Uneasy Lies the Crown

by N. Gemini Sasson

  Owain poured a cup of usquebaugh and pushed it in front of Gruffydd, who regarded it with disdain. Gruffydd had never liked the way it warmed his veins, made his tongue feel thick and filled his head with fog. Besides, to him it tasted no better than vinegar.

  “The Irish call it ‘water of life’.” Owain winked. “It will put a beard on your chin.”

  Gruffydd brought it to his nose and inhaled, then plunked the cup down on the table. “The devil’s own piss. It will burn my insides on the way down.”

  “Only the first time.” Owain cuffed him on the shoulder. “Ah! The mummers have arrived.”

  Owain and Margaret clapped gleefully as a small parade, led by their second oldest son Maredydd, entered the hall. The children drew out in a line, from tallest to shortest, all ten of Gruffydd’s younger brothers and sisters. Sweeping down from their shoulders were brightly colored cloaks borrowed from their parents’ wardrobe. Sion and little Mary, now five years of age, were more concerned with gathering up the ends of their trailing encumbrances to keep from tripping than playing their parts. Madoc, one of the middle children, stood beside his twin Isabel with a grin that was spread from one stuck out ear to the other. Dewi and Tomos traded punches. Janet clutched a mended doll, the stitched features on its face frayed, its dress a patchwork of color. Holding Janet’s free hand was her older sister Alice, the very image of her mother. Each of the children, except Catrin, who was second oldest after Gruffydd, had a wooden sword tucked beneath their belts of rope. Circling Catrin’s pale brow was a crown of yellow-faced daisies.

  Plucking up Catrin’s hand, Maredydd strutted forward. The pair stopped in front of Gruffydd and swooped low at the waist toward him.

  “I am King Arthur. Let me present my lovely queen, Guinevere. And these,” Maredydd proclaimed, spreading his arms, “are the Knights of the Round Table!”

  The audience hooted. Mugs banged on the tables and feet stomped louder and louder until the clatter was deafening. Then Maredydd swept aside the plates still in front of his parents and sprang atop the table. He held up his palms to hush the crowd. Behind him, Margaret and Owain exchanged glances of delight at their son’s ability to cast such a spell of amusement. Gruffydd, however, was bored of all the regalia and would rather have been alone hunting with his bow—or better yet, somewhere secluded with Elise—than be forced to watch such meaningless child’s play.

  “But wait, good people!” A deep seriousness weighed down Maredydd’s voice. Slowly, his hands drifted downward. “There is blight in my kingdom. One of my knights, my own nephew Mordred, has fallen from grace and seeks to destroy me.” He pointed accusingly to the far end of the hall, where Tudur sprang from behind a tapestry.

  Tudur flashed a grin and shrugged. In mocking fashion, he flipped back the ends of his long black cloak and strutted into the middle of the hall. Jeers and whistles followed him.

  It was in the midst of this earsplitting folly that the doors to the hall swung open and a sagging figure stumbled in. There was little cause for notice at first. More than one guest had already had too much to drink and people had been coming and going all day. Gruffydd’s first instinct, however, was to claim a weapon from above the hearth to chase away the bedraggled stranger. The man looked to be no threat, but clearly he was either drunk or deranged. Gruffydd turned a questioning gaze upon his father.

  The smile now gone from his face, Owain detached himself from his wife’s gentle handclasp and moved around the table. Maredydd dropped from his perch to stand behind his father. Tudur whirled around, and then took several steps back. Almost in unison, the children turned to see who had interrupted their play.

  Head bowed, Owain sank to his knee. “My lord.”

  The hall went silent. Not even a whisper rippled the air. Gruffydd had seen the man perhaps once before and then from a distance. But he knew by his father’s reaction who it was.

  King Richard’s eyes were dull and drooping. He moved in a detached manner. The clothes he wore were plainer than even those of Sycharth’s servants, unmended and tinged with the dust of mountain trails. Just beyond the doorway stood a remnant of his fragmented army, far cleaner than him, but looking every bit as weary.

