Madeleine and Anwen looked at one another as though they’d just been told that Christmas was cancelled. They grasped one another’s hands and pressed their shoulders together.
“M’Lord,” whimpered Madeleine. “We don’ know the way! The forest is so great an’ there was sounds an’ storms and wolves an’ . . .”
“What if,” he cut in, his voice falling to a new level of sinister, “what if I were to tell you that Brenton LeGros has been captured by my men . . . that they have tortured him . . . and that as soon as he is able . . . to walk . . . he will take me where I wish to go? With or without your help. What if I was to tell you that, as a sign of my gratitude, for saving me the time of waiting, I will return you, safe and whole, to your families? Think of that! You could be back at your work tomorrow! All for your help with this trifling little matter. What would you say then? These men . . these Welsh men . . . can be of no importance to you, after all? And you must see! I will have what I want. It only remains to be seen if you will have what you want. Eh?”
Contrary to Sir Roland’s desire (and this would not be the last time his desires were flouted) his tale did not carry the weight of encouragement that he’d expected. At the image of Brenton LeGros under torture – the young giant whose back she had ridden safely through the storm – Anwen’s tough little heart gave a lurch and creaked in a way that she thought must surely be audible to all in the room. She let go of Madeleine’s hands, stood up straight on her two legs and glared at the great knight. Such a glare, directed at such an exalted person, could easily result in the spillage of blood. A peasant, after all, was a creature of small value. Especially when weighed against the dignity of a knight.
“You tortured Brenton?”
Sir Roland tilted his head to one side, mildly amused by and, for the moment, willing to tolerate, the small defiance in the girl’s tone.
“Not me, of course.” The amusement remained in his eyes. “I have people for that. It takes special training, you see.” It was a joke he had told before and quite enjoyed.
Madeleine, even through her own terror, sensed a dangerous imminence – sensed that Annie’s untameable tongue might be about to launch irretrievable, possibly suicidal words. She reached out, hoping to re-take her sister’s hand, to hold her in check. But Anwen, at that moment, chose to do something even more dangerous and unforgivable. She turned her back.
Roland’s brows shot straight up out of sight under the hair that hung over his forehead. A great gulp of air whooshed into his lungs and his face flamed. It was an astonishing affront, an intolerable dismissal of his position and authority. Men – even men of standing – had been thrown in the stocks for less. What reprisal, then, might an insignificant peasant girl suffer? He lunged forward and snatched a fistful of Anwen’s blond curls, twisting her head, half lifting her while lowering himself so she could look directly into the fever of his eyes. Madeleine screamed Annie’s name, even as she clapped both hands over her mouth, to barricade against the sound. Anwen’s face contorted with the pain, but she uttered no sound.
Roland glared viciously into her face, his teeth bared as though he was about to take a bite. Her fate hung in a balance for long moments. If Sir Roland had decided to cut Anwen’s throat at that moment and fling her body from the top of the keep, no law in the land could have called him to account. Fortunately for her, her offence, grave as it was, was still heavily outweighed by the offence of Owain Glyndwr’s apparent continued and inexplicable existence.
He half dragged her, half carried her to the door and flung it open. Sir Cyril stood there, grim and resolute, as tense as the knee of a one-legged man.
“Show this peasant your blade, Sir Knight!” growled Roland and Cyril’s great sword sang out of its scabbard. The point crept like the head of a snake to within an inch of Anwen’s eye. “Flesh is easy work for steel, little girl,” Roland hissed in her ear and she was powerless to stop her head from being nudged toward the gleaming edge. “This man,” Roland continued, “this knight you see before you, will do to you precisely what I tell him to do. Do you understand? This man would slice you like a side of bacon, until you cried out to tell me everything you’ve ever learned in your pathetic little life.” He looked up at Cyril. “How many strokes to take off a leg, Sir Knight?”
“As many as you wish, M’Lord,” answered Cyril chillingly.
“As many as I wish, child. Got that?”
