Here Be Dragons - 1 (62 page)

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"Joanna ... do you want me to talk to Gwladys?"
Joanna gave Catherine a grateful look. She'd been badly shaken by her stepdaughter's hostility; that it was understandable did not make it less hurtful. "Thank you, Catherine, no. She is still too distraught. I can only wait till we get word from Nottingham, till it is proven that Gruffydd and the other hostages are safe and well. But Catherine, if it is not soon . . . Jesus wept, the suffering this evil rumor has caused!"
She rose, moved restlessly to the window. "Gwladys is not the only one blaming me, Catherine. I see it on other faces, too."
"I know," Catherine conceded. "But not all do feel that way Joanna. Llewelyn's people know that John would never have agreed to a truce if not for your intercession. And what you did that day at Aberconwy, defying your father on
Llewelyn's behalf, that won you more favor than you realize. There are many who do not blame you, Joanna, who are sorry for your pain."
"But I do not want that, either. I do not want them pitying me because they think my father is the . . . the Antichrist!"
Catherine did not know what to say to that. She watched in silent sympathy as
Joanna turned from the window, began to pace.
"I find myself haunted by what Llewelyn said. I know it is not true, but I
cannot stop thinking of it. It is such a vile accusation, Catherine; how can
Llewelyn believe it? We are alone, and I can speak the truth with you. I think it very likely that my father did have Arthur put to death, as his enemies charge. Men do things in anger, give commands they might later regret. I think it happened that way with Arthur."
She stopped before Catherine. "But it would take hours to drag thirty hostages to the gallows, Catherine. There'd be time to relent. Even if my father had given such a command in a moment of rage, he'd not have carried it out. As for the other, what Llewelyn said about Maude de Braose, that could never be. Such a dreadful death as that would take days, even weeks ..." She shuddered, for she had the imagination to envision the full horrors of a death by starvation, Maude's slow realization that food would never be forthcoming, that none would heed her screams, that her dungeon was to be her tomb.
A silence fell. Joanna moved back to the window. Almost at once she tensed.
"Llewelyn," she breathed, and suddenly she was very frightened.
Llewelyn had dismounted by the time Joanna reached the bottoin of the keep stairs. She started toward him, then stopped at sight o Cristyn. Cristyn had ridden in that afternoon with Tegwared and An ghared, her seven-year-old twins, and her presence was just one rno goad to Joanna's unraveling nerves.
Even though she believed LlgW
lyn's physical intimacy with Cristyn was over, their continuing friend-

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ujp occasionally gave her some uneasy moments; she would always be alous of
Cristyn, if only because the other woman had the power to make her remember what it was like to be fifteen, awkward and innocent and so desperate to please.
Cristyn was looking up intently into Llewelyn's face, her hand on his arm.
Saying all the things I cannot, Joanna thought. Llewelyn put his arrn around
Cristyn; they stood for a moment in a quiet embrace. It was, Joanna knew, just what it looked to be, but she felt a pang nonetheless, found herself resenting
Cristyn for being able to offer the comfort she could not.
Llewelyn had begun walking toward the great hall. He stopped when Joanna said his name, waited for her to reach him. She started to speak, but her words caught in her throat. His eyes were hollowed, his skin grey with fatigue;
there was a bleak, bitter desolation in his face that went beyond grieving, that Joanna could not bear to look upon.
For a long moment, Llewelyn studied her face, searching for something he could not find. "You still do not believe me, do you?"
"Llewelyn, I... I cannot!"
"No," he said slowly, "I do not suppose you can. But to tell you the truth, Joanna, I do not know where that leaves us."
"Do not say that," she whispered. "You cannot mean that. Jesii, Llewelyn, we have to talk!"
"What would we say? I've just come from telling a man and his wife that their eleven-year-old son has been hanged, the son I took from them as a hostage. Do you truly think this is the time to defend John to me?"
"I'm not defending him, I'm not!" But he was no longer listening; he'd turned away.
Joanna stood as if rooted. She could feel eyes upon her, curious, gloating, pitying; they no longer mattered. At last she followed Llewelyn into the great hall, not knowing what else to do.
She paused uncertainly in the doorway. And then she saw the selfappointed courier, the Shrewsbury blacksmith.
"Why are you still here?"
He was flustered by her tone, and stammered, "The priest ... he said your lord husband might have additional questions for me, said I should wait for him
'Wait for payment, you mean, wait for your blood money! Tell me, °w much do you think my husband should give you? You've seen the §n« you've brought upon us; what price do you put upon it?"
Joanna heard her voice rising, shrill, accusatory. Llewelyn was sudnly at her side, saying, "Joanna, that is enough."
No, it is not! This man goes into a tavern, hears a drunken stranger

