‘Go to bed, Luned.’ Her mind was made up. ‘Go to bed, I’m going down to the stables.’
It was months since she had done it; months since she had visited the horses in the dark. John had been adamant. The Countess of Huntingdon did not curl up in the straw like a stable boy – not now that she was a woman. She slept between silken sheets every night. The Countess of Huntingdon was not expected to seek out the shadows or explore the castle alone or gallop at the head of her men or disappear into the heaths when out hawking with her pretty merlin on her fist. She must be demure and ladylike and behave with propriety at all times.
‘My lady.’ The soft voice at her elbow stopped her as she reached the door into the courtyard.
‘Cenydd?’ She suspected he slept across her threshold once the castle was quiet at night.
‘Shall I call for torches, my lady?’ The big man was smiling down at her, his shoulders broad in his heavy leather jerkin. She became conscious of her hair, hanging loose down her back, free of the neat cap or head-dress she should be wearing.
‘No, no torches.’ She stepped out on to the wooden staircase which led down from the only door in the keep to the courtyard below.
‘You should not go out alone, lady.’ The gentle voice was persistent.
‘I am not alone if you are there!’ she retorted. Swishing her skirts in irritation, she ran down the staircase. At the bottom she stopped and turned. ‘You may come with me if you wish. If not, you may return to the great hall and pretend you haven’t seen me. I intend to ride Invictus.’
‘In the dark, princess?’
‘There is enough light. I do not want my husband to know about this, Cenydd. I do not wish to worry him. If you betray me I shall have you sent back to Gwynedd.’ Her imperious tone left him in no doubt that she meant it.
‘Very well, princess.’
She gave him a quick smile. ‘Just this once, Cenydd, before I die of suffocation.’ The charm had returned, and the small wheedling smile he could never resist – nor, he guessed, could any man. ‘Please.’
If the grooms were surprised at being asked to bridle the great stallion for their small mistress, they hid the fact. He was led out and Cenydd lifted Eleyne on to the high back of the horse. He hastily mounted his own fast gelding, afraid she would gallop off into the dusk, but she walked the stallion demurely towards the gatehouse, beneath the portcullis, and reined in, waiting for the postern in the main doors to be opened, before urging the animal on to the track outside. The storm was drifting closer, imperceptibly, a deeper blackness in the sky to the south-west, sliced now and then by zigzags of lightning. Invictus sidled uneasily and snapped bad-temperedly at the horse beside him.
‘If we take the road across the heath, we can gallop,’ Eleyne said at last. The huge flat distances, mysterious in the moonlight, depressed her, as did the vast unbroken canopy of the sky, this infinite eastern sky which rendered the land so insignificant and featureless.
‘What of the storm?’ Cenydd could smell the rain, sweet and cold, in the distance. Like the horses, he was ill at ease.
‘I want to ride in the storm.’
‘No, lady, think of your position. Think of your safety. Please come back.’ He knew she should not be there. If anything happened to her, he would be blamed. He sighed, loosening his sword in its sheath for the umpteenth time. Her wilfulness was Rhonwen’s fault. The child had never been disciplined and now she had a husband as weak-willed as the rest.
Invictus bared his teeth spitefully and Cenydd’s gelding sidestepped.
‘Come on. We can see well enough here.’ She was gathering her reins and the stallion was on his toes.
‘Why, princess?’
The forceful disapproval in his voice stopped her, fighting with the bit, holding the horse back on its haunches.
‘What do you mean?’ She raised her head defensively.
‘Why must you ride like this? A countess, a princess, should behave like a lady …’
Even in the moonlight he could see the colour darken her cheeks. ‘There are many kinds of lady, Cenydd. My husband has taught me that. I am the kind who rides like Rhiannon on her white horse, whom no man can catch.’ She pronounced the soft Welsh name wistfully.
Cenydd stared across at her. ‘Your husband told you this?’
She nodded emphatically.
