Rhuddlan (56 page)

She stood at the window and shivered. Judging
from the light, it was midday but she was still tired. She seemed
to spend most of her time sleeping lately; to do anything else
merely caused exhaustion. She stared onto the empty ward and
couldn’t remember how long she’d been standing there or what she’d
been watching…vaguely, she heard the click of someone’s tongue, a
flurry of footsteps and then a robe fell down around her shoulders,
but it was a cold and heavy robe and gave her no comfort. Sleep was
her only comfort and she started to move towards her bed.

A great shout caught her attention and she
turned back to the window. There was activity near the gate;
pandemonium, she thought. Longsword had left a guard behind and it
appeared that all the soldiers comprising it were rushing full
force to the main entrance, climbing up onto the walls or into the
tower. Teleri stood on her toes and squinted her eyes until she
saw, in the near distance, tens of horsemen thundering in the
direction of Rhuddlan.

Welshmen. Warriors, by their roars.

She knew immediately what had happened. It
was a trick. There was no attack on the abbey of St. Mary; the
attack was to be on Rhuddlan.

Her heart beat furiously. Her tiredness
evaporated. Down below, Longsword’s men were struggling to close
the gate before the Welsh arrived. There was only a handful of
defenders but Teleri knew from her husband’s ceaseless bragging
that only a handful was necessary to successfully defend his
well-stocked fortress from a larger opposing force.

She caught her breath. “Hurry…” she urged in
a whisper.

But the gate was closed and barred and when
in the next moment several Welshmen finally reached it, a barrage
of arrows flew down to greet them, although the steep angle ensured
that none of the missles hit anyone.

One of the Normans was shouting, “Wait until
they pull back! Wait until they pull back!” and Teleri recognized
Ralph de Vire waving his arm at the others.

She couldn’t see the Welsh at the gate but
their more numerous companions had halted just out of arrow range.
Some had dismounted and were huddled together. She wondered which
one was Rhirid ap Maelgwn but although she had always envisioned
him as taller than any other man and twice as broad, there wasn’t
any one person who didn’t look like the others and the distance
made it impossible to see individual features.

The air was filled with a silence as one side
waited and the other conferred which seemed almost absurd after the
tumult of only a moment before. Teleri felt frustrated; why hadn’t
Rhirid rushed more quickly? Why had his men shouted and hooted,
alerting the Normans to their presence? Would they turn around and
leave if they failed to draw the Normans out of the fortress?

A streak of light tearing through the blue
sky caught her eye. Suddenly the noise resumed. So many men were
yelling at once that it was impossible for her to understand their
words. She looked beyond the wall to the Welsh and saw that some of
them had ridden forward. She squinted hard because it appeared that
they were on fire. And then she saw them raise their bows to the
sky and let fly a dozen flaming arrows in the direction of the
fortress before pulling their horses’ heads around and retreating
out of the range of retaliation.

Teleri watched this scene repeat itself
several times before slipping from the window. A thought had just
occurred to her: if Rhirid was determined to burn down Rhuddlan,
then she had better be prepared to escape, in which case she needed
to be dressed. She clapped her hands together and ordered her women
to bring her clothes. No, no; she changed her mind; she wanted
water, soap and a drying cloth first; there wasn’t time to have it
heated, she just wanted a bowl—and, she added sharply, one of these
lazy women ought to be brushing out her hair while she waited.

Suddenly there was more activity in Teleri’s
chamber than outside where de Vire had put servants to good use
extinguishing flames while he and his men attempted to prevent the
Welsh from getting close enough to shoot off their flaming arrows
to harmful effect. Her hair had been brushed and braided, her face
washed and her women were just about to remove her shift when the
door to the outer chamber slammed backwards and a very large man
with long, black mustaches materialized on the threshold.

Teleri stared at the intruder in amazement.
Her mouth dropped open. Her women, bent double and holding the hem
of her shift, froze. The shouting outside was the only sound in the
room. “What do you want?” she asked the stranger in a steady
voice.

The man rudely looked her up and down,
smiling slowly, and belatedly, she realized she was practically
naked. She reached over to her bed, snatched up her discarded robe
and held it in front of her body. “What do you want?” she repeated
angrily.

