A Memory of Love

by Bertrice Small

  "I do not know how much she respects you, Llywelyn, but she will do her duty by you. Rhonwyn will do you proud, and if she proves to be a good breeder, her English lord will have a large family. She will need her husband's loyalty when you and the English eventually come to a parting of the ways, which I have not a doubt you will."

  "That is her fate. Mine is greater," he replied. "Now, sister, I must go. You have your relic and everything else you have asked of me." He handed her two small leather bags. "My daughter's fees," he said, dropping the first one in her hand, "and your gold bezants," he concluded, handing her the second little bag. "I am pleased by the progress I see in Rhonwyn. When I return for her in the spring, I expect a complete transformation."

  "You will have it, brother," Gwynllian said.

  "I know I will. Your word has always been good, sister, and I thank you for what you are doing, even if it has cost me dearly."

  She laughed at him. "Do not complain, Llywelyn. That for which you pay nothing is worth nothing. Godspeed to you now."

  The winter came, and snow covered the hills. The sheep were brought in from the far pastures and kept within the walls at night to protect them from the wolves. It was a festive season, Rhonwyn discovered. The feast of St. Catherine was celebrated in late November, and there were a host of other saints' days leading up to Christ's Mass, which celebrated the birth of Jesus, whom Rhonwyn had now been taught was God's son come to earth to expiate man's sins. For all her rough upbringing, Rhonwyn found Christianity comforting. The notion of a god's son dying for mere mortals was both generous and honorable in her eyes. The abbess smiled when Rhonwyn told her that. She was grateful her niece approved of the concept of religion at all. While she found the thought of delivering a full-blown pagan to the English amusing, she did not think her brother would agree. She giggled in spite of herself at the picture it presented. Then she saw to it that her niece was baptized on Christmas Day.

  With Twelfth Night came the end of the festive season. Rhonwyn settled down and worked harder than ever. She was learning that the brain was as difficult and as skilled a weapon as her alborium. She was now put in the care of Sister Rhan, a nun whose plump and cheerful countenance belied an incredible intellect. Sister Rhan, somewhere in middle age, had once, according to the gossip Elen and Arlais offered, been a powerful lord's mistress. If the rumors were to be believed, she had also dressed as a boy and studied with the greatest minds in England.

  "You have intelligence, Rhonwyn," Sister Rhan said the first time they came to study together. "Your intellect and reason will serve you far better in the long run than your body. That is how I held my lord's interest for so many years until he died."

  "Then the gossip is true?" Rhonwyn was surprised to hear the nun admitting to what she had now been taught was a sin.

  Sister Rhan laughed. "Aye, 'tis true, and I have never made a secret of it, my child. Once I loved and was loved. I was faithful to him as he was to me."

  "But he had a wife," Rhonwyn said.

  "Indeed he did, and a very good woman the lady Arlette was, too. She brought him excellent lands to add to his own and gave him healthy children whom she raised to be regardful and devout. He treated her with devotion and great respect, even as he did me. We each served a purpose in his life. When he died, his lady wife and I washed his body and sewed him into his shroud together. She is a benefactress of Mercy Abbey now."

  "A man can love more than one woman, then, Rhonwyn said thoughtfully. "I did not know that. I thought once the choice was made and the vows spoken, a husband and wife cleaved to each other only."

  "Ideally, but not always," Sister Rhan answered her. "But we are not here, my child, to discuss my past sins. You have mastered both Norman and Latin. You can read and write it as well, although sometimes you are impatient with your letters. Your housewifely skills are, at best, passable, but you do not shine in that venue. The abbess believes your mind can absorb more serious learning, and so she has sent you to me. We shall study together grammar, rhetoric, logic, music, arithmetic, and astronomy. I will help you to become a support to your husband, so even when he becomes bored with your young body, he will find your mind invaluable to him. You will find much satisfaction in aiding your lord for the betterment of your lives and the lives of the children you will have together, Rhonwyn."

  "Then marital love doesn't last," the young girl observed.

  "If there is love at all, and do not mistake lust for love," Sister Rhan warned her.

