Uneasy Lies the Crown (30 page)

40

Bangor, Wales — February, 1405

A gale hammered down upon the waters of Conwy Bay. Waves that would have swallowed a ship whole slammed against the shore. It was at the home of Dafydd Daron, the Dean of Bangor, that Owain and his son-in-law, Sir Edmund Mortimer, waited in the main hall with Gruffydd and Master Hopkyn. Sixteen year-old Madoc leaned crookedly against a doorframe, watching his father vigilantly. He readjusted the short sword tucked at his belt and swallowed a yawn.

A solid day of rain had changed over to stinging, wet snow as the bleak light of a February day faded to blackness. Tiny daggers of ice scratched at the windows and the draft swooping down the chimney challenged the hearth fire.

Gruffydd stared at the logs, poking at them and adding more kindling whenever there was danger the flames were being defeated. “She keeps a lover twenty years her junior...” he said, “and openly. Who knows what secrets pass above her pillows?”

“Kingdoms have been toppled from between silk sheets,” Edmund said. He paced back and forth across the room in obsessive rhythm. The room was not large enough to accommodate his furious stride and every four lengths he pivoted back toward the opposite wall. “We may prove ourselves fools to think that she has the means or the will to free my nephews. For years she has served Henry as their jailor. We have cast our fate into the hands of a wanton.”

Inwardly, Owain cringed at Gruffydd and Edmund’s pious condemnations of Lady Constance Despenser. She had been selected by Henry to watch over Edmund, the Earl of March, and his younger brother Roger, who were now being kept under lock and key at Windsor. The plan was for her to get the boys out of Windsor and off to Glamorgan where Gethin was waiting for them.

As Owain scooted his chair back from the long table, it scraped across the floor, causing Gruffydd to cease his tending and look at his father.

“I do indeed wonder at Bolinbgroke’s reasoning behind placing the Earl of March and his brother in her care,” Owain said, “but she is, after all, the sister of the Duke of York. Like it or not, she is the key—and our only hope of freeing them.” Lady Despenser’s role in this meant everything to him, to Edmund, to Wales and England alike. “Northumberland says she loathes Bolingbroke—curses him with every breath.”

“Northumberland?” Edmund scoffed. “I tell you, he plays the tepid partner in all this. Too afraid of being found out to show his face.”

“Henry’s spies keep a close eye on him. If not him, who would we have then, half as powerful, to serve our cause, Edmund? Henry Percy is happy to scheme and manipulate. I will accept that of him. When the time is right, he’ll reveal himself.”

Edmund resumed his pacing, every once in awhile glancing out through the rain-streaked window.

“Master Hopkyn?” Owain said, “have you any encouragement for Edmund here?”

Hopkyn’s gaze dropped. He had sat silently at the distant end of the table the entire evening, his liver-spotted hands folded neatly in his lap and his pale, sunken eyes barely moving from one face to another as he absorbed their banter. With his spindly arms, he pushed himself up from his bench and shuffled over to the fire. He stretched his hands out, the glow of the flames outlining his gnarled fingers in shifting shades of pink and yellow. “Knowing what is possible is not always enough.”

“And of what possibilities do you speak?” Edmund said cynically. “Prophecies, perhaps? Whose?”

“Myrddin Emrys’s,” Hopkyn uttered.

Edmund darted toward Owain and spoke lowly into his ear. “It smacks of witchcraft, Owain. If Bishops Trefor and Byfort, who you wooed from England’s saintly breast, caught wind of you trusting in a prophet of Myrddin Emrys’s they might abandon you.”

Byfort and Trefor had become some of Owain’s closest advisors. They had clandestinely withdrawn at first from Henry’s choking hold, preferring Owain’s plan for an independent Welsh Church. He knew them well enough to know which side of the Severn their God-fearing hearts lay in. “They will abandon no one. I assure you they are as political, if not more so, as they are pious.”

Madoc edged closer, as if he feared he might miss something.

The clang of an iron poker shattered the air. Gruffydd shook his fist at them. “Enough of your insane visions and perilous schemes. Enough of all of you! We must beat Henry by the sword. There is no other way. Hang your hopes on the ramblings of an old man or the vengefulness of a wayward widow if you will. May as well cast your fate to the wind. I am going to bed and there I will dream of which vein, when cut, will make the King of England bleed the most.”