“Not that, mistress! I’m a married man!” he
protested, grinning. “Do I have the honor of making the
acquaintance of Teleri, Prince Dafydd’s beautiful niece?” When she
didn’t answer, he glanced unfavorably at the trio of stout old
women surrounding her and flashed his teeth again. “Apparently so.
Well, mistress, I’m sorry, but I’ve come to take you away. We
haven’t much time; it would be best if you came with a minimum of
fuss, although I have no problem with flipping you over my
shoulder—”

“Aren’t you the same man who rode in here not
long ago and told Lord William that the abbey of St. Mary was being
attacked by Rhirid ap Maelgwn?” she interrupted, frowning at
him.

“Not a suspicious mind among them,” he said
cheerfully. “And I’d always heard the Normans were an untrusting
lot.”

Teleri sucked in her breath.
“Are
you
Rhirid?”

The man hooted. “No, no! But I’m his man. My
name is Dylan ab Owain. Now, if you please, we must hurry.”

It was on the tip of her tongue to ask why
Rhirid wanted her. But she decided she didn’t want to know the
answer. It was enough she could reassure herself that she hadn’t
become worthless after all.

“I’ll come,” she said, feeling a thrill of
excitement she hadn’t felt in a long time. “But I need to dress
first. I can’t meet Rhirid ap Maelgwn like this.”

Before he could protest, she slammed the door
to the inner chamber against him. He stared dumbly at it. He hadn’t
planned on any delay; Rhirid’s instructions had been explicit,
particularly the part about not wasting time.

He started pacing the perimeter of the
antechamber and for want of a better occupation, counted his number
of circuits. He grew anxious when he arrived at double digits and
was nearly shaking with panic ten circuits later. How long did it
take to throw on a gown? Suddenly he stopped in his tracks. What if
there were another door in the bedchamber, one which led out of the
keep?

But just as he reached for the door, it swung
open and Teleri emerged, dressed in her sky blue gown, the one she
had put on in anticipation of Rhirid’s arrival for the peace
negotiations two months earlier. The long hem trailed behind her.
Her hair was now loose and covered with a sheer veil in blue and
gold, there was a pair of soft leather slippers on her feet and she
had rings on every finger. Draped across the arm of one of the
servants following her was a light, fur-trimmed cloak.

For a moment Dylan just stared. Teleri looked
utterly beautiful, especially to a man who had been away from home
for a long time. She realized the affect she was having on him and
smiled modestly but lifted her chin a little higher. Dylan’s mouth
opened and then clamped shut quickly as if he’d thought twice about
what he’d been about to say. Instead he looked away and cleared his
throat. “We must hurry,” was all he said.

They left the keep the same way Dylan had
entered it: through the ground level entrance across from the
kitchens. They were out of the sight of the Norman guard although
they could hear quite clearly the sounds of the assault on the
walls. He kept his hand secure around her wrist and urged her along
with whispers and tugs while her women fell further and further
behind. They ended up behind the stables and before the postern
gate. Dylan turned to grin at her.

“Not even one man here!” he said.

“Well, it’s barred,” she answered, breathing
heavily from the unfamiliar exertion. “No one can get in.”

“But I’m already in! What’s to prevent me now
opening this gate to a dozen more of Rhirid’s men?”

“Is that what’s planned?” Teleri asked
excitedly. “Rhirid is going to take Rhuddlan?”

The big man laughed. “No, mistress; only
you.”

“But why not? The timing couldn’t be more
perfect!”

“I don’t think King Henry would approve, nor
your uncle.” He lifted the bar which kept the gate locked and
tossed it to one side. He gestured to her. “Come. If everything’s
gone right, there ought to be a few horses on the other side and
we’ll be away.”

Teleri looked back. “Wait a moment; my women
are almost here.”

“There isn’t time, mistress. We can’t take
them along, anyway.”

“But my cloak—”

“Rhirid will give you an even finer cloak!
Come!” And before she could protest further, he swung back the gate
and hustled her through it to the waiting horses.

