Chapter Six
Llywelyn
“May I ask your thoughts, my lord?” Goronwy asked. We’d stopped to water the horses at a stream and to allow men to dismount and see to their needs. Goronwy had taken the opportunity to tell me of his conversations with Marged.
“I am at sea with her,” I said. “Too many things she says don’t add up.”
“Do you have second thoughts that she seeks to betray you? Do you believe she’s lying?”
“No,” I said. “No, I don’t. But that doesn’t make what she says true either. Yet if I’m not mistaken, she didn’t believe I was the Prince of Wales when she awoke last night. She so thoroughly didn’t believe me that she attacked me with a knife.”
“My lord!” Goronwy said. “You didn’t tell me that!”
“No, I didn’t,” I said, suitably chastened. “In truth, she knew so little of its use that I was never in danger. What most concerned me was her fear—particularly her fear of me.”
“She rightfully feared retribution for her audacity,” Goronwy said. “Many a lord who would have behaved differently, punished her certainly, and wouldn’t have kept her with him after that.”
I smiled. “But I am not a typical lord now, am I?”
Goronwy nodded. “Might I say, my lord, if you excuse my impertinence, that you can be confident to a fault.”
“Ha!” I said. “When have I ever rebuked you for impertinence? I tried once, as I recall, when you defeated me at wrestling. Nothing ever came of it.”
Goronwy smiled and I was glad to see it. He worried too much these days and it had put lines between his eyes. “There’s much about her that we don’t yet know,” he said. “I’m most interested in the mystery of her chariot, its manner of propulsion and material.”
“She has more to tell us,” I said. “Not that we’re going to believe it either.”
Goronwy snorted a laugh. Then he checked his saddle bags and mounted his horse. I followed suit, all the while contemplating the woman in question. Throughout my conversation with Goronwy, she’d knelt on her cloak, clapping as Anna ran around the clearing. The little girl would run to one tree and then another, and then back to her mother, while Marged counted, seeing how fast the little girl could leave and return.
My men had glanced at them often, every one with an amused expression on his faces. Marged was obviously genuine, obviously loved her daughter—but I wasn’t sure about anything else about her. How could I be? She’d hardly sat on a horse before today, given the unprofessional nature of her seat and the stiffness in her walk when she dismounted. How had she come from Radnor? It was a six day ride in full summer for a woman, not to mention in the dead of winter with snow in the mountains and a small child to care for.
Marged gathered Anna to her and walked back to where her horse was tethered. It was the walk that got me thinking. Marged walked unlike any woman I’d ever known. I pictured her as I’d seen her striding across the bailey at Castell Criccieth. She moved along as if she were a man wearing breeches (which admittedly she was wearing when I found her) and not used to the hindrance of a dress around her ankles. That walk of hers was a signpost that told me there was more to Marged’s differences than merely a matter of dress or of the strange vehicle in which she came to me.
It was also in the way she spoke, not only to me but to everyone. On one hand, she had yet to accord me my title, ‘my lord,’ in Welsh, French, or even this ‘American’ that Goronwy informed me was her native tongue. On the other hand, she tossed around ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ to anyone and everyone in a manner which indicated she was supremely confident in her own station, unconcerned with the station of others, or viewed every person, whether low or high, as her equal. Now that was a daunting thought.
She reminded me a bit, in fact, of my mother—not so much in later life when she was embittered by years of imprisonment and loss—but when I was a small child and it was only my brother, Owain, and me in her house. She was loving, protective, and without fear. She would stand up to anyone when we, her cubs, were threatened, even my father. When I was young, I do believe she loved me.
As I gathered the reins and led my men out of the clearing, I glanced toward the sea, eyeing the clouds that moved closer with every breath. At noon when we’d left Criccieth, they were still distant. I’d allowed only this one short rest at mid-afternoon because the clouds were beginning to crowd the space between the sea and the sky and I didn’t think we had much longer before the rain hit.
“Reminds me of when your Uncle died,” Geraint said, tipping his head to the western sky.
Dark clouds had gathered in the east that day, which we’d taken as a sign of trouble to come. Trouble always came from the east, though the weather almost never did. The storm had broken, with cacophony of hail and crashing rain, unusual for Wales at any time of year, where the wet was generally steady and unrelenting, but quiet.
