Here Be Dragons

  “Your concern for Celyn’s well-being is commendable,” Llewelyn said dryly, but then he smiled at his son. “Very well, lad. That will be all, Celyn.”

  “Shall I summon your squires, Papa?”

  Llewelyn resisted the temptation to ask if Davydd wanted to keep vigil by his bedside till he slept. “No, Davydd, that’s not necessary. Go back to the hall now, make sure that our guests are looked after.”

  Gathering up the correspondence, the scribe made a discreet departure; those who served Llewelyn this spring had, of necessity, learned to be as prescient as soothsayers, as unobtrusive as shadows. Davydd paused in the doorway. “God grant you a restful night, Papa,” he said, and Llewelyn thought it might be for the best, after all, that Richard had come to his court. Mayhap Richard might be able to do what he could not, talk to the lad about Joanna. That Davydd had such a need, he well knew. A man might disavow a wanton, cheating wife. But a son could not be expected to disavow his mother.

  Reaching for a flagon, Llewelyn poured himself a cup of malmsey. He drank slowly, rationing himself, for he was not such a fool as to think he could drown his dreams in wine. Picking up the cup, he crossed to the bed, lay down upon it fully clothed. The dreams had a numbing sameness, differing only in detail. Most often the dream did but reflect reality; he would walk into his bedchamber, unsuspecting, and find his wife with her young lover. More than once, though, the dream took an even uglier turn, and he would enter the chamber while they were making love, naked bodies entwined together in his bed, so lost in their lust they did not perceive their danger until it was too late, until he had sword in hand. Sometimes he heeded Ednyved, took a more calculating, cold-blooded vengeance; sometimes Will died at once, there in the bedchamber. But not Joanna, for even in his dreams he could never bring himself to thrust the sword into her breast.

  As harrowing as these dreams were, they were not as rending as the others, the dreams of days gone by, those that recreated his world before his discovery of Joanna’s infidelity. Like most dreams, they were an incongruous blend of the fanciful and the commonplace, dreams in which a man might get saddle sores from riding a unicorn. But in them all, Joanna was the one constant. Taking a bath, she’d splash him with soapy water, giggling like a little girl. Or she’d look up at him over a Welsh grammar lesson, grimace and vow she’d master his tongue if it took her a lifetime. She was there to welcome him home from war, and there beside him in the night, and the seductive lure of memory was such that he would awaken in drowsy arousal, reaching for her. And then he would remember.

  Llewelyn took a deep swallow of malmsey. Upon his first night at Dolwyddelan, he’d been crossing the bailey, had come upon some of his soldiers squatting by the door of the great hall, passing a flask back and forth as they discussed his wife’s betrayal, her lover’s death. They tempered their abuse of Will de Braose with a grudging acknowledgment of his gallows courage, but they spared Joanna nothing, damned her in language as coarse as it was colorful. When Llewelyn stepped out of the darkness, they scrambled to their feet, staring at him in stricken silence. All save one youngster, drunker than the rest, who blurted out, “I do not understand your forbearance, my lord. You must hate her now, you must! So why have you not punished her as she deserves?”

  Appalled, his more sober comrades made haste to intervene, sought to turn aside Llewelyn’s anger with a babble of apology and excuse. Llewelyn looked at the boy, younger even than Davydd, trying in his muddled way to empathize with his lord’s pain. How easy it would be to make a scapegoat of this imprudent youth. Easy and understandable and unjust. “I do not suffer fools gladly,” he said curtly, “but luckily for you, lad, I have more patience with drunkards. Go sleep it off.” The soldiers did not press their luck; they scattered.

  But the boy’s question stayed with Llewelyn in the days to come. Why had he not punished Joanna as she deserved? Why had he sent her to Llanfaes? Why had he made hers such a comfortable confinement? He’d done it for Davydd’s sake. That was the obvious answer, the easy answer. But was it the only answer?

