The Reckoning

by Sharon Kay Penman

  “No,” Ellen agreed, “he would not do that…”

  Hugh felt very thankful then, that he did have some comfort to offer. “This I can say for certes, my lady, that Lord Amaury finds life far easier at Sherborne than ever he did at Corfe. His chamber is not as barren, or as cheerless, and he does not lack for blankets or candles or food to his liking. The castellan is quite friendly, too, comes and plays chess with Lord Amaury when his duties allow.”

  Hugh paused to smile at Juliana, who’d just joined them; Caitlin and her kitten had long since sauntered over. “Lord Amaury even has a pet popinjay now, a gift from his friends at the papal court. He says it comes from the Holy Land, and it is a rare sight to see, screeching like a Paris fish peddler, preening feathers green as emeralds. Lord Amaury keeps it in a wicker cage, and amuses himself by teaching it to swear in Latin!”

  As Hugh hoped, that evoked laughter. “He did bid me, my lady, to ask you to procure for him a lute or gittern. I assured him you—” Hugh seemed to swallow his own words, so abruptly did he cut himself off. “Who is she?”

  Even before they followed Hugh’s awestruck gaze, they knew who they’d see entering the hall, for in the fortnight since she’d joined Ellen’s household, Eluned ferch Iago had been turning male heads like spinning tops.

  “Who? That plain, drab little sparrow in the green gown?” Llewelyn queried, and Hugh looked at him as if he’d lost his mind before realizing that he was being teased.

  “For a moment there, my lord, I thought you’d either gone blind or daft! She is…” Words failing him, Hugh could only shake his head in wonderment. They were all laughing at him now, but he was too bewitched to care, unable to take his eyes from the vision across the hall. “What is her name? Does she have a husband? Do you think she—”

  “Give me time to answer, Hugh.” Ellen was delighted, for she was a born matchmaker. “Eluned is a widow, and my newest lady of the chamber. I had suggested to my lord husband that if I had one of his countrywomen as a handmaiden, I would have more opportunities to practice my Welsh. So what does he do? He finds me the most bedazzling creature to draw breath since Helen first looked upon Troy!”

  “Really?” Llewelyn sounded surprised. “I cannot say I noticed.”

  “Of course not, darling,” Ellen said. “Why, it was by pure chance that you nearly walked into that wall yesterday just as Eluned was passing by.”

  Llewelyn bit his lip, struggled manfully to keep from laughing, a battle he lost as soon as his eyes met Ellen’s. Hugh was normally amused by their bantering, but now he shifted impatiently and cleared his throat, hoping they’d take the hint. Mercifully, Llewelyn did. Rising to his feet, he winked at his wife. “I’ll be back, cariad, once I’ve had a few words with the Lady Eluned. Hugh…is there any chance you’d like to come with me?”

  Watching as the men crossed the hall, Juliana nudged Ellen playfully. “You have that look again,” she chided, “that melting, dewyeyed, adoring-wife look!”

  “I do not!” Ellen protested, and then, “How can I help myself? He is so generous, Juliana. Once Eluned sees how high Hugh stands in her Prince’s favor, she is bound to be impressed. Yet if I try to thank Llewelyn, he’ll act as if he’d done nothing at all.”

  “I’m sure you will find a way to show your gratitude,” Juliana murmured, slyly enough to make Ellen laugh and blush at the same time. “It appears,” she said cheerfully, “as if our Hugh is well and truly smitten—at long last!”

  “And to judge by the way she is smiling at Hugh now, I’d venture his chances are—” Ellen stopped suddenly in mid-sentence, having belatedly become aware of Caitlin’s utter stillness, her frozen silence. One glance at the girl’s white, stunned face was enough. She caught her breath, reached out. But her fingers just brushed the sleeve of Caitlin’s gown, for her indrawn breath had broken the spell. Still clutching the kitten to her breast, Caitlin turned, began to walk rapidly away. Her name hovered on Ellen’s lips; she bit it back, let the girl go.

  Juliana was watching, too, at first quizzical, and then, as comprehension dawned, pitying. “Ah, no, that poor lass…”

  Ellen nodded. “We’ve all been so blind,” she said sadly, “Hugh most of all.”

