Time and Chance

  Flies were already buzzing about the body and if Jan were left unprotected, they’d soon be laying their eggs in his mouth and nose. In less than a day, his flesh would be crawling with maggots. It occurred to Kort that he’d seen too many corpses, buried too many friends.

  Klaas leaned over to close Jan’s eyes, for there was something unnerving, even accusing, about that blind, blue-white stare, only to recoil as soon as he touched the dead man’s skin. “Jesú! He’s still warm!”

  “I know,” Kort said grimly. There was no need to say more. Jan had died as the night waned, slain by a killer bold enough to venture alone into an enemy encampment, his presence observed only by a small stray dog.

  HENRY’S WRATH was volcanic. Seething and swearing, he paced the cramped confines of his command tent, raging at the murder of his men and the treachery of the Welsh and the appalling ineptitude of his guards. No one interrupted his harangue, knowing from experience that it was safer just to let his furies burn themselves out.

  “A half dozen men dead, throats slit! And no one hears or sees a bloody thing? I’ve a mind to hang some of the sentries. I daresay that would encourage the rest of them to stay awake on duty!”

  Rainald didn’t really think his nephew would carry out that threat, but he deemed it prudent, nevertheless, to deflect his anger away from the sentries and back onto a more legitimate target. “The Welsh know these woods the way one of our soldiers knows his local alehouse. They can shadow us at their ease, knowing they’re well nigh invisible in that God-awful tangle of trees and brush, awaiting their chance to strike. If you ask me, it is a craven way to fight a war, a coward’s way.”

  “It is that,” Henry said tersely. “There is no honor in stabbing a man whilst he sleeps.”

  The other men echoed their heartfelt agreement, all but Ranulf, who was conspicuously silent. Henry’s eyes narrowed. “What say you, Uncle? Surely you have some thoughts about these loathsome killings?”

  Ranulf knew he should keep quiet. But he’d been keeping quiet for far too long, a mute and unwilling accomplice to this English invasion of his homeland. “If my house was broken into, my only concern would be to protect my family and my home—any way I could.”

  “That is a peculiar comparison, by God,” Henry said incredulously. “You would equate an outlaw’s crime with a king’s campaign to punish disloyal vassals?”

  “The Welsh do not see themselves as disloyal vassals.”

  “Do they not? Well, they will soon learn different, that I can promise you. For all their delusions of grandeur, they are no more than malcon tented rebels on the run, afraid to face us in the field.”

  “If you truly believe that, you’re in for a rude awakening.”

  “Indeed?” Henry’s tone was sardonic. “So you think, then, that they might yet find enough backbone to fight us fairly?”

  Ranulf’s mouth twisted. “If by that, you mean in the field, one army against another, no, they will not do that. Why should they? They are winning, after all.”

  “The Devil they are!” Henry strode forward to glare at his uncle, as the others marveled at Ranulf’s audacity. “I have enough Welsh foes skulking about in the woods, need none in my own tent!”

  “I thought this was why I was here—to tell you what the Welsh are thinking. Or am I only to say what you want to hear? Like it or not, my lord king, the Welsh do think they are winning this war, and why not? Those men we are burying this morn are not Welsh, and I’d wager that the next graves dug won’t be for the Welsh, either.”

  Henry’s breath hissed between his teeth. He made an abrupt gesture of dismissal, which Ranulf was more than willing to obey. Ducking under the tent flap, he began to walk through the camp. The sky was overcast, the air uncomfortably humid; within a few steps, his tunic was damp with sweat and his hauberk felt as heavy as lead. Off to his right, a small group of men were conducting a brief funeral for one of the night’s victims, soldiers standing somberly around a shallow grave. The guttural murmurs of Flemish caught Ranulf’s ear as he passed and he paused for a moment, feeling a prickle of pity for any man who’d died so far from his own homeland. At least if he was struck down in this accursed war, he’d be dying on Welsh soil.

