by Tracey Warr
‘Gruffudd, half of those captives are Welsh, not Norman.’
‘What of it? They are collaborators.’
‘My maid’s husband is amongst the captives, a fisherman named Dyfnwal. Can you get him released for my sake?’
‘I can’t cross Owain. A young man will fetch a good price in the slave market.’
‘Gruffudd, please. I ask this one thing of you. I will pay for him.’
‘But what money do you have, sister?’
‘I have this. I will pay with this.’ I undid the clasp of the chain at the back of my neck and held Gerald’s small silver cross out to Gruffudd. ‘Please.’ It had been the first gift Gerald had ever given me and I had cherished it for many years.
‘I will try,’ he said, taking the cross and studying it. ‘If I can purchase him with this, I’ll send him to you but I warn you, keep him from Owain’s sight.’
I was able to rise from my bed a few days later and sat by the fire in the hall, with Raegnald and his wife, Owain and my brother. Slowly, I swilled wine in a wooden cup, mesmerised by the shifting reflections of pale sunshine on the meniscus of dark liquid. I had recovered my strength quickly after the births but as I revived, my tiny babies sickened. That morning, I had washed them in warm water with rose petals and salt with the help of the maids and done my best to feed them, but the midwife had insisted on calling a priest to baptise them immediately, and I saw from her dark looks that she thought they would die. The priest had arrived tolling an enormous, rectangular handbell, and added greatly to the growing sense of hopelessness with his gloomy face.
‘They call you Helen of Wales in the streets, sister,’ Gruffudd said, trying to dispel my dark mood. I saw Owain puff up at that. He liked that idea, that his sordid behaviour was somehow akin to a Trojan hero and I was a famous beauty from a Greek story.
‘People in France drew the same parallel for Bertrade de Montfort,’ I said, feeling argumentative, ‘when King Philip stole her from her husband. None of these thefts came to good. They were merely excuses for war.’
I stared at Owain, and he stared back stonily at me, angry that I had punctured the notion of a romantic elopement. ‘It goes to show that the beauty of some women must be blamed for many wretched things in the world,’ he said.
‘Must women always be unjustly blamed for men’s choices and actions then?’ I looked away from him and into the fire, too weary to argue, and not wishing to further embarrass my brother, who was caught in the midst of the miserable eddies of tension and growing dislike between his friend and his sister. I was sad to see how close in friendship my brother was with Owain. Gruffudd was addressed by Raegnald and all the men there as Prince, but I knew he would have a harsh fight to earn that title.
‘Any news from Powys?’ Owain asked Raegnald, who was reading a long scroll just delivered to him.
‘Your cousin, Madog, has murdered his and your uncle, Iorwerth. Set his hall on fire with him in it,’ Raegnald said with relish.
Owain smiled slowly. ‘Iorwerth should not have presumed to take my father’s throne. My throne.’
I looked into the dead eye of a fish shrivelling on a nearby table and put down my beaker with deliberation. I had met Iorwerth once, when I was still an unwed maiden, when Henry was besieging Robert de Bellême at Bridgnorth. The King had summoned me to his war camp, dangled the prospect of me as a bride for Iorwerth, a bribe for his support against de Bellême. Henry had hoped then to seduce me himself too, but I had kept him at bay. Iorwerth had seemed to me an honourable man, amongst so many who were dishonourable.
‘King Henry has returned Ceredigion to your father,’ Raegnald continued, ‘on condition of his paying a fine of 100 pounds of silver and promising to have nothing more to do with you.’
Owain punched the air at the news of his father’s restoration and laughed at the condition. ‘He won’t keep to that.’
Raegnald shifted in his seat. ‘We should settle the matter of your sister,’ he said to Gruffudd, who nodded gravely. I looked back and forth from their faces: Gruffudd, Owain, Raegnald. What were they talking about?
‘Owain ap Cadwgan,’ Raegnald’s voice became formal, ‘you are accused of abducting and ravishing Nest ferch Rhys, sister to Gruffudd ap Rhys.’
Owain shrugged. ‘I cannot deny it with two sons crying lustily upstairs,’ he said, with a wry smile.
