Here Be Dragons

  Cristyn was looking up intently into Llewelyn’s face, her hand on his arm. Saying all the things I cannot, Joanna thought. Llewelyn put his arm around Cristyn; they stood for a moment in a quiet embrace. It was, Joanna knew, just what it looked to be, but she felt a pang nonetheless, found herself resenting Cristyn for being able to offer the comfort she could not.

  Llewelyn had begun walking toward the great hall. He stopped when Joanna said his name, waited for her to reach him. She started to speak, but her words caught in her throat. His eyes were hollowed, his skin grey with fatigue; there was a bleak, bitter desolation in his face that went beyond grieving, that Joanna could not bear to look upon.

  For a long moment, Llewelyn studied her face, searching for something he could not find. “You still do not believe me, do you?”

  “Llewelyn, I…I cannot!”

  “No,” he said slowly, “I do not suppose you can. But to tell you the truth, Joanna, I do not know where that leaves us.”

  “Do not say that,” she whispered. “You cannot mean that. Jesú, Llewelyn, we have to talk!”

  “What would we say? I’ve just come from telling a man and his wife that their eleven-year-old son has been hanged, the son I took from them as a hostage. Do you truly think this is the time to defend John to me?”

  “I’m not defending him, I’m not!” But he was no longer listening; he’d turned away.

  Joanna stood as if rooted. She could feel eyes upon her, curious, gloating, pitying; they no longer mattered. At last she followed Llewelyn into the great hall, not knowing what else to do.

  She paused uncertainly in the doorway. And then she saw the self-appointed courier, the Shrewsbury blacksmith.

  “Why are you still here?”

  He was flustered by her tone, and stammered, “The priest…he said your lord husband might have additional questions for me, said I should wait for him…”

  “Wait for payment, you mean, wait for your blood money! Tell me, how much do you think my husband should give you? You’ve seen the grief you’ve brought upon us; what price do you put upon it?”

  Joanna heard her voice rising, shrill, accusatory. Llewelyn was suddenly at her side, saying, “Joanna, that is enough.”

  “No, it is not! This man goes into a tavern, hears a drunken stranger babbling in his cups, and suddenly he becomes a man with a mission, suddenly he cannot rest until he’s made sure that we’ve heard the latest alehouse gossip. Well, you’ve delivered your poisonous offering, you’ve had your moment of acclaim. But look around you and then tell me if it was worth it!”

  “You’re not being fair! It was more than gossip. I know the man spoke the truth.”

  “How could you possibly know that?” Joanna said, so scathingly that the man’s face flushed a resentful shade of red.

  He raised his chin, said defiantly, “The day the courier reached Shrewsbury, Robert de Vieuxpont hanged Prince Maelgwn’s younger son. He was just a lad, not yet seven, and he died at the King’s command. Why would I doubt, then, that the other hostages, too, were dead?”

  The emotional upheavals of the past two days had left Llewelyn without the capacity to feel shock, outrage, to feel anything at all…or so he’d believed. “Are you saying John had a seven-year-old boy hanged?” he demanded incredulously, and the blacksmith nodded.

  “I saw the boy’s body with my own eyes, my lord.”

  Their voices were echoing strangely in Joanna’s ears, growing faint and indistinct. The people, too, seemed to be receding, faces blurring, slightly out of focus. The scene before her had lost reality; she was in it but somehow no longer part of it. She turned, without haste, began to walk toward the door.

  “Joanna!” Llewelyn caught up with her in two strides, but she did not stop until he put his hand on her arm. She looked up at him, her face so still and remote that he felt an inexplicable throb of fear. “Are you all right?” he said, very low.

  “Yes.” He’d shifted his hands to her shoulders; she had to resist the urge to pull away, not wanting to be held, to be touched. “I want to be by myself, Llewelyn. I just want to be alone for a while.”

  He hesitated, and then stepped back. “We’ll talk later.”

  “Yes,” Joanna agreed politely. “Later.”