  He had not expected his emotions to be so raw, his anger so close to the surface. He had thought that he could handle the pull of conflicting loyalties, as he had in the past. But this time it was different. He was betraying the Welsh by fighting with the English, betraying the English by hoping the Welsh would win, and betraying himself with each stifled breath he drew. And the end was not yet in sight.

  RANULF WAS SEATED upon a fallen log, gazing out upon the forest fastness of Ceiriog, when Henry finally found him. “I’ve been scouring the entire damned camp for you, Uncle, began to think you’d ridden off on your own.”

  “I thought about it,” Ranulf said tonelessly, and Henry grimaced, then sat down beside him upon the log.

  “I know you do not want to be here,” he said after a long silence. “If truth be told, neither do I, Ranulf. I’ve never hungered for Welsh conquest; what man in his senses would? Look around you,” he said, gesturing toward the encroaching wall of trees and brambles. “This whole wretched country is a fortress. And we have not even gotten into the mountains yet. This campaign has not gone at all as I planned—and I do not always take it with good grace when my plans go awry.”

  “Do tell,” Ranulf murmured, but there was a softening beneath the sarcasm, for that was as close to an apology as Henry could get and they both knew it. “So now what, Harry? Do I lie the next time you ask me how I think your war is going?”

  “You know better. There are precious few people I can trust to tell me the truth, but you are one of them.”

  “The truth, then. I think you will be making a great mistake to continue on with this campaign. The Welsh will keep on harassing us with their contrary tactics, bleeding away your army’s strength with quick raids and retreats, fading back into the woods ere you can retaliate. War by attrition, the wearing down of the enemy. In your words, it may indeed not be honorable. But it works, Harry. It works.”

  “I know,” Henry admitted. “But I am not about to give up, Ranulf. I cannot do that, for a king who lets one rebellion go unpunished will soon see others springing up all over his domains. Think of weeds in a garden, if you will. Stop pulling them up and the garden is lost.”

  “What will you do, then? Just press ahead by day, keep losing men by night?”

  “No,” Henry said, “that would be a fool’s play. The rules of this game are too heavily slanted in Owain Gwynedd’s favor. So—I mean to change the rules.”

  FROM THEIR VANTAGE POINT upon the heights of the Berwyn Mountains, they looked out upon the vast, green expanse of the Ceiriog Valley. They had come to see for themselves if their scouts’ reports were accurate, and they stared down in silence now at the devastation being wrought below them. The woods echoed with the sounds of axes and hatchets, the cursing of men, the snorting of horses as they struggled to uproot saplings and lightning-scarred hollow trunks. Henry’s bowmen fanned out in defense of the axe wielders, yelling hoarse warnings when trees began to topple. It was a slow, laborious process, but the English army was cutting a swath through the thick underbrush on each side of the road, hacking away at the trees, brambles, and scrub providing cover for Welsh bowmen or Welsh ambushers. The Ceiriog Valley would be scarred for years to come by the passage of the English army.

  Hywel was not easily shocked, but this purposeful and far-reaching destruction did shock him, both by the scope of the damage done and by the arrogance of the English king. A man who thought he could impose his will even upon nature was as dangerous as he was mad. He saw his foreboding reflected upon the faces of the other Welsh princes; even his half-brother Davydd seemed daunted by what they were watching, an attack upon the very land of Wales itself.

  Rhys ap Gruffydd swore, then leaned over and spat. “There is nothing worse than an enemy with imagination.”
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  “I wonder that he did not just order the woods to part, like Moses at the Red Sea,” Hywel said bleakly. To his surprise, his bitter jest seemed to amuse his father, for Owain’s mouth was curving in a slight smile. Hywel’s own humor rarely failed him, but to save his soul, he could not wring a single drop of amusement from their present plight. How could they hope to defeat in the field an army so much larger than theirs? “It looks as if we shall have to revise our battle plans. We were so sure they’d not get across the Berwyns, so sure . . .”

  “I still am,” Owain said, and they all turned in their saddles to stare at him.

  “Why?” Blunt as ever, Rhys was regarding his uncle with an odd mixture of dubious hope. “Why should a mountain range halt a man willing to chop down an entire forest?”

