Gifts of the Queen (42 page)

'When a boy,' Dafydd was continuing, 'he led that famous charge against the Normans, which caused their great defeat. They had crowded on a bridge, retreating from a Welsh force; the bridge broke, their weight of horse and armor snapping its wooden piles; the river was choked with drowning men and those who shed their armor to keep afloat our archers shot them down as they swam ashore.' He relished the story, the Celtic side of him uppermost; it was what he hoped, they all hoped, would happen a second time. But his words had that same effect that Henry's had, approaching disaster, no way to stop it, a boulder hurtling down a hill, a tidal wave.

When I saw Owain, strangely enough it was of my father that he reminded me, a gray-haired old man, bent with age, yet powerful enough to pick up his Celtic sword in one hand, sing out his Celtic war cry as eagerly as a young man. And, like all the Celts I've ever known, he could still go uphill on foot or run a mile if he had to.

That night, he was sitting in this ancient hall, before a fire, sweet-scented of fruit wood, and as he talked, he bit into an apple with his strong white teeth. Or rather Dafydd talked, he listened, and I wondered how it was that suddenly words seemed to recede, then grow large, as if words could have shape and form. Much of what was said at that time escaped me; but as Prince Owain paid me little attention at first, I think no one noticed my distress as my fever ebbed and flowed. Owain greeted Dafydd with open arms, clasping him twice to his breast in Celtic style, in that strange offhand fashion I had come to accept as theirs. I noticed now, beneath his tunic, he wore a band of gold, or tore, around his neck, as our warriors of long ago used to wear, as I remember my brother, Talisin, had when he went to war. But when Owain heard my name, his old hooded eyes flicked in my direction; he nodded his large head with his shock of long hair, finished his apple with a decisive bite, threw the core into the flames.

'I knew your father,' he said. His voice had a gritty sound, but he spoke more distinctly than his men, as if he were used to strangers and matched his speech with their understanding. 'We often rode to hunt together, he and I. But before that we were enemies, rivals too who would have killed each other if we could. Yet when you fight a man like Falk you come to know his ways, he becomes your second self; his victories, defeats, are yours. He swore to me, as revenge once, that he would take that which we prized most. I thought he meant land or cattle or gold, the things I cared for in those days. It was your mother he stole from us.'

He paused then, sat looking in the fire, seeing his past and theirs. 'She was like you, lady, in looks,' he said after a while, 'and of all women, I cherished her. Yes, you are very like, and although I have not heard you speak, no doubt you have her voice; they say she sang like a lark, sweet and high.'

'No, I fear not,' I said regretfully, my words too sounding far off, oblique.

He raised his eyebrows, bushy white they were against his brown skin, twisted a gold bracelet about his arm, too courteous to contradict.

'Well, sharp or sweet,' he said, 'no matter if you brought us good news today.'

'What news?' I had to force myself to ask.

'Why,' he said, 'where Henry will cross the river, where and when—a foolish move. The waters run fast this month, a season for high tides, and the estuary will back up and flood. To cross at all, he must go upstream to the nearest ford, where the river goes through a narrow gorge. Henry is young and reckless,' he went on, 'to think we'd let him cross unopposed. By Saint David, our patron saint, we'll make him rue the day he threatened us.'

From the blocks of sound that his words made, I gradually began to pick out sense. 'He means no harm, a peace treaty is all he asks,' I tried to reply.

They started to laugh, the other lords in the room, Dafydd, Prince Owain. 'Peace or war,' the prince gasped, wheezing for breath, 'Henry is caught if he crosses at Basingwerk. And you, my lady, daughter of Efa of the Celts, you have done us a service greater than you know, to put our enemy within our grasp.' Then, at last, his words became real.

'I do no such service,' I tried to cry, tried to deny. But Dafydd tightened his grip upon my arm, hustled me away. 'They'll not attack the king as he crosses,' I cried, my voice now far away and faint, as if I spoke through a gag, as if I spoke through echoes a tunnel makes, 'they'll not ambush him.'

'They must,' Dafydd explained. 'Against such an army we have no chance but to attack first. Thanks to you, we have that chance.'

