He got no further, for Ellen had begun to laugh. It held no humor, had an odd brittle ring to it, echoes of shattering glass, and he crossed the chamber in three strides, caught her by the shoulders. “Ellen!” He repeated her name, tightening his grip, and her laughter stopped as suddenly as it began. Her eyes looked enormous to him, almost black, the pupils so dilated that they swallowed all the light, all the green.
“When my father lay dying in the rain and the mud,” she said, “his enemies were not content with that, with his death. So they cut off his head, chopped off his arms and legs, and gelded him. But even that was not enough for them, so they threw his mangled body to the dogs. And Roger de Mortimer claimed his head, a keepsake for his wife, I’ve been told. They impaled his head upon a pike, and then…then they took his severed privy member, stuffed it into his bloodied mouth. They did that to my father.”
She stared up at him, eyes wide and glazed, but dry; she’d shed not a tear in the telling, although he could feel the tremors shaking her body. There were no words, and he knew that, did the only thing he could, pulled her against his chest, held her close. She was rigid in his arms, but after a few moments, she shuddered convulsively, and then she clung. He continued to hold her, gently stroking her hair, and after a time, she said, in a muffled voice, “I never told anyone that I knew. My mother and brother tried to keep it from me, and for a long time, they did. But one day I overheard some of our men talking…”
She looked up then, into his face, still tearless, but with a chalk-white pallor that caught at his heart. “Edward did that,” she said. “He may not have wielded the knife himself, but he let it happen. He was there, he had the command, and Roger de Mortimer was his friend, his boon companion. He dared to tell me that he’d wept for Harry, after letting my father be butchered, and when the monks crept out onto the field to bury my father’s body, Edward ordered him dug up, as if he were a dog, denied him Christian burial. He would lie today in unconsecrated ground if not for Amaury. Edward’s generosity to a fallen foe, and who knows, mayhap that is the real reason Amaury has passed nigh on three years in English prisons. Even if Edward could somehow convince me that he was not to blame for what they did to my father’s body, even if I could somehow forgive him for that, how could I ever forgive him for Amaury?”
“That,” he confessed quietly, “was what I could not understand.”
“I had to make him believe I bore him no grudge. If I could have bought Amaury’s freedom with my smiles, I’d have given him every one I had. If we had not been wed I might even have offered more than smiles. But I could not bring dishonor to your name, even for Amaury’s sake.”
She at once worried that she’d been too honest, but he did not seem shocked. “You are very loyal to your brother,” he said, and she nodded somberly.
“Loyalty is all that was left to us after Evesham. But I will be just as loyal to you, Llewelyn. I’ll never give you reason to doubt me, that I swear to you.”
He looked for a long moment into her upturned face, then kissed her, very gently. “This ought to have been a day you’d take joy in remembering. But between us, Edward and I have turned it into one you’ll want only to forget.”
“It does not matter,” she said, and discovered, to her surprise, that she meant it. “All that matters is this…” Sliding her hand up his chest and over his heart. “When I touch you now, our souls touch, too. That may sound foolish, but I truly did feel as if you’d gone where I could not follow, and it frightened me. Llewelyn… I realize you are not a man accustomed to sharing secrets of the heart. And I will try not to ask of you more than you are able to give. But do you think you can learn to be more forthcoming, to treat me not just as a wife, but also as a confidante?”
“You are right,” he said, “I’ve never been one for confiding your ‘secrets of the heart.’ But then, I’ve never had a wife before. I cannot promise you that I can change overnight. But I can promise you that I’ll try. That is the least I can do for you, my love.”
She smiled, almost as pleased by the endearment as by the promise. But what could she do for him? She seemed to have been able to staunch the bleeding, but the wound was a deep one, would take a long time to heal. She could think now of only one offer to make, and she said softly, “We do not have to return to the hall, Llewelyn. We can bolt the door, stay right here in our bridal chamber. I do not imagine you are much in the mood for wedding revelries.”
She was right, he wasn’t. “That is a very tempting offer. But we’d be creating a great scandal.”
“I do not care about that.”
