Time and Chance (72 page)

Cristyn had never been popular with her husband’s people, for her position was by its very nature an ambiguous one. She was scorned by some as a concubine who’d usurped the place of Owain’s lawful wife, and to these judgmental souls, she had not been redeemed by her subsequent marriage. To others, she was seen as guileful and sly, willing to do whatever was necessary to disinherit Hywel and ensure that her sons would succeed Owain as rulers of Gwynedd. But the animosity of Thomas Becket had done what she herself could not, transforming her into a more sympathetic figure to many of the Welsh.

Once the meal was done, the trestle tables were cleared away and the entertainment began. Owain’s
pencerdd
came forward as the hall quieted. Poets were accorded great respect in Wales and he had an attentive, enthusiastic audience for his songs, the first celebrating the glory of God and the second a paean in praise of his lord. After his performance, it was the turn of Owain’s
bardd teulu,
the chief minstrel of the court, and as the sky darkened over the Menai Straits, the prince’s palace at Aber resounded with music and mirth.

Servers were circulating throughout the hall with mead and wine, and Hywel’s foster brother Peryf amused Hywel and Ranulf by appropriating a large flagon for himself. “You need not fear,” he assured them, “for I might be persuaded to share.”

“Assuming there is so much as a drop left,” Hywel scoffed. “I’ve seen you in action, Peryf, remember?”

They had withdrawn to a window seat alcove. Seeing that Rhiannon had concluded her conversation with Owain’s daughter Angharad, Ranulf hastened over to bring her into their charmed circle, where they had an unobstructed view of the dancing and the intermingling of the other guests. Once she was settled onto the cushioned seat and Hywel’s flirting had run its course, Ranulf asked the question that was foremost on his mind.

“Are you still planning a voyage to Ireland, Hywel?”

“Must you say it in the same tones you’d use to inquire after my trip to Purgatory? I know the Irish Sea is aboil at this time of year. But I have no choice, for there are matters about my lady mother’s estate that demand my presence. And now I will impress you and the lovely Lady Rhiannon with my abilities as a soothsayer, for I can predict your next question. The answer is yes. I mean to take your lad with me.”

Ranulf and Rhiannon had the same parental response, a discordant mixture of pride and concern. They were gratified that since joining Hywel’s household, their son was rising so fast in Hywel’s favor. Yet they worried about his making a winter journey to Ireland, although they would do their best not to embarrass Gilbert by giving voice to their qualms.

“Speaking of the devil,” Hywel said, and they saw that their firstborn was heading in their direction. Seeing Gilbert away from home and hearth, Ranulf invariably felt a prick of surprise that his son could be nineteen now, a man grown. Gilbert was smiling, but his parents knew him well enough to pick up on the subtle signs, indications of unease.

Once the pleasantries were over, Gilbert hesitated. “Has Lord Hywel told you that I will be accompanying him to Ireland?” Getting a confirmation, he paused again and then, as was his wont, plunged in headfirst. “There is something I need to tell you ere I go and I might not get another chance. I have decided to change my name. I’ve never felt comfortable with Gilbert, as you know. I am of an age now to choose a name more to my liking, a Welsh name. I wish to call myself Bleddyn.”

Ranulf felt as if he’d just taken a blow to the midsection. He stared at his son, stunned that Gilbert could offer such a mortal insult in this public setting. Did he truly think it was merely a matter of names? That Gilbert Fitz Ranulf could become Bleddyn ap Ranulf as easily as that? Gilbert was rejecting half of his heritage, the Norman blood running in his veins, and at that moment, it seemed to Ranulf that his son was rejecting him, too.

Before he could respond, he felt Rhiannon’s hand on his arm, gently but firmly pulling him back from the brink. He covered her hand with his own, giving it a grateful squeeze. “This is not the time,” he said, as evenly as he could manage. “I think it would be best if we continue this discussion later.”

His son agreed all too readily and made his escape within moments thereafter, leaving Ranulf, Rhiannon, Hywel, and Peryf behind in a cloud of dust. There was a long silence and then Ranulf slowly shook his head. “Whatever possessed him to raise this now?”

