Uneasy Lies the Crown (31 page)

Owain’s guts contorted. He knew the head of hair, the long, thin limbs, the youthful, alabaster face. He sprang to his feet and even though there were already soldiers scurrying to relieve Gethin of his burden, Owain reached him first.

He scooped Madoc into his arms as Gethin crumpled. Owain settled his son to the ground. Madoc was barely breathing. Fresh streams of crimson seeped from a hole in Madoc’s ribs, just below his heart.

“Madoc, Madoc, Madoc? Do you hear me?” Owain brushed the hair from his son’s forehead. The day was warm, but Madoc’s skin was dry and cold. Owain clutched him to his breast and rocked gently. He had seen Madoc ill innumerable times when he was a small boy, but never had he lain as lifeless as this. Owain felt the wet chill of blood against his skin.

Someone brought a blanket and they lifted Madoc onto it and propped up his head on a wadded cloak. Owain held his son’s hand. “Madoc, we’re going to take you home to Harlech. Look at me, Madoc. I’m here. One word. Just utter one word so I know there is fight left in you.” The tears welled up in Owain’s eyes, so he could hardly see. Then he felt a tiny squeeze from Madoc’s icy fingers. “Madoc? Son?”

Madoc’s eyelids fluttered and with all the effort he could muster he looked up at his father. “Isabel? I...”

“What? What of Isabel?”

His voice was so thin and frail that Owain had to put his ear to Madoc’s lips to hear him.

“I wanted to give her my horse, but it ran.”

He cupped Madoc’s face in his hands. “We’ll find it. And in a few days we’ll be back in Harlech and you can give it to her yourself. She’ll love you for that even more.” But even as Owain made that desperate promise and saw the weak smile on Madoc’s lips, his son’s eyes went distant, looking out over other realms. Owain pressed his face against Madoc’s unbreathing chest and wept.

A cool rain fell softly through budding trees upon the grieving father and his fallen son.

An hour later they pried Madoc from Owain’s arms. Madoc’s body was wrapped in a sheet of gentle folds and laid at Owain’s feet. But shrouded with the raiment of death, the face Owain gazed upon was no longer his son’s. Madoc was gone. There was no bringing him back. Owain would carry home a corpse and lay it before his wife. He never expected to witness any of his children being tossed into a grave. To bring a life into the world and then see it fade before him... it was more than even he could bear.

Gethin had been given water and offered food, which he had not the stomach for and turned his face from. Rhys supported him as they approached Owain.

There was a fresh scar slanting across Gethin’s right cheekbone to match an older scar on the other side. “When I saw that Madoc was in trouble, I fought through four men to get to him,” Gethin said wearily. “I cut off the arm of the Englishman who was after him, but not before he had shoved his sword into Madoc. I have failed you, my prince. It is I who should be dead and gone.”

Owain merely shook his head. “You did what you could. You have failed no one.”

“But I have,” Gethin confessed, hanging his head low. Never before had he lowered his pride to admit to such failing. “More than you yet know.”

In the pause between Owain’s heartbeats, grief turned to anger. If there was any reason this should not have happened, he wanted to know why. “What do you mean? What happened? Where are all my soldiers? My sons? My brother?” Owain closed the gap between them and grabbed Gethin’s surcoat, twisting it into a wad. “Where are they?!”

Gethin would not meet his eyes. He swallowed and began with the terrible news. “We took Caerleon and Usk and then fell upon Grosmont. As we gathered what loot we could, Prince Harry himself rode out from the castle and took us by surprise.” Gethin glanced fleetingly at Owain and continued. “We lost eight hundred. And John Hanmer was taken prisoner.”

Was it not enough for Margaret to lose a son? Now, her own brother would wither in an English prison.

“And since Grosmont?” Owain said.

“I gathered my men and we came to Usk. On the hill of Pwll Melyn we met the forces of Greyndour. We were outnumbered, but Gruffydd wanted vainly to prove his worth to you. He led the attack and fought in a manner that would have made you greatly proud. We could not hold the hill. Our men scattered and twice as many fell as at Grosmont.”

“Gruffydd?”

“A prisoner.”

Owain let go of him. “Then he lives?”