“No,” he said, “this is your wedding day. I’ll not cheat you of it, Ellen. Every bride deserves that much, her time in the sun, and this is yours, cariad. Kiss me now to seal our bargain, to remind me what I have to look forward to, and then we’ll return to the hall and enjoy our wedding.”
“Are you sure?” she asked, and he nodded.
“Very sure. If we do not, Edward will have won. And I think he has already won enough today.”
The wedding guests were not long in noticing their absence, and when they returned to the hall, they were subjected to merciless teasing, to a bawdy bombardment that gave them a foretaste of the bedding-down revelries still to come. But Llewelyn and Ellen did not seem unduly perturbed. Although some of the jokes caused Ellen to blush, they met all queries about their disappearance with shrugs and enigmatic smiles. Blanche, watching intently, heaved a heartfelt sigh of relief. The dinner was about to begin, and she took advantage of the accompanying confusion to pull Ellen aside.
“All is well now between you?” she asked quietly, and Ellen nodded.
“I think so. You know then, Blanche?”
“Edmund told me. He was truly taken aback, thinks that Edward’s timing is lamentable. I’d say it was well nigh perfect.”
“Yes,” Ellen said grimly, “so would I.” She felt very thankful at that moment for Blanche’s friendship, started to tell her so. But a young woman was bearing down upon them. Reaching the dais, she made a deep curtsy, as Ellen looked at her in dismay, having seen her earlier with Davydd.
“Cousin Eleanor, I am Elizabeth de Ferrers, Davydd’s wife. I… I want to ask your pardon. A bride should be able to choose her own wedding guests, and I know you would not have invited Davydd and me of your own free will.”
Ellen was startled by the girl’s stark honesty, was silent for a moment as she decided how to respond to it. “Elizabeth, I’ll not insult you by pretending I do not know what you mean. Nor will I tell you that you are welcome here, for although it is true, I do not think you would want to be welcome if Davydd were not. Ah, Elizabeth, I truly do not want you to be uncomfortable. Today I want only to enjoy my wedding. As for Davydd…well, he is Llewelyn’s brother, so he probably has more right to be here than many of the others. You need only look over there, at the Earl of Gloucester. I want him at my wedding for certes—when pigs roost in trees!”
Blanche grinned, amused by how deftly Ellen had managed to steer the conversation into smoother waters. “Ellen is right,” she said, entering into the game with zest. “And let’s not forget the Earl of Pembroke. If that one got his dinner invitations only from those who fancied his company, he’d soon starve to death!”
“That holds true, as well, for the man by the hearth, John Giffard. Wherever he belongs, it is not at my wedding,” Ellen said, with a grimace of distaste, eliciting an unexpected response from Elizabeth.
“John Giffard belongs by rights in the deepest pits of Hellfire Everlasting,” she said, so venomously that Blanche and Ellen looked at her in surprise.
“I have good reason to scorn that man,” Ellen said curiously, “for he betrayed my father. But why do you detest him so, Elizabeth? Did he ever harm you?”
“No,” Elizabeth said, “but that is more than his wife can say. That is her over there, standing behind him. I think you know her, Cousin Ellen—Maude Clifford?”
“Good Heavens, yes,” Ellen ex
claimed. “Is that Maude? I’d never have recognized her! She was wed to my cousin, the Earl of Salisbury’s son, widowed young, at seventeen or so, left with a little girl. We were never close, for she was at least twelve years older than I, but Salisbury was one of my father’s most steadfast friends, and so I did see her from time to time. In fact, we are now kinswomen,” Ellen said, explaining for Blanche’s benefit that Maude Clifford was a granddaughter of Llewelyn Fawr, and thus a first cousin to Llewelyn. “I had not heard that she’d wed John Giffard. Jesú, what a choice!”
“Believe me,” Elizabeth said, “choice did not enter into it. He abducted her from her Dorsetshire manor, took her by force to his stronghold at Brimpsfield, where he raped her and then found a biddable priest to marry them.”