She had been reading to him as he lay, his eyes closed, on the daybed they had arranged for him on the dais in the great hall. At first she had resented these hours at John’s side, longing to be out in the sun, longing to be riding. Seeing this, he had kept her with him for short periods only, lengthening them infinitesimally until, one day, when the rain teemed down outside, sluicing off the roofs and pouring in waterfalls from the stone gutters jutting out from the parapets of the keep, he drew her down near him and with a smile handed her a packet wrapped in a piece of linen.
‘A present.’
She looked at it with a sinking heart, knowing already from the feel that it was a book. Slowly she began to unfold the wrapping. To her delight the book was in Welsh, and as she turned the richly decorated pages she gasped in wonder.
‘I asked your father if he could send a book of Welsh stories to cheer you up, Eleyne, and he had this made especially for you. The stories are as old as time. His bards and storytellers have been collecting them and writing them down for many years, I gather.’ He waited, half amused, half anxious as she leafed through the pages spelling out the titles: The Dream of Maxen, the Countess of the Fountain, Peredur. She looked up at John, her eyes shining. ‘I know these stories – ’
‘Of course you do.’ He smiled. ‘And I want to know them too. Will you read them to me?’ He was watching her as he so often did, this strange child, the daughter of a Welsh prince, descendant perhaps of the ancient gods of the stories in the book she held. Maybe the stories would help him understand her better, and maybe they would help to relieve the homesickness which still robbed her cheeks of colour and filled him with such guilt whenever she came, trying so hard to hide her reluctance, to his side.
‘Even so, princess,’ Cenydd went on grudgingly, ‘I am sure he did not mean you to ride without escort like this. These heaths and fens are full of robbers and thieves and outlaws.’ He examined the still, moonlit landscape with its brooding shadows and the deeper pools of blackness beneath the trees, big enough to have hidden an army, and he shivered.
Eleyne laughed lightly. ‘If there are any robbers here, we can outride them. And I have you and your sword to protect me.’ Behind them a low rumble of thunder echoed around the horizon.
She waited for him in a patch of streaming moonlight, her hair wildly tangled on her shoulders, her blood singing with exhilaration, she and the horse tired at last. Then out of nowhere a bolt of lightning hissed out of the sky near them and exploded into the ground, making the stallion rear.
She had not seen the castle as she approached, but as she gentled the great horse she could see it clearly in the green eldritch light. The lightning vanished into blacker darkness leaving flames running along the walls, licking across the roofs, strung along the scaffolding poles like bright flags at a tourney. Dear God, the lightning must have struck the roof. Horrified, she watched, hearing the shouts and screams of the men and women trapped at high windows too narrow to let them push their way free. On the roof leads she saw a figure outlined by fire. As she watched, the man turned from the flames and climbing into the battlements hurled himself out into the smoke, his cry lost in the tumult below.
Dimly she was aware of Cenydd beside her now. ‘Look. Oh, Holy Mother! Oh, the poor people! Can’t we do something?’ But there was nothing they could do; nothing anyone could do. They were surrounded by the roar of the flame and the rolling smoke, white and grey against the blackness of the night, sewn with a million sparks.
Another flash of lightning showed the broad band of the river between them and the castle and the line of armed men who stood unmoving between the castle and the wate
r which could have saved it. She narrowed her eyes, trying to see the banner of the man at their head, but the smoke rolled down to the river once more and she could see nothing.
The rain came, as though a giant bucket had been overturned in the heavens, soaking the ground, the horses and the two riders within seconds, reducing the visibility to no more than a few feet. Eleyne narrowed her eyes, desperately trying to see ahead, but her eyes refused to focus now, seeing only the cold silver needles which stung her face and hands.
She realised that Cenydd had dismounted and was standing at Invictus’s head, looking questioningly at her as he gripped the horse’s sharp bit. She had not flinched from the rain. She sat upright, unmoving, her eyes on the distance.
‘Are you all right, princess?’
She could barely make out his narrowed eyes, his hair plastered to his skin beneath his leather cap.
‘I … I don’t know.’ She felt strangely disorientated. ‘The castle … will they be all right? The rain will help put out the fire …’
Cenydd let go of the bridle long enough to cross himself fervently: ‘You saw a fire?’