  His last memory of Joanna had yet to fade; he had only to close his eyes to bring it into sudden, sharp focus, to see the tangled dark hair, the rumpled sheets, even the sweat trickling down her throat, into the hollow between her breasts. That woman he could hate, and did, the woman who’d taken a Norman lover, made him a laughingstock, betrayed his trust, jeopardized Davydd’s succession. Blood will tell, the soldiers had jeered; who should be surprised that John’s daughter showed herself to be a shameless wanton? Harlot. Whore. Harsh, ugly names. The woman who’d taken Will into his bed deserved them all.

  But what of the seventeen-year-old girl who’d almost died giving birth to Davydd? Or the woman who’d stood in this chamber, pleading with him to let her intercede with John? What of the woman who’d curtsied to him that day at Aberconwy, salvaging his pride, defying her father for his sake? Did she, too, deserve to be called slut?

  Llewelyn drained the last of the wine, threw the cup across the room, watched it shatter against the wall. It was an act of impulse, one he at once regretted. Come morning, the servants would find the broken clay shards upon the floor; they would make no comment, would clean up the wreckage with impassive faces. And they would not understand.

  No one did. Morgan had come the closest to comprehending; in his one attempt at consolation, he’d counseled endurance. “Give yourself time, Llewelyn, time to grieve. Try to remember that pain does pass. Think upon Tangwystl and how you mourned her. But the hurt did eventually heal…and so will this.”

  At least Morgan could understand that it was possible to grieve for an unfaithful wife; few others did. But he was wrong to equate Tangwystl’s death with Joanna’s betrayal. This was a different sort of loss, and in its own way, more painful, for he’d lost more than Joanna, he’d lost their life together, too. In destroying their future, Joanna had also poisoned their past.

  Closing his eyes, Llewelyn lay back against the pillow. But no man could ever fully master memory. The tides ran higher at night, and he found himself engulfed without warning, carried back in time to an October afternoon, to the cloistered silence of the White Ladies Priory. Joanna was standing again before him, disheveled, breathless, a russet leaf clinging to her hair, turning up to him a face streaked with tears.

  Llewelyn gave a sudden, bitter laugh, for what greater irony could there be than this, that the one person able to understand exactly how he now felt should be Joanna, Joanna who’d cried out in such despair, “If he’d died, I’d still have had memories. But now even my memories are false. They do not comfort, they only torment…”

  “Richard!” Joanna’s book thudded to the floor; in three strides she was across the room, in her brother’s arms. “How glad I am to see you, how very glad!” He did not return her embrace, merely patted her awkwardly on the shoulder, but he’d always been sparing with physical demonstrations of affection, and she reached up, kissed him on the cheek before stepping back to smile at him.

  “I’m not sure what I expected, Joanna. But not this,” he said, glancing about the bedchamber. “One might think you were still Princess of Gwynedd.”

  Joanna’s smile vanished; his voice was very cold. “Would you rather have found me in a dungeon at Cricieth, Richard?”

  “Of course not,” he said impatiently. “But I cannot help marveling at Llewelyn’s leniency.”

  “You’ve seen him, talked to him? Tell me how he is, Richard. How does he?”

  “How do you think he does? The man loved you, Joanna.”

  “I know,” she whispered. “I know…”

  “How could you do it? How could you shame yourself, shame your family like this? At first I thought it had to be some sort of macabre hoax! And if I could not believe it, I would not even attempt to imagine what Llewelyn—”

  “Richard, enough! I do not need you to tell me of the pain I’ve caused those I love. I was there, I saw, and those are memories I’ll have to live with for the rest of my l
ife. I do not deny that I have committed a grievous sin, and I’ll willingly answer for it to my husband, to my children, to the King, and to God. But not to you, Richard. Least of all to you!”

  “You do not think I’ve a right to be angry? Disappointed?”

  “I do not think you’ve the right to pass judgment upon me. I think you forfeited that right when you refused to pass judgment upon John.”

  “What mean you by that, Joanna?”

  “You knew, Richard. You knew about Arthur, about Maude de Braose and her son. You saw the hangings. But you stood by John even then, even after watching those Welsh children die at Nottingham. So I do not think it is for you to judge me. Unless you can explain why adultery is a greater sin in your eyes than murder.”

  “I see it was a mistake for me to come.”

  “Mayhap it was,” Joanna agreed, and he turned, walked out.

