This last piece of information made me burn with the prickly heat of jealousy. I dared not discuss it with the Prince, but on that day he boarded one of his own ships which lay at anchor in the mouth of the Clwyd and set out on an inspection tour of his kingdom, I jerked all my bridal finery out of the chests and hurled it to the floor in a fit of temper. Not since Ireland had I allowed myself such a display.
Emma and my servingwomen set themselves calmly to making order out of the mess, but for the rest of the day they made certain to stay clear of my foot which might kick and my hand which could slap.
Then Griffith returned and was as warm to me as before. When we sat for supper that first evening in the hall, he reached out and put his hand on mine, the dark ruby in his ring blazing against his brown skin. He was tanned by sun and wind and more beautiful to me than ever, though I was too shy to say so.
“When I was gone, Aldith,” he said straightway, “I put in order my domestic affairs elsewhere.” His eyes bored into mine. “You understand what I am saying? I am sure someone has spoken to you of it?”
Unable to answer, I cast down my eyes and nodded.
“It is just as well, I would have no secrets between us. But know this; I have provided for all of those who are my responsibility, though I need have no more commerce with them. The children too, they will be properly reared and will be no disgrace to the house of Llywelyn.” He paused, then his second hand reached out to join his first and cradle both mine gently within.
“The Earl Aelfgar will leave East Anglia this day week,” he continued, “come to give you into my keeping. I would have nothing hurt you or make you regret our betrothal, Aldith. I will come to you completely yours, as I demand that you be completely mine.”
He reached out and put his fingers under my chin, cradling it in the warm cup of his hand and lifting it until my eyes met his. “I am a possessive man, Aldith. Know that now. I will not share one smile of yours, one touch, not even one dream! Do you agree to that?”
I was glad the courtiers habitually ignored one another’s private conversations! For I wanted to say to Griffith, “How could I smile, or touch, or dream of another, when you have filled up all the empty spaces inside me already?” But I could not do it, the poetry of the Cymry had not yet loosened my cold Saxon tongue to make such a declaration possible. I could but nod again, like some halfwit child slow to learn a lesson, and hope Griffith could read the words written on my soul.
It all happened. Just as Griffith had promised. My lord father came to Rhuddlan with a large party of his relations, all come to witness my marriage to the Welsh Prince. We were wed in the chapel at Rhuddlan, and I wore a gown of violet silk, with my hair unbound in the Cymry fashion. The Earl Aelfgar said those words required by the Welsh law as he put my hand in Griffith’s; Griffith took the massive ruby from his little finger and put it on my third one.
All around us they stood, the Cymry I had come to love and know even as my own kin. Dillwyn and Trevor and Cemaes, Morgan and Dafydd and Rhys. Angharad up from her hut by the sea, and Madog and Owain and Emma, too. All my people, forevermore.
Then we were alone at last, in the private chambers of the Prince, with nothing but the cheery spirit of the fire in its kettle for company.
Griffith put his hands lightly on my shoulders and smiled. “How you tremble, little one!” (Though I was as tall as he and met his gaze on the level!) “Are you frightened? We all fear the unknown, and we are surely about to confront the unknown in each other. But it will be all right, I will not hurt you. Do you believe that?”
“Yes,” I whispered.
“It is my responsibility, as you are virgin, to see that you overcome your fear and learn to feel pleasure in me as I shall in you. Tell me truly, have you ever seen a man naked?”
That was a foolish question! Surely everyone has seen nakedness; children run unclothed in warm weather, sparing their mothers much weaving and needlework. And it is no great feat to spy on a servant bathing in a stream; I had done that aplenty.
“I have seen children, my lord. And servants, in a stream.”
“Now you are about to see me in the hide my mother gave me, Aldith, and it is not seemly that you be so formal. When I came naked into the world I was dubbed Griffith, and that only. So I would be to you henceforth.”
“Yes, my … Griffith.”
He chuckled. “‘My’ Griffith has a fine sound to it, little one. Let us proceed with your education.”
Taking my hands in his, he guided my fingers so that I helped remove his clothing. As the garments fell away I became aware of a new sensation, replacing my timidity—I felt the prickings of curiosity.
When Griffith ap Llywelyn stood before me, naked in the firelight, I felt no fear at all. He was beautiful, and there was no shame in him. In response to his dignified gift of himself, I gazed my fill of him in wonder and thought of nothing else.
He stood straight and proud, my Griffith, with his shoulders back and his chin lifted. The line of his throat was supple though his neck was thick with strength. There was a soft sheen to his skin that made me long to touch it, and I wondered fleetingly if he oiled his flesh.
I raised my eyes questioningly to his and saw, from the patient waiting in his face, that more was expected of me. So I took a deep breath and gazed full upon his manhood.
And it was not at all frightening! Unlike the sword the stallion plunged into the mare, this was a small and fragile-seeming bit of pink flesh, so vulnerable and soft I almost laughed aloud at my earlier fears. It lay curved over the bag of the scrotum, which I saw was just the size to fit in my two cupped hands. I don’t know what expression crossed my face at that moment, but I heard Griffith’s sudden sharp intake of breath. And to my wonder that sleeping and insignificant part of him grew before my very eyes, stretching and quivering as it leaped out toward me! This was the miracle, then, this rich flowering of beauty and power. Through what must have been iron self-control he had shown himself first to me in such a way that I was not affrighted, merely curious and interested. But at my reaction his manhood had broken through his will power and presented me with the male in all his formidable majesty.