“Has it been that long since you were young?” Hywel gibed. “This was an ambush, man! Your lad picked his time and place with care. I’ll wager that you’ll need a pack of lymer hounds to track him down ere we sail for Ireland.” He laughed, but stopped when Ranulf did not. “There’s less to this than meets the eye, Ranulf. Take a moment and think it through. The name he chose . . . Bleddyn. You think he picked it at random?”

“Does it matter?”

“I think so. You told me once that yours is an old Norse name, dating back to when they invaded Normandy. ‘Shield of the wolf,’ right? Well, what does Bleddyn mean in Welsh? You ought to know, for you named one of your dyrehunds Blaidd!”

“Wolf,” Ranulf said softly. “Bleddyn means ‘young wolf,’ ” and Hywel gave him the indulgent smile of one tutoring a slow student. At that moment, Hywel saw that his father was beckoning to him from the dais, and after kissing Rhiannon with his usual flourish, he took his leave. It was soon clear that Owain had invited him to perform and the hall quieted in anticipation.

Hywel took a seat, accepted a harp. “I would sing,” he said, “of the battle of Tal Moelfre.”

Those words were enough to roll back time for Ranulf, and the torchlit hall gave way to a summer’s day in God’s Year 1157, to the tangled, dense greenwood of the Cennadlog Forest, riding with Harry into a Welsh ambush. While they were escaping by a hair’s-breadth, Hywel had been routing the English at Tal Moelfre on the isle of Môn, and he’d afterward composed a poem to commemorate the battle. Ranulf had heard it many times, and while he appreciated the imagery in such lines as “When ruby-red flame flared high as Heaven, home offered no refuge,” he’d teased Hywel unmercifully over the hyperbole of the boastful last verse, in which Hywel bragged of sinking “three hundred ships of the king’s own navy.” If Harry had ever had three hundred warships, he’d pointed out, all of Wales would be an English shire by now. Hywel’s response was always the same: a laugh, a shrug, and a claim that poets could not be held to the same exacting standards as mere mortals.

Others in the audience assumed with Ranulf that Hywel would be performing his own composition. There were murmurs of surprise, therefore, when he began, for the words were not his. The song was one of praise to Owain, but the poet was not present. Gwalchmai ap Meilyr had been Owain’s chief bard for many years. They’d had a falling out, though, and Gwalchmai was no longer in favor. So Hywel’s choice was a startling one, and Ranulf noticed how both Davydd and Rhodri pushed their way through to the dais, jockeying for position like eager spectators at a public hanging.

Hywel seemed oblivious to the tension in the hall. But then he happened to catch Ranulf’s eye and winked. Ranulf knew him as well as one man can ever know another and he knew then that Hywel had selected the disgraced Gwalchmai’s song to honor a fine poet. There was little that Hywel took truly seriously, but his love of poetry was the lodestar of his life, greater even than his love of women. Ranulf felt sure that Hywel had been motivated by mischief, too. He’d rarely been able to resist poking his stick into a hornet’s nest.

Hywel had a rich, mellow voice and he infused Gwalchmai’s words with a passion that was contagious. By the time he lauded Owain as “The Dragon of Môn,” his father’s stern mouth had relaxed into an amused, fond smile. No one watching could doubt the depths of Owain’s pride in his firstborn, and when Hywel was done, the hall erupted into applause.

Ranulf was laughing and cheering, too, when Peryf nudged him and hissed gleefully, “The she-wolf looks like to choke on her own bile!” And he turned in time to see Cristyn’s court mask slip, to see her handsome face harden into stone, dark eyes narrowed to slits of pure, primal rage as she gazed upon her husband’s best-loved son.

NORTH WALES had another week of dry weather, and then the rains returned. At night, the temperature dropped and a thin glaze of ice skimmed the surface of ponds. The last of the swallows disappeared and badgers dug winter dens and trees were silhouetted bare and sparse against the November sky.