  “Have you so forgotten your Scriptures, Rhys? I suggest you think upon Proverbs.”

  That was less than illuminating to Rhys and Davydd. Much to Davydd’s vexation, it was his brother, with a poet’s love of the written word, who solved the puzzle. “ ‘Pride goeth before destruction,’ ” Hywel quoted, “ ‘and a haughty spirit before a fall.’ ”

  “Exactly,” Owain said, so approvingly that Davydd’s jealousy rose in his throat like bile. “What could be more prideful than this? Only Our Lord God is omnipotent, not the King of England. That is a lesson this Henry Fitz Empress needs to learn, and I do believe it is one he will be taught, for such prideful presumption is surely displeasing to the Almighty.”

  The others did not doubt that the English king was not in God’s Favor, for soon after crossing into Wales, his soldiers had plundered and burned several churches. But they did not have Owain’s apparent faith in divine retribution, not with the English army soon to be within striking distance of the Welsh heartland. Owain saw their skepticism and laughed softly.

  “Oh, ye of little faith,” he said mockingly. “You want proof of the Almighty’s Intent, do you?” Wetting his forefinger, he held it up. “The wind has shifted—from the northwest to the northeast. Need I tell you what that means?”

  He did not, for these were men who, of necessity, had long ago learned to read the skies and cloud patterns as a monk might study the Holy Word. That wind change signaled a coming storm.

  FOR DAYS, the sky had been heavy with clouds, the air muggy and uncomfortably close. Passing birds were flying much lower to the ground than usual. The last visible sunset had turned the sky a dull red. There were Englishmen as adept as the Welsh in interpreting nature’s portents, and so Henry’s army had fair warning that unsettled weather was on the way.

  They were not men to be disheartened by a few summer showers, though. Rain was an occupational hazard of the soldier, particularly in a land as wet as Wales. As long as they no longer had to shy at shadows and fear that there was a Welsh bowman lurking behind every tree, they were willing to slog through a little mud. That seemed a fair trade for being able to sleep again at night. Morale had soared with each felled tree, each trampled bush. It was slow going, but what of it? Once they got to the Berwyns, they’d make better time, for its slopes were not as deeply wooded as the valley. Their Welsh guides would lead them across the barren heaths and bogs and over the mountain pass toward a reckoning with the Welsh army at Corwen. After that, they could go home, for few doubted that they would prevail once the two forces met on the battlefield.

  There was still an hour or so of daylight remaining when the English at last reached the foothills of the Berwyn range. But the wind had picked up and the clouds to the west looked like billowing black anvils. Henry was pleased with the progress they’d made and decided to reward the men by making camp instead of pushing on till dusk. They hastily set up their tents, laid out their bedrolls, and braced themselves to ride out the breaking storm.

  Soon after dark, the rains began. It was immediately apparent that this was no mere summer soaker. The winds were shrieking through the camp, collapsing tents and terrifying the horses. Men who left their shelter were drenched within moments, half drowned in the downpour. Just before midnight, hail mixed with the rain, ice pellets the size of coins pelting the ground and stinging every inch of exposed skin on the unfortunate sentries. Sleep was the first casualty of the storm and, for all, it was a wakeful, nerve-racking night.

  Although his command tent had withstood the tempest, Henry had gotten no more rest than his soldiers, listening to the howling of the wind and the occasional shouts when another tent was blown down. Daylight brought no respite from the gale. If anything, it seemed to intensify, and Henry had no choice but to order them to remain in camp until the storm passed. The day was torture for so impatient a soul as Henry’s. He might be drier than most of his men, but he was no less miserable, trapped in his tent as the hours dragged by and his frustration festered. The night was easier, for he finally fell into an exhausted sleep. But upon awakening, he discovered that the wind still raged and the rain continued to fall in torrents.