‘Why did you do it, Owain?’ Gruffudd asked, an edge of anger in his voice. ‘What was the point for you? You have dishonoured my family.’
‘Nest was betrothed to me when you were in your napkins, sucking at the teat of your wet nurse!’ Owain shouted. ‘It was my right.’
Raegnald patted the air between them. ‘Peace,’ he said. ‘I will have this business conducted calmly in my hall, and not in anger.’
‘Look at her.’ Owain gestured at me. ‘It is plain that the fault lies with her beauty. See how ravishing she is. I could not think straight watching her pawed by Normans. One of our women.’
Gruffudd pursed his mouth and stared angrily at Owain.
Owain lowered his voice. ‘A rape of her from her Norman husband was no worse than the rape of Wales by those very Normans.’
Gruffudd nodded his head and I dug my fingernails into the palms of my hands, staring at him, but he did not meet my gaze. Raegnald waited a moment to hear if there was any more to say between them.
‘Owain ap Cadwgan, I order you to pay a fine of 50 solidi to Gruffudd ap Rhys in compensation. Will you shake on it?’
‘50 solidi!’ Owain exclaimed.
‘I’ll take nothing less.’ Gruffudd spoke at last.
‘Very well, though you’ll have to take half next summer and not this.’ Owain reached his hand to Gruffudd across my lap and they shook on their deal.
I stood and left the hall, not knowing where I was going but unable to stay in the hall with them any longer. I felt furious with Gruffudd that this cold negotiation was his only response to my situation with Owain. Gruffudd should have slain Owain! Did he realise how I had suffered? Did he care? I had been too slow, too stupid in it all. But I knew that Gruffudd’s position was weak and he needed to keep any allies he had. I stood in the courtyard, looking around. Darkness was falling. I walked to the stable to check on my horse who had not heard my voice for days as I had birthed and cared for my sons. The warm scent of the horses and their steady chomping and shifting in the hay was comforting. I stroked the soft muzzle of my horse and looked into the dark of his liquid eye.
‘Lady!’ I swivelled to the hissed voice and saw Dyfnwal emerge from a gloomy corner. Gruffudd had been true to his word then.
‘Dyfnwal! I am so pleased to see you out of that cage.’
He thanked me for rescuing him and wept for those others from Llansteffan that he knew well, who had been sold into slavery. ‘They are gone on a ship already with Norsemen.’ We grimaced together, looking into each other’s faces in the gloom.
‘There is a group of mummers in the house,’ I told him. ‘They are leaving in the morning. Stay hidden here tonight. I will bribe them to put you in disguise and take you away from here with them. Then you can make your way to a boat heading for Wales.’ I would have to steal something for the bribe, I thought, but I would find a way.
‘Let me take you with me, lady!’
‘I wish I could come, Dyfnwal, truly, but I have two newborn babies who are fighting for their lives. I cannot leave them and they would not survive a sea journey.’
‘Is there anything I can do for you, lady, when I regain Pembroke and Amelina?’
‘Give word to her, and to my husband, that I am safe and hope to return home soon. Tell them, I wish with all my heart to return home.’
The youngest of my twins died the following day, and Raegnald’s wife hurried the mummers from the hall, telling them there was no place for them amidst such grief. I sat before the fire, my face concealed in my hands in despair. Through my wet fingers, I glimpsed the actors and acrobats filing from the hall, one wea
ring headgear imitating a stag, another with the head of a dog, and a third in the guise of a rabbit. The dog, I thought, had something of the gait of Dyfnwal about him.
I waited until they were clear and then stood. ‘Will you eat something, Lady Nest?’ Raegnald’s wife asked me. I shook my head and walked to the chapel to keep vigil for the soul of my son. My breath misted the freezing air before my face in the stony chapel. I prayed that Gerald would receive the message Dyfnwal carried for me and might find a way to bring me home.
The oldest twin joined his brother in death two days later. Unwilling to expose my misery to those around me, I clamped my jaw and told myself I could not weep. I was a numb stone. During my pregnancy, I did not know there were two of them rocking together in my womb, but I had sung to them, spoken with them. I had been alone in hostile circumstances and they had been my dear friends, my only confidants. Raegnald and his household were immensely kind to me, but I kept my feelings tightly bolted inside me. Owain’s disillusion with me was now complete, and the only thing that made me glad in those black, silent days was that he avoided my company.
