Children of Clun

  She opened her mouth again, to speak. But again, he held up his finger for silence.

  “Not yet! Not yet. Take another moment. Be sure you understand, reeve’s daughter, that you are the last – the very last – person I intend to ask. Not that I would harm you, of course! I don’t want that – you being the person who saved Lady Joan’s life and all.”

  He turned his back and strolled to the spot where Anwen stood. Absently, he brushed a frizzy blond lock of hair from her face, revealing the still oozing gash. He faced Madeleine again, drawing up his shoulders and showing his open palms.

  “Now,” he said amiably. “Now you can talk. Release these people to their homes. Earn your reward. Tell me what I want to know.”

  * * * *

  Sir Perceval had warned Madeleine. The hunter, he’d said, will set traps. But how could anyone avoid this kind of trap? Over Sir Roland’s shoulder, Madeleine could see Jeremy Talbot, tucking his thumbs into his armpits, waggling his fingers and winking saucily at her.

  Madeleine would learn that he and Lady Margaret had been discovered, late morning, asleep beneath a cloak in the pantry, surrounded by emptied bottles of sack. When taken before his lordship, Lady Margaret had somewhat tipsily identified Jeremy as he had identified himself to her – the mighty Owain Glyndwr. Clearly NOT the Owain Glyndwr Sir Roland himself had been dealing with – but one who had, undeniably, somehow gotten into the castle and taken a valuable prisoner.

  Looking away from Jeremy’s nod of encouragement, she sought out Silent Richard, and the gentle old warrior’s eyes blazed back at her. He reached into his vest and pulled out the little good luck charm that Anwen had made for him – the cross woven of St John’s Wort. He held it where she could see it and gave her a single nod. Pick me, both men seemed to be saying. We are the Children of Owain. Nothing that can be done to us can diminish us.

  Madeleine understood, at last, that she must pick. If she did not, ultimately, Sir Roland would squeeze souls – Jeremy’s and Richard’s, certainly – her own, her sister’s, her father’s, and Brenton’s, probably. Even poor Jack Sorespot and Roger Ringworm might be targeted. Over Lady Joan’s shoulder, Madeleine saw her father shake his head with anger and frustration. She recognised the signs. His famous temper was shaking itself loose from whatever controls he’d managed to place on it. But that, she knew, considering Sir Roland’s state of mind, would only hasten and ensure a terrible ending. She drew breath, intent on . . . something! Some sound, some name – she didn’t know what or whose – would come out! She just knew she had to keep Gwilym quiet and her family safe. But it was not her voice that broke the silence. It was the voice of Maude, for a third time, moaning aloud. And then the voice of Myfanwy, saying, “It ends.”

  Her voice, soft yet strangely insistent, cracked through the silence. The group around her parted as everyone in the room turned their eyes in her direction. On the floor, on makeshift pallets, Madeleine could see the two unconscious forms to which Myfanwy had been attending. One was a barrel – the great figure of Brenton LeGros. The other was a post – the thin, starved looking form of Roger Ringworm. Madeleine wondered which of them Myfanwy was giving up on.

  For a long, slow count, it seemed that the mystic woman had revealed all she was going to reveal. Her focus had immediately fallen away, to some invisible middle distance. Suddenly, though, she revived and turned her attention to Maude whose hand had crept blindly out in search of Myfanwy’s. Maude’s head was tilted querulously and her eyes closed, as though she was falling asleep. Except for the tears. Only then did Myfanwy speak once again.

  “It is ended.”

  She drew a long, shuddering breath and looked about the hall. A strand of spider silk, fallen from the rafters, slithered through a shaft of sunlight before her. She caught it by the trailing filament and held it up. A small dark spider swung at its end. She looked to see where it would have landed – somewhere on Brenton’s legs. With great deliberation, Myfanwy moved her hand, so that the spider circled Maude’s head – once, twice, three times. Then she returned it to its original path and let it fall onto Brenton.

  “Luck for both,” she murmured. And finally, to Sir Roland, she said, “Both these men,” indicating Silent Richard and Jeremy, “are imposters.”

  She looked at Jack Sorespot whose head was already beginning to shake a rejection of what was to come. She reached out, put a steadying hand on his shoulder.