There was no way it could be unsaid. Owain still kept his place beside the fire, had laughed himself into a fit of coughing; but when it was done, he summoned each noble to his side and told each quickly what was his plan. One by one, they put down whatever they had been busy with, some with drinking, they left the cup of mead half-full, some with mending a sword or leather strap, work normally done by Norman squires, that too they left against their seats; quietly, without a word, they drifted off. In a moment or two the room was empty, and I heard feet stamping along the outside colonade; I heard a stack of shields clatter apart; I heard a clash of steel as men tested sword blades. There was a flurry of birdcalls, that high note I had been hearing all day long. Then silence, and in that silence came the realization of what I had done.

'Dafydd.' In my distress, I took him by his jerkin front and shook it, 'tell him that I am mistaken; I do not know . . .’

He loosened my fingers, gently enough, 'The order is given, Lady Ann. He would not go back on it if he could. Besides, it is common knowledge what Henry plans. We all know he comes to war with us. War has been brewing these twenty years. Your father's death put an end to peace.'

'Henry may not bring war,' I still tried to argue. 'There are those who will counsel against it; there are those who will not follow him.'

'Perhaps.' He sounded dubious. He rubbed his hand across his face in the gesture I had seen Raoul make. 'Since it is our only hope, we shall act on your advice. If proved wrong,' he paused, 'we go to our deaths in any event.'

'And if proved right,' I cried, 'Lord Raoul will die by Henry's side.'

He looked at me, pity contending with surprise. 'Then are you too caught in a trap, Lady Ann,' he said after a while, 'but it cannot be stopped.'

On whose side will you fight?
I had asked Raoul that question; better, I think, that he had asked me. For that is how I betrayed him and his king.

Well, that is how the Welsh moved to prepare the ambush for Henry at Basingwerk, and that is how I destroyed all I held most dear for my Celtic kin. Bitter are the days I have lived to regret it.
You shall do us a service. 
Now was that prophecy come true, and like all the others, two-edged. Owain's men left before the day was an hour old, slipping away in the dark, mounted on their swift border horses, whose hooves had already been muffled with straw. Owain's bodyguard, his family retinue, more than a hundred strong, with Dafydd among them, they went the fastest way north. The rest, on foot for the main part, walked or ran down the long road we had come up, carrying their spears and heavy Welsh bows. Since boyhood are they trained to run like that; and within an hour or so of my meeting with their prince, there was little sign of them, only stray wisps of straw, a broken strap, their gear they had left at their place, a young boy or two, the camp guards. And their womenfolk—I had not even realized that the women were there. They may have been waiting outside the camp for the men to leave, for they had not shown themselves to bid them good-bye or wish them Godspeed. First one of them, then another, came out from wherever they had kept themselves, and with the help of the boys, brought up saddlehorses for them to ride. Some began to gather up the pieces strewn about Prince Owain's hall; neatly and quickly they piled them as if they must be accounted for. And when they were ready too, to leave, one of them came up to me where I sat and bid me follow her.

Where else, I thought, shall I go? And so I did. I mounted as they ordered it, riding astride, no hardship for me although I think they feared it, a heavy shawl of undyed wool, closely woven against the damp, wrapped round my head. I thought it was too late for warmth; I thought I should never know warmth again; ice cold I was, and where my heart, my memories, all that I loved should have been, nothing but ice. And so we also rode away.

We rode deeper into those northern mountains that Geoffrey of Sedgemont had longed to see. (And, it seemed, already word had come to Owain's camp of that attack, although no word yet in Henry's. Many men dead, they claimed, Sir Geoffrey dead, Geoffrey Plantagenet escaped, but so had I already known that news; it too was dead to me.) It was hard riding in the dark with only a few torches to light the road, yet after many hours of zigzagging through small, wooded ravines and under tumbled rocks, we came to Prince Owain's dwelling place. It was not a castle in the Norman style, although he owned those, but an old-style fortress, hemmed round with deep ditches and earth ramparts, topped by a wooden palisade with iron-studded gates. A battering ram or a Norman siege machine would have made short work of those ditches and walls, but how to get Norman army there; we had ridden along trails so narrow, so twisted, our ponies scarce could inch along, and the last climb had been almost perpendicular from a valley floor into the clouds. A Norman horse would have been too large to pass, would have slid off in the precipice. I said little, thought little, remember little of that ride. What was there worth remembering? It all had been told, long, long ago.

