Time and Chance eoa-2

by Sharon Kay Penman

  “Nothing at all. It is just… that you’d not called me Bleddyn before.” Bleddyn smiled then, a smile so like Rhiannon’s that Ranulf could only marvel how he’d missed the resemblance.

  As Bleddyn disappeared into the mist, Ranulf began trudging again toward Pentraeth, stopping frequently to rest and comfort his horse. He was tired and hungry, but happier than he’d been in months, relieved to be spared that harrowing journey to Ireland, grateful that he’d heeded Hywel’s advice and accepted his son’s name change. He found himself wondering suddenly if Harry and his sons were traveling a road as rough hewn as the one he’d been riding with Gilbert-Bleddyn for so long. Why were daughters so much easier to rear? Mallt had given him nary a worry over the years. Whereas Morgan was already a hellion at six; God forbid what he’d be like at sixteen!

  The sounds were muffled by the fog, but far too familiar for Ranulf to mistake; he’d fought in enough battles to recognize the din in his sleep. He stood still for a heartbeat, listening to the metallic clash of swords, the cries of men and horses, and then hastily looped Roland’s reins over the nearest bush before he began to run.

  “Gilbert!” He wasn’t even aware that he was shouting his son’s name. “Gilbert!” The fog was inconstant, drifting over the land like sea smoke. One moment he’d break free of it, only to plunge into another cloud. The air was mild and damp, and he felt as if he were trying to breathe underwater. The fog distorted sounds and he could no longer trust his senses, could not judge distance. He fell once, was up even before his bruised body could register the impact. And then suddenly he was there, emerging from the mist onto a scene of carnage.

  The fighting was over, the battlefield strewn with crumpled bodies, dropped weapons, and several downed horses. Unlike most battles, there had been no looting and the attacking force was already gone, in their hasty retreat leaving behind riderless stallions and bloodied or broken swords. Ranulf came to a halt, stunned, unwilling to believe what he was seeing. Drawing his sword in a reflex action, he peered blindly into the night, but could find no foes, none but the wounded, the dead, and the dying.

  “Papa!”

  Ranulf spun around as Bleddyn came stumbling out of the fog. He looked dazed and blood was flowing from a gash on his forehead, but he was alive, he was breathing, and Ranulf dropped his sword, lunged forward to embrace his son. Bleddyn was trembling, and for a long, shuddering moment, he said nothing, just held tight.

  “I came upon this…,” he said, his voice so constricted and choked that Ranulf would never have recognized it. “Dead… all dead… the men who’d attacked them were fleeing… I never even saw who they were… I set after them, not thinking, just… I wanted to kill, to make them pay… and then my horse swerved to avoid trampling a body and I went right over his head… God, Papa, Jesus God… what happened?”

  “Hush, lad, hush. It’s over, it’s all over.” Steering the shocked youth toward the closest shelter, a lanky sapling, he got Bleddyn to sit upon the ground. Fumbling for his dagger, he slashed a strip from his mantle and urged his son to hold it to his bleeding head. “Stay there, lad. Do not move. I’ll be back, I swear I will.”

  He thought then to retrieve his sword, shoving it into his scabbard. But he was at a loss as to what to do next. Everywhere he looked, there was need. Hywel… where was Hywel? Moving like someone in a trance, he knelt beside the closest body, saw that the man was beyond help, and went on to the next victim. This one, too, was dead, and somewhere in the back of his brain, he recognized Iddon, one of Peryf’s brothers. He could hear moaning now, cries of pain. The rank smells of death-blood, urine, and spilled entrails-were strong enough to make him queasy. Hywel… Jesu, where was he?

  He found Peryf next, so limp and still that he was amazed to be able to detect a pulse. Peryf had been the only one wearing a hauberk, mocked by his brothers for his excessive caution, but Ranulf suspected now that the chain-mail had saved his life for he could find no wounds on Peryf’s body, just an ugly, swelling bruise above his eye.

  “Mary, Mother of God!”

  Ranulf whirled toward this new voice, saw one of the men who’d been left behind at Pentraeth standing several yards away. The rest were coming into view now, too, moving instinctively toward Ranulf, all talking at once, some swearing, others saying that they’d heard the clamor, one man just whispering “Merciful Jesus” over and over, as if he knew no other words.