  "What is the difference?" Rhonwyn demanded to know. "How shall I make the distinction?"

  "Excellent! Excellent!" the nun approved. "You are thinking. The abbess was right to send you to me. Lust is when your bodies crave each other for no reason. The urge will be strong and fierce. Love, however, is an entirely different thing. Love is a powerful yearning not just for the body of the object of your affection, but for everything about him. You will be unhappy out of his sight. The mere sound of his voice will set your heart to racing. You will put his interests ahead of your own because you want him to be happy. Ideally he will feel the same about you. Just being held in his arms will bring you a warm contentment. Ah, my child, love is very difficult to explain. You will know it when it strikes you, and you will find that when you make love then, it is entirely different than just pure and unbridled lust."

  "I know nothing of either marital love or lust," Rhonwyn said. "At Cythraul my brother and I were the fortress's children. Lately, however, young men newly come into our midst had tried to feel my breasts and kiss me. I beat them with my fists, and the others beat them afterward with rods for their temerity. Was what they attempted lust?"

  The nun nodded. "It was. And you felt nothing toward them?"

  "Nay," Rhonwyn replied vehemently. "They were pockmarked lads and nowhere near as skilled as I am with weapons. I think I must respect the man who uses my body and loves me."

  "A wise decision, my child. Now, let me turn the subject to the matter of arithmetic. It is best you have some familiarity with computation and calculation. That way if your husband goes off to war, you will be able to be certain the steward doesn't cheat you. You know your numbers, I am told, so let us now begin." She held up two fingers on her right hand. "How many?" she asked.

  "Two," Rhonwyn said.

  "And now how many?" The nun revealed two fingers on her left hand.

  "Two there as well," Rhonwyn said.

  "But how many altogether?" Sister Rhan asked.

  Rhonwyn quickly scanned the digits, counting mentally. "Four."

  "That is correct, and that, my child, is called adding." She reached into a basket by the table where they sat and brought up a device with several rows of beads, which she set on the table. "This is called an abacus, Rhonwyn. Now watch." She slid two beads from one side of the instrument to the other. "Two and two more equal how many?"

  "Four!"

  "Take away one head. How many?"

  "Three!"

  "Excellent. That second calculation is called subtraction," Sister Rhan explained.

  They quickly discovered that Rhonwyn had a talent for arithmetic. Each day she increased her knowledge until Sister Rhan assured the abbess that her niece would never be cheated by anyone. At least not where arithmetic was concerned. Grammar and logic appealed to the young girl, but while her handwriting improved markedly, Rhonwyn seemed to have no real talent for rhetoric, and she knew it.

  "My brother would do well with it," she told her teacher. "He makes up stories and poems, and puts them to music that he sings in the hall of Cythraul. I think he will be a great bard one day."

  Her time was growing shorter at Mercy Abbey, and her days, it seemed, were busy from dawn to dusk. Her two companions, Elen and Arlais, ended their trial as postulants and became novices. The three girls had never really become close, having different interests, but Rhonwyn was pleased that they were halfway to attaining their heart's desire. Rhonwyn, on the other hand, was suddenly beginning to consider her forthcoming
marriage. She would not meet her husband-to-be until just before they married. Such a thing was not unusual, her aunt said.

  Now, as well as increasing her education, Rhonwyn was being fitted for her wardrobe. Her father had brought fine materials indeed for his daughter, and Gwynllian could not complain at him for being niggardly in either his choices or the quantity. There were silks and velvets and brocades as well as linen and fine cottons. The fabrics were rich and colorful. Rhonwyn was shocked, however, to learn women did not wear braies beneath their gowns.

  "I've worn mine all along since you put me in a gown," she told her aunt. "What is substituted to cover the bottom?"

  "Ladies wear nought beneath their chemises," Gwynllian replied.

  "Nothing?"The girl's eyes were wide.

  "Your skirts will cover all, I assure you, Rhonwyn," the abbess said. "It is quite acceptable."

  "I don't think it respectable" was the answer..