“He does, but... Tudur was struck and killed. And Master Hopkyn, who came to tell us you were on your way, died as well.”

Owain did not fully hear Gethin’s last sentence. A chasm of sorrow had opened up at his feet and swallowed him whole.

Harlech Castle, Wales — March, 1405

Owain’s heart was more than heavy. To fall from the pinnacle of enduring victory into an abyss of bereavement, the bottom of which he had yet to find, was completely devastating. Every time he had faced battle, it was not his own death he feared, but the loss of those close to him. And now it had come to pass. God had finally called upon him to make payment for all that he had brought unto this land.

As he neared Harlech, its lofty walls purple in the sunset of a stormy sky, all he wanted, all he longed for, was to pull Margaret into his arms and hold her. If he didn’t, he might keep falling into that endless, sucking void and never return.

With a small party on horseback, Owain rode into the courtyard of the castle. Hooves clattered on the cobbles. The customary rush of excitement on their return was absent. It was almost as if no one at all wished to see them. The black tidings of Madoc’s and Tudur’s deaths had apparently preceded his arrival.

It was Maredydd who came out first, accepted Madoc’s body into his arms and carried his brother to the chapel. Edmund took Tudur’s body to lie beside his nephew’s.

Numbly, Owain dismounted. When Margaret trudged somberly down the hall steps, she gave Owain a lingering, vacuous glance, then turned and went to the chapel. He followed her. As Owain entered the chapel, he shared a look with Emund and Maredydd that said more than any words could convey—they assigned no blame to him. Margaret, however, was another matter. She was kneeling at Madoc’s feet, candles flickering all about the chapel as the darkness of night came on.

Owain lowered himself to his knees beside his wife and took her hands in his. He had not gone a day without tears since Pwll Melyn and now kneeling beside Margaret with the unbreathing bodies of two dear souls... it only brought a new rush of helplessness to his faltering spirit.

“I don’t know what to say.” Salty tears streaked down his face and collected in his beard. He glanced at her to see eyes that were red and sore and had already wept long and hard. “Ah, dear God, Marged, I should have ridden after Madoc when he left from Aberdaron. I want him back. I want to see him ride along the shore again. I want to sit with Tudur in the hall, stuffed to sickness with food and ale, and hear him laugh at our children’s plays. My sweet Marged, it is not supposed to be this way. Mothers and fathers should not bury their children.”

He squeezed her fingers hard, but it was a long minute before she at last turned her face to him.

“Was this part of your vision?” The accusation in her stare cut him deeper than any weapon ever had.

“Never,” he insisted. “I am arrogant. I know. I cannot bring Madoc or Tudur back, though I would give my life in exchange if I could. I will do what I can to get John and Gruffydd back. That I swear.”

She ripped her hands away. Her icy words chilled the entire room. “You think you can do that? Is there nothing beyond your power, Owain Glyndwr? Look before you at your dead son and brother. Look at them! Selfish bastard! Can you not see the price of your ambition?”

He shot to his feet and pulled her brusquely into the corridor. The chapel was no place for such brazen words. The torches rested unlit in their sconces and he could see little but the fiery whites of her eyes.

“Selfish, Marged? Is that what you think I am? If you thought of anyone but yourself, you would know that what I have done was never for the sake of ambition. I did it so that I could have back that life we shared—with our children gathered in the hall and one day their children sitting upon your knee. Love something greater than yourself and your own little world and then you will know what it is to truly live.”

“Oh, Owain. I would have suffered any indignation at the whim of an English king if only to keep part of that life. Why must it be all or nothing?” Her voice rose in anger with each syllable. “Why must you go on? For how long? Until every child, every grandchild of yours, every Welshman is dead? Why?”

A servant, eyes averted, floated past, silently putting flame to the torches along the corridor.

Owain unbent his knuckles and studied them for a moment. So many scars—jagged ridges of pink-rimmed white flesh. The veins on the back of his hand were dark and bulging. The crevices there on his skin looked like flats of mud dried in the sun. The blackened fingernails betrayed the rugged life he had lived these past years. He dropped his hand and raised his eyes. “After so many years, you still ask why?”