Anwen couldn’t nod, couldn’t move her head at all, but a small, terrified moan escaped her and it seemed to satisfy Sir Roland. He flung her backwards into the room. She crashed heavily to the floor, rolled and came up with a skinless patch on her temple. Beads of blood appeared at a dozen places on the abrasion, each swelling to join the others in a hot stream across her cheek. Madeleine, already on her knees and wailing, flung her arms around her sister – too late to protect her from anything.
Roland spoke to them from the door, his fists on his hips, his thin lips barely moving, his voice clipped and precise.
“Fortunately for you both, I am a merciful man. My decision is to hand you over to the sheriff of Shropshire who has already been sent for. He will take you to Shrewsbury where you’ll be questioned again about your knowledge of the man Glyndwr. And then you’ll be punished for your treasonous silence. And you’ll never see your homes or families again.”
He left them without another word. As Cyril stepped in to re-secure the door, he cast them a thin smile and drew a finger slowly across his throat.
Chapter 28 – The Children of Owain
The remainder of the journey back to the abandoned monastery passed easily and quickly for Brenton, entertained as he was by Jeremy’s tales. Richard had dropped out of sight behind and Roger had scooted on ahead, only occasionally stopping for them to catch up. So there were just the three together for much of the trip and, prompted by Tom, Jeremy spun out the story of the “liberating” of horses and swords from Sirs Cyril and Angus. Tom’s addition of his end of the story – witnessing Sir Cyril’s attack on the juniper bush, listening to the blustering lies, offering and being refused the services of the mare – had them all cackling merrily.
When that tale ended, an eager round of question and answer began between Tom and Jeremy – questions and answers filled with names that sometimes echoed with faint familiarity in Brenton’s mind. One of those was Henry Gwyn, a name Brenton connected somehow with treason.
“Never such a thing!” asserted Jeremy. “No truer Welshman ever put a foot on the ground!”
“He was heir to the Lordship of Llansteffan,” explained Tom. “When my father’s luck ran out . . .”
“Your father?” Brenton asked. “Who . . .?”
Jeremy chortled and shook his head. “Ye’ve no idea who you’re travellin’ with, have ye LeGros? You’re still thinkin’ this’d be a ‘Tom’ ye’ve guided into the forests! Ha! No Sir! This particular lost little soul’d actually be a Maredydd . . . Meredith, to them ungodly Saxons. This be a son, in the flesh . . . to the great Owain Glyndwr himself!” He stopped and leaned conspiratorially close to Brenton. In a half whisper he said, “Bein’ in the company o’ men such as us, me lad, would once’ve earned ye a trip to the choppin’ block!”
“Still would, technically,” smiled Tom.
“Technically?”
“Technically. The offer of a pardon’s been renewed, Jeremy. The amnesty – for all of us. All who were connected to the uprising. King Henry’s determined to be lookin’ forward, to his new role as king of France – rather than back to his old role – as oppressor of the Welsh. He wants peace in his homeland and all of us relegated to history.”
“I’ll be relegated to ‘istory when I’m relegated to the grave,” sniffed Jeremy. “Ye’ve accepted, then? The pardon?”
Tom/Maredydd shook his head merrily. “Not on my own! Never on my own! ‘I am my father’s son,’ I told them. ‘Where he leads, I’ll follow.’ ‘That might take you to your grave,’ says they. ‘Never a surer place,?
?? says I. So they sent me away. ‘Find him,’ they says, ‘if he still lives. And ask his advice. Extend the offer to him again. Then bring your ungrateful self back and accept the king’s gracious forgiveness.’ So here I am. Technically, especially out here in the Marches, still in need of a dose of English justice – all for want of a thank you.” The humour drained out of his voice. “I tell you truly, Jeremy. I never really hoped to find him still walking God’s good earth.”
“And I tell ye truly, lad – it’s a state of grace ye’re unlikely to find him in come Christmas. He has somethin’ amiss inside. There’s a death in him, we’re all thinkin’. Ye should prepare yourself for when ye see ‘im.”
“That reminds me,” cut in Brenton, reaching inside his tunic. “I have this for him. It’s a powder the fortune teller gave me.”
They stopped walking and all three stared at the little linen bag. For them, medicine and magic were closely allied and such mixtures reminded them always of the arcane mysteries that moved at all times around and through them. Jeremy looked questioningly at Tom who shook his head and said, “She’s an honest woman. I’ve travelled with her across half the country. What she sees – what she knows – isn’t given to her by any man.”