  Joanna slid the bolt into place. Only then, with the world shut out, did she begin to tremble. Moving to the bed, hers and Llewelyn’s, she lay back against the pillows. It came upon her without warning. Suddenly sweat broke out on her forehead, her face began to burn, and she was overcome by nausea. When it did not abate, she stumbled into the privy chamber. After some wretched moments, she vomited weakly into the privy hole.

  She heard knocking on the door; Catherine called her name. Then it grew quiet again. After a time she was able to return to the bedchamber, where she washed her face, rinsed her mouth out with wine. But the more she tried to make sense of what she’d been told, the more agitated she became. Her thoughts took flight, too swiftly for coherence, ricocheting wildly off the outer parameters of belief. She sought desperately to seize upon fragments of fact, to patch them into an intelligible pattern, one that would enable her to understand. But the raw, graphic horror of the images filling her brain blotted out all else. A bewildered child being led up onto a gallows. A woman screaming alone in the dark.

  A kaleidoscope of faces seemed to spin before her eyes. The florid, heavy face of the Shrewsbury blacksmith. Llewelyn’s, lean and dark and terrifyingly aloof. John’s, mouth quirking as if at some secret and very private joke. When she was little, their eyes would meet across a chamber, he’d wink, and she’d be flooded with happiness, reveling in the reassuring intimacy of their shared smiles. Had he smiled, too, as he gave the command to hang Maelgwn’s son? He was just a lad, not yet seven. John had Maude de Braose and her son cast into a dungeon at Windsor Castle, and then he starved them to death. He hanged the hostages; they’re dead…dead. She sank to her knees by the bed, but the voices would not stop. When she could endure them no longer, she fled the chamber.

  Catherine was waiting out on the porch. “Ah, Joanna, I’m so sorry…”

  “I want Llewelyn. Please, Catherine, bring him to me.”

  “I will, dearest,” Catherine said swiftly, soothingly. “I will. But a man has just ridden in, and he…he was there, Joanna, at Nottingham the day the hostages were hanged. Llewelyn is with him now. I know he’ll come to you as soon as he can.”

  “No!” Joanna shook her head vehemently. “No, I cannot wait!” She could hear her voice rising again, as it had in the hall. Her need for Llewelyn was an instinctive, blind groping toward the light, toward the only haven left to her, and she repeated, with the stubbornness born of shock, “I cannot wait. I must see him now.”

  Her eyes were clouded over, unfocused; they held a look Catherine had seen before, the dazed, defenseless look of a child half-awakening from a nightmare. Catherine had always been able to dispel childhood horrors with hugs and lit candles, but she had no comfort to offer Joanna, for her fears were not fantasy. She knew that Llewelyn would have no comfort, either.

  Llewelyn was standing by the dais; men had clustered around him, intent eavesdroppers upon this eyewitness account of the August 14 hangings. Joanna did not yet know what she would say to him. In truth, she did not want to talk at all, for there was nothing he could say to change what was—that the whole fabric of her life had been founded upon lies. She asked no more now than to be held, asked no more than the reassurance of physical closeness, the familiar feel of his embrace.

  She had almost reached Llewelyn when her gaze fell upon the man kneeling before him. Marc, the most trusted member of her household. Marc, whom she’d sent to Nottingham with a warning for John.

  “Morgan…” Llewelyn’s voice was husky, almost inaudible; he sounded stunned. “Tell my daughters.” And then he was moving away from the dais, moving swiftly toward the door. He passed within several feet of Joanna, but seemed as oblivious of her as he was of the others in the hall. She st
ood in stricken silence as the distance between them widened; she’d begun to tremble again.

  “Madame!”

  Marc had risen to his feet, was hastening toward her. He started to speak, but she did not give him the chance. “You told him. You told him about my letter.”

  He nodded. “Madame, I had to tell him. We’re at war with John. Why would I be in England…”

  Joanna was no longer listening. For a moment she closed her eyes. How could she face him? He might have understood yesterday, but now…Lady Mary, what was she to do?

  “Madame…did you not hear what I said about your stepson? He is not dead, Madame. He is not dead.”

