Chapter Nineteen
Meg
"My tongue feels like the backside of a dog," Goronwy said. I mopped his brow with a warm washcloth. He'd woken, ill as all the men were, and now lay sprawled on his back on one of the benches in the hall. He'd vomited when he'd tried to lift his head earlier, and both of us were loath for him to try again.
"I believe it was the mead," Llywelyn said.
"I did not over-drink last night!" Goronwy said, conscious enough now to work up the energy to thwart any aspersions on his character.
"I didn't say you did," Llywelyn said. "The healer believes it was poppy juice, which can cause deep sleep-sometimes too deep, but thankfully not in this case."
"By the Saints! Who's the witch who poisoned us?" he said.
"No witch, Goronwy," Llywelyn said. "Merely a man who worked for Roger Mortimer against me. He has paid for his mistakes with his life."
"You caught him, my lord?" Goronwy said. "Do we know him?"
"Mortimer removed his head from his body to show his displeasure at the outcome of the plot," Llywelyn said.
"The whole thing wasn't very well planned anyway," I said. "Why did the man keep the gates open, when Roger Mortimer rode in from the north? He couldn't even get into the castle from the north because both the towers are built to block access to the gatehouses from any direction but the drawbridges."
"He could, actually," said Llywelyn. "The ford of Rhyd Bernard is just upstream of the confluence of the Usk and Honddu. He didn't think he needed it, though."
"Because he had the gate in the undercroft."
"Well, yes, but was he going to lead those horses through there one by one?" Llywelyn said.
"Okay, you're right," I said. "I was surprised at all those stairs for horses to navigate at Castell y Bere, but here-were they going to get up from the kitchen to the hall?"
"That's the point, of course," Goronwy said. "The stairs leading down to the postern gate at Castell y Bere are behind the stables as an added protection in case someone decides to enter that way. I confess, I never thought of putting the door in the kitchen."
"Anyway," Llywelyn said, "Mortimer said that his scouts saw Meg and me enter through the southern gate. They may have been close behind us when we went in, but as soon as we closed the portcullis, were forced to ride west to the nearest ford across the Usk."
"A long way as it's in flood," Goronwy said.
"That they rode around is the reason we had enough time to do what we did," Llywelyn said. "Luck, as Roger said."
"Luck serves those who are best prepared, my lord," Goronwy said. Llywelyn and I exchanged a look. Llywelyn settled himself on the bench at Goronwy's feet and Goronwy lay back, his hand across his eyes. "It isn't as if it hasn't worked before."
"Taking a castle by stealth, you mean," Llywelyn said.
"You mean like the Trojan horse?" I asked.
Llywelyn smiled, his eyes alight. "You've read Homer?"
"Not in the original, but yes."
"But you know the story," he said, "how the Greeks built a giant horse to hold their men. The Trojans, thinking the offering a gift to their gods, brought it inside their city."
"They had to tear down their own gates to do it, I believe," Goronwy said. "Certainly a lesson to us all."
I touched Llywelyn's arm and spoke in a low voice. "They found the city. Six hundred years from now they uncovered the walls and the gold-much as Homer described."
Goronwy and Llywelyn gaped at me.
"Sorry," I said.
Llywelyn took in a deep breath. "Don't be sorry, Meg. It's disorienting to have you speak thus. At times, I don't know what's real and what's not."
"I know what's real," Goronwy said, "and it has to do with a man trying to assassinate you. It's convenient for Mortimer, isn't it, that the conspirators are all dead?"
"Mortimer knew what he was doing," Llywelyn said. "What else does he have in store for us?"
"You really think there was only the one?"
"Two," Llywelyn said. "Lacey's body is in the kitchen. He must have gone north to Wigmore Castle to meet Mortimer, and then returned with a companion to implement their plot. I killed Lacey before I blocked the door to the passage."
"Oh." I looked away, unable to ask him how he felt about that-how he could take a life and then shrug it off-or appear to shrug it off. Was that what he was going to teach our son?
Goronwy read my thoughts. "You think it doesn't bother him, Meg? You've never heard him talking in his sleep, words you might not understand? Shouting sometimes, even?"