  “Your guests are lacking in their manners.” Richard stole a tankard from one of the tables and wetted his lips. Then he groped inside a torn sleeve and, discovering his kerchief gone, wiped at the split corners of his mouth with the backs of his fingers.

  Owain shot a glance at Tudur, who obediently dropped to one knee. Maredydd grabbed at the arms of Alice and Tomos and pulled them down. The younger children, bewildered, huddled together beneath a table. Her mouth hanging aghast, fair Catrin slowly knelt, her eyes never leaving the king.

  “What are you staring at?” Richard stomped toward Catrin. Trembling, she lowered her eyes. “Have your eyes never beheld a king?”

  He looked anything but a king as he staggered around Owain’s hall. The shadow on his whiskered cheeks from too many days without a shave and a bundle of limp, knotted hair gave him the appearance of a cat that had been stranded in a rainstorm. Halting behind Owain, Richard bent over and whispered in his ear, “Get rid of them.”

  “Rid of whom, sire?” Owain whispered back.

  “Them. All of them.”

  “M’lord, if you wish to speak in private we could —”

  “I wish to speak to you here. Now. I haven’t any time. I am pressed for Conwy.”

  Nodding, Owain rose.

  Richard grabbed his sleeve. “That one may stay.” He pointed at Gruffydd. “He reminds me of my cousin—young Harry.”

  Gruffydd hadn’t even been aware that the king had noticed him. As curious as he was about what had brought him here, Gruffydd had no desire to be privy to Richard’s troubles. Life at Sycharth was, for the most part, uncomplicated. English politics were anything but simple. Certainly, Wales had had its share of troubles in the past, but his father had done his best to remain on good terms with both his neighbors and his English overlords—whatever it took to live in peace. Gruffydd, too, preferred it that way.

  Owain turned to Margaret and gave the instructions for the hall to be cleared. It was several minutes later before the last guest exited and the doors were drawn shut. Richard stood in the middle of the hall, his eyes fixed on the distant hills beyond the windows as if contemplating some looming fate.

  “They gave up Bristol,” Richard said. “Opened the doors, let Henry in to murder my men.” Then he turned his face toward Owain. Behind his pupils was an extinguished soul. The flamboyance for which he was known was vanished, his fingers unadorned but for the ring that bore the royal seal. “My kingdom is in chaos. My army, hearing rumors of my supposed death, has scattered to the winds. My people... they hail Henry and toss petals before his godly steps. Yet they flee from me, as if I were some ogre afflicted with leprosy. Have I even one loyal man to defend my name? One? Alas, he has turned them all against me—every soldier, every nobleman, every beggar and every child.” Again, he looked out over the hills and flinched, as if he thought he had seen Henry himself riding for him. “Oh, this I swear, by God I do swear—if ever I get my hands on that bastard Bolingbroke’s neck, he will die in such a manner that they will retell the tale even in Turkey.”

  Richard was rambling as if Henry had woven some spell over the whole of England, when in truth it was Richard’s confiscation of the Lancastrian inheritance that had severed any and all devotion he might have claimed. Even Gruffydd, just turned sixteen and more interested in a certain young English girl than English politics, knew that.

  The king then turned to Owain, inviting a response with a pleading, doleful stare.

  “Say it,” Richard challenged Owain. “Whatever it is, say it. I did not come here so that you could tell me what I want to hear. Tell me what I need to hear. Say it or I’ll damn you every day until my death.”

  Owain glanced around the room—at the immense timber rafters, at the host of empty chairs and half-eaten plates of food—the
n at the king. “You must give back to Henry everything you have taken from him.”

  Gruffydd cringed at his father’s boldness, wishing he could scamper beneath the table like his siblings had and crawl from the hall unnoticed.

  Richard laughed hollowly. “Everything?”

  “Yes. Everything. Including his father’s titles.”

  His hands on his hips, the king paced the length of the head table. He tittered like a madman. Then he thumped a finger on his temple and pointed at Owain. “I don’t think there was ever a man in my court who spoke half as honestly as you, Welsh.”