I gave him a shy smile and reached out to touch the broad shoulder glowing in the firelight. The moment I touched him I saw the pulse leap in his throat, and I realized that in some way he was as vulnerable to me as I to him. My heart flooded with tenderness.
“I love you, my Griffith!”
And then the time was come when I was truly made wife to Griffith ap Llywelyn; all doors were opened and all walls let down. And in our joining I knew that we were not two, but one.
In this new realm I could happily have spent a lifetime. But the strongest flesh weakens, and at last I fell asleep in his arms, sore and happy. When next I woke a tray of meats and fruit had been set beside the furcovered pallet where we lay. As I had been hungry for his touch, so was I starved then for food, and we ate together like ravening wolves and laughed at each other till he kissed the juices from the corners of my mouth and all began again …
And always he talked to me in that marvelous musical voice. His body made love to my body, his voice made love to the Aldith in my head, so that I was not alone in any way. He spoke of my beauty, whispered his passion, groaned with our mutual rapture. When we rested he built my future with his words, so that I could see our whole life together spread before me as I lay in his arms. He asked me about myself and listened intently to my answers, even as his fingers memorized the curve of my cheek. Sometimes he spoke love to me, and sometimes he quoted poetry, and I swear I could not tell one from the other.
Griffith, Griffith, so much did you make of us one person that I still breathe with your breath, your heart beats in my breast!
RHUDDLAN
MY NEW LIFE was truly begun. In one day (and a night) I had moved in rank from student to First Lady in Wales. And chatelaine of Rhuddlan, too: keeper of the keys to the private chambers, the stillroom, the strongroom, and the
solar. My domain included the kitchens, a chapel, barn and stables, a kilnhouse for drying grain, a cow byre, a small house for Griffith’s falcons, the porch where we dined on starry summer nights, and the privy.
Also within Rhuddlan’s walls were the watch towers and sleeping huts for the men-at-arms and the servants’ chamber and hall, but these were none of my affair. Emma did love to bring me tales from the servants’ chambers and I did love to give ear to them, though I pretended for the sake of my dignity that I was impatient with such tittle-tattle.
But the part of my new kingdom I loved most was not within stout timbered walls; it was best seen from the back of my gray pony. The rich and rolling valley of the Clwyd, its colors always changing beneath the racing clouds—that was dear to me. The distant purpled hush of mountains. The songs of the thrush as we lay on our pallet of furs in the early morning, when pearly light came streaming in through the solar’s wind door, open to air and sky. The funny manmade mountain they called “Toothill” upon which Rhuddlan stood.
The valley of the Clwyd was rich land, so fertile that many of the Cymry had given up their traditional occupations of hunting, hawking and fishing and taken to tilling the soil. Landowners plowed with a heavy wooden plow and a team of eight oxen; a whole community went in together in this endeavor, sharing the oats, barley or wheat they raised. I loved to ride along the edges of the fields, listening to the cries of the callers who walked backward leading the oxen, singing their commands like bards.
“It seems the whole world is here!” I said to Griffith once. “Everything we need is grown hereabouts or provided to us as the court’s share from the tribes. It is not like East Anglia, where we purchased from traders so much of our goods.”
“It is wrong to be dependent on others,” Griffith replied. “Each tribe of the Cymry cares for itself; no man can cut off its food supply or take away its clothing and fuel. We do without some of the luxuries of the great towns, perhaps, but we are free.” His face grew very serious. “Remember that, Aldith. It is a great thing to be independent, to have no foot on your neck.” There was a real sadness in his eyes that surprised me.
“Surely no man is so free as you!”
My Griffith gave a bitter laugh. “Few men are so enslaved as I.”
“But you are Ruler of All Wales!”
“Mmmmmm,” said Griffith, stroking his neatly trimmed auburn beard.
I waited. I had learned that those “Mmmmmms” of his meant he was about to deliver himself of an important thought and wanted all of my rapt attention.
“So I am, Ruler of All Wales. That is a title I went after like a hungry bear, sweeping aside everything that got in my path. And would do so again, just as fiercely! Make no mistake about that, Aldith; my ambition is not quenched, nor will it ever be. Unfortunately.
“For I can tell you this, little one. At sundown the landowner puts away his plow and oxen, the fisherman leaves his nets and weir and goes home to a good supper and an easy sleep. But for a Prince sundown means only that the torches must be lit, so that he can see better the problems he must grapple with. There are always friends to be made, enemies to be staved off, decisions and choices and dealings until the mind scurries like a trapped rat.
“We live well here at Rhuddlan, Aldith, but I pay for each cow and oat and piece of gold as surely as if I wrested them from the land myself. No plowman works as hard as I; no beekeeper keeps such hours. I have not just one flock to guard but many! I must protect them all from invasion, administer the Laws and hold court to settle rights and wrongs. It is a tiresome task that is never completed, for as soon as I put down one problem two more rise in its place.” He shook his head in a weary way.