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babbling in his cups, and suddenly he becomes a man with a mission, suddenly he cannot rest until he's made sure that we've heard the latest alehouse gossip. Well, you've delivered your poisonous offering, you've had your moment of acclaim. But look around you and then tell me if it was worth it!"
"You're not being fair! It was more than gossip. I know the man spoke the truth."
"How could you possibly know that?" Joanna said, so scathingly that the man's face flushed a resentful shade of red.
He raised his chin, said defiantly, "The day the courier reached Shrewsbury, Robert de Vieuxpont hanged Prince Maelgwn's younger son. He was just a lad, not yet seven, and he died at the King's cornmand. Why would I doubt, then, that the other hostages, too, were dead?"
The emotional upheavals of the past two days had left Llewelyn without the capacity to feel shock, outrage, to feel anything at all... or so he'd believed. "Are you saying John had a seven-year-old boy hanged?" he demanded incredulously, and the blacksmith nodded.
"I saw the boy's body with my own eyes, my lord."
Their voices were echoing strangely in Joanna's ears, growing faint and indistinct. The people, too, seemed to be receding, faces blurring, slightly out of focus. The scene before her had lost reality; she was in it but somehow no longer part of it. She turned, without haste, began to walk toward the door.
"Joanna!" Llewelyn caught up with her in two strides, but she did not stop until he put his hand on her arm. She looked up at him, her face so still and remote that he felt an inexplicable throb of fear. "Are you all right?" he said, very low.
"Yes." He'd shifted his hands to her shoulders; she had to resist the urge to pull away, not wanting to be held, to be touched. "I want to be by myself, Llewelyn. I just want to be alone for a while."
He hesitated, and then stepped back. "We'll talk later."
"Yes," Joanna agreed politely. "Later."
JOANNA slid the bolt into place. Only then, with the world shut out, di she begin to tremble. Moving to the bed, hers and Llewelyn's, she wj back against the pillows. It came upon her without warning. Sudden*, sweat broke out on her forehead, her face began to burn, and she w overcome by nausea. When it did not abate, she stumbled into the p11 "

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chamber. After some wretched moments, she vomited weakly into the privy hole.
She heard knocking on the door; Catherine called her name. Then it grew quiet again. After a time she was able to return to the bedchamber, vvhere she washed her face, rinsed her mouth out with wine. But the [iiore she tried to make sense of what she'd been told, the more agitated she became. Her thoughts took flight, too swiftly for coherence, ricocheting wildly off the outer parameters of belief. She sought desperately to seize upon fragments of fact, to patch them into an intelligible pattern, one that would enable her to understand. But the raw, graphic horror of the images filling her brain blotted out all else. A bewildered child being led up onto a gallows. A woman screaming alone in the dark.
A kaleidoscope of faces seemed to spin before her eyes. The florid, heavy face of the Shrewsbury blacksmith. Llewelyn's, lean and dark and terrifyingly aloof. John's, mouth quirking as if at some secret and very private joke. When she was little, their eyes would meet across a chamber, he'd wink, and she'd be flooded with happiness, reveling in the reassuring intimacy of their shared smiles. Had he smiled, too, as he gave the command to hang Maelgwn's son? He was just a lad, not yet seven. John had Maude de Braose and her son cast into a dungeon at Windsor Castle, and then he starved them to death. He hanged the hostages; they're dead . . . dead. She sank to her knees by the bed, but the voices would not stop. When she could endure them no longer, she fled the chamber.
Catherine was waiting out on the porch. "Ah, Joanna, I'm so sorry ..."
"I want Llewelyn. Please, Catherine, bring him to me."
"I will, dearest," Catherine said swiftly, soothingly. "I will. But a man has just ridden in, and he ... he was there, Joanna, at Nottingham the day the hostages were hanged. Llewelyn is with him now. I know he'll come to you as soon as he can."
"No!" Joanna shook her head vehemently. "No, I cannot wait!" She could hear her voice rising again, as it had in the hall. Her need for Uewelyn was an instinctive, blind groping toward the light, toward the °nly haven left to her, and she repeated, with the stubbornness born of shock, "I cannot wait. I
must see him now."
Her eyes were clouded over, unfocused; they held a look Catherine ad seen before, the dazed, defenseless look of a child half-awakening
, °m a nightmare. Catherine had always been able to dispel childhood
°rrors with hugs and lit candles, but she had no comfort to offer Jo-
^ na< for her fears were not fantasy. She knew that Llewelyn would
Ve no comfort, either.