  “I have nothing to gain or lose by doing so.”

  “Ah, but you do. You are the wealthiest Welshman west of the Severn. You have a great deal to lose.” Leaning idly against one of the tables, Richard picked at the food around him until he found a morsel of still warm capon to his liking. “I upheld your right to the lands that your neighbor Grey so covets... but fortune may not smile so pleasantly on you in the future. You in all your golden splendor, with an army of children, rivers flowing in wine, a sea of grain around you—mark me, one stroke of the blade or swipe of the pen and all is gone. All...”—he gazed down at his sullied palms as if he were watching a handful of sand sift between his wriggling fingers, his voice fading to a frail whisper—“all is gone.”

  “No.” Owain stepped closer. “All is not gone, my lord king. Go not to Conwy. Stay here at Sycharth. Many Welsh would come to your calling. I can send word —”

  “You are already in grave danger for having befriended me,” Richard warned. “If you were to speak on my behalf, they would disparage your name and connect to it all manner of lies. And they are such fantastic experts at concocting lies, you would not believe it. If you were to raise an army in my name, they would level every paltry village hereabouts. To house me, they would burn your home for it. Cleave to your family, Glyndwr. In the end, it is the only thing truly your own.” Pilfering a loaf of white bread, he tossed a glance at Gruffydd. Then he trudged toward the door and without so much as a cordial nod of farewell, shoved it open, tripped down the stairs and pulled himself up into his saddle. With a scant few dozen guards and archers, King Richard departed for Conwy.

  Gruffydd expelled a sigh of relief, but in the very next breath his shoulders and arms were locked with tension. The king’s visit, however unplanned, meant trouble. His father may not have been one to seek out confrontation, but he was not one to let injustices go unanswered, either. Gruffydd feared his father would let himself be drawn into a fight that was never his to begin with.

  With obvious trepidation, the guests began to filter back into the hall. Madoc, so generally soft-spoken and observant, sidled up to Gruffydd and tapped him on the shoulder. “Who was that?”

  Gruffydd rose from his seat to watch the last of the king’s company disappear over a hill. “That, Madoc, was Richard, King of England.”

  In the circle of Owain’s fingers rested a cup of flat ale. The log in the hearth of their chamber glowed weakly at its core. He had been sitting on a small stool there for over an hour, thinking about, wondering, even dreading what news would come.

  Margaret knelt at her husband’s feet and put her chin on his knees. She looked up at him with her great brown eyes, the last of the fire glimmering in her pupils. “I would tell you to come to bed, but I know you wouldn’t sleep. You’d only keep me awake with your tossing and turning.”

  “I fear for him, Marged.” He swirled his cup, then tossed its contents onto the diminishing fire. “I fear for us.”

  “So bar the door. Throw away the key,” she teased, running her soft hand over his thigh. Then she raised herself up on her knees and circled her arms about his neck. “Everything we need is here. In this house.”

  “Would that were true, cariad.”

  “Owain, what I’ll not have you doing is dabbling in king’s games. What’s done is done. King Richard has made his own bed. You don’t take from men what is rightly theirs without paying recompense eventually.”

  Setting his cup aside, he pulled her hands down to his chest and held them tightly. “I still think he could have been a good king. He’s a peace-loving man... and generous.”

  Margaret scoffed. “Generous at the expense of others. Leave it be, my love. ’Tis not your quarrel.”

  “It’s more than a quarrel. More than that. Far, far more.” He shook his head and gazed again into the fire. “Ah Marged, but you are right. You always are. There’s little to be done. Richard must crawl to Henry and beg bloody forgiveness for all his transgressions. He’ll be a king in name only. A tethered animal. A baited bear.”

  “He hasn’t the claws to be a bear.” Tenderly, she turned his hands over and kissed his palms. “Come to bed, won’t you? If you can’t sleep, it’s no bother—truly. I’m not tired, either.”