14
Blood and Wine
Benedicta loved the inexorable structure of her life at Fontevraud. She rose early in the morning for matins, then breakfasted, tended her herbs and pottered around tidying her cell. Then came the morning terce service, after which she undertook her scribing or library duties until noon, when she would attend the church for sext. Then the nuns took dinner and she gossiped in the refectory with Genevieve and Petronilla. The None service was mid-afternoon, and then she would do more work, write to Haith, and take supper. After supper, there was evensong. Then it was her nightly duty to cover the fire in the refectory with cold ashes and remove the log to keep the embers alive so that they could easily be revived in the chill morning. After all that, she could sleep peacefully, confident that her spying days were over, rising for compline and again for prayers at midnight.
The longer she spent at Fontevraud, the more Benedicta came to see how the community that was evolving here was a signal of many women’s great dissatisfaction with the old rules and how so many of them sought for something else. They imagined other possibilities for women, other shapes for a woman’s life. Benedicta realised she had also seen that at Countess Adela’s court. She was living through momentous times.
All she had heard about Robert d’Arbrissel convinced her that he sought an equal society for all people who sincerely sought salvation, and especially for all women and the poor. Benedicta reflected, however, that the noblewomen he had left in command of Fontevraud did not quite share that aim and were busily, subtly, reframing it. They were not quite as interested as their Master in the rights of lepers, reformed prostitutes, and poor women.
Benedicta roused herself reluctantly from a deep sleep and realised that it was Sister Genevieve’s voice outside her cell, Genevieve’s hand knocking at the door. Benedicta stumbled from her bed and across the room, without tying the belt of her habit or finding her shoes. She yanked open the door, so that Genevieve almost fell upon her, with her fist clenched, readied for another bout of knocking. ‘What is it?’
‘So sorry to wake you,’ Genevieve whispered. ‘Petronilla asks that you come quickly. There is some emergency in the Countess Bertrade’s rooms.’
Benedicta blinked, trying to gain some semblance of full consciousness, and staggered to where her shoes were neatly aligned next to the stool. She slipped her feet in, tying her belt, and looked around, hunting for her wimple and veil.
‘Here we are.’ Sister Genevieve held them out to her and made no remark on the fact that Benedicta was flouting the rules by sleeping without them. Her hair, by rights, should be covered at all times, even when she was alone and asleep; a rule Benedicta considered to be quite ridiculous. She had tried compliance and found that the wimple and veil twisted around most uncomfortably as she tossed and turned in her sleep, and often woke her with their heated strangling. In the middle of many nights she had pulled them, exasperated, from her head and neck, and flung them into the corner, until finally she had given up the attempt at obedience altogether.
‘What colour is your hair, Genevieve?’ Benedicta asked the other nun suddenly.
‘Red. Sort of brown-red.’ Sister Genevieve shook her head and hands, as if irritated with herself. ‘We must be quick, now.’
The two nuns entered Bertrade’s chambers, where Benedicta was astonished to see the lady’s brother, Amaury, rather than the lady herself, and Prioress Petronilla. He was seated on the floor and the Prioress was kneeling beside him. They looked up at her entrance with Genevieve, and Benedicta saw a smile of recognition bloom on Amaury’s face. ‘I think I met you last time I was here, Sister,’ he said to Benedicta, and winced.
Benedicta saw that one of his boots was off and his hose was rolled up above his knee, exposing a long, bloody gash – and a long muscular calf with an abundance of golden hair. The Prioress was dabbing at the wound with a wet cloth and wringing it into a bowl of rosy-tinted water.
‘Ah, Sister Benedicta, thank goodness,’ said Petronilla. ‘Will you take over here?’