And the ladies of Owain's family, realizing there was no harm in me, and sensing, in a way no man would, the sickness, the darkness and the despair, they left me alone, although from time to time, when I swayed in the saddle, I suppose like to fall off, as in truth I thought I might, they sent someone to ride beside me to catch me if need be. Most of the time they chatted among themselves, a hardy breed these royal ladies, wife, daughters and daughters-in-law, some of them red-haired, some gold-red like Dafydd, some dark, all of them vivacious, although in public they seldom spoke but that may have been the nature of Prince Owain's household. I do not swear its truth for all Celtic courts. The Lady of Gwynedd was a regal dame—old, too—yet like other women of her race, her black hair showed no sign of age, and her dark eyes were battle fierce. She it was who noticed when I shook with chills and ordered one of the younger boys, pages I suppose, to ride beside me, had one of her daughters bring a blanket to put over my shoulders. This was the youngest daughter, perhaps two years younger than I, red-cheeked, dark-haired, dark-eyed, one of the dark Celts, and she loved to laugh and talk, as by and by, I soon found out. For, although I could not or did not reply, she still chatted on, sometimes about simple homely things such as young maids like to discuss, but more often about her father and her brothers, all warlike men, and her sisters, aunts, the women of Owain's house, warlike all. And when we passed a certain place, she told how it reminded her of the story of a lady of great fame and bravery who had herself led out her men, in her husband's absence, against the Norman Lord of Kidwelly, far in the south. Alas for my boast to Lord Raoul, this lady and her sons were defeated; she was beheaded, her sons made prisoners; yet the site of the battle is still named after her, Maes Gwenllian. But I had not thought, when I hurled that boast, I should be the cause of a Norman defeat.

'And so am I named after her, called Gwenllian in her honor,' the girl chattered on, 'but my friends call me Lilian for short. As may you.' And so she spoke, not disheartened by the lack of response on my part. And when, after many weary hours, we came to the gates of Owain Gwynedd's fort, she helped me inside, found me a place to lie down, tended me. But never once, not then or ever after, did she, her mother, or any of those women of Prince Owain's house, say anything of where their men had gone, how or why. And that silence was for courtesy.

For almost a week we waited, at least I think it was a week, time seemed to spin away, sometimes day, sometimes night, in no real order, indiscriminate. And on the last day, the seventh since our coming here or so it must have been, I rose from my bed. I could scarcely stand, yet I cannot explain otherwise, except some thought made me seek the open air; some awareness, some sense of things being done, of happenings, beyond our knowledge yet happening. There was a kind of watchtower, I suppose it would have been called in a Norman castle, and from its battlements there was a view over the mountainside. There I crept and there I stayed. The sky was clear, which it seldom is in these parts, a land of mist and rain, and below us, sliced between the forest, green and secret valleys stretched toward the northern coast. Lilian had claimed more than once that this was the richest part of all of Wales, supplier of grain and food, having the best cattle grazing and best land for sheep. And it is true it had a graceful aspect that bespoke peace and harmony. But it was not harmony or peace I looked for that day.

Come the evening, for in these mountain regions the sun sank behind the peaks and brought twilight early, toward then the late of day, a cloud of black birds wheeling far below attracted me, and having watched them for a long while, I questioned a passing guard what they were. He answered in his Celtic way, not directly, but roundabout, first having looked at me carefully to know who I was and if what he said would offend. 'There be two kinds of birds,' he said, 'those who know the place and those who know the hour. These be ravens; see how they swoop and cry. They tell the time. Keep watch yourself; if eagles join them, they will point the way, for eagles know the place but not the hour.'

He continued on his march about the tower walk, but when he passed me again, he pointed with his spear. 'Look,' he said. Two birds of greater size came flying toward us from the south. They passed beneath the castle walls, their wingspan measured by the shadows they cast upon the trees, circled once or twice, then dipped into the valley, following the ravens north. I had never seen an eagle before and certainly not ravens flying in black clouds, and I stood and watched them for a long while until they disappeared into the shadow's line. Nor did I need to ask, nor did he tell, time and place for what—that I too had already known as did all men there.