When Christ and His Saints Slept (98 page)

“Tell her,” Ranulf whispered, “that I did know…”

His young cousin had squeezed between Rhodri and Rhiannon so that she could get a better look at Ranulf. “Papa, his eyes are closed! He…he is not dead, is he?”

“No, child. He is sleeping again, that is all.”

Rhiannon leaned over, brushing her fingers lightly against Ranulf’s cheek. “He feels cooler,” she said. “Papa, do you truly think he will recover?”

“Yes, lass, I do. But I did not,” he admitted, “until now.”

RANULF
would have few memories of the days that followed. Mostly he slept. Owain Gwynedd was gone, back to his royal manor at Abergwyngregyn. The monk-priest had returned to his brethren at Basingwerk. Declaring that Ranulf no longer needed his care, the doctor, too, departed. But each time Ranulf awoke, his uncle and cousins were there.

He came to rely upon it, that they’d be close at hand whenever he needed them. Rhodri straddled a chair by the bed, translating French into Welsh and back again, demanding that Ranulf eat all the food he brought over from the castle kitchen, putting Ranulf in mind of a shepherd hovering over a lamb long given up for lost. When the boredom of the sickroom became too much for Eleri, she slipped out to explore the castle grounds and flirt with the garrison. But she volunteered to wash Ranulf’s hair, tried to talk him into letting her shave off his beard so he would look “properly Welsh,” and borrowed a lute to play for him at night before he fell asleep. And he was convinced that in all of Christendom, he could not have found a more devoted nurse than Rhiannon.

Unlike Eleri, Rhiannon never seemed to tire of her vigil. During the day, she was always within the sound of Ranulf’s voice, and after dark, she slept on a pallet by his bed so that she could hear him if he needed her in the night. It did not matter that he could not understand what she said; he lay still, listening to the ebb and flow of her soft-spoken Welsh, as lulling as the familiar patter of rain upon a roof, and he knew that he would not die in this alien place called Yr Wyddgrug, the “burial mound.” His cousin Rhiannon would not allow it.

WHEN
Rhodri opened the shutters, spring sunlight flooded the chamber. After a fortnight in the semi-gloom of a sickroom, Ranulf was dazzled by this sudden blaze of brightness. “Another week in here,” he told Rhodri, “and I’d have been blinder than any bat.”

Rhodri swung around to glare at him. “Do not joke about that—not ever!”

Ranulf blinked. “What did I say amiss?”

His bewilderment was not feigned, too sincere to doubt. “You truly do not know, Ranulf?”

“Know what?”

“That Rhiannon is blind.”

“No…that cannot be! She has been taking care of me, bringing me food, even pouring me wine…I saw her do it!”

“You sound just like all the others,” Rhodri said impatiently, “those who believe that to be blind is to be utterly helpless. Do not deny it, Ranulf. When you think of a blind man or woman, you think of a beggar, seeking alms by the roadside.”

“It is not that,” Ranulf insisted, not altogether truthfully. “You just took me by surprise. It never occurred to me that…that she could not see. She did not stumble or bump into things or—And I am proving your point,” he said, and Rhodri nodded.

“You’ll learn, lad,” he said tolerantly. “But do not start treating her any differently now that you know. My girl cannot abide pity.” Moving toward the bed, he looked down pensively at Ranulf. “I’ve a question to put to you. You’re on the mend for certes. But do you think you’re strong enough yet to travel? I think you’d do well enough in a horse litter, but if you’d rather wait a few more days, we can. It is up to you.”

“Where would we be going?”

“Why, home, lad. Back to the Conwy Valley, to Trefriw. You’ll stay with us whilst you regain your strength. You’ve grown up in your father’s world. Now it is time you got to know your mother’s world, too.”

“I do not understand,” Ranulf confessed. “I am a stranger to you, the son of your enemy. Why have you opened your hearts to me like this?”

Rhodri was puzzled, for the answer was so obvious. “Because,” he said, “you are my sister’s son.”

41

Gwynedd, Wales

May 1148

F
OR
Ranulf, Wales was one surprise after another. He’d known it was very unlike England, a land of deep, trackless forests, jagged mountain peaks, sky-high icy lakes, barren moorlands, and no towns or cities. He had not known, though, that it was so beautiful, a country of untamed grandeur and lofty, soaring vistas, and for the first time, he understood why his mother had never stopped looking back.

He was surprised by how well his Welsh kin lived. Wales was a much poorer country than England, but even by English standards, Rhodri ap Rhys had a comfortable home in the hills overlooking the Conwy Valley, where his cattle grazed—for the Welsh were hunters and herdsmen, not farmers. As in England, the great hall was the heart of the manor. The kitchen and private quarters were set apart, but otherwise, the layout of a Welsh manor house was not drastically different from its English counterpart. Reassured by the familiarity of his new surroundings, Ranulf hoped to make a quick recovery, and learn a little Welsh in the process.

His convalescence was to last far longer than he’d anticipated. He’d assumed—unrealistically—that he’d be up and about in a matter of days, but he soon realized that it was going to take weeks to regain his strength, a frustrating outlook for a man who’d never been gravely ill before.