"Goronwy," Llywelyn said, a warning in his voice.
I kept my eyes on Goronwy. "I've heard him."
Goronwy nodded. "Don't let the bluff talk and the bravado fool you. If you think that our prince will not relive the moment he killed Lacey, or forget the light fading from his eyes, then you don't know him, or any of us. We live with it every day. Too many men allow the drink to take them rather than admit how much they care; and it's then that they cease to be Welshmen and become something less than human, which is of no use to me, in battle or otherwise."
"Yes, Goronwy." He was right. I'd chafed at Llywelyn earlier about the fate of our son, but I should have known better who Llywelyn was. I had heard him in the night.
I'd also seen the young men, pale and stammering after the skirmish at the Gap, and seen the vomit mixed with blood on the road. What scared me was how human they all still seemed, even though their daily lives were full of what no man should have to bear-and what he couldn't bear and remain the person he was before the killing. That's what I feared for my son, and didn't know how to deal with, despite Llywelyn's reassurance.
I'd had a friend who'd joined the National Guard in college and was sent to Kuwait during the Gulf War. His tank was one of the first to cross into Kuwait City. Seven hundred years later, men talked about war in the same way men did here: in public, bravado and beer; in private, hollowness in their voices and vacancy in their eyes when the emotion they held tight inside their chests threatened to overwhelm them.
Too often in the twentieth century, we thought of war as not unlike playing a video game. Killing was mostly from a distance, with our bombs and our long-range mortars. But not my friend. His tank had killed hundreds of men, he said, and there were nights he lay awake, reliving the deaths of every single one of them. Just like Llywelyn.
Goronwy was still looking at me and I met his gaze. He nodded. "If you really are who you say you are, Meg, I can't imagine what your world must be like."
"I almost can't either, anymore," I said.
"What else might be in store for us?" he asked. "Can you tell me?"
"I don't know of any coming battles. Not for a long while, but I've been wrong before."
"That history of yours, Meg," Goronwy said, fingering his lip. "I'm not sure that very much of it is right."
"Quite honestly, I'm not either," I said.
"Are you sure about what happens at Cilmeri?"
"Yes," I said. "That I'm sure of."
Then Llywelyn put a hand on Goronwy's shoulder. "By the way, Meg and I have some good news, my friend."
"Do you now?" Goronwy looked from Llywelyn to me. A grin had split Llywelyn's face and he punched the air. I tried hard not to smile, but I couldn't keep it suppressed in the face of Llywelyn's joy.
"Really? Do you mean ... a baby?"
"Yes!" Llywelyn clapped a hand on Goronwy's shoulder.
It was a bit different from Trev's reaction when I'd told him I was pregnant with Anna. He'd been mad at first-understandable in retrospect, given how young we both were, me especially at not even eighteen. We'd gone for a walk in a park-the best way I could see to tell him-and he'd driven off without me after I told him. I'd walked home, crying. I'd already told Mom, and when I'd informed her of Trev's reaction, her face had taken on a calm expression, instead of anger.
"Well then," she'd said. "We're on our own."
But then Trev had called a
nd apologized and I'd forgiven him. Mom said that if someone had told her what he'd become after Anna was born, she wouldn't have been surprised. But we hadn't known, either of us.
Llywelyn, however, was having a hard time containing himself. "We aren't going to tell anyone else, not for a while, not until it becomes obvious," he said, bouncing up and down on his toes. The two men grinned at each other and I wouldn't have been surprised if their heads had come off and floated around in the great hall all by themselves.
"Your brother won't be happy," Goronwy said.
"Ha!" Llywelyn said. "You have the right of it!
"I hate to rain on your parade," I said, "but it's going to be an impossible secret to keep. Do you imagine Maud doesn't know already? Or the maidservant? Everyone within a hundred mile radius of Brecon is counting the days until they're sure I'm late."
"At least there won't be any questions about paternity," Goronwy added, "not with as close as you've kept her."
I narrowed my eyes at him for speaking of it so openly. Men.