  But no sooner had he gone than Joanna’s anger was gone, too. She sat down upon the closest coffer, feeling weak, empty, and alone, utterly alone. Why had she sent Richard away? Who else did she have? Henry would be no less shocked than Richard, no less judgmental. An unfaithful wife was a creature utterly beyond her Aunt Ela’s ken. She was not close to her other brothers. Two of her three sisters were strangers to her, and Nell was but fourteen.

  Even her dead would not have understood. Catherine had been her dearest friend, but Catherine had been Llewelyn’s friend, too. Her grandmother? Eleanor would have been indifferent to the immorality of her adultery, but would never have forgiven the stupidity of it. Her mother would have been horrified, with the peculiar intolerance of the onetime sinner. Her father? Hating Llewelyn as he did, how could he not have been delighted by her infidelity? But her mockery went awry, for she knew better. John would not have forsaken her. The man who had murdered Maude de Braose was the same man who had loved her enough to forgive her any sin.

  She had sent Glynis to gather gorse and wood sorrel, and she was grateful now to hear footsteps in the antechamber, grateful for Glynis’s opportune return; hers were not thoughts she cared to dwell upon. She rose, moved toward the door. But it was not Glynis, it was Richard.

  His smile was tentative, almost but not quite apologetic. “I would not have gotten so angry if there were not some truth in what you said. But I was halfway to the ferry ere I would admit it to myself.”

  “You came back, Richard. That is what matters,” Joanna said, and this time their embrace was mutual, comforting and conciliatory. Drawing him down beside her upon the settle, Joanna entwined her fingers in his. “I will answer your questions as best I can. But first you must tell me if you spoke to Davydd, if he gave you any message for me.”

  He shook his head. “He’s not yet able to talk about you, Joanna. Mayhap in time…” He tightened his grip upon her hand. “How much have you been told? You do know Will de Braose has been hanged?”

  “Yes,” she said, startling him by her matter-of-fact tone. If she could sound so indifferent to Will’s fate, then all his assumptions had to be in error.

  “I can offer no excuses, no explanations for my conduct, Richard. But there is this you must know. My liaison with Will was a brief one, and long over. But Will was not accustomed to a woman telling him no and meaning it, thought he would be welcome in my chambers. He was not.” Richard was looking at her so strangely that she felt sudden dismay. “You do not believe me?”

  “How could I have been so stupid? I actually believed you must have been beguiled by this man, had become so infatuated you’d lost all common sense. Knowing you as I do, how could I have been so blind?” He rose to his feet, began to pace. “Why did I not see the truth ere this?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I think you know, Joanna. But if you’d have me elaborate upon the obvious, I am willing. Where shall we begin? With Llewelyn? You love your husband, you truly do. You have a marriage that was tested in fire and found true, a marriage that by rights ought to have foundered years ago, and yet it not only survived, it somehow flourished. You’re no fool; you well knew the consequences of a wife’s infidelity, knew you risked divorce and disgrace, mayhap even death. You knew, too, that adultery is a mortal sin. Yet despite all that, you still decided to take the risk, to take a lover. And of all the men in Christendom, whom did you happen to choose? Surprise of surprises, none other than Maude de Braose’s grandson! Need I say more?”

  Joanna’s protest was immediate—and indignant. “What are you saying, that John’s sins led me to sin in atonement? That is ridiculous, Richard. I am not responsible for my father’s cruelties!”

  “I know,” he said. “I’ve been seeking to convince you of that for nigh on twenty years.”

  Joanna opened her mouth to argue, to insist he was wrong. Instead she surprised herself by saying, “I do think it was important to Will that I was John’s daughter. I think he found a perverse satisfaction in that. He learned to hate too young. But he had cause, Richard, more cause than you know…”

  She did not finish the sentence, said abruptly, “What of Henry? Does he know?”

  Richard nodded. “He got word ere he sailed for St Malo.” He sat down beside her again. “I’ll not lie to you, Joanna; it’s better that you know. Sentiment is very much on Llewelyn’s side, even in England. Men feel he was justified in acting as he did, that Will de Braose well deserved to die. More than eight hundred people gathered to witness his execution, and not all of them Welsh. Will was too familiar with too many bedchambers; even amongst his own family, he does not seem to have been much mourned.”