“Uncle Dafydd liked to describe England as a looming storm, biding its time before it struck, downing us without warning with lightening and thunder,” I said. Twenty years later, the menace was less evident, yet the only difference was that I was older, and that the men of Wales had rallied around my masthead, more prepared to weather any storm England could inflict upon us.
“But we should only have snow today, praise God.” Geraint’s body swayed with the easy walk of the horse. “We need to reach the manor before the sun sets.”
Watching him clutch his cloak around himself, I had a pang of regret that I’d brought him on this journey. I valued his advice and selfishly wanted him with me, but if I needed extra cushions on the road, he needed a bed. God willing, we wouldn’t spend any night on the open road. The mountains between us and Brecon formed a barrier that was only thirty miles across—forty miles if we took the old Roman road from Llanio—but in a blizzard, forty miles could be four hundred for all the difference it would make.
I looked back to find Marged. She’d tucked Anna inside her own cloak, so only the little girl’s head showed from between two of the ties. Marged noticed me watching and grinned. That was another difference between her and any other woman . . . how many women would have come on this journey without complaint, and then had the stamina to grin at me?
Of all the women who’d shared my bed in recent years, I’d always known, even through the blindness of lust, that they were with me because I was the Prince of Wales. Either they or their fathers put them in my path because they wanted the prestige it could give them. But as always, none had born me a child, and eventually I’d urged each of them to marry someone else.
Goronwy noted my attention and trotted up beside me. “We’re approaching Coedwig Gap,” he said. “It’s the perfect place for an ambush if Marged’s memory is correct, whoever this Owain Glendower might be.”
Hywel reined in close on the other side. “Should we prepare, my lord?”
“Yes,” I said. “At worst, the exercise will wake everybody up. It’s easy to become complacent when the challenges have become fewer or farther between.”
Hywel nodded. “If this is a trap, I have no intention of going in unprepared.” Putting his weight on his stirrups, he stood in them and raised his sword to gain the attention of the men.
“Find someone to take charge of Marged, Goronwy,” I said, keeping my voice low underneath Hywel’s call. “I need you if there’s to be a fight.”
“Yes, my lord.”
We rode on, in better formation and more watchful. Another quarter of a mile and we crested a rise that gave us a view of the land around us, though not the road ahead as it bent and was obscured by trees. Goronwy checked his horse, looking southeast. I followed his gaze, only to grimace at the sight: smoke rose towards the sky in billowing clouds. It was too much for daily activity in any village, not to mention the small one that crouched in the valley below, separated from us by expansive fields and stands of trees.
Hywel had seen it too. “Is that the trap?”
“Hard to know until we enter it,” Goronwy said.
“I don’t know of whom Marged speaks,” I said. “But whoever this Owain Glendower was, he should have known better than to ride through Coedwig Gap without precautions.”
“We should divide the company,” Goronwy said.
“Do it,” I said. “Take Marged and half the men along the road and the rest of us will ride across the fields. That leaves both of us with twenty-five men—still a formidable force.”
I pulled my horse out of line. “Come!” Hywel and I led our men off the road, urging our horses across the fields that separated us from the unnamed village. The men were on high alert; those with bows strung them, the rest of us had unsheathed our swords, riding with the bare blade ready for use.
“I don’t like it,” Hywel said. “If it looks like a trap and smells like a trap, it’s probably a trap.”
We slowed our horses as we reached the summit of the last hill before the village. It lay before us, quiet in the sunshine. Nothing stirred except the three scouts I’d sent ahead. They worked their way from hut to hut, looking for survivors. It was a village of twenty thatched huts, all burning, with a small green. It was the green that drew our attention. The possessions of the villagers had been piled in its center, ten feet on a side and another fifteen feet high, and lit. The entire wealth of the village was going up in flames.
“Mother of Christ!” Hywel breathed. “We don’t have time for this.”
“Only goods, not bodies,” I said. I wheeled my horse around. “A trap, but not for us! To Coedwig Gap!”
The company flowed into formation behind us as Hywel and I hit the track heading west at speed, back to where our companions rode. We knew these roads, had ridden them many times before; a path ahead led to the back side of the hill that overlooked the road at Coedwig Gap. The view from above would give us the opportunity to assess the situation without falling into a trap ourselves.