  Llewelyn was standing by the window. He heard the door open behind him, but he did not turn, not until Joanna said his name.

  “Marc told me,” she said softly, “that Gruffydd is safe.”

  “Safe? Safe…oh, Christ!”

  Joanna had never heard so much raw emotion in his voice, so much fear. Tears began to burn her eyes.

  “Why did John spare him? Why?”

  “I…I do not know, Llewelyn.”

  “Hanging is not an easy death. But there are worse ways to die, much worse.”

  They looked at each other, and the same thought was in both their minds: Windsor Castle and the agony of Maude de Braose’s last days.

  “I have no way of knowing if Gruffydd is even still alive. John could have had him put to death yesterday…or tomorrow. Gruffydd will never know which sunset might be his last. And I can do nothing for him, nothing.”

  “Beloved…” But the right words eluded her. He’d spoken only the truth; how was she to dispute it? The silence was fraught with tension, with all that still lay unsaid between them. Moving to the table, she poured out a cupful of mead, all she could think to do for him.

  He took it from her, drank slowly, keeping his eyes upon her all the while, and then he said, “Do you want to tell me now what was in the letter you sent to John, the urgent letter that was for his eyes alone?”

  Her voice was little more than a whisper. “I…I warned him that he faced betrayal by his own men if he led an army into Wales.”

  She might have been a stranger of a sudden, a haggard, frightened woman looking up at him with eyes full of entreaty. “I trusted you,” he said. “I’ve never trusted a woman as I trusted you.”

  “It was all I could think to do, Llewelyn. If my father feared treachery, there was a chance he’d not come into Wales, that he’d abandon the invasion. I did it for you. Beloved, I swear it!”

  “Was this the first time? Or have you been keeping him informed all along? Have I been underestimating your talents? Loving wife, ardent bedmate—and John’s spy?”

  “No, Llewelyn, no!” Her voice broke and she began to weep.

  He watched, saying nothing. He’d taken the mead on an empty stomach, and it was beginning to have an effect; so, too, was the lack of sleep, the guilt, the grieving. His anger ebbed away, leaving only exhaustion in its wake. Joanna’s denial rang true, but it mattered little. Nothing mattered now but Gruffydd and what he faced at John’s hands.

  “Llewelyn, I would have told you, in truth I would. I meant to…”

  “I do not want to talk about it. Not tonight.”

  “But you do not understand, you’ve not let me explain—”

  “Joanna, not now!”

  The world had become a bewildering place to Davydd. His brother was dead. But then he was not. His sisters had been weeping continually. For three days now, his mother had been sleeping with Elen and him in the nursery. His father seemed no happier after learning that Gruffydd was alive, while his mother wept quietly in the night, and near dawn she’d awakened them all with her screams. Davydd did not understand.

  Sitting on the edge of his bed, he watched as his mother and Aunt Catrin folded his clothes into an open coffer. He was anxious, wanting to make sure they packed his favorite toys, his wooden horse and his whipping top.

  “Mama had a bad dream,” he told Catherine. “I dream about wolves sometimes.”

  “We all do, sweeting.” Catherine straightened up, said softly, “Joanna, are you sure about this? I truly think you should wait till Llewelyn comes back…”

  “I cannot, Catherine.” Joanna drew Catherine aside, out of her son’s hearing. “He might not let me go, and if I do not, I think I may truly go mad. I dreamed about her last night, about Maude…Catherine, I have to go.”

  She moved over to the table, picked up a letter. “I want you to give this to Llewelyn, Catherine—”

  “Madame!” Branwen was standing in the doorway. “Madame, Prince Llewelyn just rode in. When he saw your coffers being loaded onto the pack horses, I…I had to tell him.”

  “I understand, Branwen.” Joanna leaned back against the table, gripped the edge for support.

  “Papa!” Davydd scrambled from the bed, ran to his father. “We’re going away, Papa, we’re going to England! Did Mama tell you?”

  “No, Davydd, she did not.” Llewelyn’s eyes flicked down to the open coffers, up to Joanna’s face. “Catrin, would you take Davydd outside?”

