned toward the table, thrust a wine cup into her hands, she had to lock her fingers around the stem to hold it steady. “What…what mean you to do, Llewelyn?”
“I mean to instruct John how wars are waged in my country.” He reclaimed the wine cup, took several swallows. “In England and France an army is expected to live off the land, off the spoils of war. But Wales…Wales has no towns lying open and easy for the taking. Aside from the few settlements that have grown up around the church in Bangor or my palaces at Aber and Rhosyr, my people live scattered about the hills. They’re herdsmen, hunters, not farmers, Joanna. Much of Gwynedd is virgin soil, has never felt a plow. John’s men will find no crops in the fields, no villages ripe for the plundering, no women for the taking, and nothing to fill their bellies. I’d wager that within a fortnight they’ll be eating their own horses,” he said, with such savage satisfaction that Joanna shuddered.
He saw, and put an arm around her shoulders, drew her to him. But he offered her no words of comfort, no assurances that all would be well, no lies.
Most of the Welsh lived in circular, timber-framed houses with earthen floors, wattle-and-daub walls, and thatched roofs, simple structures that could be abandoned without regrets. In hasty obedience to Llewelyn’s command, they gathered up their bedding, their kitchen utensils, their chickens, drove their livestock ahead of them as they fled into the deeply wooded hills, lost themselves in the formidable heights of Eryri.
On May 18, the English army moved out of Cheshire, crossed the border into a ghost country, exceedingly beautiful and eerily still. The few huts their scouts found were deserted, stripped bare. The only signs of life were distant spirals of smoke high up in the hills. They advanced warily along the coast road, advanced farther and farther into an alien land of ominous silence and unseen eyes.
By the time they reached the east bank of the River Conwy, morale was at a dangerously low ebb. Soon their supplies were, too. As rations were cut and cut again, men began to appraise their neighbors’ shares, began to dice for larger portions, and then to fight for them. While John and his captains argued whether to attempt a crossing of the Conwy, word spread through the ranks that scouting parties sent to search for the Welsh had not returned. Men began to sicken. Others riding out to hunt for game disappeared without a trace into the dark, foreboding forests that rose up on both banks of the river. John consulted urgently with Chester and Pembroke, calmed the camp by announcing that men were being dispatched back to England for wagons of flour, bacon, and cheese.
The supply party set out the next day at dawn. At noon the few survivors staggered, bleeding, back into camp. With the realization that the man they were hunting had become the hunter, that Llewelyn had swung around behind them and cut off access to England, John’s captains were hard put to maintain order. By month’s end, Llewelyn’s grim prediction had come to pass; they’d begun to butcher their horses.
Richard was standing by an open window in the keep of Deganwy Castle, gazing down at their encampment spread out upon the slopes below. To his right flowed the fluid barrier of the Conwy, and beyond, the whitewashed buildings of Aberconwy Abbey. Richard knew the white-robed monks would be moving about their daily chores, as if oblivious of the fact that only the width of the river lay between them and an enemy army. He wondered if the monks realized just how lucky they were. The abbey had flourished under Llewelyn’s patronage, reason enough in his father’s eyes to have treated the monastery as spoils of war.
The silence in the chamber was oppressive, utterly disheartened. His Uncle Will and the Earl of Pembroke had unrolled a crude map of North Wales. No one else was making even a pretense of productive activity. Richard’s older half-brother Oliver was sprawled in a far corner, trying to sleep. So, too, was Oliver’s uncle, Fulk Fitz Warin. John’s mysterious magnanimity in pardoning Fitz Warin’s treason had been resolved for Richard upon learning that Oliver’s mother was Fitz Warin’s sister. He could not help thinking upon that now, wondering at the perverse inconsistencies in his father’s nature, that the same man who’d forgive a rebel for the sake of a onetime bedmate would also undertake the destruction of a loved daughter’s husband.
The door opened and Eustace de Vesci entered, followed by Robert Fitz Walter and Henry de Bohun, Earl of Hereford. They squatted down in the rushes, began to pass a wineskin back and forth. But they kept their eyes upon John all the while; Richard could not help noticing how many of his father’s barons did that, watched John whenever he was not looking.
De Vesci had left the door ajar. It was jerked back now with a violence that spun all heads around. Ranulf de Blundeville, Earl of Chester, strode into the solar. Ignoring the others, he addressed himself to John, with a complete disregard for preamble or protocol.
“There’ve been three more stabbings today.”
John got to his feet. “What of it? Soldiers are bound to brawl amongst themselves.”
“Indeed, that’s so. But in the past when my men fought, it was over a wench—not over bread!”