  “Owain Glyndwr,” she said softly, as though speaking only to him, “Lord of Glyndyfrdwy, heir to the Kingdom of Powys, bids his children farewell.” To Sir Roland, she said, “He lies newly dead this morning, a long day’s march through the forest from here. This boy can show you where.”

  Stillness. Quiet. Two dozen hearts continued to pound out their little rhythms. Bumpety bump. Then came the cry, small and shrill. It was as though a lark had suddenly forgotten how to fly and was falling out of the heavens. It came from Jack Sorespot. As Madeleine watched, he sank like a broken thing, to his knees, his head thrown back. The heels of his hands were clamped over his ears. Too late to block the sound. His eyes were clenched shut. Too late to block the vision. A loved life ends. One’s own persists. Madeleine’s heart flew out to him. Go ahead, she thought. Go ahead and cry.

  Owain Glyndwr had been the one reliable source of love, the one source of protection, the one real anchor Jack had known in the eternal single breath of his life. And he was gone. Simply and irretrievably gone. Life is like a shrill whistle heard in a glen – immediate, sharp and commanding, and finished in the space of a breath. How could Jack know that?

  Not so surprising then that, in the Great Hall of Clun Castle, before a crowd of strangers, his little red-headed heart, already brittle with fear and loneliness, commenced to breaking, as all hearts do, in the most irresistible and unstoppable of fashions. The little cry extended into a keening, animal wail that peeled out of his throat – long, dry and wordless. It crashed about the hall, sucked a skerrick of warmth from everyone’s blood and blew a whiff of mortality up every nostril.

  The cry ended. Echoes lingered. Then the unutterable silence flooded in. In later times, other voices would fill the empty places. For now, it was Silent Richard who reached out to Jack. Though death was one of Richard’s oldest acquaintances, he surrounded Jack with his arms and shed his own bitter, old man’s tears. Across the room, Jeremy lowered himself to a bench, dropped his cartoon of a face into his hands and sobbed. Lady Margaret, reaching a solicitous hand toward him, thought better of it and drew it back. No one thought to doubt Myfanwy’s word. Not even Sir Roland. Her aura was simply one that spoke of knowledge and truth. Sir Roland turned his dry gaze back on her, waiting for more information. She shook her head.

  “There is no more.”

  * * * *

  Within minutes, the anger fell out of Sir Roland like an egg falling out of a chicken. He spent a little time examining it – tapping its shell and turning it over, as though wondering what it was made of. His thoughts went something like this: The Elizabeth Douglas incident (whatever the damned woman had been up to), well . . She was gone – back to Scotland, presumably. And Lady Joan’s ‘word’ would protect him from repercussions. So let that go. And Glyndwr? The mournful carry-on in the hall seemed assurance enough that he really was dead – not, if it came down to it, that he hadn’t been as good as dead anyhow, for a decade or more! So let that go, too. The imposters? Clearly a pair of soft-headed idiots – possibly remnants of the once fearless Plant Owain. But obviously too decrepit and senile to worry about. He’d look a fool, taking them to London! So let that go, as well. And Clun Castle? Run down. Obsolete. Preposterous. A potential hole in someone’s pocket; just big enough to lose one’s self-esteem through. He’d never wanted anything to do with it, anyhow.

  He was mildly disappointed that there would be no blood, of course. Blood was always useful . . . for . . . ? Something. He couldn’t think what. Emphasis maybe. Still. The man Rowe was gone. And so too was a perfectly disgra
ceful knight. Perhaps that would do.

  The decision slid into his mind as quietly as a caterpillar slipping into a cabbage.

  He drew his sword half-way from its scabbard and thrust it back with an ear-catching clunk.

  “I’ve decided!” he announced. “This castle . . ! What with the stables gone and winter appearing to be at hand . . . ! The animals can’t be properly protected in this castle. Rebuilding’s out o’ the question. Especially with the steward being dead! So . . . I’m going to recommend to Sir Edmund, the Earl of March, that Clun Castle . . . be abandoned.” With barely a pause to let that soak in, he snapped his fingers at Gwilym and barked, “Reeve! Lady Margaret and I will be leaving . . . within the hour . . . to return to Hampton Court. The Lady Joan de Beaufort – and her travelling companions – will be leaving with us.” He turned back to Joan. “I’m sure your uncle . . . the king . . .” (he smiled in a perfunctory, argue-this-if-you-can sort of manner) “would expect me to see you safely out o’ the Marches, Milady. For your own safety, of course.” He turned back to Gwilym. “Our baggage is to follow. No later than tomorrow.”