Rhirid watched another wave of his warriors
thunder as close to the fortress as they dared before loosing a
slew of flaming arrows into the air. He was growing impatient; he
was running out of arrows and the Norman defenders had nearly
killed two of his men with well-aimed missiles of their own. Dylan
should have returned by now. He swore under his breath and hoped no
ill had befallen the man; not only would he hate to lose his most
valuable warrior but it would mean he’d squandered a perfectly good
opportunity to sack the abbey of St. Mary and draw the Normans out
from behind those insurmountable walls in favor of a plan which had
failed.

At last there were hoofbeats to his right.
The young man he’d put as lookout rode up to him. “Lord, they’re
coming!” he called.

Rhirid shielded the sun from his eyes with a
hand and peered towards the west. Dylan wasn’t hard to identify and
there was a figure sitting behind him on his horse. He dropped his
hand. “Good. Guri,” he said to his cousin, “give us some time to
slip away and then make a slow retreat. I don’t know how long it
will take them to realize what’s happened but stall as much as you
can.” He clicked his tongue and urged his mount into a trot. He and
the remainder of his guard headed in the direction of the river,
away from the view of the men on the walls.

Dylan and his escort had already reached the
bank by the time Rhirid arrived and he gave his chief a hearty
greeting. “It went perfectly, Rhirid!” he said in a booming voice.
“There was never a question that we might be tricking them!”

“Yes, we watched them leave,” the other man
replied. “It was a good job.” He switched his attention to Dylan’s
companion, whose slight figure in such close proximity to the
Welshman’s large bulk made her look like a child, and inclined his
head. “It’s my honor to meet you, Lady Teleri. I apologize for our
crude methods and I hope you weren’t very much inconvenienced.”

“Not at all, Lord Rhirid. I’m happy to meet
you at last.”

Her voice was calm, which pleased him.
Chester had stressed how unhappy the woman was in her marriage but
Rhirid had always suspected that most women complained about their
husbands merely as a topic of conversation. And he’d assumed that
because Teleri was Prince Dafydd’s niece, she was a
Norman-lover.

Perhaps not. She was attractive, he noted.
Chester had left out that part, of course. She rode astride,
holding onto Dylan’s belt, and the skirt of her dress was hiked up
to her knees, exposing shapely legs…and feet encased in useless
gear. Rhirid brought himself abruptly back into reality. Riding
around with unbound hair was pure folly and the pretty gown she was
wearing was surely going to be ruined by the end of their journey.
He darted a quick glance at Dylan, who understood exactly what he
was thinking and who shrugged and raised his eyes upwards.

“We have a small journey before us, Lady
Teleri,” Rhirid said brusquely. “We’ll try to keep it as
comfortable as possible for you.” He took up the slack in his reins
and started to move off.

“Lord Rhirid!” she called and he felt his
lips tighten because her tone was commanding. He turned back. “Why
don’t you take this opportunity to burn Rhuddlan to the
ground?”

“We haven’t time,” he said.

“It wouldn’t take long,” she insisted. “The
postern’s open and unguarded. There are only a dozen or so soldiers
left on the walls. You can be in and out in no time!”

“It isn’t as easy as that, Lady Teleri. A
fortress that size would take some doing and we’ve been told that
this son of the king can move very fast. We want to be safely away
by the time Lord William realizes the hoax we’ve played on
him.”

“But—”

But Rhirid had already kicked his horse into
action and wasn’t listening any longer.

Chapter 36

May, 1177

near Llanlleyn, Gwynedd

Almost immediately, Teleri had second
thoughts.

The journey to Rhirid’s summer pastures, a
seemingly neverending loop to the west and then south and then east
of Rhuddlan—all to avoid running into her husband—was torturous in
its duration. It was the longest time she’d ever been on horseback.
Her seat and legs were sore from the constant bouncing and her arms
ached from clinging to the waist of the man who sat before her. She
rode with Dylan ab Owain, who bragged to the others that he’d been
the one to convince her to come away with them. Rhirid laughed and
said he hoped Dylan would tell William fitz Henry the same when the
Norman came for revenge. All the men within hearing laughed
heartily. Teleri was irritated. She didn’t appreciate being
discussed as if she weren’t sitting right there among them and,
besides, hadn’t she played a part in the deception perpetrated on
Longsword?