  Llewelyn’s favorite castle was Dolwyddelan, but his wife was more partial to Castell y Bere, deep in the mountains of Meirionydd. From the solar window in the upper chamber of the keep, Ellen looked out upon a vista of truly dramatic dimensions, for Castell y Bere was situated upon a rocky ridge above the Dysynni Valley, almost in the shadow of the lofty range, Cader Idris. But she valued Castell y Bere as much for its isolation as for its scenic panoramas; the castle was one of the most inaccessible of all Llewelyn’s mountain citadels, and it gave Ellen an illusory sense of security, being so far off the beaten track, so far from England.

  She lingered a while longer at the window, enjoying the warmth of the August sun upon her face. She thought she heard the distant, muffled echoes of a hunting horn, wondered if it could be Llewelyn’s; it was difficult to tell, for she knew sounds could carry for miles on the quiet country air. Turning back toward the man waiting patiently at the table, she said, “How many letters have we completed so far, Adda?”

  Her scribe riffled through the parchments piled before him. “There is a letter to your brother, the Lord Amaury. And one to your kinswomen, the Lady Hawise Wake. A brief letter to our lord’s cousin, Mallt Clifford. Giffard, that is,” he amended, grimacing as if the very name tasted foul, for John Giffard was proving to be one of the most rapacious and predatory of the King’s officials. “There is a letter to the Abbot of Cymer, thanking him for offering the hospitality of his grange at Abereiddon. And a letter to the vintner at Shrewsbury, ordering a cask of vernage. A promise to send honey to the priory at Beddgelert. Accounts paid: to the silversmith at Bangor who crafted the saltcellar for Sir Huw and the Lady Eluned, to Ithel ap Maelgwn for the fox pelts, to the peddler who brought the salt and needles and velvet from Cheshire. And lastly, a letter to Marged, the French Queen.”

  Ellen smiled, amused by Adda’s persistent habit of translating names into Welsh whenever possible, so that Hugh became Huw, Maude was transformed into Mallt, and the Gallic Marguerite emerged as the Celtic Marged. “I have one more letter to write, Adda, but I’ll take care of it myself. I would like you to seal these letters now and arrange for couriers.”

  Once she was alone, she sat down in the seat Adda had just vacated, reaching for a newly scraped sheet of parchment. “To the Lady Blanche, Countess of Lancaster, greetings. I was gladdened by your good news, and went at once to the chapel to light a candle for your safe confinement and an easy delivery. This past spring my cousin Elizabeth was brought to bed of a second, healthy son. I am sure you will be just as blessed, dearest.”

  She paused then, for so long that the ink dripped from the quill point, dribbled onto the sheepskin. Taking up the pen again, she wrote: “We had a most illustrious guest this summer, none other than John Peckham, the new Archbishop of Canterbury. He came into Wales in June, seeking to mediate between Llewelyn and the Bishop of Bangor.”

  Her pen hovered, not quite making contact with the parchment. The Archbishop’s visit had been an amiable one—on the surface. Peckham was surprisingly tactless for a man who’d risen so high in the Church hierarchy. It had been Ellen’s experience that papal princes were subtle, urbane, even devious men, shrewd practitioners of the arts of persuasion and politics. Yet for all that Peckham appeared to be lacking in even the rudimentary skills of diplomacy, he did strike Ellen as well-intentioned; it spoke well for him that he had been willing to undertake an arduous fifteen-day journey into Llewelyn’s domains. Nor was she unduly troubled by Peckham’s imprudence, for no man had valued plain speaking more than her own father. Brashness she could overlook, but bias she could not, and Peckham’s bias was too inbred, too heartfelt, to be camouflaged in courtesy. It had soon become appallingly obvious that England’s premier prelate had a deep and abiding contempt for Wales and the
Welsh.

  Ellen frowned down at the parchment. Should the Archbishop ever be called upon to mediate between her husband and the English Crown, what sort of peacemaker would he be? She thought she knew the answer to that, all too well. Peckham would see the conquest of Wales as Edward’s divine duty, just as popes had exhorted Christian kings and knights to take the cross, take back the Holy Land. She was far too circumspect, though, ever to commit such dangerous thoughts to print, for letters might always fall into unfriendly hands, and she had bitter, personal knowledge of the efficiency of her royal cousin’s surveillance system.

  “We sent Hugh de Whitton—you remember Hugh—to Amaury at Sherborne Castle, and upon his return last month, Hugh stirred up quite a hornet’s nest by falling head over heels for a young Welsh widow. Whether it was love at first sight or—as Llewelyn claims—lust at first sight, nothing would do but that he must marry her, and since she was no less smitten with him, marry they did, without even waiting for the banns to be posted.”