  With that, he turned on his heel and left the hall. The people of Clun would not hear his voice again. Lady Margaret, finding herself on her own, curtsied quickly to Lady Joan, stepped back and turned to follow her husband. On her way past Jeremy Talbot, though, she paused, touched his shoulder and bent to whisper. “To me,” she said, “you will always be . . . the mighty Owain Glyndwr.” And then, she too was gone.

  That was the moment, without any real fanfare, that the history of Clun Castle began to end, the last duty of its steward passed into the hands of a peasant farmer.

  * * * *

  The witnesses to the change, for a period, subsided into a strange sort of limbo. Fear, relief, loss, shock and confusion moiled through them. What had happened? What did it mean? Gwilym was one of the first to find momentum and it carried him directly to Madeleine. He knelt before her, putting his great hand on her pale cheek. Then, flustered and embarrassed, he reached to touch her wounded foot.

  “How’re ye, girl? Are ye . . . ?”

  Her insides were quivering like the wings of a cricket and she wasn’t yet certain that she wouldn’t vomit. But she said, “I’m alright, da’! I jus . . . !”

  She held herself stiffly upright, her mouth open, trying to still her heart, control her trembling, find words of apology. For being, somehow, the focal point of all the troubles that had beset Clun. But she had no words. It was the first time she and her father had spoken directly since the morning she’d entered the forest with Anwen and all she wanted to do was look away.

  “Maudie,” she sniffed. “Best see to Maudie, da’!”

  Maude was wending her way through the crowd, heading not for her own family but for Lady Joan de Beaufort who remained in a close huddle with Sir Perceval and Marie. In the quietest of tones, the French couple were stroking Joan back into a semblance of calm. She’d been perfect, they were telling her. If she’d buckled under Roland’s bullying tactics – if she’d let slip anything of her complicity with Elizabeth Douglas – or even hinted that she knew the Scot’s real identity – the question of treason would not have melted away so easily.

  “If he was not convinced,” a wide-eyed and smiling Sir Perceval was saying as Maude approached, “at least he dared not openly doubt! Bravo!” And Marie, shaking her head in wonder, was adding in a whisper, “For an English girl to hold her nerve like that . . .! I tell you truly! Even a French girl could have done no better! And there is no higher compliment than that!”

  Maude appeared at their sides and Sir Perceval gave her his warmest smile.

  “Ahh, Maude! Another brave English girl!” He gave her a shallow bow. “I salute you, and all your family! You have survived your . . .” he waved his arms as though describing the explosion of a roman candle, “. . . your experience of castle life, non? It is more exciting even than you feared, n’est ce pas?”

  Maude’s earnest gaze stayed on him until he finished, then she said, “I know what the message means! The one the lady sent!”

  Marie immediately stepped forward, grasping Maude’s hands and manoeuvring herself to fill Maude’s line of vision.

  “The message is explained, Maude!” she said very softly and emphatically, anxious that that topic not be further scrutinised within hearing of Sir Roland’s knights. “All are content! You cannot know more . . . !”

  She stumbled to a stop, startled by something in Maude’s eyes. It was as if a great cat had suddenly appeared there and winked at her and Maude stepped around her, unhindered.

  “You were in the dream!” she said to Joan. “On a white horse! White horse means a weddin’! An’ a dyin’!”

  Joan, still quaking from her ordeal with Sir Roland, heard only the last words.

  “A dying? What are you saying, Maude? Are we not safe? Is James not safe?”

  “First a weddin’,” Maude clarified. “A great weddin’! An’ there’s a crown! I saw it the day you came to Clun! Ribbons I thought first, then . . . !”

  “No, Maude!” hissed Joan, pulling Maude into her arms to stifle the flow of words. “You mustn’t say that! Please! You must go back to your family and your life, Maude, and be thankful for it and forget this dream! For your safety as well as mine! Please!”

