Chapter 14
September, 1176
Rhuddlan Castle, Gwynedd
It was unusually warm for a mid-September morning, that much William fitz Henry had learned in his two years as lord of Rhuddlan Castle. And although he knew that soon enough the weather would turn bone-chillingly frigid, he still cursed the heat which caused the sweat to drip into his eyes and between his shoulder blades as he practiced his swordsmanship against one of his garrison knights. The two of them were bareheaded and shirtless and dearly would Longsword have loved to stop but he refused to give up before his competitor.
The sentry in the tower shouted and put a fortunate end to the contest. There was a rider approaching, he called down; a solitary man. A moment later he turned back with the welcome news that the horseman was Sir Richard Delamere.
“Pull open the gate!” Longsword ordered. He wiped his forehead with the back of his hand and spat onto the ground. One of his men brought a bucket of freshly drawn water to him and he rinsed the dust from his mouth and then drank deeply. He nodded to the young man with whom he’d been practicing and passed him the ladle. “A good bout,” he said. “You almost had me.”
“No, my lord,” the other man protested, grinning. “I was barely holding on to my sword towards the end.”
“As for me,” Longsword said with the barest hint of amusement, “what kept me going was pretending you were my wife.”
The men standing around him burst into laughter and were still chuckling when Delamere rode into the ward and slid effortlessly from his saddle.
“Seems when I left you were all hanging about doing nothing,” he said with a broad smile. He bowed to Longsword. “My lord.”
“Where the hell have you been, Richard?” Longsword demanded irritably. “It’s been nearly a month!”
Delamere looked surprised. “But you know where I was. Why? Was there trouble while I was gone?”
“Trouble would have been welcome!” Longsword snorted and strode off towards the keep.
“He’s been in a foul temper since the day you left,” one of the knights told Delamere. “Couldn’t keep still. Every day we were out hunting.”
“There can’t be anything left in the countryside to kill,” added someone else.
“He wanted to visit you once. Took four of us. We got halfway to there and then he changed his mind.”
“Snaps at everyone. Last night he had one of the servants in tears when she didn’t fill his cup fast enough.”
Delamere sighed. It was becoming obvious that Longsword relied on his company to divert his mind from his hatred of living in Wales.
He found Longsword in his chamber, changing his clothes with sharp, angry movements. He leaned casually against the wall of the open doorway and crossed his arms over his chest. “Miss me, did you?”
“You said you’d only be away a week or so!” Longsword retorted, combing his damp hair with his fingers.
“I’m sorry, Will,” Delamere said calmly. “I forgot the time.”
“You forget your service to me!”
Delamere gritted his teeth but refused to be drawn into an argument. Strictly speaking, he owed Longsword only forty days of service a year. “I’m sorry, Will,” he repeated.
For a few moments there was silence as Longsword sat on the edge of his bed and pulled his dusty boots back onto his feet. Then, as he criss-crossed the laces, he grudgingly asked Delamere if he had enjoyed his stay at the manor.
“Very much,” he answered, careful not to sound too enthusiastic. “The little one’s a terror. He can’t be bothered with walking; he half-runs, half-stumbles everywhere, always in a rush.”
“And your wife?”
“Olwen is well. But she isn’t my wife, Will.”
Longsword stood up and reached for his belt. “She might as well be. You’ve no fancy for anyone else, have you? And what of your children? I know too well the taint of illegitimacy.”
Delamere shifted uneasily. “I’m happy the way things are,” he said, shrugging. “And the only thing Olwen’s fretting over now is the baby that’s coming in a couple of months. Anyway, in Wales a child isn’t illegitimate if his father acknowledges him.”
“God in heaven,” Longsword shivered. “The way you speak, it sounds as if we’ll be here forever.”
Rhuddlan was a moderate fortress on a spit of land between the sea and the River Clywd. It had long been an important location, although not necessarily for strategic reasons. To the Romans, who had an auxiliary fort there, it was a stop along their road which continued west to Caernarfon. Later, to the native rulers of Gwynedd it was the site of a llys, the home and court of the chief and one of the first urban areas in Wales by virtue of its proximity to the waterways which facilitated trade and its abundant iron ore deposits. To the Normans who invaded after 1071, it was a springboard to further incursions into Gwynedd, ambition which had been stifled with the emergence of strong Welsh leaders, principally Owain, who captured the royal stronghold there and razed it in 1167.
It remained a ruin until Owain’s son Dafydd returned it to Henry six years later. The king sent in masons and builders to refashion it, building in stone in a rectangular shape softened by rounded towers at every corner. The main gate, bounded by a pair of close-set towers, faced the river only several hundred yards away, while the rear of the fortress looked out upon the demesne, the castle’s own fields, worked upon by taoegion, unfree laborers. Passing through the gate, one emerged onto the ward. Straight ahead was the keep, containing the ample hall and lord’s quarters; to the left were the barracks which housed the royal garrison. The ground floor of one tower served as a chapel. The kitchens, bake-house, brew-house, laundry rooms and latrines were in the rear, as were the stables and the armory. There was a covered well just past the entrance to the hall. The ward was a large expanse of packed earth. Rhuddlan was strong, superbly designed to withstand a lengthy siege. Its storerooms on the windowless ground floor of the keep were vast and Longsword kept them well-stocked.
