“If I were Almighty God,” Ranulf countered, “I’d have adopted the Welsh law code and allowed bastards to inherit.” He hesitated, then, not wanting to open an old wound. But would the wound left by a child’s death ever truly heal? “I was very sorry about your son,” he said, sounding as awkward as he felt.
“I know.” Henry’s tone was terse, almost curt, but Ranulf understood. They were silent for several moments, listening to the waves surging against the rocks below them. Down on the beach, gulls were shrieking, squabbling over a stolen fish. The sun was warm on their faces and Ranulf lamented that cloudless, summer sky. Welsh weather was usually as wet as it was unpredictable; more than one English army had been defeated by those relentless rains and gusting mountain winds. It was just Harry’s luck, he thought, to pick the driest, warmest August within memory for his invasion. Did even the weather do his bidding?
“I suppose you have not heard, then,” Henry said at last. “Eleanor is with child, the babe due in September.”
“Again?” Ranulf marveled. Four children in five years. Not bad for a “barren” queen. “Congratulations, although you truly are pouring salt into poor Louis’s wounds!”
Henry swung away from the battlements with a grin. “As hard as it may be for you to believe, Uncle, when I’m in bed with my wife, I have nary a thought to spare for the French king.”
Henry waited until echoes of their laughter had floated away on the wind. “I think it is time,” he said, “to talk of less pleasant matters. I know you do not want to be here, Uncle. I knew you would come, though, and it gladdens me greatly.”
“I wish I could say the same.”
“It is not as bad as you think, Ranulf. I want your counsel, not your sword. What I have in mind is not conquest. I know full well what it would take to subdue the Welsh: more than I’m willing to spend, in lives or money. I mean to remind Owain of the respective realities of our positions, preferably with as little bloodshed as possible. No more than that.”
“You truly do not intend to claim Gwynedd for the English Crown?”
Ranulf sounded so dubious that Henry laughed. “You doubt me? You ought to know by now that I do my lusting in the bedchamber, not on the battlefield.”
Ranulf did know that. His nephew had never lacked for courage, but his early introduction to war had left him with a jaundiced view of combat. He fought when he had to, and fought well, yet took no pleasure in it. Unlike most men of youth and high birth, Henry saw no glory in war and drank sober from the cup that sent so many into battle drunk on illusions. Remembering that now, Ranulf felt a flicker of hope.
“So why, then, are you leading an army into Gwynedd?”
Henry raised a mocking brow. “Since when are you so disingenuous? You may not want me here, but you know why I am here. Owain Gwynedd poses a serious threat to the English Crown. He is an able, ambitious man and if I turned a blind eye to his scheming for long, Cheshire and Shropshire would soon be speaking Welsh.”
“You exaggerate, Harry.”
“A king’s prerogative, Uncle. But I do not exaggerate by much.
Owain has proved himself to be much too adroit at exploiting English weaknesses. Look what happened during the chaos of Stephen’s reign. He seized control of the entire cantref of Tegeingl. Need I remind you how close that is to Chester? Or that the present Earl of Chester is a ten-year-old boy? Moreover, Owain has been casting out bait toward the Marcher lords, and some of them are greedy enough to snap it up, hook and all. After all, loyalty has never been a conspicuous Marcher virtue.”
When Ranulf did not respond, Henry correctly interpreted his silence as reluctant assent. “You know I speak true, Uncle, however little you want to admit it. But I do not begrudge your affection for the Welsh.” He glanced sideways at the older man, grey eyes glinting in the sun. “I never said, ‘Thou shalt have no other gods before me,’ now did I?”
Ranulf smiled. “You’re your father’s son, for certes, lad. That perverse humor of yours most surely does not come from my sister, God love her! So . . . why am I here, then? What do you want from me?”
“I am hoping that a show of force will be enough to tame Owain’s rebellious urges. If so, I’ll need you to negotiate peace terms. Right now I want the benefit of your seven years in Wales. You know the man, Ranulf. Tell me about him. What sort of foe—or friend—is he?”
Ranulf leaned back against the wall, shading his eyes from the glare of sun on water. “I respect him,” he said, doling out the words with miserly precision. “And there are few men I’d say that about.”
