Rhiannon

by Roberta Gellis

  “Only to fight if attacked. For the king to march his army here and there is no attack.”

  “My lord,” Gilbert Bassett put in, “I know that much of your trouble is on my account, and I should be accepting of your rule in gratitude, but the king’s intention is clear. Really, you go too far in patience.”

  “The king in his own person is there,” Richard said.

  There was a soft sound, almost like a pack of beasts snarling. Richard sighed. It was all too obvious that no one agreed with him, that all had abandoned hope of any settlement outside of force, and that the king’s presence at Grosmount was an inducement rather than a detraction to the idea of attack. It was also obvious that every man who was not directly his vassal intended to follow Llewelyn. To withhold his own men, then, would merely increase the danger for his allies without preventing the action. And most probably they were right after all. Nonetheless, Richard could not bring himself personally to lead a surprise attack on the king.

  “I will go back to Abergavenny,” he said, “and send my men out under Bassett’s command. I am sorry, but I cannot lead them myself. I—”

  “If God had sent me such vassals as you,” Llewelyn interrupted, “I would be prince of the Garden of Eden.” Then he laughed. “I do not know whether that would be entirely to my taste. So much peace and justice and mutual respect… No, I cannot imagine it.” He put out his hand to Richard. “But one or two like you, Pembroke, would be the greatest gift God could give a ruler. What a fool Henry is.”

  While this talk had progressed, Simon was shifting impatiently from one foot to the other. Now Llewelyn turned his head toward him and raised his brows sardonically. “And another vassal like you,” he said affectionately, “would make me inquire why my men never bathed. If you itch, Simon, then scratch. Do not stand there wriggling.”

  “I do not itch,” Simon protested, “except to go at once. If we do not move at once, they may victual and be away before we arrive. It would be impossible to hide all traces, and…”

  Half a dozen pairs of eyes fixed on him with varying degrees of amusement and irritation. Simon swallowed. It was rather foolish for him to be instructing a group of old war dogs, one of whom, at least, had been staging successful surprise attacks for nearly forty years. Yet Llewelyn was least annoyed and only said firmly that Simon should get a few hours of sleep, assuring him that if he would stay out of the way, they would be at Grosmount and ready to attack at the proper time.

  At first light they did, indeed, set out. For his sins, Simon was put in charge of the baggage animals, not wagons and oxen but sure-footed asses that could climb the mountain trails that lay between Grosmount and Builth. He cursed and laughed at the same time, recognizing that the punishment surely fit the crime. It was not so bad, either. He arrived at Llewelyn’s camp only an hour after the main body of the troops, well in time to join the others for a late dinner. Llewelyn was not there. He had ridden with Pembroke and Bassett to Abergavenny.

  Scouts went out and returned to say there was plenty of activity in the camp but no sign the army would move. The troops settled down to give a last look to their weapons or to sleep, but Simon remounted Ymlladd to bring in his own men from the camp on Orcop Hill. They were not needed, but it would be a shame for them to miss the fun and what individual pieces of loot they could pick up. By the time he got back to the main camp, Simon was beginning to feel tired, but he went at once to join the conference that was planning the attack. He had more news that would be of interest. His men had discovered that all the leaders of the army, the king, Winchester, Seagrave, Peter of Rivaulx, and nearly all the mercenary captains were inside the keep. Only lesser men were with the army.

  Rhiannon had reached Builth just before terce to find that the keep was all but empty. The old knight whom Llewelyn had left in charge of the skeleton garrison told her willingly enough where the troops and her father had gone, and assured her that they expected to return to Builth and that the women in the keep were ready to receive her. Rhiannon had all she could do not to burst into tears of frustration. At that moment, for all she knew, Simon might be fighting, and her selfishness had deprived her of saying farewell to him.