“If the business of kingship is so tiresome,” I asked, logically, I thought, “then why do men seek to rule?”
Griffith took a long time answering, and his voice was soft when at last he spoke. “Each man has a vision of himself, Aldith, a picture in his head of the way he wants to think of himself. I was the son of a great Prince; my vision, when it came, was to be a greater Prince than my father. I saw myself as a man who could not be beaten, and it gave me much pleasure to think of myself in that way. And so I have lived my life, striving always to be the best, the strongest, the most powerful.”
“But it hasn’t made you happy? Is that what you are trying to tell me?”
His face lightened marvelously, and I felt a wash of relief. “Ho, Aldith, it has made me very happy! Sometimes. I have you! And honors and opportunities and the respect of men. I meant merely that I pay a high price for all that, my love, and that I will never be free of the goad of ambition or the responsibilities that go with it.”
Sometimes, he had said. Sometimes he was happy.
But sometimes he was not. Warned, I noted the times when his expression was grim and there was no laughter at table. I saw his hands shake with fatigue at times, and many were the nights I lay alone on our pallet till cockcrow while he conferred in the hall with ministers and soldiers.
And sometimes he was away for long periods, and the wind from the sea sang sad songs around the towers.
When Griffith was at Rhuddlan, he broke with ancient custom and had me always seated at his right hand at the feasting table. But when he was away, with his household cavalry and his cup-bearer and his physician and his footholder and all the rest of his retinue, then I was banished too. Instead of taking my meals in the Great Hall with the ranking members of the court, I dined in our own chamber. I could hear the male voices raised in song or quarrel, but without Griffith I was no part of them.
During that time I felt almost an outcast again, denied the company of men I had come to like and admire. There was Emlyn, the court judge, kindly and sober, and Gwerstan, our chapel priest and Griffith’s secretary. Rhys the chamberlain and Caradog the steward. And a goodly number of others besides. All men who talked with me and asked after my health and seemed to enjoy my company when Griffith was there. But when Griffith was away on the business of his kingdom, those of the court who remained behind were a closed company, kind and polite to me always but never including me in their number.
Even though this was the Saxon way as well, still it rankled me. I complained a bit to Griffith.
“I am your Lady whether you are here or naught; don’t I deserve a place at table in your absence?”
“It is the custom, Aldith!”
“It is not a fair custom!”
“You are still a child Aldith; you have not had enough experience to judge what is fair and what is not. The ancient ways were established by wise men who had good reasons. It is not seemly for you to question them.” Griffith was using his stern, adult-speaking-to-a-child voice on me, but it did not always work.
“When will I cease being a child? When will I be old enough for my own ideas to be respected, Griffith? I am not a fool. I can think!”
Griffith began to lose patience. “I know you can think. I would not have a wife who was stupid, she might give me stupid sons. But you should think a woman’s thoughts and not try to meddle with the traditions of men.” There was a rough note of anger in his voice and a glint in his eye that warned me not to press too hard. My beautiful, poetic Welshman had a savage temper once he lost it; he had not yet lost it with me, and I was reluctant to have him begin over such an issue as my dining arrangements.
But, nevertheless, it was not fair!
The affairs of the outside world were not unknown to us in our private world; Griffith came back from one of his trips with news of the death of the Earl Leofric of Mercia, my grandfather.
“The Earl Aelfgar will accede to the earldom of Mercia,” he announced, “and a new earl will take his place in East Anglia.”
I was happy for my lord father. Taking his sire’s place as Earl of Mercia would give him much satisfaction. But who would sit in the hall where I grew up?
“It is not yet decided, Aldith, and I suspect the Saxons and Danes will do much quarreling over the bone before one of them ma
kes off with it!” The quarrelsomeness of the two factions pleased Griffith; he liked to see dissent among all those who would call themselves the English.
As it fell out, the earldom of East Anglia went to Gyrth, the fourth son of Earl Godwine, and all of Oxford Shire was added to his portion as well.
“Ho!” Griffith exulted. “There will be hot hearts over that bit of business! The Godwines strengthen their control almost daily, it seems.” He turned to me and smiled. “I daresay we will be hearing from your father again soon, little one.”
We did. Two messengers came hotfoot from Mercia, begging the support of the Welsh Prince in a new uprising against the Godwines. This time my father proposed to obtain mercenaries from Norway as well, promising them the same looting privileges that had enlisted the Vikings in Dublin.
“It will be tedious,” Griffith sighed.
“Then why do it?”
“My dear, if I don’t keep them terrified of me, the light-fingered English will continue to nibble away the land along our border. Besides, who knows what crumbs may fall to us along the way!”
“I hate the thought of your going off to do war, my love!”
“Nonsense! War well done is a fine and profitable business.”
“But you could be killed!”
“In that case I would be a hero, covered with glory as well as a shroud! But come, Aldith, do not pull such a long face. Your Griffith will come home to you safe enough, I vow!” He put his fingers under my chin and tipped my lips up to meet his, thinking to make me forget battles and killing. It almost worked, but not quite.
The Wind From Hastings Page 6