She stared at him. ‘You must have seen it. There – ’
Behind them the heath was invisible behind the curtain of rain. Another lightning flash zigzagged across the sky.
‘There is no fire, my lady, and no castle,’ he said gently. ‘And there never has been. Not here.’
CHAPTER FIVE
I
BANGOR June 1231
The nuptial mass had been all Isabella had dreamed it would be. The cathedral at Bangor, with its sturdy pillars and its high arched roof, glowed with sunlight as, the marriage completed, Prince Dafydd ap Llywelyn, heir to Gwynedd and Aberffraw and all North Wales, led his young bride to the high altar and knelt beside her there on a faldstool embroidered with silver and gold. Behind him stood his father, alone. In spite of a stream of desperate, contrite letters from Joan, begging his forgiveness, she was still imprisoned. She had not been permitted to attend the wedding of her lover’s daughter to her son.
Nearby, tight-lipped, stood Eva de Braose, her lovely face hidden by a black silk veil. Was she, she wondered, as she stared around the packed cathedral, the only person there to remember that her husband had been hanged by these people? She clenched her fists angrily as the voices of the choir soared aloft. Then a hand touched hers. Standing next to her, Gwladus, now married to Ralph Mortimer, remembered. She too had loved her dead husband’s dashing son. In sorrow the two women bowed their heads and prayed.
Isabella was not thinking of her father. She ran her hands quickly over the front of her richly embroidered gown, then folded them meekly in prayer. On her thick curtain of black hair, brushed loose almost to her waist, sat a golden coronet studded with pearls.
She stole a look at her handsome husband. He was tall, his red-gold hair gleaming in the stray beams of sun which slanted across the hills behind the cathedral and in through the stained-glass windows. The air curled and moved with the smoke of incense.
Dafydd smiled at her. He found his curvaceous young bride much to his taste. Her dark eyes and hair showed off a naturally white skin; she was small – not yet fourteen – but the breasts beneath her bodice were well grown and her hips beneath the slender lines of the gown and kirtle were provocatively curved.
He had thought long and hard about the problem of her father and at last had cautiously brought up the subject with the prince.
‘However right we were to hang him,’ he said, with a wary eye on his father’s face, ‘the child is bound to feel resentment. It’s only natural. Her mother does.’ He grimaced; he did not like the stone-faced Eva.
‘She must learn that the wages of sin are death,’ Llywelyn replied, his face grim.
‘I think she knows that,’ Dafydd said slowly. ‘But still it must be hard to bear. Can I …’ he hesitated, ‘can I tell her that it was Eleyne who discovered them together? It might be easier for her to come to terms with that idea, and if she can’t,’ he shrugged, ‘no doubt it will take less time to get over it. And as Eleyne has left Gwynedd it hardly matters anyway.’
Llywelyn examined his son’s face for a moment, surprised at the young man’s cynicism. ‘You mean you think Isabella needs a focus for her hate?’
‘Of course she does.’ Dafydd smiled. ‘And Eleyne has gone. What better way of handling it?’ He did not add that he had guessed that his father had done the same thing; only in his case he had shifted on to his daughter the blame of his wife. It was well known throughout the palace that Llywelyn had given orders for his wife’s imprisonment to be made less harsh; that he missed her intolerably – and that he had sent no messages or gifts to the Countess of Huntingdon save one book, grudgingly, at her husband’s request.
Isabella’s reaction to his frank discussion was all Dafydd had hoped. Several days before the wedding he had drawn her aside into one of the window embrasures in the newly built stone keep at Caernarfon Castle, out of earshot of their chaperones.
‘My dear, the shadow of your father is coming between us,’ he said slowly, taking her hand gently in his. A master of the chivalric art of courtship, he had already plied his betrothed daily with poems and flowers and little gifts of love: scented kerchiefs and ribbons. ‘I cannot bear that to be so.’ He glanced at her solemnly and was touched to see her eyes had filled with tears. ‘There is something you should know, Isabella.’ He lowered his voice even more, so she had to bend close to hear him and he could feel the soft brush of her breath on his brow, see the fine bloom of youth on her rounded cheeks. He felt a sudden rush of desire and had to close his eyes to keep his feelings under control. ‘I know she was your friend, but I have to tell you. It was Eleyne who betrayed your father. He trusted her; he loved her almost as a daughter, and yet she betrayed him.’
