His father was there, too, a remote figure never quite in focus. Robert, keeping his distance, looking sad and disappointed. And a gentle ghost, more than twenty years dead: Angharad, his mother. He’d not dreamed of her for years, and her face was indistinct, shadowy, but he knew it was she. He recognized the bright hair, the low-pitched voice, the soothing sounds of her Welsh. Unlike the other apparitions in these terrible dreams, she did not disappear when he reached out to her. Instead, she took his hand and held tight. He held tight, too, and she stayed with him. Through the worst of the delirium and fever and pain, he could sense her presence, a beacon in the dark, guiding him home.
THE room was shuttered, but even the dim rushlight hurt Ranulf’s eyes. He was wondering where he was and why he felt so weak when a woman bent over the bed. She held a basin of water, dipped a cloth into it, and laid it upon his forehead. Her touch was sure, her fingers cool against his skin. He studied her through his lashes; she seemed somehow familiar and yet he could not remember seeing her before. “Who…are you?” The sound of his own voice startled him, for his words emerged as a croak. She was even more startled. She gasped and her hand jerked, spilling water onto the bed coverlets. When she spoke, her voice sounded strangely familiar, too, but he did not understand what she was trying to tell him. “I am sorry,” he mumbled. “I speak no Welsh…”
More Welsh rang out, but this voice was male. Joining the woman at Ranulf’s bedside, a greying, burly stranger beamed down at him. “We’d about given up on you, lad!” This Ranulf understood, and it puzzled him for a moment, before he realized that the man was now speaking French. Turning away, the man switched briefly back to Welsh, and another figure emerged from the shadows, this one a young girl, no more than fourteen or fifteen. “Ranulf…men do call you Ranulf? No, do not try to talk. For more days than I can count, we were sure each breath you drew was like to be your last! You do not know me?” The query followed by a hearty, booming laugh. “How could you? I am Rhodri ap Rhys, your uncle. And these are your cousins, Rhiannon and Eleri.”
“Your…your daughters?”
“My lord king’s message said that you were in a bad way. I thought it best to bring my lasses along, so that at least they’d have a chance to bid you farewell. And glad I am that I did. I’m not sure you’d have made it if not for Rhiannon here.”
Rhiannon murmured in Welsh, and her father patted her on the arm before turning back to Ranulf. “She speaks no French, but she still suspects that I’m bragging on her. I’m just speaking God’s Truth, though. Even after the doctor gave up, my girl did not. She never left your bedside if she could help it. She prayed for you and talked to you and held your hand, so you’d know, she said, that you were not alone.”
“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
FOR 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 lon
ger 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.
She startled him with occasional flashes of wry humor, for humor and blindness seemed utterly incompatible to him. She puzzled him by her stubborn insistence upon doing things for herself when it would have been so much easier to let others help. She made him feel self-conscious, for he had to keep censoring himself, lest he inadvertently say something she might find hurtful or offensive. And again and again she amazed him by her eerie ability to act as if she were sighted.
Blindness was not an uncommon affliction in their world, but Ranulf had no firsthand experience of the malady; those fortunate enough to have families to care for them rarely ventured out on their own. The only blind people he’d ever seen were beggars, for that was the brutal choice they faced: begging or starving. Who, after all, would hire a blind man? What could he do? Nothing, of course.
Ranulf would once have answered that question in the negative, too. But no longer, not after watching his cousin at Trefriw. Rhiannon assisted her sister and servants in running Rhodri’s household. She crossed the hall with sure steps, detouring around the center hearth without hesitation. She invariably recognized her father even before he called out to her, and when neighbors began to drop by, eager to get a glimpse of Rhodri’s long-lost English nephew, she greeted them by name. She mended clothes, and while she needed to have her needle threaded for her, she then reached into her sewing basket and selected the proper spool of thread. She changed Ranulf’s bandage without fumbling, poured him wine without spilling it, and whenever he spoke to her, she turned and looked toward him so attentively that he found it hard to believe those wide-set dark eyes could be sightless.
And so he studied Rhiannon in mystified fascination, awed by what he could not understand, but his bafflement was a barrier between them—until the evening when she checked upon him before retiring, crossed to the table by his bed, and exclaimed, “Your candle has gone out!” And as he watched in amazement, she carried the candle over to the hearth, returning a moment later with her hand cupped protectively around the flickering flame.
This was too much for Ranulf. “How in hellfire did you do that?” he blurted out. “How could you know the candle was no longer lit?”
“Have you never heard of second sight?” she murmured, so earnestly that it was a moment before he realized he was being teased. When he laughed, she did, too, and then s
he explained that the quenched candle gave off no heat. At the time, he was amused by her wordplay, relieved that he’d not affronted her, and intrigued by the simple logic of her answer. Later, though, he would look back upon this incident as a turning point for them both.
Having discovered that Rhiannon was so matter-of-fact about her blindness, Ranulf felt free to satisfy his curiosity, sure now that it would not be at her expense. She readily revealed her secrets. Trefriw was the only home she’d ever known; was it so surprising that she should know it so well? As long as the household members took care not to shift furniture around, she could move about with confidence. Nor was there anything magical about her ability to recognize others; she knew the sound of their footsteps, as she knew the sound of their voices. She did not overfill a wine cup because she crooked her finger over the rim and poured until she felt the liquid at her fingertip. Her sewing spools were notched so that she could tell if the thread was white or black. She sewed tags into her clothes so that she would not make the mistake of wearing a garment inside out. She knew that venison was being served for dinner by the smell of roasted meat. She needed her fingers and ears to play her harp, not her eyes. There was no sleight-of-hand, she insisted, none of the “tricks of the trade” practiced by traveling jongleurs. It was just a matter of learning to heed her other senses, to rely upon memory, and to be patient.
She’d made it seem so easy, and yet Ranulf knew it was not. He no longer saw her achievements as uncanny, even miraculous. But once he understood just how hard-won her victories were, he felt such admiration for her courage and perseverence that pity was crowded out. He thought of her now as “Cousin Rhiannon who is blind,” not as “blind Rhiannon,” and so began what was to be one of the most rewarding and significant friendships of his life.