Uneasy Lies the Crown (39 page)

“Leave here? In God’s name, my lord... Father, if no one can manage to get in, how are you to get out?”

Halting, Owain crossed his arms loosely and shrugged. “It will be treacherous. I don’t deny that. Many, many times this past year, as Aberystwyth lay under siege, I roamed the beach, rowed up and down the length of the outer walls in the bay below Harlech, and studied the rocks from every angle. There is a way, just beyond the upper gate on the west front, but I regret that only the strongest may pass. The children and women... they shall have to stay behind.”

“Nothing but sheer rock and the sea below.”

“Yes.”

“Suicide.”

Owain went to Edmund and placed a hand on his drooping shoulder. “It is the only way... the only hope of salvation.”

Edmund slid from his stool. On his knees at Owain’s feet, his face downcast, Edmund shook his head in denial.

Owain settled upon his haunches and raised Edmund’s stubbled chin with a finger. “As long as you can, Edmund. As long as you can. I’ll find Rhys and Gethin, gather a relief force... and free Harlech.”

The candlelight was waning to near darkness as Owain helped Edmund to his feet, up the dark stairs and back to his bed where Catrin slept. Beside her, their son Lionel, who had been roused by a nightmare, slumbered beneath the protection of her arm.

53

Harlech Castle, Wales — December, 1408

Whereas in the years before, the tables at Harlech and also at Sycharth had been steeped in abundance, this year the Christmas feast was merely a few rolls more than the day before. The wine was watered. The salted meat, dry and sinewy. Song was forced. Even Iolo’s strumming on his harp was brittle: the rhythm irregular, the pitch strained, his fingers foreign visitors to the strings which once had echoed his heart. There was no Yule log to light the hall, no mince pie or pudding to delight young stomachs, nor holly to garnish the rafters.

Only the children were mindless of the doom that was sure to commence at dawn. Sion and Mary, now both fourteen years old, led the games with their nephew Lionel and little nieces Angharad and Gwladys with an authority well beyond their years. Mary had endured the hardships of the previous year with her mother’s dauntless courage, developing into a young woman whose countenance promised a rare beauty as yet to blossom. Sion, though he had been rarely in the company of his oldest brother Gruffydd while growing up, was in every way like him: moody, pensive and passionate to a fault. When Lionel, brimming constantly with the urge to move, would not stand precisely where Sion commanded him, Sion erupted into a tantrum and demanded of his sister Catrin to make her unruly son mind. Catrin merely cocked her head and admonished her younger sibling for expecting too much of a little boy. Then she flattered Sion by adding, “He is not a man yet, like you.”

On the far end of the head table, Dewi and Tomos joked. The veteran of a handful of raids and the unavailing campaign that ended at Woodbury Hill, Dewi shared his vast knowledge with Tomos, who was more than eager to gut an English soldier.

“Ah,” Dewi began, clasping Tomos by the shoulder with his left hand and brandishing an imaginary weapon aloft in his other, “you will yet have your chance, my little brother. Soon enough. The English have bellies soft as a hare’s.”

Tomos grinned and scooped up his tankard. He slurped down the remaining ale as an act of his manhood.

As Owain reached for his drink, Margaret grabbed his wrist.

“Sooner or later you will have to tell me,” she said.

It was never any use hiding his thoughts from her. She could read him by the way he stared either into his drink or out the window. Into his drink meant hesitation over troubles. Out the window indicated that his mind was a maze of plots taking shape.

He stared at his cup as he pulled it into the circle of his fingers. Then he rose and offered a hand to his wife.

Margaret clasped her fingers over his as they went from the hall. The uninterrupted song of the children followed them out into the ward until a servant scurried to close the massive door. The stars winked at them from above, but neither took notice, as once they did every night while they were young and intoxicated with each other. Now they were older, heaped with responsibilities and living life like mice in a cage. One step beyond and the cat would sink its teeth into them and then swallow them whole.

Although the chill of December was sharp in the air, Owain strolled toward the chapel, an array of sentries watching with sleepy curiosity from the battlements. He wanted to feel the warmth of her hand one more time and memorize the curve of her outline in the starlight. Once inside the chapel, where three tall candles illuminated the altar, he led her toward it. Taking up both her hands, he raised his chin.