“Goronwy would not have been surprised easily,” Hywel said, through teeth gritted in concentration.
“He shouldn’t have been surprised at all,” I said. “It’s the possible numbers he faces that worries me.”
Spying the path, Hywel signaled with his sword and the men followed us up the trail. It was steep on this side but our horses were bred for the Welsh mountains and didn’t falter. We came out of the trees on the crest of the hill and looked down onto the road below, a heavily treed hollow with hills that rose sharply on either side.
Hywel cursed beside me. “S'mae cwd!”
My twenty-five men were in brutal hand-to-hand combat with a company of men who hadn’t the honor to wear the colors of their lord. A few had managed to keep their seats, but Goronwy was unhorsed, feet planted, astride the body of another man. I didn’t see Marged.
I gave Hywel a quick assessing glance and raised my sword. “Am Cymry!”
The men cheered and spurred their horses. We surged down the hill in a massed cavalry charge, that even with two dozen men, implied overwhelming force. The enemy, whoever they were, were unprepared to be hit from behind.
As always in the face of battle, my insides turned cold and my hearing dulled, even as my vision sharpened. Slicing through the arm of one man, I caught the neck of another on the upswing. I registered the cries and calls of pain, but they didn’t disrupt my focus. I reached the edge of the road, having passed through the main body of the men and checked my horse in front of Goronwy. While a few survivors raced north from the battle, in less than two minutes, my men had driven through the intruders. Their bodies lay strewn across the road and hillside. It was a sight I’d seen many times, and always hoped never to see again.
Hywel breathed hard beside me. “We’ll get after them, my lord.”
He pointed his sword and a rush of men chased after the remainders. One of my men pursued and overtook a man on foot and cut him down from behind. I turned away.
The power drained from me, more quickly than when I was a younger man. I dismounted and rested my head against my horse’s neck. I closed my eyes and whispered my thanks and encouragement to her, before straightening and gazing at the carnage. Goronwy knelt next to the man whose life he’d guarded with his own. It was Geraint.
Not Geraint.
“He’s alive but perhaps not for long,” Goronwy said in an undertone as I crouched beside him.
“Damn those bastards to hell,” I said.
Goronwy ignored my profanity. “He has a head wound and a gash in his side that has bled heavily.”
“Where’s Marged?”
Goronwy pointed with his chin back down the road to the north. “In the trees. I should have left Geraint beside her, but he insisted on riding with us.”
“Fool,” I said, though my throat closed on the word, and I was angry at myself for not ordering my old friend to stay behind. Sweet Mother of God, he would have obeyed me.
Hywel planted himself stiffly in front of me. I read in his face the bad news he carried, and stood so as to give his report the honor it deserved.
“We’ve lost eight men and three more are grievously wounded,” he said. “Several others are less so. All of the men who rode from the village are alive, with few injuries. We caught them completely by surprise.”
“We did exactly as they should have expected, Boots,” I said. “Why weren’t they prepared?”
Hywel shrugged. “Perhaps they assumed we’d see the village but ride to it along the road. If our thoughts were fixed on the village, we would have been unprepared for an assault here, at the Gap.”
“Possible,” I said. “And they wouldn’t have known we had warning. The real question now, is who knew we would come this way this morning and had the wherewithal to set a trap?”
“Someone at Criccieth,” Hywel said.
I was grateful he didn’t give voice to what he thought—what every one of my advisors would think after half second contemplation: Dafydd. He’d not come with us, and we’d only taken this road with such urgency because of his news.
And then there was Marged.
“Haul these men off the road. I don’t want to leave them in the way,” I said, damping down my anger but knowing that my words had come out stiff and pointed. “For the rest, I want a survivor I can question.”
“Yes, my lord,” Hywel said. He bowed and strode away.
“We must send to that village for help,” Goronwy said. He eased Geraint’s helmet off his head and threw it across the road. It rolled away and came to rest in the ditch among the fallen leaves. “Geraint needs a healer.”
“The village is destroyed and her people absent,” I said. “Whether dead or missing I don’t know.”
Goronwy absorbed this news without speaking but tightened his grip on Geraint’s hand. “We have bandages in a pack on Marged’s horse.”
“I will find her,” I said.