Not only was he prepared for a siege, he longed for one. Any bit of trouble. Any diversion, no matter how harsh, from the mind numbing inactivity of the past two years.
In the old days, in the time of his great grandfather Henry I, there had been plenty of strife with the Welsh, particularly along the marches, the borderlands separating the principalities of Wales from England. Plenty of opportunity to hone battle skills and take plunder. Even the early years of his father’s reign had been marked by friction but most of this had since been resolved.
The prospect of spending the rest of his life lost and forgotten in the placid hills of northern Wales did not excite William fitz Henry in the least.
He left his chamber. Delamere pushed himself away from the wall and followed him down the circular stairwell which led to the hall below.
“William, what would you think if I were to move Olwen here?” he said. “Perhaps she could wait again on Lady Teleri—”
“No!” Longsword answered curtly.
“Why not? You complain I’m away too often. If Olwen were here, then I would never need to leave.”
The hall was empty but for a pair of serving girls sitting on a bench near the unfired hearth. Longsword recognized one of them and gestured to her to bring him a pitcher. After two years he still hadn’t learned any Welsh and couldn’t seem to remember even the few words for his basic needs, such as wine, that Delamere had taught him. But he had noted that this particular servant was quick to understand his simple gestures and that she had a less likely chance of messing up his orders than any of the other ones.
He turned to Delamere. “Olwen wouldn’t be too happy. She never got on with Teleri.”
“She’d come if I told her she had to.”
Longsword smirked. “Maybe she would…if you swore to marry her first.”
“Will, I’m serious.”
Longsword waved his hand irritably. “There isn’t any need to bring your family here, Richard! I apologize
for my anger.”
The girl returned with a pitcher of wine and Delamere dropped the subject. His pleasant relationship with Olwen was becoming a sore point with Longsword, who was confined to his castle and to a wife for whom he had no affection. Much as Delamere loved his friend, he couldn’t but help feel a warm and intense pride in his burgeoning family and it seemed now that every day he spent at his manor flew by so quickly that he was easily persuaded to stay longer.
At the same time, he felt guilty about leaving Longsword alone. The two had been close friends since childhood. Out of respect for their long association, Longsword had generously enfoeffed Delamere with a small area of good land. It had been the Norman habit when invading Wales to simply replace the traditional Welsh administrative divisions with the nearest Norman counterpart. The basic Welsh political unit was the commote, ruled over by a chief. Bound to the land and not free to leave it were the taeogion, who provided the chief, his war band and his family with the fruits of their agricultural labor. Also belonging to the commote, but legally free, were the bonheddwyr, pastoralists who moved their stock from winter shelters in the lower lands to summer pastures in the hills. A victorious Norman lord merely needed to put up a castle on the site of the former chief’s fort in order to collect the revenues of the commote. The exchange wasn’t as easy or favorable to the Welsh; in addition to losing their native rulers, they were now subject to Norman law.
Longsword’s gift had dramatically altered Delamere’s position from hired sword to feudal vassal, a man of independent means. In truth, the grant had been more of a gesture than a source of income. There was land enough only to feed his family and his laborers. Olwen’s household consisted of two female servants and six men who tended to the fields. But it was land, that most coveted of all Norman possessions, and it meant that he only needed to report to Longsword for castle guard for a month and a week and the rest of the year, barring war, was his.
However, Delamere was no husbandman and he was young enough, at twenty-six, to often miss the camaraderie of the barracks and the company of his friends, which was why he spent more time at the fortress than was required of him. And being part of a small group of foreigners living in a formerly hostile country made him feel all the more keenly his obligation to them. When he had first met Olwen, he hadn’t been able to speak a word of Welsh nor she a word of Norman French but somehow they had communicated and now, two years later, they were able to converse well enough in each other’s language. But it was like stepping into a comfortable pair of boots to ride up to the castle gate and be hailed in familiar speech and to speak and joke with someone without stumbling over strange words or groping for unaccustomed phrases.
He had met Olwen when she’d arrived at Rhuddlan as part of Lady Teleri’s entourage. Teleri was the niece of Prince Dafydd and Longsword’s intended bride. She was fifteen, haughty and hated the foreigners. She had been rumored to be a beauty, with thick reddish-brown hair, large, dark eyes and flawless white skin, but from the moment she entered Rhuddlan she was a disappointment in that regard. She walked about with a sour expression, her nose crinkled with distaste as if everywhere she went she smelled something awful and her obvious loathing for everyone and everything connected with the Norman fortress made her seem unattractive.