“Tonight, I...” He urged the words from his mouth, but they were firmly lodged in the back of his throat. Abruptly, he pulled her into his arms, crushing her against his chest. A shudder ripped through him. “Ah, dear God, I cannot do this. I cannot leave you and the children.”

“Leave?” Struggling against his desperate embrace, Margaret stepped back. “What do you mean?”

He traced the sloping curve of her neckline with great tenderness. “I had made plans to descend over the cliffs and escape along the shore. To join Gethin in the mountains, seek out Rhys and bring relief. Marged, Marged... only hours away and I can’t. I can’t leave you. Not for any reason or cause.”

She caught his hand and pressed it to her heart. “You must go.”

No, she spoke madness. He shook his head. “I must stay to protect you. They will starve us out, Marged. Eventually, we will have to surrender, because I cannot sacrifice my family for the sake of pride. I can only pray for mercy, for you, for Sion and Mary, for little Lionel and Angharad and —”

She covered his mouth with her hand. “You said yourself, when we were alone at the beginning of the siege, that there was a trace of kindness in Harry of Monmouth. When Rhys gave up Aberystwyth, Harry allowed the entire garrison to walk free. He will relish the return of Harlech. And if you are not here, I do not think he will explode in retribution. If he puts us away it will only be for a little while. If you were him, the perfect trap would be to set your family free and wait for you to come. We’ll be safe. Safe. Do not fear for us.”

“No, I won’t go from here and leave you in danger. I must stay and fight.”

“If you stay and fight... you
will
die. Either in defense of this cold, heartless place you have tried to fashion as your home, or by the amusement of an executioner while all of London jeers. Leave, Owain. I beg of you—leave. For as long as you live, there is hope.”

The truth was bitter. He swallowed with difficulty, turning away from her.

“My love,” she said, her arms encircling him from behind as she pressed her cheek to his back, “do not abandon that which you gave so many reason to believe in.”

He turned around and pulled her so tight that he felt her heart beating in rhythm with his.

Then he lifted her chin with his fingertips and pressed his mouth to hers. The kiss they shared was not long, but it singed them both as they ripped themselves away from one another.

A few hours later, Owain and the others were ready. A heavy blanket of clouds began to blot out the starlight as an insistent wind pushed in from the Irish Sea.

The five men crept low across the open ground. All they had with them were the clothes they were wearing, a sword and a dagger each and a length of rope. Maredydd had spent the last two hours scanning through the darkness for English scouts and when he deemed it safe he gave the signal. Maredydd descended the rope first. Having scaled his share of castle walls, he carefully selected the best path down toward the sea. Iolo, trembling and white as alabaster, went after him. Dewi and Tomos were close behind.

Feeling her eyes still upon him, Owain turned and shared with his wife one last look. One look that said more than a thousand words could. Then he began his descent. Each footfall brought them closer to the furious sea, each handhold further from the walls that had housed them and kept them safe. The rope burned his hands raw. He had forgotten his gloves. Every now and then a loose stone slipped beneath his boot and tumbled down the steep rock face. It might have been an hour or the whole night, Owain would not look down or up, only as far as the next step. Then, quite suddenly, he found himself on a thin landing where the waters of the bay beat against the rock on which he stood.

He looked at Iolo, who was nursing his own bleeding hands, and his sons, who were fueled by the danger of their adventure, and nodded. One by one, they slipped into the water and began to wade and then tread southward.

The last to enter the water, Owain tried as hard as he could to focus on the place where he had parted with his beloved—the place where he had left his heart behind. But all was gray above. Beyond, the black sea. When he at last submitted to the fate of the sea, the cold sucked his breath away. The tide beckoned him toward deeper waters. In the darkness, Tomos called softly to him. Owain, his thoughts going numb, followed his son’s voice.

The waves created by the vigorous wind tugged at Iolo. The bard’s head slipped beneath the dark surface. Owain was imbued with a surge of strength and purpose greater than the mad sea. He swam to Iolo, draped his friend’s arm over his shoulder and pulled him along through the water. Iolo coughed and fought for breath.