  The priest was there, too, having followed them as they raced past his church, fearing the worst and finding it. After a horrified pause, he began to move among the bodies, seeking to do what he could, stirring the others to action, too.

  Peryf was groaning, his eyelids fluttering. Coming back to consciousness, he came back, too, to immediate recall, and started to struggle upright, had to be restrained by Ranulf and Tathan. “Davydd,” he gasped. “It was Davydd and Rhodri… Christ, it happened so fast, Ranulf! They were upon us ere we knew it and we were so outnumbered-Hywel! Where is Hywel? Find him, Ranulf, find him!”

  “I will,” Ranulf promised. “Just lie still, Peryf. I’ll be back.” Beckoning Tathan aside, he said softly, “Stay with him. Whatever… whatever happens, he’s already lost a brother. Iddon is dead.”

  Tathan blanched. “God help him, for so is Brochfael.”

  They looked at each other, neither knowing what to say. And then Ranulf turned away to hunt for Hywel.

  The fog hid the worst of the bloodshed. So did the utter blackness of a January night. With no stars, no lanterns, they stumbled around in the dark, going from body to body, seeking to find the living midst the dead. Ranulf had not seen so many casualties since Lincoln, that long-ago battle of his youth, which ended with the capture of a king. Would Hywel be as lucky as Stephen? That was a question with no answer, a question to raise the hairs on the back of his neck and start icy sweat oozing down his ribs.

  He almost fell over Caradog, twisted aside just in time. Kneeling, he touched the young man’s face. His skin was still warm, but the eyes staring up at Ranulf were sightless, empty. Ranulf reached out and gently closed them, trying not to think of all that Caradog would never see now. Coming slowly to his feet, he continued to search the field for Hywel.

  He heard someone shout that Caswallon was alive, and that emboldened him to call out for Hywel. His cry was quickly taken up, for men were no more equal in death than they were in life, and Hywel’s blood was worth more to Wales than any spilled by the other victims of this island ambush. Ranulf began to shout for Hywel again, shouting until he was hoarse, hearing only echoes on the wind. But then he saw the dog.

  The wolfhound was crouched by a low hedge of hawthorn, shivering with fear. It whimpered as Ranulf approached, shrinking back as he held out his hand. With a leaden step, he drew closer. He moved around the hawthorn and there he found Hywel.

  He lay motionless on the ground, a bloodied spear protruding from his side. Crying out for help, Ranulf dropped to his knees beside him. There was a moment of wild hope when he saw Hywel’s chest rise and fall. Hywel’s breathing was shallow and labored, his heart not yet ready to stop beating, and when Ranulf gripped his hand, the fingers closed weakly over his. But blood was trickling from the corner of his mouth and his dark eyes were losing the light. He did not look afraid or even in pain, just surprised. He struggled for enough breath to speak as time ran out, and his face blurred for Ranulf in a haze of hot tears. When he blinked them back, Hywel was gone and the hand in his was inert, unresponsive.

  Men were cursing and crying. From a great distance, Ranulf heard a wail of anguish, and he wondered numbly if Peryf knew that at least three of his brothers had died with Hywel. The priest was beside him now, giving the last rites to the man who so many saw as Wales’s best hope, giving them all the only comfort he could, the salvation of Hywel’s immortal soul. Ranulf did not move, no longer hearing the babel of voices. He looked up at the fog-shrouded sky, down at Hywel’s body, and then he wept, for himself and for Hywel, for Peryf and his brothers, for all the
good men who had met sudden death in the vale of Pentraeth, but above all, for Wales.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  March 1171

  Poitiers, Poitou

  How many days until Maundy Thursday?” Raoul de Faye’s question seemed idly put, innocuous.

  Maud knew better. It was a sly thrust at her cousin the English king, for it was customary for the Pope to issue excommunications and interdicts upon that day, the Thursday before Easter.

  “I have not been keeping count,” she lied coolly, as if she had not been grudging every day’s dawning for the past month. Henry’s envoys had departed for the papal court weeks ago, racing the calendar to arrive before Maundy Thursday. Thomas Becket’s cross-bearer, Alexander Llewelyn, was known to be on the road to Italy, too, bearing letters from the French king and outraged French bishops. If he reached the Pope before Henry’s emissaries, a Maundy Thursday thunderbolt was almost a certainty.