“Dare I ask if you include me in that small, select group? No . . . better you do not answer,” Henry joked. “So you respect him. Why?”
“On your side of the border, the Welsh are viewed as a rash, passionate people. Whether that be true or not, Owain is neither. He is as shrewd as any fox, farsighted and pragmatic, deliberate in all that he does. He keeps his temper in check, his enemies close, and his thoughts to himself. He forgives, but I doubt that he forgets. Above all, he understands what Stephen never did—that he must put the king’s needs above the man’s.”
“He sounds like a man worthy of your respect,” Henry conceded. “A pity he is not more like his brother. Cadwaladr is a ship without a rudder; no one ever knows where the winds or his whims will take him. Owain is much the older of the two, is he not?”
“I think there are about ten years between them, mayhap a few years less. I know Owain’s next birthday is his fifty-seventh, for he was born in God’s Year 1100. But he is aging like an oak, stunting the sons growing in that vast shadow. He has nigh on a dozen, some by his wife, several by his current concubine, the rest by other bedmates, including the best of the lot, Hywel, whom I count as a friend. I would not want to encounter Hywel on a battlefield, Harry.”
Ranulf said it smiling, but Henry caught the undertone. “I hope you will not, Uncle. Truly I do.”
“But no promises?”
“No,” Henry said slowly. “No promises. Mine would not be worth much on its own. You’d need one, too, from Owain Gwynedd.”
“Yes,” Ranulf agreed, “I suppose I would.” And after that, they stood without talking for a time, gazing toward the west, toward Wales.
CHAPTER THREE
August 1157
Aber, North Wales
AS SHE ENTERED THE GREAT HALL, all eyes followed the Welsh king’s concubine. By the standards of their age, Cristyn was no longer young at thirty-seven. But she still turned male heads with ease. Dressed richly in a vibrant red gown, she defied Welsh fashion by wearing her hair long, a curly, midnight cloud set off by a veil of gauzy gold, as transparent as summer sunlight. The colors were deliberately dramatic. She’d have been just as compelling, though, in mourning garb, for her vital, passionate nature burned brighter and hotter than any fire. All knew she held their king’s heart in the palm of her hand, and few seeing her now wondered why.
One who did watched from the shadows with a sardonic smile. Hywel ab Owain could not deny that Cristyn made his father happy or that he’d have wed her years ago if not for the inconvenient existence of his wife, Gwladys. It even amused Hywel that he might one day have a stepmother younger than he was, although it had taken him years to see the ironic humor in that. In the beginning of their liaison, Hywel had been horrified that his father would bed a girl of seventeen. It had not helped that he’d found her so damnably desirable himself. He still did, but no longer with the shamed, hungry yearning of raw youth. When he looked upon his father’s leman now, it was with an oddly impersonal desire, the poet’s innate love of beauty continually at war with the prince’s deep-rooted dislike of the woman.
“I see the queen bee has set all the drones to buzzing about her again. You think she’ll ever grow tired of preening her tail feathers in public?”
The speaker mixing metaphors with such reckless abandon was Hywel’s half-brother, Cynan, who’d come up unnoticed behind him. Like Hywel, Cynan was born out of wedlock. But i
n Wales, it was enough that the father recognized the child as his, and so Cynan and Hywel and their other illegitimate half-brothers were on an equal footing with Iorwerth and Maelgwn, the sons of Owain’s lawful wife. Hywel, the result of Owain’s youthful love affair with the daughter of an Irish lord, was the firstborn, the oldest at thirty-eight, of Owain’s considerable brood. The rest ranged in age through their thirties and twenties down to Cristyn’s two sons, nineteen-year-old Davydd and twelve-year-old Rhodri.
Cynan never referred to Cristyn by her given name if he could help it. It was always the “queen bee,” although not in his father’s hearing; even Cynan was not that rash. Hywel’s private name for her was the “lioness,” after reading in a bestiary that the female lion was fiercely protective of her cubs. Cristyn’s eldest cub was now swaggering across the hall toward her, the younger cub nowhere in sight. Cynan, who detested Davydd fully as much as he did Cristyn, muttered an obscenity. Hywel snagged a cup of mead from a passing servant and waited for Cristyn to come to him.