  Maude wasn’t sure why such an important message would be rebuffed but, with Gwilym’s hand settling on her shoulder, and him in no mood to have any of his family anywhere near a member of the gentry, she had no choice but to obey. With a muttered apology, he drew her away and Sir Perceval, in obvious relief, did the same with Joan and Marie.

  * * * *

  When Gwilym left her, Madeleine had closed her eyes and gripped the edges of her stool. The room had spun even faster, but she’d persisted, preferring the dizziness to the sweating grey of the stone walls. It was out of that dizziness that Anwen appeared, crouched at her side, tapping for attention, her eyes flooded with tears.

  “Oh Maddie!” she wailed, dropping her head into her sister’s lap. “We’re alright!” It was part affirmation, part question. “How did we manage it?”

  Madeleine looked away. It truly was the right question. They’d been put like peas in a conjuror’s cup, shaken about and plunged into darkness. What cup were they under now? On what table? And what would they see when the cup was lifted?

  “I truly don’ know, Annie! I’m jus’ not willin’ to move, case the sky falls in! But . . . look!” She felt a need to deflect both their attentions. “You don’ need to be cryin’! You foun’ Brenton, didn’ ye? An’ what did the family need more’n another man to be looking after, eh?” Anwen’s laugh was little more than a pair of hiccups. “An’ look there!” Madeleine continued, pointing across the room. “Shy ol’ Maudie, standin’ right up, talkin’ to them high-born folk! See how important our fam’ly suddenly got? Be gettin’ visits from the king, next we know!”

  And, as though that visitor was even now at the gate, they heard Gwilym’s voice boom out: “Come in! Everybody in!”

  While their heads had been down, Sir Roland’s knights had melted away and the villagers, having crept again into the courtyard, were now crowding up to the Great Hall itself. It was a sign of changing views in Clun that Gwilym’s invitation was sufficient. They churned in and from their midst, a sobbing Gwenith emerged, falling into the arms of Gwilym and Maude. They brought her to Madeleine’s stool where, together again at last, the five of them tangled briefly in an awkward five-way embrace. But brief it was because Gwilym suddenly realised that Silent Richard and Jeremy, being now free, were preparing to disappear back into the forest before he had a chance to speak with them; and Anwen and Gwenith found they needed to inspect Brenton’s injuries; and Maude found herself drawn, like a nail to a magnet, back to Myfanwy. So before she had a chance to feel overwhelmed, Madeleine was alone again, marooned on her stool, finding that solitude no longer felt comfortable. She caught a glance from Eustace, who was sidling
by toward the door.

  “Eustace! Help me outside?”

  She reached for him and he came to her, putting an arm about her, lifting with a strength she’d never known he had. She let him draw her arm over his shoulder and press his hip to hers. She let his hand spread itself against her ribs and she let him bump a path for them through the crowd. Out in the cold light of day, she let him choose a seat for her on the edge of a trough. But when he stood irresolutely beside her, gazing silently across at the burnt remains of the stable, she decided not to let him ignore her.

  “So! Ye finally got to kill someone, eh?”

  He shook his head. “ ‘e was a bad ‘un, Maddie! Knights en’t s’posed to be like that.”

  “Did you . . . ,” she began, not sure she wanted to know the answer to this particular question. “Was it like you thought it’d be? Did you like it? Did you like killin’ ‘im, Eustace?”

  He looked at his feet and scuffed the ground.

  “I gotta go, Maddie. Sir Roland be leavin’ soon, an’ I have to be ready.” He began walking, but only a few steps out he turned and came back to her.

  “I reckon there’s lots o’ things in the world that jus’ can’t be enjoyed, Maddie. But someone’s got to do ‘em, see? Your da’ taught me that. An’ another thing he taught me is, ye gotta want happiness. Ye gotta wring a bit of it out’ve every day.” He bent down and kissed her lightly on the cheek. “I hope you get to be happy one day, Maddie.” He turned and began walking away.

  “Eustace?”

  He stopped, turned, regarded her from several yards away. She waited a moment, but it was clear he was not coming back – had already almost gone.

  “Good luck then, eh? I ‘ope you get to meet the king! If anyone deserves that, you do.”