Benedicta had never been known for her nursing skills and she looked with bewilderment at the Prioress and the wet, bloody cloth she held out to her. ‘It’s just for a moment while I go to fetch you some writing materials. As you see, Lord de Montfort has suffered a mishap and needs to get word to those who are expecting him. Sister Genevieve is afraid of the sight of blood and is of little use here.’ Benedicta looked up to see that Genevieve had turned her back to them and was facing the door, her shoulders trembling. When the Prioress had left, and Benedicta had pressed the cloth gently to the wound, she spoke to Genevieve. ‘I think you should return to your cell. There is no sense in standing there quivering. You would do more good with your prayers.’
Sister Genevieve turned to thank Benedicta, blanched at the sight of the blood again, and rushed from the room. Amaury let out a small laugh and Benedicta smiled. ‘You say well to your friend, Sister. Benedicta, is it?’
She nodded.
‘Thank you for your ministrations, Benedicta.’
‘How did you come by this wound, lord?’
He waved his hand. ‘My horse was startled and I fell onto sharp rocks. A ridiculous accident. It’s nothing really but I did not want it to fester. This was the closest place I could think of to get it tended. My sister is blissfully unaware that I am even here – sleeping the sleep of the innocent in her cot. The Prioress, as usual, has all in hand.’ He smiled and Benedicta tried to avoid his humorous eyes.
‘You must be in pain,’ she said.
‘Not now,’ he said, meaningfully, as she held the cloth against the wound.
Prioress Petronilla returned and changed places with Benedicta, whilst Amaury dictated a short note, explaining his accident and delay. He mentioned no name and so Benedicta had no idea who the recipient of this note might be. She blotted and folded the small piece of parchment, handing it to Amaury’s waiting servant. The servant was an unusually small man with brilliant red hair and a sword scar across his forehead that had left a thick bald section in the middle of his eyebrow. He thanked her, bowed to his lord, and left them. Prioress Petronilla drew Benedicta aside, looking unusually flustered. ‘What is it?’ Benedicta asked.
‘By rights, the lord should be accommodated in the guesthouse but he is unable to walk there. He came straight here to Bertrade’s quarters, because he knew it. I’m not sure what to do. We can’t leave a man, even an honourable man as he doubtless is, alone here in the women’s quarters, with so many young novices on the premises.’
Benedicta shook her head but could think of no solution to offer. She looked at de Montfort’s leg. He probably could walk on it but doing so would open the wound again and lead to more bleeding. It was best to leave him where he was.
‘Will you stay here, Sister Benedicta? Keep vigil until the morning. And then we can arrange to move him with the aid of some of
the lay brothers. I am relucant to wake yet more people on this account.’
Benedicta nodded. She felt some misgivings but could not voice them to the Prioress who placed such complete trust in her.
Amaury, meanwhile, had rested his head back on the cushions behind him, and looked as if he would sleep soon.
The Prioress patted Benedicta’s hand in thanks and left the room.
Amaury breathed in and out gently. Since his eyes were closed, Benedicta was able to study the planes of his face. In the flickering light from the fire and the two candles burning in the room she allowed her gaze to linger on the rich golden brown of his brows and eyelashes contrasted with the yellow gold of his hair, the full sensuousness of his mouth. Two of Bertrade’s little dogs sat on cushions nearby, softly snuffling in their sleep. The abbey was silent. Benedicta thought of the three hundred or so souls here, all sleeping soundly into the night. And here she was, as awake as she had ever been, looking at the real model of the man who had appeared in her fantasies and dreams so vividly for the last few years. He was, if anything, more beautiful than her imaginings. Benedicta felt a lunge of desire and looked away from him, desperately searching for something to distract her.
To the side of the room, the lord’s cloak and saddle bags were thrown in disarray, evidently in the hurry of his arrival. She stood quietly and moved to tidy them, folding the fine black cloak carefully. One of the saddlebags was open and spilling its contents. She bent to pick up the fallen pages and put them back inside. De Bellême. She recognised the signature. She glanced quickly at Amaury. He slept. She opened the letter as carefully as possible, but heard the crackle of parchment loud in her own ears in the quiet room. She scanned the letter. De Bellême wrote to de Montfort of his intention to muster more support for the rebellion against King Henry in defence of the claims of William Clito. It was exactly what she needed for Breri, for the Countess. If she could give them this, surely she could sue for her release from any further spying duties.