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LLEWELYN was standing by the dais; men had clustered around him intent eavesdroppers upon this eyewitness account of the August u hangings. Joanna did not yet know what she would say to him. In truth she did not want to talk at all, for there was nothing he could say tn change what wasthat the whole fabric of her life had been founded upon lies. She asked no more now than to be held, asked no more than the reassurance of physical closeness, the familiar feel of his embrace.
She had almost reached Llewelyn when her gaze fell upon the man kneeling before him. Marc, the most trusted member of her household Marc, whom she'd sent to Nottingham with a warning for John.
"Morgan . . ." Llewelyn's voice was husky, almost inaudible; he sounded stunned. "Tell my daughters." And then he was moving away from the dais, moving swiftly toward the door. He passed within several feet of Joanna, but seemed as oblivious of her as he was of the others in the hall. She stood in stricken silence as the distance between them widened; she'd begun to tremble again.
"Madame!"
Marc had risen to his feet, was hastening toward her. He started to speak, but she did not give him the chance. "You told him. You told him about my letter."
He nodded. "Madame, I had to tell him. We're at war with John. Why would I be in England . . ."
Joanna was no longer listening. For a moment she closed her eyes. How could she face him? He might have understood yesterday, but now . . . Lady Mary, what was she to do?
"Madame . . . did you not hear what I said about your stepson? He is not dead, Madame. He is not dead."
LLEWELYN was standing by the window. He heard the door open behind him, but he did not turn, not until Joanna said his name.
"Marc told me," she said softly, "that Gruffydd is safe."
"Safe? Safe ... oh, Christ!"
Joanna had never heard so much raw emotion in his voice, so much fear. Tears began to burn her eyes.
"Why did John spare him? Why?"
"I... I do not know, Llewelyn."
"Hanging is not an easy death. But there are worse ways to die/ much worse."
They looked at each other, and the same thought was in both the1 minds:
Windsor Castle and the agony of Maude de Braose's last days-
"I have no way of knowing if Gruffydd is even still alive. John co have had him put to death yesterday ... or tomorrow. Gruffyd"

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ver know which sunset might be his last And I can do nothing for him, nothing
"
"Beloved " But the right words eluded her He'd spoken only . truth, how was she to dispute it7 The silence was fraught with tenon with all that still lay unsaid between them Moving to the table, she oured out a cupful of mead, all she could think to do for him
He took it from her, drank slowly, keeping his eyes upon her all the while/
and then he said, "Do you want to tell me now what was in the letter you sent to John, the urgent letter that was for his eyes alone7"
Her voice was little more than a whisper "I I warned him that he faced betrayal by his own men if he led an army into Wales "
She might have been a stranger of a sudden, a haggard, frightened woman looking up at him with eyes full of entreaty "I trusted you," he said "I've never trusted a woman as I trusted you "
"It was all I could think to do, Llewelyn If my father feared treachery, there was a chance he'd not come into Wales, that he'd abandon the invasion I did it for you Beloved, I swear it1"
"Was this the first time7 Or have you been keeping him informed all along7
Have I been underestimating your talents7 Loving wife, ardent bedmateand
John's spy7"
"No, Llewelyn, no'" Her voice broke and she began to weep
He watched, saying nothing He'd taken the mead on an empty stomach, and it was beginning to have an effect, so, too, was the lack of sleep, the guilt, the grieving His anger ebbed away, leaving only exhaustion in its wake
Joanna's denial rang true, but it mattered little Nothing mattered now but
Gruffydd and what he faced at John's hands
"Llewelyn, I would have told you, in truth I would I meant to "
"I do not want to talk about it Not tonight "
"But you do not understand, you've not let me explain"
"Joanna, not now1"
THE world had become a bewildering place to Davydd His brother was dead But then he was not His sisters had been weeping continually
01 tnree days now, his mother had been sleeping with Elen and him in he nursery His father seemed no happier after learning that Gruffydd as alive, while his mother wept quietly m the night, and near dawn b e d awakened them all with her screams Davydd did not understand Sitting on the edge of his bed, he watched as his mother and Aunt t n folded his clothes into an open coffer He was anxious, wanting "lake sure they packed his favorite toys, his wooden horse and his ^Ppmgtop ^