She turned from him, leaning against the wall for support. “When first we met, I thought you so noble a man: proud and courageous. Your words were honey dripped into my ears. But now when I hear you speak, I hear nothing but odes of war and hatred.”

“Marged... I know it is hard for you to understand.”

“Understand what? What is it that I fail to understand, Owain?”

His chin trembled. “
I am Wales
.”

She shook her head at him. “Wales will live on long after you are dead, Owain.”

“No, you’re wrong. If Henry has his way, Wales will not live on. It will become a forgotten part of England and its people slaves to English masters. I will not have it that way. And if I must die for Wales, I will. But by the right of God, I will die in Wales and fighting for Wales. Wales belongs to the Welsh, my love.”

“It does and it always will,” she said. “But soon enough the only Welsh left who will be able to claim it will be those you have put in their graves.”

“I regret every man who ever died. But if we do not fight to see the dream live, then we all die in the end.”

“Is that how you see it? A dream? Whatever happened to dreams of peace? Dreams of our family gathered about us? Dreams of us?”

His heart clenched in anguish. “Yes, a dream. Wales for the Welsh. A country to call our own. I thought it was once your dream, too. I thought if there was at least one soul in this whole cruel world to believe in me it was you. Tudur and Madoc did not die for nothing, Marged. They died to save others. They died for that very dream you so glibly denounce. I am not the only one who believes in it.”

He backed away from her, shielding his heart with words. “Damn me to hell from now until you die, if you want. It will not bring them back. I was not the one who killed them.”

Iolo Goch:

Grosmont and Pwll Melyn had turned the tide of England’s fortune from its lowest ebb. It was not only in the south of Wales that prospects had brightened for Henry. In the north, Gwilym and Rhys ap Tudur had been dislodged from Anglesey after a fierce fight and fled to the mountains around Snowdon, leaving the English once again in possession of vital Beaumaris.

And so Henry deigned to take on intemperate Wales once more.

By May of 1405, forty thousand Englishmen, invigorated by the evidence that my lord Owain was no longer invincible, flooded into Hereford at the summons to array.

In royal Harlech, Owain grew uneasy. He penned eloquent letters to France, day after day and on into the night, imploring for aid in his cause.

Fragmented news from Scotland was even more disheartening than France’s lukewarm promises. King Robert’s health was failing and his conniving brother, the Duke of Albany, was gaining control of the realm. Any chance of help from north of Hadrian’s Wall had withered.

There was one hope left to save Wales. One small, fleeting hope, however unreliable: Northumberland.

My lord Owain sent John Trefor, the Bishop of St. Asaph, and Dafydd Daron, the Dean of Bangor, northward on a mission where they met Richard Scrope, who was the Archbishop of York and a kinsman of Northumberland’s. He was easily won over. Leading an army of eight thousand, Scrope marched out from the city gates with the intent to join up with Northumberland, but instead he was confronted by another Percy: the Earl of Westmorland, a faithful vassal to the King of England.

For three days, Archbishop Scrope waited for Northumberland, but the earl never came. Why my lord Owain thought he could trust the man, I do not know. I daresay he would not again.

Westmorland invited Scrope to treat with him, but when the archbishop came, the earl took him prisoner.

Henry was not going to allow any rebel, no matter how heavenly an office he occupied, to go without punishment. Richard Scrope, Archbishop of York, was executed just outside the walls of York in a field of newly sprouted barley.

Within days, King Henry suffered a fit of apoplexy. It left him weak on one side. I am not alone among those who were convinced Henry’s most recent affliction was the disapproving hand of God at work

42

Doune Castle, Scotland — Summer, 1405

It may have been summer elsewhere in the world, but Northumberland was not convinced that the season had yet visited Scotland. A miserable mist had followed him all the way from Durham. The dank chill of Doune Castle was not much improvement. For two hours, he had been kept waiting. Finally, a door to the left of the dais gave a little groan and a creak, then swung ominously open. A parade of Scottish nobles swaggered through, among them the Earl of Douglas. Archibald was the only one grinning. The others looked less than pleased, let alone impressed, to part with their time on behalf of an Englishman, even if he was one at odds with the English king.