That she would, he did not doubt; a lioness was always wary when male lions were on the prowl. Hywel had no false pride, for he had won fame at an early age and was renowned throughout Wales as a poet and soldier. He and Cristyn both knew that he was the most formidable of her foes, the son most like Owain.
Cristyn greeted Hywel with a cool smile. “I’d heard that you had ridden in, Hywel. Is my lord Owain expecting you?”
His own smile was wry, acknowledging the deft thrust: a polite welcome for an interloper. “I daresay he is, Cristyn. When has he ever ridden off to war without me at his side?”
Cristyn’s smile held steady. Davydd, following in his mother’s footsteps, had neither her self-control nor her skill at verbal jousting. Glaring at Hywel, he said belligerently, “My father does not need your help to defeat the English.”
Hywel had done enough hell-raising in his own youth to understand Davydd’s need to chase after trouble and court confrontations. Usually he overlooked his half-brother’s bravado. Tonight, though, he was tired and Davydd’s barb rankled. “Tell me, Davydd, have you bloodied your own sword yet?”
Davydd’s face flooded with color. “Whoreson!” he snarled, and people nearby gave up any polite pretense that they were not eavesdropping. Others had begun to drift over and they soon had a large, expectant audience. Cristyn put a hand on her son’s arm, saying softly, “Do not take his bait, Davydd. Let it lie.”
Davydd was no fool, and the part of his brain not inflamed by anger was sending him the same message. But at nineteen, pride had a louder voice than common sense. “Hywel owes me an apology,” he insisted. “If he says he is sorry, I’ll be satisfied.”
He sounded so young that Hywel could not help smiling. It was both his blessing and his curse that he could never stay angry for long; his sense of the absurd was too well developed for that.
“Are you laughing at me?” Davydd balled his fists, shrugging off his mother’s restraining hold. “Say you’re sorry, damn you, or by God, I’ll . . .” He paused, not sure exactly what he would do, and Cynan chose that inopportune moment to join in the fun.
“I’ll say it if Hywel won’t. I am indeed sorry, lad, sorrier than I can say that you’re such a hotheaded half-wit. It reflects badly upon us all, what with your being kin—”
Davydd lunged at Cynan, who pivoted just in time. Before the younger man could launch another attack, Hywel and Cristyn, working in tandem for once, stepped between the combatants. Cynan was willing to cooperate, for he’d merely been amusing himself. Davydd was too furious, though, to heed reason, or even his mother. When Hywel caught his arm, he jerked free with such violence that he stumbled. Only then did he become aware of the sudden silence. All around him, people were backing away, when only moments before, they’d been pressing in eagerly to watch. Davydd froze and then turned slowly to face his father.
When men said that Owain Gwynedd cast a long shadow, they were speaking both literally and figuratively, for he was taller than most Welshmen. He was fairer in coloring, too; in his youth, his hair had been as bright as beaten gold, now silvered like moonlight. He bore his fifty-seven years well, but his cares had chased the laughter from his soul. Inspiring both admiration and awe in his subjects, he was a redoubtable figure even to those who loved him.
Owain said nothing; he’d long ago learned the tactical advantages that waiting could confer. Davydd and Cynan were soon squirming under the piercing power of those flint-grey eyes. “Did something happen here that I ought to know about?” Posed as a question, it was not. He controlled their response as thoroughly as he controlled the moment, and Davydd and Cynan hastily assured him that nothing had happened, nothing at all.
Owain regarded them impassively, just long enough to communicate an unmistakable message: that he knew better. “One of our scouts has ridden in from the east,” he said. “The English king’s army is breaking camp at Saltney, getting ready to cross into Wales.”
A murmur swept the hall, subdued and unsurprised. Cristyn moved unobtrusively to her lover’s side. The others, too, had drawn closer to Owain, putting Hywel in mind of the way people huddled before an open hearth on a blustery winter’s day. Only this storm would strike in August.
“Papa . . .” Owain’s youngest son had followed his father into the hall. Rhodri’s eyes were as round as coins and his voice held the hint of a tremor. “What . . . what will you do?”