There was a long silence. ‘No? Not Elly?’ It was a plea.
‘I am sorry, Isabella. But you would have found out in the end.’
She had cried a little, discreetly, so the chaperones would not see and interrupt their tête-à-tête, then slowly she began to realise what he had said. Eleyne, her friend, had killed her father! Anger replaced the tears, and then fire-spitting fury. ‘How could she! I hate her! I’ll never forgive her!’ She had forgotten, as Dafydd had intended, that her father had not been alone in his sin. That Dafydd’s – and Eleyne’s – mother had been with him, and that they had both been in her bed.
The wedding feast dragged on for hours; course succeeded course, trenchers and plates were piled high with spiced food: sucking pig, swan, hare, pike, quail, partridge, stews, broths, mussels, trout, leek tarts, custards and honey cakes, and cask upon cask of Gascon wine, Welsh mead, ale and whisky were emptied, rolled away and replaced. Beside her husband Isabella was hot, tired and overexcited, and she had begun to feel sick. She stared around the hall uncomfortably, wondering if she should excuse herself again and run to the nearest range of chambers of ease, where she would have to brave a queue of jeering drunken men. It was that or the shame of being sick in the corner. She was still trying to make up her befuddled mind as she stared at the wheels of dripping candles when she found her husband beside her, helping her to her feet. ‘Go, sweetheart. Make ready for me.’ He pushed her gently towards a group of giggling ladies who seemed to be waiting for her. Swaying slightly, she stumbled towards them, only half conscious of the full-throated roar of approval from the prince’s young friends and the chorus of lewd comments from the lower tables.
In the bridal chamber it was quiet and cool after the roar of noise and the heat of the great hall. To the accompaniment of much gentle teasing, Isabella’s clothes were removed by her attendants, her face and body sponged with flower-water and anointed with sweet-smelling salves; her hair was brushed and then she was helped into the high bed, decorated all over with garlands and flowers.
Minutes later, as she caught the silk sheet to her breasts with a little shriek, the door flew open and Dafydd appeared, accompanied by
a number of boisterous young men.
Hazily she watched as he tried half-heartedly to escape his friends; she saw him caught and watched, half amused, half afraid as they tore his clothes none too gently from his body. Then he too was naked. She gazed at him in awe. The lithe muscular body was the handsomest thing she had ever seen; and he sported a magnificent erection.
With a cheer the young men pushed him into bed beside her, during which manoeuvre she clutched tightly at the sheet, but they got a more-than-adequate view of the rounded charms of their new princess. Then reluctantly they fell to silence as the figure of the bishop appeared in the doorway, surveying the scene tolerantly. With a smile he walked into the room. ‘Pax vobiscum, my children.’ He walked across to the bed.
Isabella closed her eyes as the holy water touched her face and breasts and realised with a sickening wave of nausea that the room was spinning around her. She opened her eyes again, feeling her stomach lurch as, beside her in the bed, she felt with a shock the touch of her husband’s thigh against her own. It seemed a long time before the bishop left the chamber, and with him her maidens and ladies and the prince’s friends, but at last the door closed and they were alone.
With a swift, almost angry movement Dafydd brushed the flowers and ribbons from the bed and threw himself back on the pillows.
‘Sweet Christ! I thought they would never go.’
Reaching out an arm, he caught her shoulder and pulled her towards him. ‘My lovely Isabella – ’
With a groan she pulled away. ‘My lord,’ she started to cry, ‘I’m going to be sick!’ She threw herself from the bed and ran naked to the garderobe.
It was a long time before she returned white-faced and shivering to the chamber. Dafydd was sitting in the bed drinking and gave her a sympathetic grin. ‘Better?’
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