His stormy departure was a relief to Owain. After a door slammed shut upstairs, Owain rose and walked around the table to stand before Hopkyn. “Tell us what Myrddin Emrys foretold.”

“Lord Bardolf,” Edmund muttered, alerting them to the arrival of riders. His breath steamed the pane of glass to which he pressed his forehead. “And he comes on a black horse. I pray that is not an ill omen.”

Owain gripped Hopkyn tightly by the shoulder.

“The mole, the dragon, the wolf, the lion,” Hopkyn chanted. “The dragon and the wolf, whose tails are intertwined, will unite with the lion and divide among them the kingdom of the mole.”

Northumberland was sometimes referred to as the wolf of the north. Owain, of course, was the dragon. But the lion? Could that be Mortimer, or perhaps his nephew?

Owain pinched Hopkyn’s shoulders with such force that the old man whimpered. “How do you know this? I have told you nothing about the purpose of this meeting.”

“It was spoken. It was spoken,” Hopkyn said, his eyes pinched shut, his entire body shrinking from the force of Owain’s grip. “Long ago.”

Dafydd Daron, who had been woken and alerted to the overdue arrival of visitors, flew into the hall. His shirt, hastily donned, hung crookedly from his shoulders. He dispatched two of his servants out into the frozen deluge to greet them. They returned with Lord Bardolf and two of his attendants.

Bardolf, who was the same height as Owain but older by twenty years, swept back the hood of his dark cloak. Ice frosted his snowy beard. Gracefully, he bent his knee and spoke. “My Lord Prince, I come on behalf of Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland, and am assigned to do his bidding.”

“Rise, Lord Bardolf,” Owain said, touching his shoulder. “We have the maps. Let us divide what will be conquered.”

By lantern light, the three men—Owain Glyndwr, Sir Edmund Mortimer and Lord Bardolf—negotiated through the night. When all was done they had divided the whole Isle of Britain, but for Scotland, amongst themselves in an agreement they termed the Tripartite Indenture. Owain’s new Wales would extend far into the Midlands and give him Shrewsbury, Worcester and Chester. Northumberland was to rule over the whole north of England and the Earl of March, who would be placed upon the throne in proper course, was to have the remaining south of England.

“The mole, the dragon, the wolf, the lion,”
Hopkyn had chanted.
“The dragon and the wolf, whose tails are intertwined, will unite with the lion and divide among them the kingdom of the mole.”

So it would be.

Owain had been sound asleep in his bed when Edmund came into his room and shook him hard.

“What is it?” Owain rubbed at his eyelids and forced himself to sit up. Judging by the weariness in his bones, he couldn’t have had but a few hours of sleep.

“Gruffydd is leaving. To join Gethin.” Edmund opened the shutters and scratched away the frost on the window. “They’re saddling a horse for him now.”

Owain sank back into his pillows. “And you want me to stop him? Let him go. Let him test whether he can brandish his sword as deftly as he does his tongue.”

Quietly, Edmund watched through the window. Owain did not rise to look. He could not. Gruffydd would come back—wiser and more forgiving—when the time was right. His callow passion was simply misdirected. He would have a broad, rich land to look after one day. Gruffydd, his oldest, his heir, he would come back... He would. He must.

“Owain? Madoc is with him,” Edmund said.

In an instant, Owain was up on his feet and staring helplessly out the window. Young Madoc, so eager, so worshipful of his older brothers, had deigned to join Gruffydd. By then they were vanishing riders tearing along the shore, sprays of sand flying from their horses’ hooves, the wind fierce in their tangled hair. It was too late to catch them. They were excellent horsemen, just as their father had taught them to be.

Bracing himself with a hand on either side of the frosty window, Owain hung his head. “Margaret will not forgive me for this. She cannot bear to see her sons go off to battle.”

Edmund touched him reassuringly on the shoulder. “She cannot bear it when you go, Owain.”

Simple words, and yet they cut so deeply into Owain’s already bleeding heart.

Harlech Castle, Wales — February, 1405

Owain had barely returned to Harlech with Edmund and Hopkyn when a letter arrived from Glamorgan. For an hour, Owain was alone in the first floor room of the Prison Tower, the letter clenched tightly in his right hand. He lingered above the trap door to the dungeon, presently empty of captives. Whenever there were any, he would not keep them there long—not with the children about. Prisoners were quickly sent off to Dolbadarn or Aberystwyth.