Owain glanced down at the boy, letting his hand rest on Rhodri’s shoulder. “Well, lad, we shall have to teach this young English king how wars are fought in Wales.”
THE ENGLISH KING’S command tent was lit by sputtering cresset lamps that gave off more smoke than light, and the men had to crowd in to see the map spread out upon the trestle table. The Marcher lords were dominating the discussion, for they claimed to know Wales better than the Welsh themselves. William Fitz Alan was embellishing his conversation with such sweeping arm gestures that he’d already caused one lamp’s flame to gutter out, and Walter Clifford was using his dagger for dramatic effect, stabbing down at the map as if he were thrusting into the heartland of Wales itself.
“Here,” he said, “here is where our war begins and ends.” The dagger flashed, the knife biting deeply into the table.
Henry looked down at the target pierced by that quivering blade. “I already know Owain awaits us at Basingwerk, Walter,” he said coolly, for he had little patience with posturing. “If he fights, it’ll be here. Was it really necessary to mutilate the table for that?”
Most men were flustered by royal rebukes. Walter Clifford was oblivious to the sarcasm, as thick-skinned as he was single-minded. “What is more important, my liege?” he asked brashly. “A table or a chance to outflank your enemy?”
“How?” Henry sounded skeptical. “We’ve agreed that we must march along the coast. What would you have us do, try to take an army over the goat tracks that pass for roads in most of Wales?”
Clifford grinned triumphantly. “No, my lord king. But you could send a smaller force through the Cennadlog Forest.”
“I know it sounds rash at first hearing,” William Fitz Alan said hurriedly. Furious with Clifford for presenting the Marcher plan as his own, he glared at the other man even as he sought to persuade the king. “The forest trails are indeed narrow and not easily followed. But with trustworthy guides, a body of lightly armed horsemen could penetrate those woods and reach the coast—behind Owain’s army.”
Henry glanced inquiringly at Owain Gwynedd’s brother. “What say you, my lord? Can this be done?”
Cadwaladr nodded vigorously. A tall, robust man in his late forties, with a cocky grin and thick chestnut hair that had not yet begun to grey, he was not one to pass unnoticed in any company. Only in his brother’s presence was he somehow diminished, a paler, lesser copy of the original. When seeing the two men together, Ranulf had occasionally felt an involuntary pang of pity for Cadwaladr, no more able to eclipse Owain than a man could outrun his own shadow. He was n
ot surprised now that Cadwaladr should back the Marcher plan, for the Welshman’s courage was equaled only by his confidence.
“I can do it,” the Welsh prince said, with just enough emphasis on the “I” to hint at doubts about the corresponding capabilities of these alien allies of his. “Give me the command and we’ll salt Owain’s tail for you, good and proper!” An uproar at once ensued, as the Marcher lords began to object strenuously to the idea of turning over command to Cadwaladr.
Henry heard them all out. Ranulf sensed that he was intrigued by the Marcher suggestion. There was an inherent boldness in the idea that was sure to appeal to him. Ranulf said nothing as the discussion swirled about him, drawing further back into the shadows. He was accustomed to feeling like an outsider, for he’d lived much of his life as one, half Welsh, half Norman-French, a king’s bastard, neither fish nor fowl, as he put it in his more whimsical moods. But rarely had he felt as isolated as he did now, or as helpless, watching as war’s insidious fever claimed first one victim and then another. Was it burning, too, amongst the Welsh?
His silence did not go unnoticed by Henry, who rarely missed much. “It is getting hotter than Hades in this tent,” he complained. “I am going to take a walk around the camp, and will give my decision when I return. Uncle . . . you want to help me walk the wolf?” he asked, gesturing toward the large black alaunt napping under the table.
Rainald half-rose from his seat, then sank back in disappointment as he realized he was the wrong uncle. Ranulf got slowly to his feet, waiting as Henry slipped a lead on the dog’s collar, and then followed his nephew out into the night.
Henry’s pretext had some basis in truth, for it had been an uncommonly hot August so far. The sky above their heads held not even a wisp of cloud, just stars beyond counting. Soldiers nudged one another as they recognized the king, and one of the inevitable camp-followers, a buxom young woman with fiery red hair, called out cheekily, “Good hunting, my liege!”