  “It is less than a fortnight,” Raoul supplied helpfully. “I wonder how far the Angevin’s minions have gotten by now. For all we know, they are snowbound somewhere in the Alps, using his papal petitions for fire-wood.”

  “You sound as if you hope that to be true,” Maud observed, and he gave her what he thought was a candid, disarming grin, allowing that he’d not be heartbroken if Henry’s agents were lost until the spring thaw.

  Maud studied him with speculative, critical eyes. Raoul had been verbally sparring with her since her arrival in Eleanor’s capital the preceding week. At first she’d dismissed his sniping as an echo of Petronilla’s antagonism, but she was reassessing that assumption. Petronilla was jealous of her intimacy with Eleanor, and obviously so was Raoul. But Petronilla’s resentment was personal and his was political. He wanted no rivals for Eleanor’s ear, no trusted confidants to offer advice that was not his. Not for the first time in her life, Maud marveled that men could be such fools. As if Eleanor would ever be any man’s pawn, be he husband or uncle.

  Raoul’s smug satisfaction grated upon her nerves. They were jackals, she thought scornfully, nipping at Harry’s heels, hoping against hope that the lion was cornered at last. She had a weapon of her own-knowledge that Raoul did not possess-and she used it now to retaliate.

  “It grieves me,” she said gravely, “that you find such joy in wishing misfortune upon the king’s ambassadors. One of them is my beloved brother, the Bishop of Worcester.” Although addressed ostensibly to Raoul, her retort was actually aimed at their audience, and it achieved the desired result. Her sorrowful dignity stirred chivalric urges in the listening men and their disapproval discomfited Raoul. In the indolent, pleasure-seeking society of Aquitaine, bad manners were often judged more harshly than sins.

  Maud had not lingered in the great hall after her victory; she had no interest in exchanging poisoned pleasantries with Raoul or Petronilla. Her confident pose was just that: a pose. She was deeply concerned for her cousin, fearing that Henry would be branded as an enemy of God by the enraged Pope. She worried, too, about Roger, for a winter crossing of the Alps was fraught with peril. And in the past few days, she’d become aware that Eleanor was troubled by more than her husband’s jeopardy.

  She discovered the queen’s secret later that night, purely by chance. She’d gone into the chapel upon discovering that it was unoccupied, for solitude was rarely found midst the clamor and commotion of a royal court. After saying prayers for the souls of her parents and dead brothers, for friends long gone and the husband who was surely burning in Hell these seventeen years past, she then prayed for the salvation of a Welsh prince whose laughter was stilled, his music silenced.

  She was about to depart when she heard footsteps out in the stairwell leading up to Eleanor’s private chamber. One of the queen’s men was escorting a woman muffled from head to foot in a dark, enveloping mantle, an odd choice of apparel on a mild spring eve. Maud’s curiosity was piqued by the clandestine behavior of the couple; had one of Eleanor’s ladies dared to tryst with a lover in her mistress’s own bed? As they passed the chapel door, whispering furtively, she acted on impulse and stepped out to confront them.

  Recoiling sharply, the woman grasped the hood of her cloak, drawing back into its folds like a turtle into its shell. The man reacted with equal dispatch, hurrying her by Maud before any words could be exchanged. Maud stood utterly still in the stairwell, staring after them. A cry rose in her throat, a name that never left her lips. For just the span of an indrawn breath, she’d looked upon the other woman’s face, no more than that, but time enough for recognition. This mysterious, shrouded figure being spirited from the queen’s chamber with such secrecy was Bertrade, her midwife.

  Eleanor had unbraided her hair and was brushing it out, a nightly ritual that should have been soothing in its very familiarity. Not tonight; her thoughts continued to careen about: unwelcome, illogical, and unexpected. Picking up a mirror, she examined her metallic reflection with critical eyes, seeing a tired, pale woman gazing back at her, an aging stranger.