“Does she know who you are?” asked Jeremy.
“I believe she does. Though I’ve not told her so in any words that you or I could hear. And I’m always ‘Tom’ to her.”
“Well,” Jeremy said pointedly, “maybe you didn’t have to tell her. Maybe she’s come to offer an amnesty of her own, on behalf of the English king. A ‘graver’ amnesty, if ye take my meanin’.” He looked sadly at Brenton and at Tom, shook his head and set off once again. Over the next hill, the monastery came into view and they saw in the distance, Roger, dragging a reluctant old man out of the dormitory into the feeble afternoon sun, pointing up the hill to where they stood.
The reunion was a quietly magnificent event – father and son in each other’s arms, weeping. Both men had lost so much. Most immediately, Owain’s wife, two of his daughters and three of his grandchildren –Tom’s mother, sisters and nieces – all dead in the Tower of London, their bodies buried in the churchyard of St Swithin’s. Added to that was a great tally of brothers, uncles and friends – friends by the hundred. These were losses that all the men of the Plant Owain had shared and suffered, over nearly two decades of resistance. Men fled from the land, men killed on battlefields, men murdered by ‘due process’, their heads left on pikes for all to view in London, in Shrewsbury and in Chester.
One by one, the band of greybeards approached the spot where father and son stood, clinging to one another. One by one, they added themselves to the embrace until finally, on that winter’s afternoon, in the yard of a house built to celebrate God’s mercy, there stood a knot of ancient warriors, their arms intertwined, their heads bowed, their tears flowing freely. They wept, as all men do, for the years lost, for the seeming failure of great enterprises, for the bitter honey that is life.
Clinging to the outer edge of the circle were two small, thin boys, also weeping – not for any pain or regret of their own but for the unknowable agony of others. Alone outside the circle, Brenton LeGros stood swaying, clutching his old wound, feeling again the heat of the lance, knowing that he was the luckiest of men. And around them all, invisible to all, swirled a myriad of placid ghosts, purged at last of their life-long ferocity. God in his Heaven, looking down on such a scene in a valley of the war-torn Welsh Marches might well have heaved a small sigh of satisfaction.
When the gathering broke, it did so amongst sniffles, embarrassed smiles, slapped backs and hugged shoulders. The senses of renewal and healing that each had experienced would sustain them for the last tests of their great lives and would also influence their immediate decisions. There was the matter of the proffered pardons, for example. Tom spoke of them in the dormitory, over hot stew and ale. As had long been the case, Owain spoke first and for himself.
“Meredydd, there is no fight left in Wales. For now, at least, it’s ended. Perhaps King Henry’s right to want it left to history. And no young man should waste his life on a cause that’s already been lost. Why don’t you accept the pardon? Go into Wales and work on the peace?”
The room was silent as he spoke, every eye focussed on him. To these men, Tom knew, Owain Glyndwr was the great patriot, the crafty planner – the fearless leader, the vengeful soldier. In some minds, he might even be the magician, the spirit of Merlin that his enemies had once believed him to be. Tom wondered if any of these men had ever before heard him utter the words ‘lost cause’.
“The peace will work on itself for the time being,” he said. “What I’m asking is, is there anything in it – in this amnesty – for you? You are, after all, uchelwyr – descended from the ancient royalty of Wales. Too great to be spending – perhaps finishing – your days in this isolated valley. Think of Sycharth – what a fine house it was – the fish in the ponds, the fruit in the orchards. And the music! The singing and the dancing. Minstrels from all over the land. You loved that once. Surely you know that no one in Wales would begrudge you that again. Don’t you deserve to have all that again?”
Tom knew that Sycharth, the most favoured of the Glyndwr ancestral homes, had been sacked by the treacherous schemer, Grey of Ruthin, nineteen years earlier. It was one of the indignities that had finally provoked Owain to act against Saxon injustice. Grey had paid dearly and continued to pay. But so did Owain. And there was no need for it.
Tom looked around the table, expecting to see heads nodding in assent. Only Roger’s head met his expectations. The others gazed off at the fire or found interesting things to study in their stew.