Finally, he sent for Edmund.

“From Gethin,” Owain said, handing the letter to him. “Our Lady Despenser and your nephews were captured at Cheltenham. They were so close, Edmund. So damn close.”

As Edmund looked heavenward in question, the letter slipped from his shaking fingers and floated to the floor.

41

Near Pwll Melyn, Wales — March, 1405

Owain glanced up to admire the red kite sailing above the foothills of the limestone-rich Black Mountains. Beside him rode Rhys, humming a tavern song. They had ridden like that for days, mostly silent, from sunrise to sunset, down from Harlech on their way to Monmouthshire where Gethin and Gruffydd were struggling to hold ground against Sir John Greyndour. A hundred and fifty lightly armed Welsh fighters trotted at a steady pace behind them.

As they slipped past Abergavenny Castle, there was still no hint of Gethin’s forces to be found. They forged on, winding their way through the Usk Valley. The woodlands that crisscrossed the land both concealed them and hindered their view. Purple-gray clouds swept low through the sky, carried on a vigorous wind that whipped Owain’s hair across his eyes.

When they topped a small rise, Rhys groaned at the sight of the darkening sky to the west. The wind roared more mightily. “Damn wind. Only thing I hate more than that cursed eternal Welsh wind is lightning.”

“I like the wind,” Owain said.

“You’re insane. What is there to like about it?”

A light shrug lifted Owain’s shoulders beneath his surcoat and chain mail. “I suppose because it reassures me I’m alive—the brushing of the wind on my cheeks... just like the rush of water through a riverbed, the smell of decaying leaves on the forest floor, the cold purity of snow, the brightness of sunlight, the cleansing of the rain. Reminds you you’re alive and not dust beneath the ground.”

“You’ve been listening to Iolo’s poetry for far too long. Your brains have rotted.” That Rhys did not agree with his friend in the least was obvious in his scowl. “I’ve never doubted for a moment I was alive. I don’t need to be reminded. Whenever I hear the rumble of thunder it’s all I can do to keep from shitting myself.”

“Why would a grizzled, old warrior like you be frightened of storms? I’ve never seen you so much as flinch in the throes of battle while arrows flew around your ears.”

“I was standing next to a man once who was struck by lightning. Bolt ripped from the sky quicker than you could blink. He flew up in the air and landed twenty feet away. The soles of my shoes were burnt—I was that close to him. It charred the poor bastard from the inside out. Smoke poured out of every hole in his body as he lay dead as a lump of peat.”

Owain closed his eyes and inhaled deeply. “It’s going to rain,” he said, smelling the moisture on the air. But there was another barely detectable scent mingled with it, slightly metallic like rusted iron. Perhaps it was time to give his chainmail a good scrub?

When he opened his eyes to take measure of the approaching clouds, his heart thudded. Just beyond the roadway, a puddle of carmine lay partially in concealment beneath a tussock of grass. He plunged from his mount and raced toward it, frantically scanning amongst the shadows of the undergrowth. Nothing but a small pool of blood and no evidence of a wounded person or unfortunate corpse. Following a crooked path marked by bent grass stems, he dove into the fringe of the woods.

Rhys was quickly at Owain’s side when they spied the first Welsh body. An axe was buried deeply in the fallen man’s back. He had been trying to flee.

They would find more bodies. They knew. It was no longer the scent of impending rain that permeated the air, but blood. Bloody air. The blood of battle. The blood of death. They had arrived too late.

Rhys pointed at yet another twisted body at the base of a tree fifty feet away. “Do you think the English are still about?”

Kneeling, Owain probed the wound of the nearest dead Welshman. The bloodstain on his shirt was dark and dry. “He has lain here a day.” Then he turned the body over to study the face. It was a practice he had done without thought for years now. Thankfully, the face was no one he knew, but still, the dead man had been someone’s son or father. “The English have been long gone from here. Perhaps they are busy burying their own dead.”

Before Owain had lifted his eyes from the unknown face, Rhys grabbed at Owain’s shoulder with a trembling hand.

“Gethin,” Rhys muttered.

Through the lacework of forest shadows, Gethin stumbled. Across his arms was draped a limp form.