There was a silence then, as Blanche and Ellen gazed across the hall at Maude Clifford, their pity heightened by the understanding that Maude’s unhappy fate could have been theirs, too, for there was no shortage of men willing to gain a rich wife by John Giffard’s methods. Ellen slowly shook her head, thinking of her own great-grandmother, the legendary Eleanor of Aquitaine, who’d barely escaped two such abduction attempts herself. “And I suppose Maude felt too shamed to make a public protest,” she said sadly, knowing how often that was the case, but knowing, too, that she would have denounced Giffard as long as she had breath in her body, and so, she suspected, would Blanche.
“No,” Elizabeth said, “he’d not yet broken her spirit, and she found a way to complain to the King—for all the good it did her. Our uncle Henry was in his dotage, Edward was on crusade, and Maude’s plea came to naught. Giffard denied taking her by force, claimed she was too ill to come to court, and offered to pay a fine of three hundred marks for having wed her without the King’s permission. By then she was already pregnant, and so that was that,” Elizabeth concluded, with a very cynical shrug.
“No wonder we heard nothing of this, Ellen.” Blanche had been doing some rapid mental arithmetic. “If Henry was still King and Edward in the Holy Land, we’re going back seven or eight years, and you and I were both living then in France. I can see why Llewelyn could not help her, for his influence has never extended into England. But the Cliffords are a power in the Marches. What of her cousin, Roger Clifford? Could he do naught for her?”
“Roger was too busy stealing Culmington Manor from Maude’s widowed mother, his own aunt. In fairness, there might have been some who’d have tried to help her, had they but known of her plight. But it was hushed up. My father just happened to hear about it because he was in Gloucestershire at that time.”
“You must have been very young, Elizabeth. Yet you seem to remember it so well?”
“I was thirteen,” Elizabeth said, “and oh, yes, I remember. You see, I was not happy living under my father’s roof, and I was eager to wed, to have a husband and household of my own. Then I learned about Maude Clifford, and I learned, too, that marriage was not always the escape I’d fancied it to be. After that, I was not quite so eager to be a wife again.”
Elizabeth paused, looked Ellen full in the face, and said, without the flicker of a smile, “But then, you and I are more fortunate than Maude Clifford. After all, we are the King’s cousins, and we both know Edward would always act only in our best interests.”
Ellen’s mouth dropped open; so did Blanche’s. They both stared at the younger woman, as astonished as if a butterfly had suddenly drawn blood. After a moment, Ellen smiled. “I think,” she said, “that you and I are going to get along very well, Cousin Elizabeth.”
The wedding guests would be talking for weeks to come about the delectable repast they were served that afternoon in Worcester Castle’s great hall. For those lucky enough to be seated at the high table, the service was as excellent as the food. Dinner guests were expected to provide their own knives, and to hack out their own plates from stale bread. But for the favored guests upon the dais, an ivory-handled knife was laid out for each diner, and the panter carefully cut their trenchers from round loaves marked with holy crosses. The saltcellar, an intricately sculptured silver nef, sails billowing, was carried with great ceremony to the high table, placed before Edward, and at every trencher there was a wine cup of silver gilt. They enjoyed other privileges as well. To them first came the ewers, carrying warm, scented water and linen hand towels, and when the meal began, they would receive the dishes first, too, still hot and steaming. And from their vantage point, at the head of the hall, they had an unobstructed view of the musicians, the minstrels, and the other guests.
A trumpet fanfare ushered in the first dish of the first course, roast venison, a great favorite. It was later followed by quails in aspic, and then, fried apple fritters. Another trumpet flourish called attention to the subtlety that ended the course, a marvelous marzipan sculpture of a young maiden, her long hair colored with saffron dye, her gown tinted green with parsley juice; at her feet knelt the noblest of beasts, the elusive unicorn that could be caught only by an innocent virgin. The cooks had taken some artistic license with the unicorn, for all knew it should have been snowy white, but that was not an easy shade to reproduce, and so this particular unicorn was a vivid saffron gold, a safe choice, though, for the brighter a color, the more likely people were to appreciate it.