Owain also was lost, for moments, in thought. With one finger, he stroked the edge of the table, felt the scars and nicks and dents that the years of use had inflicted on its finish. It was older, he calculated, than any of the men in the room. And still a very fine table to be holding up so many bowls of humble stew. He smiled sadly up at Tom.
“I’ll think on it,” he said.
“Good!” barked Jeremy Talbot, slapping his palm loudly on the table. “Now we’re in need of a story. Meredydd! Ye’re a man o’ the great world now! Your sleeves must be stuffed to the cuffs with tales. Regale us! Tell us what other foolishness the king is up to in London, besides worryin’ for our poor welfare ‘ere in the Marches. Tell us of your travels through that unholy land.”
And so they plied him with questions that led him through the complex political state that Henry found himself in. He spoke of the English court and its wealth and of King Henry’s genius for victory in battle. Agincourt – Rouen – Pontoise. They were already legendary battles.
Jeremy was reminded of an interrupted story. “Henry Gwyn! I started to tell ye, Maredydd. He survived the fightin’ here, only to go down at Agincourt.”
Brenton wagged his head sadly. He’d been too young to be called into that campaign, but everyone knew the story – the English outnumbered, the French overly confident, the hail of arrows, the slaughter. “He fought for the French, lad,” remarked Jeremy. “If ye’d bin there an’ he’d ‘ad the chance, he’d’ve cut your heart out.”
Jack Sorespot who, along with Roger Ringworm, had been devouring the tales as greedily as he devoured his stew, asked, “Was he a great fighter, Jeremy?”
“Was he a great fighter? Does a cock crow the morning? Does a cat lick its arse? O’ course he was a great fighter! And no braver man ever walked the earth since the first apple was et! I’ll warrant, if Henry Gwyn’d been told before the battle that ‘e was about to die wi’ an arrow in his throat, he’d only ‘ave asked ‘ow many Saxons ‘e’d be killin’ before it struck.”
“Victory in battle,” Owain said ruefully, as though halfway speaking to himself. “It’s a fine thing. Makes little difference in the long run of course. But, at the time. . . . it’s a glorious thing.”
Brenton looked across at the man whose gift for winning had once been as legen
dary as that of King Henry – a man now wearing a grey pallor of agony. He was reminded of the powder given him by Myfanwy and brought it out.
“She mentioned the name of Owain Glyndwr, did she?” asked Jeremy, ever the suspicious and protective lieutenant.
“No!” said Brenton, realising immediately the source of Jeremy’s suspicions. “She jus’ said ‘the old man’! That’s all.”
A smile tickled the corners of Owain’s mouth but Jeremy wanted more.
“What else did she say, then, young Brenton? What did she say this potion was for, eh?”
Brenton glanced at Tom, somehow feeling a guilty complicity just for having spoken to the woman. He pictured her trance-like state, the flat words: He will die. Tom made no movement, no gesture, but his eyes seemed to plead: Don’t tell them that!
All the men were watching closely and the nearly invisible exchange didn’t go unremarked. Jeremy started to demand explanation, but Owain cut in strongly.
“She said it wouldn’t make much difference, Jeremy. Let it go.” He turned to Brenton and held out his hand. “What’s the message, Brenton? There were instructions, were there not”?
There were, in fact, two packages in the wrapping. One was dried parsley, to be boiled in wine, for the relief of heart pain. The other contained a tiny amount of the rare and powerful herb called saffron, given for the treatment of cancers. Owain accepted them and, to change the subject, asked of Madeleine and Anwen.
“You got them to their homes alright then, Brenton? No more encounters with wild beasts along the way?”
It was for this, in fact, that Brenton had agreed to risk the forests a second time. He unfolded the story carefully, beginning with Samuel Rowe’s appearance at the alehouse, with soldiers, to take the sisters away. As he re-lived his own night-time flight through the village, his encounter with Tom and his refuge in Myfanwy’s wagon, the mutterings around the table intensified. Tom was able to confirm that both girls were now lodged in the keep of Clun Castle and that Sir Roland Lenthall was doing his best, or possibly his worst, to gain information from them.