He had better luck with Welsh, picking it up with what appeared to be impressive ease and remarkable speed. He let himself bask in the admiration of his newfound kin for a while, and then confessed that his mastery of Welsh was not as amazing as it seemed, for he’d spoken the language in childhood. He’d thought it had disappeared into the darkest depths of his memory after his mother died, he admitted. But all he’d needed was to fall into a Welsh well. His own forgotten Welsh had to bob up to the surface if he had any hope of keeping afloat, he laughed, and when his cousins and uncle laughed, too, he felt inordinately pleased, and not just because he’d made his first successful joke in Welsh. Their approval was already beginning to matter to him.

That was the greatest surprise of all—how fast he’d become so fond of this hitherto unknown family of his. It went well beyond the natural gratitude he might have expected to feel. Memories of his mother had come flooding back along with his bygone Welsh, and that was part of it, but not all. He liked them enormously, as simple as that.

He remembered that his uncle was two years younger than Angharad, which put Rhodri in his midforties. His hair was short and already so grey that it was impossible to tell if he’d once been flaxen-haired like Angharad. He was not tall, but he had a powerful wrestler’s build, and it was no surprise when he boasted that in his youth he’d excelled in the sport, equally popular on both sides of the border. He was one of the most affable men Ranulf had ever met, cheerful and expansive, with a serene good humor that Ranulf found truly remarkable once he learned about his uncle’s past. Other men, if they were lucky, had merely a passing acquaintance with tragedy. But Rhodri had a long and intimate relationship.

He was the sole survivor of four siblings, having lost his sister to the English king, his two elder brothers to untimely deaths. He and his wife, Nesta, had been blessed with six children, but three had died in childhood, and his last son, Cadell, had died in a fall from his horse two days before his twentieth birthday. Cadell had outlived his mother, though; by then Nesta was already six years dead and Rhodri wed again to a neighbor’s widow. Enid was a classic Welsh beauty, dark and sultry, and it was obvious that Rhodri adored this voluptuous young wife of his, too much ever to put her aside—even though she had been unable to give him a son. A man who’d buried so many loved ones, a man with a barren wife, no male heir, and a blind daughter—such a man might well have despaired of his lot. But Rhodri bore his losses with the patience of Job, and Ranulf could only marvel at his uncle’s faith and fortitude and life-affirming optimism.

A bed had been set up for Ranulf in the great hall, screened in at night so he could sleep. He liked this arrangement, for it enabled him to observe comings and goings in the hall, practice his Welsh on all who came within range of his bed, and get to know the three very disparate women of his uncle’s household.

Enid was a pleasure to watch, gliding gracefully about like a sleek, dark swan, indolent, incurious, accommodating as long as it did not inconvenience her too much, as placid and lovely to look upon as a Welsh mountain lake. She was the mistress of the manor, but she seemed quite content to delegate her responsibilities to her stepdaughters. She was not the wife Ranulf would have wanted for himself, but he did envy Rhodri the way her eyes sparkled as soon as her husband walked through the doorway, and he could not help wondering if Annora smiled so sweetly for Gervase Fitz Clement.

Fourteen-year-old Eleri won Ranulf over at once, for she seemed like a younger, Welsh version of his favorite niece. Like Maud, Eleri was lively and playful, with a penchant for practical jokes and a taste for mischief. She was a pretty girl, with dimples, dark eyes, and a heart-shaped face framed by pale ash-brown hair that looked shot through with silver in bright sunlight. She was her father’s pet, and was not above taking advantage of that when it suited her purposes. She treated Enid with an amused indulgence that few fourteen-year-olds could have carried off, doted upon her father, signified her approval of her new kinsman, Ranulf, by teasing him unmercifully, and was utterly and fiercely devoted to her elder sister.

Rhiannon did not resemble Eleri in either appearance or temperament, but she returned the younger girl’s devotion in full measure. Ranulf guessed her to be in her midtwenties. She was taller than Eleri, slim and straight-backed. Her hair was her most striking feature, a rich russet shade of chestnut, and like Eleri, she’d gotten their mother’s brown eyes. If Enid was a swan and Eleri a frisky kitten, Rhiannon put Ranulf in mind of a young doe, wary and elegant and as careful as her younger sister was carefree. She was deliberate in all that she did, but whether that had always been her nature or was the result of her affliction, Ranulf couldn’t tell. He prided himself upon being a good judge of character, but Rhiannon eluded him at every turn, for he kept colliding with his own presumptions about the blind.

Ranulf had been told about his cousin’s accident. She’d been struck in the eye by an ice-encrusted snowball, and within a year, the sight in her other eye had begun to fail, too. That was often true, the doctors had explained to Rhodri, but they could not explain why it was so. All he knew was that at the age of eight, his daughter had gone blind.

Ranulf could imagine few crosses heavier to bear than that of blindness, and it followed, then, that those so stricken would be lost souls, drowning in darkness, tragic and pathetic and helpless. He still thought Rhiannon’s plight was tragic. But she was certainly not pathetic, nor was she helpless.