  “I was going to leave you a letter.” Joanna held it out, as if in proof; he made no move to take it.

  “Where were you planning to go…to your father, to John?”

  “No!” She took a step toward him. “I’m not going to my father, Llewelyn. You must believe me. I could not do that…not now. I’m going to my brother…to Richard.”

  “For how long?”

  “I…I do not know yet. Mayhap a month. Llewelyn, I have to go. I have to find some way to live with what I’ve learned. Nor can we continue like this. If we had some time apart, it…it might help.”

  She’d feared that he might forbid her to go. Yet suddenly she wanted him to do just that, to tell her to stay, that their problems could be worked out, that he could forgive her.

  A splash of red midst the floor rushes caught Llewelyn’s eye; bending down, he retrieved his son’s whipping top. He turned it over in his hand, fingering the wooden point, and when he looked back at Joanna, his eyes were bleak.

  “I think you’re right,” he said. “It is probably for the best that you go. I’ll see that you have a safe escort.”

  Not trusting her voice, Joanna could only nod.

  “You may go, Joanna, if that be your wish. But not my children. They stay with me.”

  “They are my children, too, Llewelyn!”

  She sounded so panicked that he found himself relenting. “You may take Elen, then,” he said reluctantly. “But not Davydd. Not my son.”

  “But why? Do you want to hurt me as much as that?”

  He slammed the wooden toy down upon the table. “Do you think I’d ever willingly deliver up a second son into John’s hands?”

  She shrank back. “But—”

  “But what, Joanna? Are you going to assure me again that I’ve no cause for concern, that John would never harm a child?”

  Joanna flinched, no longer met his eyes. “No,” she whispered. “No…”

  Llewelyn found he could not be impervious to her pain, however much he willed it. “I do not want to quarrel with you, Joanna.”

  “I’m not going to my father’s court, Llewelyn, I swear I’m not. Davydd would be safe with me.”

  His mouth hardened again. “No. You may take Elen…for one month, no longer than that. But not Davydd.”

  He moved toward her, seemed about to speak, and then reached, instead, for the letter. Their fingers brushed, the meaningless, impersonal intimacy of strangers, and Joanna drew an audible breath. When she raised her eyes to Llewelyn’s, her lashes were wet, fringed with tears.

  “What I did was not an act of betrayal. I would never betray you, Llewelyn.”

  “I want to believe you,” he said at last. “But even if I can, is that enough? Could we live with John’s shadow ever between us?”

  And Joanna had no answer for him.

  32

  Grantham, Eng
land

  September 1212

  Richard stood by a window in his bedchamber, staring out into the rain-drenched darkness. The storm had swept in from the north, scattering the manor livestock and soaking the oats and barley harvested and left out to ripen in the late summer sun. Lightning had seared the aged yew tree in the village churchyard, and the villagers were sheltering before their kitchen hearths, cheated of daylight hours precious to a people dependent upon rushes dipped in tallow and fires that gave off more smoke than light.

  “Sweetheart, are you not coming to bed?”

  “Soon.” But he moved, instead, to the table.

  Eve sat up, stifling a yawn. “Are you reading again that letter from your lord father?”

  “Yes.”

  Another woman would have wanted to know if he planned to return to court. Eve was quite content to wait until Richard chose to tell her, and it was that which he valued even more than the pleasure she gave him in bed. That Eve was lacking in perceptiveness, even in simple curiosity, mattered little to Richard; what did matter was that she made no emotional demands, that she was placid and good-natured and easily relegated to the fringes of memory during their long separations.

  He glanced down at the letter, at the phrases he already knew by heart. “…only twelve, so a plight troth might be advisable…bring you a barony, lordship of Chilham…an advantageous match…” Richard silently mouthed the words; an advantageous match, indeed. Marriage to Rohese de Dover would make him lord of Chilham Castle. With his lineage blemished by the bar sinister, with no lands of his own, he was no great matrimonial prize. And yet his father was offering him a barony.