Perhaps in the hands of someone cheerful and patient she might have been worn down at length into a grudging acceptance of the fate her uncle had imposed on her but William fitz Henry was not that person. He hadn’t wanted the marriage and as his wife didn’t seem disposed towards encouraging him, he saw no reason why he should make any effort either. He had slept in her bed only twice; she had accepted his touch with her eyes squeezed tightly shut and her limbs tensed and unresponsive. After a while, he had been so disgusted that he’d given up.
Olwen was different. From the moment Delamere had caught sight of the slight figure running soundlessly across the ward, her long black hair unbound and streaming, her cloak billowing behind her, he had been mesmerized. The hour had been late and there hadn’t been anyone else around except the sentries in the distant guard tower. He had just come out of the latrines. The moon was high and full, showering down a ghostly white glow and illuminating the great ward and as he stood idly enjoying the peace of the night, the shape of a young woman suddenly manifested from the shadows near the stables and flew to the stairway below the hall. Unconsciously he walked a few steps forward, staring after what he thought must surely be an apparition, so silent and graceful was it. The figure ran up the steps and paused at the top, turning around and looking down into the ward. He fancied it looked at him, although with the distance and the unnatural light of the moon he couldn’t be certain. And then it whirled around with a flourish of hair and cloak and disappeared into the hall.
For two weeks at that time the castle had been full of people who had gathered to celebrate William fitz Henry’s marriage to Lady Teleri. The two great leaders and their retinues were there, as well as Longsword’s men and all the additional servants, cooks and entertainers necessary to cater to the crowd. The mood was especially festive because the wedding was to take place on Christmas Day. Delamere had used every free moment to search for the woman whose nocturnal flight had so impressed him, but without luck. He didn’t know if she was a noblewoman, a mere servant or someone’s mistress. He didn’t know if she was a guest of the king or of the prince. He didn’t even know why he needed so desperately to find her.
It was difficult to get away from Longsword who, upon introduction, had taken an immediate dislike to his intended bride and who stuck to him in increasing despair as the appointed day drew near. In the end Delamere had given up his quest and had stayed late at the table with Longsword and his men, drinking and making crude jokes about all the guests and falling into bed clothed and exceedingly drunk.
The day of the wedding had dawned bright and clear, snapping with winter crispness. An auspicious day but for the aching heads and queasy stomachs with which the young men of Rhuddlan awakened. Delamere felt particularly awful and hung well in the rear of the throng which gathered in the chapel to hear the betrothed couple exchange vows. After only a short while, he slipped outside, throat parched, in search of cold water. Servants were hurrying back and forth across the ward and into the hall to prepare for the feast. Garlands of pine branches and cones had been strung along the walls. Near the kitchens, smoke rose in a steady stream from the roasting meat in the cooking pits. The perfume of the pine and the smell of the burning meat reacted violently in Delamere’s stomach and he stumbled dizzily in the direction of the well.
Someone was there, waiting for him with a bucket resting on the stone lined opening to the hole in the ground which was the well. He recognized her at once. She bent down and submerged the wooden cup she was holding into the bucket, drew it out and offered it to him with a smile. He took it automatically, not even looking at it but staring all the time into her amused black eyes and arched eyebrows, and drained it.
She laughed then, and said something to him in Welsh which he didn’t understand but which sounded so beautiful in his ears that he wished she would go on talking forever. She seemed to know what he was thinking because she continued to speak in a low, conversational voice while taking the empty cup from him and refilling it. He studied her more closely. She was real enough. She wore a crimson surcoat with detail work of gold thread about the neckline. Her shining dark hair was braided and half-covered by a linen wimple. But it was her eyes that his kept returning to; he could not look away.
She laughed at him again, touched a hand to her chest and said her name was Olwen.
Longsword didn’t believe in love at first sight, although Delamere pointed out that he obviously found it possible to hate at first sight since he’d had nothing worthy to say of his wife since the moment he’d met her. Longsword insisted what his friend felt for this Olwen was nothing but lust, pure and simple. And lucky for him—but then Delamere had always been lucky, probably owing in large part to
his lean body, easy manner and dark, curling hair which he kept fashionably close-cropped—the girl lusted for him right back.
Olwen was an illegitimate daughter of Prince Dafydd’s priest and had attended Lady Teleri for the past four years. She was two years older than her mistress and of a much happier demeanor. Teleri had never liked her but now that she was trapped in a foreigner’s fortress with a foreign husband, she needed whatever familiar support was offered. But when, only two months after their arrival, it became apparent that Olwen was pregnant, Teleri demanded that her husband send the woman back in shame to the prince’s household. The request had coincided with Longsword’s self-removal from his wife’s chamber and he was feeling none too pleased with her. He refused and pretended he didn’t understand the vicious, broken phrases of sputtered Norman French with which she abused him. He had actually been shocked to discover that the girl had a temper after all; he’d started to wonder if she were even truly alive.
Although it meant that he was no longer able to see her every day, Delamere brought Olwen to the small house he’d built on his property and set her up with her own household. Teleri was livid but there was nothing she could do about it. And Longsword had been in a better mood for weeks afterward; it wasn’t the kind of excitement he’d hoped for, but it had been a battle of sorts and he felt that he had won it.