  Gwynllian's lips twitched, but she managed to keep from chuckling. Her niece was more prudish than she would have expected of a girl raised in a fortress of men. Were it not for the child's continuing warlike tendencies, the abbess would have believed her a candidate for the nunnery, and not marriage. But Rhonwyn still rode daily outside the gates of the abbey, galloping along at a breakneck speed that had the porteress almost swooning at Rhonwyn's maneuvers.

  On March the twentieth the abbey celebrated the feast of St. Cuthbert, who had been a bishop of Lindisfarne and whose fingernail paring now resided in its bejeweled gold box on the abbey's church altar. It was bruited about that the relic could cure a variety of minor illnesses, but as it was not a large memorial great miracles could not be expected of it. Rut the pilgrims came nonetheless to touch the gold box and pray to the saint. The abbey coffers grew at a modest but steady pace that day.

  April first, the day marking Rhonwyn's sixteenth birthday, came, and Llywelyn ap Gruffydd appeared to reclaim his daughter. Her cool, elegant demeanor was slightly intimidating, but her manners were flawless. He was rather astounded to learn of all her accomplishments since her arrival at the abbey almost six months ago. He was equally appalled by the amount of baggage she would be leaving with, but accepted his sister's explanation on the matter and her dictate that he could not leave until the morrow.

  Rhonwyn had been turned from a rough-speaking half-lad into a beautiful young woman. Her cropped hair had grown out. It was parted in the center and hung down her back, contained by a simple silver ribbon. Her bosom seemed larger, which was to his mind all to the good. Men liked a woman with plump breasts. She no longer walked with determined strides, but rather glided gracefully. The hands that had held a sword were now perfumed and soft, and the long fingers that bad so skillfully drawn her bow now plucked at the strings of the mandora in her lap while she sang softly The English could have no complaints about his daughter.

  "You have worked a miracle, Gwynllian," he told the abbess.

  "Yes," she agreed with a small, arch smile. "She is more than well worth the price you have paid for her transformation. However, brother, I must be honest with you. Were Rhonwyn not an intelligent girl, none of this would have been possible. And you should show the men of Cythraul some appreciation, for they are the ones who taught her honor and duty."

  "While turning her into a rough, foul-mouthed soldier," he grumbled at his sister. "And that cost me a fortune to reverse. I am tempted to burn Cythraul down about their ears!"

  "This is not someone else's fault, Llywelyn," the abbess said sternly to her brother. "This mishap was your failing. You know it, and you know why. Put it behind you, and tomorrow take your daughter to England to her husband. Remember, however, this time you travel with a lady, and not a laddie." Then the abbess chuckled at her own small play on words.

  The morning of April second came, and Rhonwyn's baggage was loaded into a sturdy cart. She bid the sisters farewell, taking special time to thank those nuns who had given her all the knowledge she now possessed, particularly Sister Rhan and the abbess.

  "Remember, my child, that you will always have a home and a refuge here at Mercy Abbey," Gwynllian told her. "May God bless you with happiness and many children."

  "Not too many," Rhonwyn teased her aunt. "But I do promise to save at least one girl for you, my lady abbess."

  With a chuckle, the abbess hugged her niece, kissing her on the cheek. "Godspeed, Rhonwyn uerch Llywelyn," she said.

  Mounted upon Hardd, Rhonwyn rode through the abbey gates by her father's side. She heard the portals close behind her, but she was not sad. She was free from the constrictions of the nuns at last and off on a new adventure. They had turned her into a mannerly lady, but they had not tamed her spirit nor dimmed her enthusiasm for life. She had spent these past months in earnest study so she could be worthy of her father's name and her new position. Now she must turn her mind to Edward de Beaulieu, the man who was to be her husband. She couldn't even begin to imagine what he would be like, but over the next few days of their journey she tried.

  Chapter 4

  “The messenger has arrived from Prince Llywelyn, my lord," the servant said, bowing to his master.

  "Bring him into the hall" came the reply.

  "Yes, my lord." The servant bowed again, and backed away some feet before turning about. He returned only moments later. "The messenger from Prince Llywelyn, my lord."

  Edward de Beaulieu glanced briefly at the rugged Welshman.