“I hardly need to hear again about the shortages!”
“I think you do. We’re running out of more than food, we’
re running out of time. Do you know a man with an egg can sell it for a penny and a half? That’d buy him an entire chicken back in England! There’s not a dog or a hen left alive in the castle, and the pantry, larder, and buttery have been emptied to feed your men, supplies that were to maintain my garrison for months. It took me two months to fortify Deganwy, fighting off the Welsh almost daily. How in Christ do you expect me to hold this castle now?”
John did not reply, and Chester took a step closer. “How much longer do you mean to deny the truth, that this is a war we cannot win? You need proof? Just go out and take a walk through the camp! So many have taken sick that you cannot get within ten feet of the latrine pits, the stink be so vile! What are you waiting for, until the bloody flux kills off those who do not starve?”
The chamber was utterly still. It had been years since any man had dared to defy John like this. Both Will and Pembroke had come to their feet. Richard took one look at his father’s face and he, too, moved forward. But Chester was beyond discretion or prudence.
“You cannot say you were not warned, my liege, because I told you it would likely come to this! I told you this man would be no easy fox to snare, that he’d be too shrewd to take the field against you, that you’d find your quick, clean war of conquest being fought on his terms. Now do you believe me? Now are you ready to admit defeat, to cut our losses whilst we still can?”
“You’ve said enough, more than enough! I’m beginning to wonder just where your loyalties lie. You’ve never had any stomach for fighting this man. Why? It could not be that the two of you have reached a private accommodation, could it?”
Chester’s eyes glittered, black pools of utter outrage. “I do not deserve that, have served you faithfully. If you call me disloyal for daring to speak my mind, to be honest with you, so be it then. But answer me one question, my lord. Have you so many men whom you can trust to tell you the truth that you can afford to spare even one?”
“Ah, yes, and Scriptures tell us to ‘rejoice in the truth,’ do they not?” John said mockingly. But it was a surprisingly restrained response, showed Richard that Chester had unexpectedly hit a nerve. Chester sensed it, too, was quick to press his advantage.
“I’m not saying Llewelyn ab Iorwerth could not eventually be run to earth, though I still think it’d be a Pyrrhic victory. But there’ll be no victory at all this time. He’s won, you have to face that. It is done, my liege, done.”
John turned away, walked to the window. He stood there for some minutes in silence, staring out at Llewelyn’s alpine citadel, the remote, cloud-crested peaks of Eryri. “No,” he said. “Not yet.”
The hill the Welsh called Mynydd y Dref rose some eight hundred feet above sea level, offering sweeping views of Conwy Bay, the river, and Deganwy Castle. Joanna moved cautiously toward the edge of the cliff, was grateful when Llewelyn slid a supportive arm around her waist.
A high wind was gusting, but the sea was a brilliant sapphire blue, and the light was resplendent upon the grey stone church below; the monastery looked prosperous and orderly and utterly at peace. But the encampment on the far side of the river was a scene of disorder and desolation. Some tents were still standing, flapping forlornly in the wind; the area was littered with debris, scarred by ditches and smoldering campfires; bones and rotting carcasses of dead horses were piled at the water’s edge, and when the wind shifted toward the west, it brought to them a sickening stench of death and decay.
“My lord! It’s true, they’re gone!” Several horsemen were coming up the slope at a gallop. The lead rider was soaked from the river crossing, shivering and short of breath, but he was exultant, stammering with excitement.
“They’ve pulled out, all of them, even the castle garrison!” He glanced then toward Joanna, said in a lower voice, “You’d best not let your lady cross the river, my lord. The English King left his dead for you to bury.”
“That much ground I’m willing to yield up to John,” Llewelyn said, and the other men laughed, began to crowd around him, gesturing toward the deserted encampment, interrupting one another freely, making boisterous jests and sardonic puns, theirs the grim gallows humor of the suddenly reprieved. Joanna turned, walked away.
Finding a sheltering boulder some yards from the cliff, she stood gazing out to sea, watching as gulls skimmed the wind-crested waves of the bay, circled above her father’s abandoned castle keep. She could still hear Llewelyn’s laughter, as buoyant and soaring as the birds wheeling overhead; if sunlight were not silent, she thought, it would sound much like Llewelyn’s laughter. It had been so long since she’d heard him laugh.
After a time, Llewelyn broke free from the encircling men, came to stand beside her. His hair was blowing about wildly, and she raised her hand, brushed it back from his eyes. As she did, he caught her hand in his.
“I understand that you cannot rejoice in my victory, Joanna, but I hoped you’d not begrudge me the joy I take in it.”