  Cursing herself, she climbed to the women’s quarters, but the questions and greetings that met her drove her nearly to distraction, and she fled down to speak to the old knight again. She soon understood that no attack would take place until that night and that the troops could not even have arrived at Grosmount yet. At first this frustrated her even more because she knew she would have to wait that much longer before she had news of the result of the battle, but she could not leave the subject alone. Pressing for this detail and that, she finally realized she had extracted directions for getting to Grosmount and a good knowledge of the surrounding area.

  At this point, the crazy notion of riding to join her father’s army took hold of her. She knew it was crazy; she knew Simon and her father would be fit to murder her just for thinking such a scheme. She put the idea away—for all of five minutes. Each time it recurred, it became more irresistible, and she could not see that it could really do any harm. Excusing herself abruptly, she went down to speak to her four men, nearly tripping over Math, who had been following her like a striped shadow ever since he had been released from his traveling basket. This was most unusual. Math’s normal behavior was to explore any new place with extreme thoroughness, reducing all the other domestic animals to subjection and ignoring his mistress until he was in full command.

  Rhiannon broached her idea to her men, half expecting that they would threaten to tie her down as a madwoman or say that Kicva had specifically ordered them on no account to permit her to do such lunacy. Instead, a light of avarice and adventure lit all four pairs of eyes.

  “Do you know the way, mistress?” Twm asked. “This is far from our lands and we could easily go astray.”

  “I think I do,” Rhiannon said with confidence, in complete ignorance of the fact that the old knight had described the paths taken by merchants and other travelers, not the route the army would follow. “We must go along the Wye to Clifford keep and then go south until we find the river Dore. It runs, the old man says, in a deep valley, so if we keep to the low land as we go south, we should find it without fail. There will be no danger in asking if we lose our way, either. That land is all Welsh or the Earl of Pembroke’s, and the people should be friendly.”

  “Well, then, mistress, it is for you to say. There will be rich pickings there.” Twm’s eyes glittered. “You can ride with the best of us if we should need to flee.”

  Math nudged Rhiannon’s leg, and she looked at him. “Go get his basket,” she said, “and make the horses ready.”

  Her final talk with the old knight was less agreeable than her previous ones. Even though she did not tell the truth and only said she would follow her father to Abergavenny, he protested. First he was amused, then outraged, arguing that he did not know whether there were any suitable women for company there and that her father would not want her mingling with so many Saesones. Finally, grudgingly, he let her go, although he was by no means happy.

  Everything went according to plan, which made Rhiannon forget for a while the lunacy of what she was doing. There were good roads running along the Wye, and they made excellent time, skirting south of Clifford and steering easily by the sun, which was intermittently visible near the midpoint of the sky but low to the south, as was normal for the season.

  Finding the Dore was not quite as easy as Rhiannon had expected. At the point they met it, it was close to its source and little more than a stream. They wasted several hours following streamlets that meandered purposelessly, and Rhiannon began to have serious doubts about the sanity of her enterprise. Just as she was thinking of giving up, the stream they were following ran into a larger one. This engendered enough hope to keep her from ordering a return, and she was soon rewarded by the stream’s turning south, again joining a larger tributary, and running into what they knew must be the D
ore. There was a well-marked track beside the river—not a road but a passage for cattle and packtrains. Again Rhiannon and her escort began to move with confidence, unaware of the fact that they were on the wrong side of the river. She had asked how to get to Grosmount, and the knight had told her, but Llewelyn’s camp was some miles to the west.

  The next check to their progress came late in the afternoon. Rhiannon believed that they must be quite near their goal by then, and they rode along in momentary expectation of seeing signs of the army or being hailed by one of her father’s scouting patrols. Doubts entered Rhiannon’s mind when they came first to a confluence of several streams the old knight had not mentioned. They were not difficult to ford, the confusion of currents having swirled rocks and sand together and spread the waters wide and shallow, however, on the other side was a well-worn road marked by the imperishable stones set by the Romans. This, too, the old knight had failed to mention.