The last Wednesday in November was wretched in all aspects. Rain poured down incessantly and a cold, piercing wind drove even the hardiest travelers from the roads. At Trefriw, none ventured outside willingly, and in the stables, cats played deadly feline games with shelter-seeking mice. Ranulf awoke with a dull headache and a disheartened realization that worse was to come: dwindling hours of daylight and smoky hearths and storms and meal after meal of salted herring and the daily deprivations of Advent and Lent and months to go before the reviving clemency of spring.

By midafternoon, the household was in turmoil, most of it due to the antics of Ranulf and Rhiannon’s six-year-old son. Morgan did not mean to wreak havoc, but he was bored and restless and trapped indoors, and the result was chaos. He spilled Ranulf ’s inkwell, snapped a string on Rhodri’s harp, lost a knife Rhodri was using to carve wooden spoons, took Rhiannon’s best boar-bristle brush to groom his father’s dyrehund, and knocked over a barrel of wood ash that the women intended using to make into soap. After this last mishap, Ranulf grabbed the boy and, snatching up their mantles, hustled him out into the rain.

“Better you should risk drowning out here, lad, than certain death inside,” he chided, and Morgan did his best to look as if he was being punished, although he had no objections whatsoever to getting wet and muddy. He was trying to coax Ranulf into wading across the bailey toward the dovecote when shouts erupted from the direction of the gatehouse.

To Morgan’s delight and Ranulf’s astonishment, a lone rider was being admitted. Swathed in a soaked mantle, plastered with mud, the man staggered as soon as he slid from the saddle, and Ranulf, remembering his manners, came forward hastily to bid this miserable traveler welcome.

“Good God, you’re half-frozen! Come inside and thaw out.”

Their guest did not argue, and as soon as a groom hurried out to take his horse, he stumbled after them toward the hall. Ranulf still did not recognize him, able to discern only that he was of middle height and stocky. He could hear the chattering of the man’s teeth, could see the reddened chilblains on his hands, and wondered what urgent mission had put him out onto the roads on such a foul day.

Their arrival in the hall created a flurry of confusion and noise. Silencing the barking dogs with difficulty, Ranulf led the man toward the hearth as Rhodri limped over with a cup of hot, mulled cider and Enid sent a servant for blankets and towels. Gulping down the cider in three swallows, the man began to struggle with his mantle, emerging from its dripping folds like a rumpled butterfly from a soggy cocoon. To Ranulf’s surprise, the face revealed when the hood fell back was a familiar one.

“Peryf? What are you doing so far from home?”

Peryf started to speak, began to cough instead. Signaling for more cider, he drank as if he could not get enough. He was standing so close to the open hearth that steam rose off his sodden clothes. “So tired . . . ,” he panted, “. . . left Aber at dawn . . .”

Ranulf’s sudden chill had nothing to do with the winter weather. “Peryf, what is wrong?”

“Lord Owain . . . he is dead.”

There was a muffled cry from one of the women, a choked oath from Rhodri. Ranulf had to swallow before he could speak, for his mouth had gone dry. “How? What happened?”

“Monday morn . . . he . . . he complained of a pain in his arm, said he felt queasy of a sudden.” Peryf’s voice was still hoarse, but steadier now. When Ranulf shoved a stool toward him, he sank down upon it gratefully. “Then he fell over. Everyone panicked, people rushing about, bumping into one another, Cristyn shrieking like a madwoman, dogs underfoot, children crying. Lord Owain was the only one who kept calm. . . . Lying there in the floor rushes, his head cradled in his wife’s lap, he told us to fetch a doctor and . . . and a priest.”

Rhodri hastily crossed himself and Enid began to sob; so did her maid and their cook. “Was there time for him to be shriven?” This voice was Rhiannon’s and Ranulf reached out, drew her to his side, thinking that she always went straight to the heart of the matter. Their relief was enormous when Peryf nodded vigorously.

“Aye, there was. He lived long enough to confess his sins and to be given extreme unction . . . and to name Hywel as his heir.”

The full import of Owain’s death hit Ranulf then. “Hywel . . . he’s gone?”

“Aye,” Peryf echoed, looking at Ranulf with swollen, fear-filled eyes. “Hywel sailed for Ireland ten days ago.”