  When Henry announced that they would break camp and head out, his audience looked at him as if he’d lost his senses. Watching as his men struggled to take down their tents and load the wagons and packhorses, he soon realized they were right. The meadow had become a quagmire and men slipped and lurched and sank to their knees in the muck. The wind hindered them as much as the mud, tearing at the tent stakes and blowing over one of the supply wagons. As sacks of flour split open and a keg rolled down the hillside, spewing out a spray of ale in its wake, Henry hastily countermanded himself, and his sodden, shivering soldiers gratefully pitched their tents again, seeking what small comfort they could find under wet blankets and dripping mantles.

  For the rest of his days, Henry was to refer to the squall upon the Berwyns with the very worst of the obscenities he had at his considerable command. Never had he encountered a storm so savage, or so long-lasting. Ironically, the English would have fared better had they still been down in the Ceiriog Forest they’d been so eager to leave behind. Here upon the unsheltered moors, they were at the mercy of the elements. Fires could not be set as kindling was saturated, the ground soaked. The only food available was what could be eaten uncooked or raw, and men were soon sickening, stricken by chills, fever, and the feared bloody flux. Henry was far less superstitious than most of his contemporaries, with a skeptical streak that few besides Eleanor either understood or appreciated. But even he began to wonder if such foul weather could be dismissed as mere happenchance.

  When the rain finally eased up two days later, the English army resumed its march, only to discover that the mountain road was washed away in places, the streams swollen with runoff water, and the moorlands pitted with newly formed bogs. Still, they pressed on, driven by the sheer force of Henry’s implacable will. By now some of the ailing men had begun to die. They were buried with indecent haste, left to molder in an alien, hostile land, and the army straggled on. They had a new concern now—their dwindling supplies, for some of their provisions had been lost or ruined during the storm. But when they sent out a hunting party to search for game, it did not come back. Hungry and dispirited, the soldiers trudged on, cursing the Welsh aloud and Henry under their breaths.

  They were higher up now and the air held a surprising chill for August. Henry had dismounted and was wrapping a blindfold around his stallion’s eyes, for there was a narrow stretch of road ahead and English horses were not as accustomed to these heights as the surefooted animals the Welsh rode. The wind was still pursuing them, shrieking at night like the souls of the damned, chasing away sleep and catching their words in midsentence, so that men had to shout to make themselves heard. Now a sudden gust ripped the blindfold from Henry’s hand and sent it flying. He was turning to get another strip of cloth when the screams began.

  One of the Flemish sergeants lay bleeding in the road, struck by a large rock that had come plummeting from the heights above them. Before anyone could reach the injured man, other rocks began to roll down the slope, and then there was a roaring sound and part of the cliff crumbled away, a
wave of mud and turf and boulders engulfing the dazed soldier and those who’d hastened to his aid. Henry clung to his plunging stallion’s reins, somehow kept the petrified animal from bolting. Hitching it to the closest wagon, he ran forward. But there was nothing to be done. Their broken bodies swept along like debris in a floodtide, the men caught in the avalanche were gone.

  As soon as they could find a suitable place to pitch camp, Henry ordered it done even though it was not yet dusk. He’d seen the stunned faces of his men, staring down mutely at the torn-up, flattened grass that marked the mudslide’s track, and he ordered, as well, an extra ration of ale with supper. But that night he was awakened by the sound he most dreaded to hear: the drumbeat of rain upon the canvas roof of his tent.

  ALL EYES were upon Henry. But no one spoke. It had already been said, the arguments made for retreat. The wretched weather. The danger of another mudslide. Men with empty bellies and loose bowels and a weakened will to fight. The specter of hunger stalking them as relentlessly as the shadowy, unseen wolves who’d learned that armies were worth trailing. Henry knew that the arguments were right, rooted in common sense and a realistic assessment of their worsening plight. But still the words stuck in his throat as he turned and finally said, “So be it. Make ready to withdraw at first light.”

  Every man in the tent was relieved by that grudging command, none more so than Ranulf. He sagged down on one of Henry’s coffers, drawing his first easy breath in weeks. But then Henry said grimly, “We will go back to Chester and await the arrival of the fleet I hired from the Danes in Dublin. This war is not over yet.”