  “Either the old man’s memory is failing,” Rhiannon said, “or we followed the wrong river after the ford. There is a little wood.” She pointed about half a mile south to where the land started to rise toward a low mountain. “Sion and Twm will come with me. You others go, one west and one south, to find our people if you can.”

  This was a sensible plan and was carried out without delay. As soon as Rhiannon and her men found what they felt was a suitably sheltered spot, they dismounted. The wood was utterly silent, for there were no insect sounds and the birds that had not flown south were mostly in the fields. It was cold, too, and Rhiannon, the men, and the horses were all tired. The men loosened the horses’ girths and put out a little grain for them to eat. Rhiannon shared out what food she had and let Math out of his basket for a while. She was not yet frightened—except about what her father and Simon would say. They would have been furious enough if she had reached the safety of their camp before the attack. If she missed them…

  She put aside the thought, though her worries were not lessened when Math voluntarily got back into his basket and sat there. However, there was nothing more she could do, so she wrapped herself in her cloak and determinedly closed her eyes. She had been even more of a fool than usual, but it was too late to worry. They could not have gone far astray. When the battle began, they would be able to orient themselves on the sound and make for the camp where the servants and other noncombatants would wait.

  The sun was just above the horizon when faint bird calls reached Rhiannon’s guards. It might be only crows that had discovered a dead animal, but Twm promptly set out to see. Sion looked at his mistress’s daughter, who was sleeping soundly, and decided not to wake her yet. When Twm came back would be soon enough. But then Sion heard what might be horses, and Twm had not returned. He had begun to tighten the girths of the mounts when Twm burst through the trees.

  “A hundred or more,” he gasped, “and they are ranging the wood, beating for game.”

  Shaken awake, Rhiannon was half-dazed. They mounted and rode southwest as quickly as possible. It was the only direction they could go. The river was northwest, and they did not know whether it was fordable; east was all king’s country. At first they thought they would make good their escape. The hunting party was making so much noise of their own that the sound of their horses would be insignificant. There was no pursuit, and they drove their mounts harder as they came out of the trees into more open land.

  This was a grave mistake. The thunder of their own horses’ hooves and the sun full in their eyes masked sights and sounds they would have noticed had their progress been more careful. Suddenly, cries rang out from ahead, a challenge in French and English. They could not answer. Rhiannon’s men spoke neither French nor English, and a woman’s voice would be no way to reduce curiosity and obtain freedom. Desperate, they wheeled east, but it was too late. Warnings were sounding before, behind, all over. Sion and Twm reached for their bows.

  “No!” Rhiannon cried. “You cannot fight an army.”

  “Welsh! Spies! Have a care!” rang from every side.

  Several men-at-arms rose with crossbows ready out of a screen of bushes along the side of a stream about twenty feet away. Rhiannon reined in her horse.

  “I am no spy,” she said in French. “I am a Welsh gentlewoman, and my men and I are lost.”

  The cultured language and the quality of the horses and their trappings saved Rhiannon and her men from excessively rough handling. There were some Welsh gentlemen who, from violent opposition to anything Prince Llewelyn did, were attached to the king’s cause, and the leaders of the men on patrol and scavenging expeditions knew better than to take the chance of offending any of their womenfolk. They also had strict instructions that any Welsh person caught must be brought to an officer for question­ing. It seemed impossible that any woman should be a spy, but if she were brought politely to their commander, they would have obeyed both orders.

  Excusing himself but nonetheless firmly, the captain of the patrol relieved Sion and Twm of everything that could conceivably be a weapon and bound their feet beneath their horses’ bellies and their hands to the saddles. This indignity was not forced upon Rhiannon, but she was as securely bound as her men because, in spite of their urging that she escape, she would not leave them.

  Until Rhiannon saw the keep itself, she had been uselessly castigating herself for her lunacy in leaving Builth, but she had not been personally afraid. As soon as she identified herself, she knew she would be treated with the utmost courtesy. When she saw Grosmount, however, she realized that, respect or no respect, she would be asked what she was doing in the area. And even if she told them nothing, her very presence would proclaim that her father must be somewhere near.