  "My master and the lady Rhonwyn will be here by nightfall, my lord," he said. Then he fell silent.

  "I await them" was the brief answer.

  Cold bastard, the messenger thought as he bowed to the lord of Haven Castle and departed the place to ride back to ap Gruffydd with the reply.

  Edward de Beaulieu watched him go, and then absently took the silver goblet of wine his servant offered him, staring into the dancing red gold flames in the fireplace. He wasn't ready to marry, yet he would shortly have a wife. A wild Welsh girl half his age. But having no betrothal agreement with another and being located so conveniently near the border, the king had chosen him to be his sacrificial lamb in this treaty marriage. He had considered refusing, but Prince Edward had stared hard at him when the king announced his decision, and Edward de Beaulieu had known he dared not refuse. The prince was an enemy he was not interested in having.

  When the Welsh prince had asked the marriage be delayed until this spring because his daughter was completing her education at Mercy Abbey, Edward de Beaulieu had been pleased to acquiesce. He had an attractive mistress and was in no hurry to wed. When he thought of it, though, a convent-bred wife did have her advantages. She would be meek and obedient, keeping his home in excellent condition and bearing his children. Haven had known no lady since his mother had died seven years ago. While he had enjoyed the company of his mistress, Renee de Faubourg, these past months, he had pensioned her off several weeks ago, with her own house in Shrewsbury and an annual allowance he placed with a reputable goldsmith. A wife was to be respected, and if the truth be known, he was beginning to tire of Renee.

  He wondered what the Welsh girl would be like. She would probably be small, for so many of the Welsh were. And she would have dark hair and eyes and a fair skin. He wondered if she spoke the Norman tongue or if she was conversant only in Welsh. It probably didn't matter a great deal as no words were really needed when a man took a woman to his bed. She would eventually learn, of course, if she was to control the servants.

  Still, he couldn't help but feel annoyed at having been forced to this marriage. But the girl had had no choice either, and was not to be blamed. Hopefully they would like one another and could come to an arrangement that would guarantee peace between them. He was uncomfortable, however, having Llywelyn ap Gruffydd as a father-in-law. The prince was a dangerous man and extremely ambitious. Haven would be caught between him and Prince Edward, who liked not the Welshman one bit, for ap Gruffydd had supported the prince's uncle, Simon de Montfort, quite openly against the king. Prince
Edward might not have a great deal of respect for his sire's style of governance, but he did love his father.

  de Beaulieu arose and left the great hall, going to the south tower where his bride's apartments would be located. The young serving girl his steward had chosen to serve the bride turned startled eyes on him as he entered the dayroom. She curtsied quickly, keeping her frightened eyes lowered. He looked about the room. The furnishings of oak were polished, and the stone floor well swept. The lamps burned without smoking. There was a bowl of daffodils on a table. He smiled.

  "You have done well, Enit," he told her. "Your new mistress will arrive by nightfall, 1 have been informed. She may want to bathe after her journey. Make certain a tub is ready."

  "Yes, my lord," Enit said, bobbing another curtsey. Her uncle was stewardat Haven, and this was a great opportunity she had been given, particularly considering her mother was Welsh and not English. Enit was sixteen and had been in service at the castle for five years. She was a plain rather than pretty girl, with brown hair and eyes.

  Edward de Beaulieu left the apartment and went in search of his priest, Father John. All the legalities had been signed and sealed at Montgomery with regard to his marriage. All that was left was for the priest to perform the sacrament. He decided upon the morrow so his bride might have a proper night's rest. The king had personally instructed him that the marriage was to be consummated on his wedding night.

  "I do not trust ap Gruffydd," Henry had said. "Breach the girl, and make certain the bloody sheet flies from the castle top on the following morning for all to see."

  "Use her well," Prince Edward had continued. "You want her with child as quickly as possible, my lord, else her sly sire attempt to annul your marriage and take her back to use to better advantage elsewhere. The Welsh are not honorable peoples, but with ap Gruffydd's daughter in our power, we may keep him under control. He must love the wench that he has kept her so secretly all these years."