“I do not, God’s truth, I do not!”
“My poor Joanna; no matter who won, you had to lose. But it’s over now, breila.” He reached for her other hand, drew her toward him. “You can await me at the abbey whilst I cross over to the camp. Then we’ll go home.”
Joanna swallowed, rested her head for a moment against his chest. “It is not over, Llewelyn,” she said, her voice so muffled it was all but inaudible.
His eyes had seemed full of light, showed golden glints in the sun. But as she looked up at him now, she saw that all the light had been completely quenched; his eyes were utterly opaque, bleak and chill.
“You think he’ll come back,” he said flatly, and she nodded.
“I know he will, Llewelyn.” She moved back into his arms, whispered, “I know he will…”
Llewelyn knew that Joanna’s love for her father blinded her to what others saw in John. Yet for all that she was disbelieving of his darker impulses, she still knew better than most the intimate workings of his mind. Llewelyn accepted her anguished certainty as grim gospel. But neither one of them expected John to act with such ruthless, single-minded resolve, or with such stunning speed.
He at once set about making ready for a second Welsh campaign, and because he was both willing and able to subordinate all else to this aim, by early July a large army was assembling at the border town called Blanc Minster by the Normans and Croes Oswallt by the Welsh. This time he’d provided for pack horses heavily laden with salt, beans, cheese, flour, and sides of bacon and beef. He’d also summoned carpenters and craftsmen, brought along laborers as well as soldiers, packed spades, axes, picks, and nails.
On the second Friday in July they moved into Upper Powys. Llewelyn’s cousin and ally, Madog ap Gruffydd, prudently offered no resistance, let the English army pass unmolested through his domain. At the same time, John’s allies Maelgwn and Rhys Gryg began a well-coordinated plan of attack from the south.
Swinging up the Vale of Llangollen, John crossed into Gwynedd, pressed on toward the River Conwy. And as he pushed west, he began to build Norman castles on Welsh soil. They were hastily erected fortresses, constructed of Welsh timber by conscripted English carpenters. But they were also symbols of power, of the might of the English crown, and each one cast a foreboding shadow over the countryside it now controlled.
Llewelyn was hopelessly outmanned, was forced to fall back before the inexorable advance of the English army, to withdraw into the deepest reaches of Eryri as John swept all before him. First Rhuddlan Castle and then Deganwy were reclaimed, and in the fourth week of July, John’s men crossed the River Conwy. It was the first time in well over a hundred years that an English invasion force had penetrated this far into Gwynedd.
After sacking the Cistercian monastery at Aberconwy, John encamped his army upon the west bank of the river, then dispatched a large raiding party up the coast. With Welsh guides provided by Gwenwynwyn, they made their way through the pass of Penmaenmawr, on to Llewelyn’s deserted palace at Aber, which they put to the torch. From Aber they rode
for Bangor Fawr yn Arfon, the episcopal see for the diocese of Bangor, where they dragged the Bishop from the High Altar, brought him back a prisoner to John’s camp by the Conwy. But before they did, they set fire to the cathedral church, burned every house in Bangor to the ground.
At dusk, Llewelyn’s young allies, Owain ap Gruffydd and his brother Rhys Ieunac, rode up from the south. Her private chamber having been appropriated for a council of war, Joanna was at a loss as to where to go, unwilling to subject herself to the stares in the great hall. She’d thought her husband’s countrymen had long ago reconciled themselves to his alien English consort, but during the past weeks she’d come to realize how tenuous that acceptance was. As her father’s army moved into the very heartland of Llewelyn’s realm, there were many who looked upon Joanna and saw not Llewelyn’s wife, Davydd and Elen’s mother, saw only John’s daughter.
Joanna finally climbed the stairwell up to the battlements that enclosed the gabled roof of Dolwyddelan’s keep, her need to be alone prevailing over her dislike of heights. Even this refuge she had to share with several sentries, but they seemed to sense her mood, kept prudently to the other side of the walkway.
The keep towered more than forty feet up into the twilight sky. By daylight the view was breathtaking, affording panoramic vistas of the River Lledr below and the mountains beyond. But as darkness descended over the vale, Joanna’s attention was riveted upon the horizon. A pale reddish glow lit the sky to the north. She knew what it was; Llewelyn had gotten word hours ago that Bangor was burning.
Joanna set her lantern on the embrasure, unable to take her eyes from that eerily streaking sky. By dawn, all of Bangor would be reduced to ashes and charred rubble. Aber still smoldered. How long, she wondered, ere Dolwyddelan, too, fell to her father’s army?
Here Be Dragons Page 45