  The sudden pounding startled her and she frowned toward the door, vexed by this proof of the edgy state of her nerves. Before she could respond, it was pushed open and her cousin by marriage burst into the chamber. But this was a Maud she’d not seen before, white-faced and tense, so obviously agitated that Eleanor felt a surge of alarm.

  “Maud? What is wrong? It is not Richard-”

  “No,” Maud said hastily, “nothing like that. The last I saw of him, Richard was in the hall, playing chess with one of your household knights too new to know better.”

  Eleanor smiled faintly. “Richard turns every game into a life or death struggle. And when he loses, he demands an immediate rematch. But if nothing is amiss, why did you come running in here as if the palace was afire?”

  Maud hestitated, for this was one of the rare times when she’d reacted on instinct, not thinking out beforehand what she would do. The sight of Bertrade had propelled her up the stairs, for the memory of Eleanor’s last birthing was still harrowing even after the passage of more than four years. Not knowing what to say, she could only fall back upon the truth. “Eleanor… I saw her leaving.”

  “Saw whom?”

  “Bertrade. It was not her fault; she was being very circumspect.” Eleanor’s face was a graven mask, utterly unrevealing, but Maud forged ahead, nonetheless. “I know I am intruding and I know that trespassers risk being-”

  “Maud, I am not with child.”

  “If it is still early enough, there are herbs like artemisia and pennyroyal or savin-”

  “You are not listening to me. I am not pregnant.”

  This time Maud believed her. “But you thought you were.” Reading Eleanor’s silence as assent, she crossed the room and took the brush from the other woman’s hand. Eleanor didn’t object and for a time it was quiet. Maud concentrated upon brushing the queen’s hair until it gleamed like a long, dark rope.

  “You have beautiful hair,” she said. “Did you ever wish that it was a fashionable flaxen shade?”

  “No,” Eleanor said, and then, “I’ve had to start dyeing it.”

  “To hide the grey? Me, too.”

  “I thought I was… pregnant, I mean. I’ve not had a flux since December. But Bertrade says no, that I’ve reached that time in life when a woman’s menses cease. She says it usually happens by age fifty.” Eleanor’s shoulders lifted in a slight shrug. “I’m forty-eight.”

  Maud kept silent, continuing to brush Eleanor’s hair.

  “It makes no sense. I was horrified to think I was pregnant again, Maud. I’ve been drinking wine mixed with the juice of willow leaves so I’d not conceive. I should be so relieved…”

  “I understand,” Maud said softly. “Any woman would.”

  “But no man.” Eleanor rose suddenly, moved to the table, and poured wine into two gilded cups. Handing one to Maud, she said, “I took your advice, after all.”

  “Which advice was that?”

  “A long time ago, it was, more than eleven ye
ars. I was wroth with Harry for failing to win Toulouse, and Petra was adding fuel to the fire. You told me-not in so many words-that I was being foolish and shortsighted. It took a while, but I came to see that you were right.”

  Maud glanced quickly toward Eleanor, their eyes catching and holding. She remembered. She had warned Eleanor that she must either accept Harry as he is or learn to love him less.

  Pope Alexander was so appalled by the news of Thomas Becket’s murder that he refused to meet with Englishmen for more than a week. But Henry’s envoys were still able to persuade him not to issue a sentence of excommunication, taking oaths that the English king would abide by any papal judgment. The Pope contented himself with pronouncing a general sentence of excommunication against the murderers of the archbishop and all who had given them counsel, countenance, aid. Nor did he lay England under interdict, although he subsequently confirmed the interdict laid by the Archbishop of Sens upon Henry’s continental domains. He also confirmed the sentences of excommunication and suspension imposed by Thomas Becket upon the Bishops of London and Salisbury and the Archbishop of York, prohibited Henry from entering any church for the time being, and announced that he would be sending papal legates to Normandy to meet with the English king and judge whether he was “truly humbled.”

  Gerald de Barri always felt his heart swell upon his first sight of St David’s. Hidden away in a secluded hollow by the River Alun, the cathedral burst into view like a flower in sudden bloom, resplendent even in a chilly Welsh downpour. The original church had been built in the sixth century by the patron saint of Wales. The present cathedral was a lodestone for the faithful, attracting pilgrims from the far-flung corners of Christendom. For Gerald, it was much more; his uncle was the Bishop of St David’s.