  Not only that, she would be a prisoner and would remain one until the war was over. Simon might be brought to heel by her predicament, and he would love her no better for placing him in such a position. And if the king tried to use her as a bargaining counter, her father would be so angry that he would probably plead with Henry to drop her down the deepest castle well that could be found. Better, far better, to suffer whatever indignity was necessary now. It could not be long before the attack took place. Surely during that confusion she would be able to escape.

  “Twm, tell them I am Rhiannon, wife of Pwyll, if they ask,” she called out in Welsh, “and that my husband put me away because I am barren. You were taking me home to my father, Heffydd Hen. You know the place and the rest of the tale.”

  “What are you saying? What are you saying?” the captain of the guard demanded angrily.

  “I told them to tell the truth if they are questioned, that we have nothing to hide. I am Rhiannon, wife of Pwyll of Dyfedd, and I am going home to my father, Heffydd the Old.”

  “What was there in that to laugh about?” the man insisted suspiciously.

  Obviously Rhiannon could not admit that her men were amused because she had adapted an old fairy tale to fit her needs. “That I will not tell you,” she said with dignity. “It is personal to me, and I love them less for they laugh at my shame.”

  This answer scarcely satisfied him, but he did not wish to take responsibility for more than telling her firmly not to address her men in their own language again. This Rhiannon readily promised, for the details of the old fairy tale were so well known that she was sure her story and her men’s would fit together perfectly. They soon came to the camp where the officer in charge was as puzzled as the patrol leader had been as to what to do with a Welshwoman of good class—he knew well enough what to do with the others.

  His first move was to ask whether she knew anyone in the king’s entourage who would vouch for her. Naturally enough she denied vehemently that she had any connection of any kind at all with the Saeson or those who loved the Saeson. She reiterated that she was no spy, that the officer should allow her and her men to pass on in peace. Since this was impossible, she was passed up the chain of command, arriving at last in the tent of Baldwin de Guisnes, the castellan of Monmouth keep, and the most important man—and bes
t soldier—in the camp.

  By then it was completely dark. The men were already quieting for the night. About half of them had only reached the camp that morning and had spent the afternoon putting up tents. Those who had come in the day before had either been out on patrol, had been scavenging, or had been collecting and distributing supplies under the eyes of their officers. De Guisnes, however, was not tired. His activities had been confined to riding the distance the men-at-arms had walked and then riding around the camp on a tour of inspection. He had just been considering whether he should go up to the keep for a little male companionship or send his squire out to procure a woman for him when Rhiannon was brought to his tent.

  He listened to her story with creased brows. “Take the men away and get an interpreter to question them. No torture yet. And you, my lady, get down from that horse.”

  Rhiannon did so without comment, only turning to unlash Math’s basket before the horse could be led away. Hands grabbed the basket from her and fastened on the lid. “No! Do not!” she cried. So, naturally, the lid was pulled off at once. Math’s yowl and the shriek of the man who had opened the basket mingled and were loud enough to drown the single choke of laughter she could not restrain.

  “I told you not to open it,” she said, still choking and hoping her mirth would be mistaken for grief. “Now my cat is lost.”

  “Cat?” de Guisnes repeated, looking at the slashes which had torn the unwise man-at-arms’ forehead, nose, and jaw so that blood was pouring down his face. “That looks like the work of a lion.”

  Then he transferred his eyes to Rhiannon’s face, which he could see more clearly now that she had dismounted. In a moment all thought of riding up to the keep or using a camp follower disappeared from his mind. He reviewed the story he had heard. No claim of influential friends or relatives. Who did she say her husband was? Pwyll of Dyfedd? He had never heard that name—or had he? It was vaguely familiar. But the father’s name, Heffydd Hen, he had never heard that. No male relative he need worry about offending. She was a nobody—but a very pretty nobody.