Far down the shoreline, well past the English camp, they crawled onto the beach. Seawater cascaded from their clothing. Defeated by his exertion, Iolo collapsed, pressing his face against the sand.

Maredydd was the only one who had not sunk to his knees. He stood with his back to a boulder. Teeth chattering, he stumbled forward and helped his father pull Iolo out of plain view. Dewi called them toward a clump of grasses amidst an undulating sweep of dunes. There they huddled together, battling for air, rubbing at their leaden muscles with frozen digits, and wordlessly suffering the cold that sliced them from skin to bone.

Owain collapsed beside Iolo. He tried to flex his fingers, but they were nearly paralyzed.

“I would trade a year of my life,” Iolo uttered, “for a fire.”

Raising his face and looking toward the northeast, Owain could see the faint flickers of light from the English camp’s morning cooking fires.

Dewi struggled to his feet. “Tomos? Where is Tomos?” He sprinted clumsily back toward the open beach, frantically scanning the shoreline and the sea. He shot to the top of a dune, disavowing danger.

“Tomos!”

Before Dewi could emit another syllable, Maredydd tackled him. Dewi thrashed against his brother’s hold. They tumbled down the dune in a twist of limbs as Dewi fought to free himself. Maredydd pinned him to the ground and clamped a hand across his mouth.

“Damn you,” Maredydd whispered. “You’ll have us all dead.”

Finally, Dewi relented. His body heaved with muffled sobs.

For an hour, they combed the shore, ducking behind buffeted sprays of grass and crouching by low-swept dunes and scattered rocks as they moved like cats searching out unknown prey. A patrol of English ships floated on the bay at a comfortable distance, far enough for the escaped fugitives of Harlech Castle to go unnoticed. In full daylight, a keen sailor might have spotted them, but the pale light of pre-dawn concealed them.

When Owain saw a shapeless form bobbing in the sea, his heart clenched in sorrow. He waded out alone and pulled his lifeless son to shore. He laid Tomos in a small valley of dunes and folded his son’s limp arms across his chest. Tomos’s skin was as white as a snowcap on the mountains. His lips were bluish purple.

None but Dewi wept. There was no time for it. Gathering what stones they could, they laid them over Tomos’s body and covered it with a blanket of grass they cut with their knives.

As they set off toward the southeast to circle beyond the ring of the enemy camp, their clothing frozen to their flesh, a weak winter sun was just beginning to top the mountain ridge ahead of them. The sounds of an army, stirring to life, drifted on the brittle air, reminding them that danger was by no means past.

54

Uplands of Wales — December, 1408

Cradled within a depression of a steep-sided mountain was a black-bottomed lake. Deep fissures, darkened by shadows, cut into the mountain like the lines in an old man’s face which betray his age. In the springtime, melting snowcaps would send their chilled water down into the crevices, tumbling in white veils, until it finally came to rest in this magical, secret pool undisturbed by man or beast and known only to the highest flying of birds.

Maredydd flattened his chest against a rock and, clinging to its icy lip, lowered his mouth to the water. He drank long and deep, even though the frozen water cutting across his tongue drove a dagger of pain into his skull. Anything to fill his belly.

A short whistle caused him to raise his head. Dewi cupped his hand and brought it to his chest, motioning for his brother to follow. Further along the shore, making way toward a ravine, Iolo and Owain were forging on.

Maredydd glanced across the black lake and up at the clear, blue sky. For a winter’s day, it was a rare beauty, but none of them had had anything at all to eat, not so much as a crumb, since Christmas dinner three days past. He forced himself to his feet and picked his way across the random stepping stones back toward shore.

“Yesterday I was famished,” he said to Dewi, as he caught up with him, “but today I am too tired to feel anything. I am just empty—from my mouth down to my boots.”

“Empty in the head, too, if you think you won’t get any more tired or hungry than this.” Dewi shoved his sleeve across his upper lip to dam the torrent that was spilling from his nose.

The walls of the ravine rose up on both sides of the two brothers and the swiftly retreating winter sun disappeared, leaving them in shadows. A shallow stream, one stride across, cut through the ravine’s center.