  Joanna linked her fingers in her lap. She found herself thinking, now, not of the man who’d brought disaster upon them both, not even of the man who’d been her lover, but of the youngster who’d come to her aid with boyish, good-natured gallantry, who’d put her in mind of Llewelyn at fourteen. “To die alone and unloved,” she said softly. “What a sad fate…”

  Richard shrugged. “It is your fate that concerns me now. I’ll admit I was none too sanguine ere today…ere seeing this,” he said, gesturing about the bedchamber. “But I am beginning to believe all is not as bleak as I first thought.”

  Joanna bowed her head. “Llewelyn says…he says I am dead to him, Richard.”

  “Yes, I know. But have you not noticed the startling discrepancy between what Llewelyn has said and what he has done? I do not mean to inflict further hurt, Joanna, but few men would treat an unfaithful wife as indulgently as he has so far treated you. I think his forbearance bodes well for the future. Whilst it is true that the Church does not formally recognize adultery as grounds for divorce, Llewelyn will have no trouble in—”

  “Welsh law does provide for dissolving a marriage upon a wife or a husband’s infidelity,” Joanna interrupted, and despite herself, she could not help remembering the night Llewelyn had told her that, the night they’d first shared a bed as man and wife.

  “A husband’s infidelity, too?” Richard echoed, so surprised he almost allowed himself to be sidetracked. But the oddities of the Welsh legal system would have to wait. “Joanna, listen. I’ve been giving it much thought. As I see it, Llewelyn has three choices open to him. He can continue to keep you here, at Llanfaes. He can compel you to enter a nunnery. Or he can banish you from his domains. I expected him to select the second alternative. You’re something of an embarrassment, you know…both to the Welsh and to the English, and a cloistered embarrassment would fade more quickly from men’s memories. But now that I’ve seen your confinement, I think we might reasonably hope for the best, that he might agree to your return to England.”

  “Mayhap he might. I do not know, Richard. Nor do I much care,” Joanna confessed, and Richard smiled.

  “Not now, no. But even the most benign captivity is still that, captivity. You need only think of our cousin, Eleanor of Brittany, comfortably kept at Bristol and Corfe castles for nigh on thirty years. In time you will care, Joanna, you’ll care passionately.”

  Joanna said nothing, and he reached
out, patted her hand. “You must be patient, though. It would be disastrous to pressure Llewelyn now. We can only wait, first for the divorce and then for his decision. But Henry will not forsake you. You’re family, and that matters more to Henry than scandal. I do believe that eventually you will be set at liberty, and once that happens, you’ll have a home with my wife and me, a home at Chilham Castle.”

  “Thank you, Richard,” Joanna said, because it was expected of her. But his offer seemed no more real than did the future he envisioned for her. Rising, she moved to the table, opened a small casket.

  “I’ve written letters to Elen and Davydd, to Henry and Nell. Will you take them, Richard? Will you engage couriers for me?”

  “Of course. And I shall write to Llewelyn on your behalf, ask him if you cannot be allowed to leave these rooms occasionally. I think he might agree, if only for Davydd’s sake.”

  “I would like that,” Joanna admitted, “to be able to walk on the beach.” She hesitated, reluctant to make a request that might be misconstrued. “There is one thing more you can do for me, Richard. I would like to have Masses said for Will, for the repose of his soul.” And when he made no comment, but merely nodded, she sighed, said quietly, “I cannot mourn him. I’m not even sure I can forgive him. But at least I can pray for him.”

  14

  Llanfaes, North Wales

  June 1230

  Richard read Llewelyn correctly, and an order did arrive in due course, allowing Joanna the freedom of the manor compound and the nearby beach. Her guards objected to this new duty in vain, protesting that they felt foolish trailing after a lone woman and an aging spaniel. Lady Joanna could not swim; did Bran fear she could walk on water? But Bran remained adamant. Would any of them want to face their lord if she disappeared? Or if harm befell her? For so baffled were they about what their duties actually were, uncertain whether they were gaolers or bodyguards.