The second course began with a dish so spectacular it drew applause: roast peacock, bones painstakingly strutted and skin and feathers refitted to give the illusion of life. After it, pike stuffed with chestnuts was served, and then beef and marrow fritters, and spiced pears. The subtlety for the second course was a culinary triumph, a marzipan dragon that owed its rich red color to sandalwood, its fiery breath to a cleverly concealed bellows. It was, all agreed, an inspired choice, for the dragon had long been linked in the popular imagination with Wales.
As the guests dined, the musicians strolled about, filling the hall with the music of harp and gittern, flute and viol, and the unique bagpipes brought by the Scots. There were numerous minstrels, too, eager to perform, hoping to find positions in the households of the highborn guests. The minstrel who was to have the greatest success, though, was already securely tenured, standing high in Alexander’s favor. He was French by birth, spoke half a dozen languages or more, and had seen, or so he claimed, most of the great courts of Europe, picking up in his travels a remarkably varied repertoire of songs and ballads and lays.
After taking several requests for jaunty, sprightly songs, he announced that he would now sing for the bridal couple.
Now is the time for pleasure,
Lads and lasses,
Take your joy together,
Ere it passes.
With the love of a maid
Aflower,
With the love of a maid
Afire,
New love, new love,
Dying of desire.
The audience joined in after each new stanza, zestfully echoing the chorus, and he finally concluded with a lover’s plea to:
Come, mistress mine,
Joy with thee,
Come, fairest, come,
Love, to me.
Ellen was delighted with the song, and the minstrel cheerfully obliged her request for more, sang to her of a lover’s vow, a faith unbroken, but then, with an impish grin, he launched into a hunter’s boast, that “Woman and falcon are easily made tame. Both will come flying to a man’s lure the same.” The women all hissed, the men laughed and cheered, and he reaped another windfall, coins sailing his way from all corners of the hall.
Trumpets now heralded the beginning of the third and final course. As stewed lampreys were ladled onto their trencher, Llewelyn wielded his knife on Ellen’s behalf, cutting the eel into pieces she could pick up with her fingers. It was the common practice for a couple to share the same trencher and wine cup, but Ellen had not known until now that such sharing could be so erotic. As Llewelyn fed her choice tidbits, washed down with spiced red wine, she realized they were indulging in a leisurely three-course seduction. It was wonderful to whisper that in his e
ar, to see him smile. When she thought how different this meal could have been, she shivered, and when Edward made a courtly toast, wishing them all the happiness he had found with his Eleanora, she was able to smile without strain, to act as if she believed him.
Llewelyn was discovering, as the meal progressed, that some of his tension was subsiding. His fury had congealed; it was still there, just beneath the surface, but safely sheeted in ice. And if he could not truly enjoy the wedding festivities, it was enough for him that Ellen was enjoying herself. She was flirting outrageously with him, even surprised him with a Welsh toast, “Tangnevedd,” asking later if it truly did mean “Peace be with you,” confessing that she was not sure Goronwy’s translation could be trusted. He listened now in amusement as she described for Alexander an exotic eating utensil that Amaury had supposedly seen at an Italian banquet. It was meant to replace fingers, she explained, a notion so ludicrous that she soon had all within earshot laughing, but she kept a straight face, even when she claimed it looked just like a shrunken pitchfork. Afterward, she winked at Llewelyn, and he realized he still did not know if she’d been serious or not about Amaury’s Italian forks. She was full of surprises, this wife of his, and getting to know her better was going to be a very interesting experience.
It was dusk before the sugared nebula wafers and Lombardy custard were served, and torches were flaring, shadows advancing, as the final subtlety was brought into the hall. Another fair marzipan maiden, but this time the tamed beast at her feet was not a unicorn, but a blood-red Welsh dragon. The guests roared their approval, applauding enthusiastically. Ellen, blushing and laughing both, glanced quickly toward Llewelyn, and her spirits soared when she saw he was laughing, too, for she knew that even a few short hours ago, he’d not have been amused. We won, Ned, she thought, smiling down the table at her royal cousin, damn your swaggering, deceitful soul to Hell, this time we won.