  Ellen could not help smiling at that, for although she did not approve of their haste, she understood it. A man of honor like Hugh would accept as a tenet of faith their society’s dichotomy, that there were women to be bedded and women to be wedded. The Lady Eluned was a woman of good birth, of good name, and therefore a bride, not a bedmate; Ellen knew that, for Hugh, it was as simple as that.

  “Eluned’s family was not that keen on the match. The Welsh do not object to an alltud woman—a foreigner—wedding one of their own, for the woman takes her husband’s nationality. It is different, though, when a Welshwoman weds an alien, a Sais like Hugh. In England, her family’s opposition would have ended their courtship then and there. But Welshwomen enjoy freedoms that their sisters in Christendom would not dare to dream about, Blanche. Welsh law says that ‘a woman is to go the way that she willeth.’ Whilst a virgin maid must consult her kin ere she weds, a Welsh widow may wed whom she pleases, and it pleased Eluned to wed our Hugh. I would rather they had waited, that they slowed their headlong race to the altar, but they were deaf to my pleas, and I could not very well insist. Hugh is a man grown of four and twenty, old enough to know his own mind, and I owe him more than I can ever repay. I could only wish him well, wish them luck.”

  Rereading her last words, she found herself hoping that Hugh and Eluned would not need as much luck as she feared. Dipping the pen into her ink-horn, she confessed to Blanche her concern for the Pope’s health; the Archbishop had heard he’d been ailing. Left unsaid was her fear that a new pope might not be as willing to champion Amaury’s cause as Nicholas IV had been.

  “I always dread the coming of August, Blanche. It was even more troubling than usual this year, for this was the fifteenth anniversary of Evesham. Llewelyn knows it is ever a difficult time for me, does whatever he can to raise my spirits. And so last week he gave me the most amazing present. It is a mirror, but utterly unlike any I’d ever seen, for it is neither polished brass not a sheet of glass over metal. This mirror’s glass has a silvered back, and reflects images with uncanny accuracy. Llewelyn said they are crafted in Germany, and he’d been trying for months to obtain one for me. Once he did, he saved it for when he knew I’d need it the most, in Evesham week. For days afterward, people were coming to my chamber, shyly asking if they might see it. I began to feel as if I had a holy relic, like Llewelyn’s fragment of the True Cross!”

  When the knock on the door sounded, Ellen’s hand jerked, smearing the ink. “Enter,” she said absently, reaching first for a knife to scrape away the blotted words, and then for a pumice stone to smooth the erasure. So intent was she upon her task that it was several moments before she glanced up, saw Caitlin standing in the doorway.

  Although Caitlin had rejected every opportunity Ellen had given her to talk about Hugh, Ellen was not surprised to see her now, for she’d been sure that sooner or later Caitlin would need a confidante. Rising swiftly, she held out her hand, beckoned the girl into the chamber.

  Caitlin did not know how to begin. She bit her lip, and then blurted out, “It hurts so much.”

  Ellen slipped her arm around Caitlin’s slender shoulders, drew her toward the settle. “I know, lass,” she said and sighed, wondering why there were so many salves and balms for a bruised and battered body, but none for a wounded heart.

  “Do you?” Caitlin did not mean her question to sound so skeptical, but she had no experience in confiding secrets of the soul. “Do you?” she repeated, puzzled. “How? Was there another man in your life ere you wed my uncle?”

  “No. Llewelyn is my first—and last—love. But I know what it is like to lose a loved one. Be it a father’s death or a lover’s loss, the pain is no different. Any time that one we love is taken from us, it leaves a jagged hole in the heart. I know about loss, Caitlin…and about living with the fear of loss. My aunt Joanna and her Llewelyn were blessed with a long, fruitful marriage, nigh on thirty-one years, and my parents…they were together for twenty-eight years. But Llewelyn and I…how many years can we hope to have? Not enough, not nearly enough. So much time squandered, stolen from us…”

  Caitlin was quiet, considering. “Yes, you do understand,” she said at last. “I feel so empty…and so angry. No, not at Hugh—at myself. If only I’d been forthright with him, let him know how I felt! But it was easier to wait, to give him the time he needed, time to discover that he cared for me, too. I knew he saw me as a little girl, a little sister. I was sure, though, that one day he’d look up and see me as I truly was, as a woman who loved him. So I… I kept silent, I kept my pride intact, and now my pride is all I have left…”

  It was the longest speech that Ellen had ever heard Caitlin utter. It was heartening to learn that she’d been able to win the girl’s trust so completely, but what was she to say? What comfort could she offer?

  “The worst of it, though, is that I know she’ll not make him happy. She is wrong for Hugh, all wrong. Oh, I know I’m not pretty, not like her. Eluned—even her name sounds musical. But a fair face and a honeyed name may not be enough—not for Hugh.” Caitlin looked up then, green eyes darkening. “I realize how that makes me sound,” she said defensively. “But it is not just jealousy, Aunt Ellen, that I swear!”

  Ellen surprised her, then. “I know that, Caitlin, for I agree with you. I do not think Eluned is right for Hugh, either. She seems to have a sweet nature. But she also seems—for want of a better word—very giddy.”

  “You see it, too! I feared I was the only one. Hugh is not a man to be content with…with a butterfly, not for long. What happens when her chatter begins to pall, when her beauty no longer takes his breath away? Then what? I find it hard to see him so happy with Eluned, I’ll not deny that. But how much harder it will be to see him unhappy…”

  Ellen’s hopes for Hugh’s marriage were not much more sanguine than Caitlin’s, but that was a worry to be confronted in the future, if and when their fears were borne out. Her immediate concern was Caitlin, and how to staunch the girl’s bleeding. What she needed was to get away for a while, away from Hugh and Eluned’s newlywed bliss. A pity she had no maternal kindred, for she’d sooner turn to the Devil than to Davydd.

  “Caitlin, do you remember my cousin Hawise? You met her at my wedding. She is kin to you, too, for her mother was Llewelyn Fawr’s daughter. I am sure she would be delighted to have you visit, to stay as long as—”

  “Leave Wales?” Caitlin’s eyes were wide; that was obviously an option she’d never considered, and one too outlandish to be taken seriously. “I could never leave Wales.”

  Ellen lapsed into a pensive silence. “Caitlin…have you given any thought at all to marriage?”

  The girl nodded. “Of course I have, Aunt Ellen. What other solution is there for me? I want Uncle Llewelyn to find me a husband. But not yet, not until my grieving is not so raw. It would not be fair—to the man or to me—to wed whilst I still mourned what might have been.”

  Ellen could see the wisdom in that. But before she had a chance to say
so, a sudden warning shout came echoing up from the gatehouse. Rising, Ellen moved to the window, with Caitlin just a step behind. The riders were not yet within recognition range. As they drew nearer, Ellen’s eyes focused upon the bright, fluttering banner, for the arms—four quartered lions, countercharged—were very similar to Llewelyn’s own. But the colors were wrong, silver and blue, not gold and red. “Oh, no,” Ellen said, and Caitlin, leaning out the window, gave a gasp as she, too, saw the windblown banner.

  “It is my father!” She turned a dismayed face toward Ellen. “What is he doing here?”

  “Who knows?” Ellen watched morosely as a challenge was issued, answered, and the drawbridge began its creaking descent. “Davydd sent word last month that he would be crossing into Llewelyn’s lands, not exactly asking permission, but as much as we could expect from him, I suppose. He said he and Elizabeth were bringing their sons to see Owain, who has been ailing. He also asked if we could offer a night’s lodging at Castell y Bere. Why he should be in Meirionydd at all is beyond me, since it lies well to the south of Owain’s lands in Llŷn, but ask he did, and we could not very well refuse. Not when the poorest Welsh hovel is open to travelers, every table is set for unexpected guests, and Lucifer himself could count upon a meal and a bed by the hearth on his sojourns in Wales.”

  “But why did you say nothing of this to me?”

  “It seemed better to wait, at least until after Hugh’s wedding. Davydd said they would be coming into Meirionydd the week after St Bartholomew’s Day, and so we thought you had no need to know yet, not until the time drew nigh for his arrival.”

  Caitlin’s mouth twisted. “Leave it to my father,” she said bitterly, “to come a full fortnight early. Aunt Ellen… I do not think I can face him now.”

  Ellen knew exactly how she felt. “I shall tell them you are ailing,” she said, and braced herself to offer Lucifer a meal and a bed by the hearth.