  A faint grin crept over his mouth. Longingly, he reached for her. A shiver rippled through her. He curled his fingers around one of her ears and pressed something cold and hard against her earlobe. Drawing his hand back, he revealed the glint of an old Roman coin, its surface speckled with the patina of many centuries.

  “What is that?” she asked in amazement.

  “My magic trick. But sadly it’s the only one I know.” He shrugged with the innocence of a young boy caught playing pranks. “I promised you, remember? That day in the market, when we first met, that as we grew older I would amuse you with my magic tricks?”

  “I do. A cart full of squawking chickens rumbled by. I bumped into you. My hair was full of feathers. You plucked them away, one at a time, as you told me all the times until then that you almost spoke to me, but didn’t.” She pulled him to his feet and led him away from the fading fire. “I remember every day with you. Every day.”

  Invitingly, she turned and sat on the edge of the canopied featherbed, the temple where each of their eleven children had been made and brought into the world. “Every hour.” Lying back as he approached her, she gazed up at him, sharing with him the memory of each laugh, kiss and tear of seventeen years. “Every moment.”

  9

  Near Ruthin Castle, Wales — Summer, 1399

  Concealed in dewy bracken, Gruffydd peered through the gray blending of forest shapes. In the boughs far above, a tawny owl bemoaned an unfound mate. He kept his eyes on the trail until they were so strained and weary he fought to keep them open. It was well past midnight... and his truelove was late.

  The moonlight that had so charitably lit his path to this secret place was now hiding shyly behind a thickening bank of clouds. A sluggish breeze rustled the undergrowth and brushed gently at his cheeks. Below where he hid in a grove of oaks, a lazy brook murmured its lullaby. He closed his lids for only a moment...

  A gasp turned to a squeak. Gruffydd poked his head above the bracken to determine its source.

  Elise’s slippered foot plunged from a stepping-stone into the brook. As she threw her arms out to catch her balance, her skirts fell into the water. By the time Gruffydd rubbed the sleep from his eyes and scurried forth, she was standing at the rivulet’s edge, a dark, knee-deep waterline marking her yellow skirt and a scowl as convincing as any snarling dog’s on her mouth. Her bosom, quite ample for a maiden of merely fifteen years, heaved with indignation. Gruffydd drank her in and braved a step closer, dying to press his hungry lips against hers.

  Before he was within arm’s reach, she shushed him with a forefinger to her plump lips. Motioning for him to follow her behind the shroud of oak columns, she snatched up her wet skirt. No need for further convincing, Gruffydd stumbled through the waist-high ferns after her. If he could have caught her, he would have pulled her down right there and nothing but the trembling spray of fronds would have betrayed them.

  “Elise, I was starting to think you weren’t —”

  “Shhh.” She leaned against a tree, one hand pressed to her lower rib cage as if to control her breathing. “He knows.”

  “He? Who? Knows what?”

  “About us,
” she said. “My uncle, Lord Grey, knows about us.” Her thick brown hair was gathered loosely at the back of her head. She pushed a handful of straying strands behind her ear. Her lower lip quivered.

  “But how? We’ve been so careful.” It was crushing news. Enough to make him feel compelled to run like the devil and never look back. But in the very same heartbeat he wanted to wrap her in his yearning arms and never let go.

  “One of his men saw you follow me behind the market stall in Ruthin.”

  They had stolen a kiss. A brief kiss. A fleeting moment of bliss wedged into the mayhem of market day.

  She turned her heart-shaped face away for a single moment, but his gaze was too strong for her to resist. She fell into his arms, shaping her body to his. “We cannot meet like this again.”

  “No, no, don’t say it. Please don’t say it. We shall give it time. That is all. A month perhaps. Ah God, even that is too long.” He buried his face in her hair, wanting to remember the smell and feel of her, suddenly afraid he might never hold her again.

  “My love, my love...” Her dark brown eyes filling with tears, she pulled back enough to look up at him. “Even now, I fear he has me watched. It’s not safe for us to be together. I want no harm to come to you. I... I must go.”

  Though it was hardly possible, he pressed her closer to him. He felt every seam of her clothing and every curve beneath. Sweet Mother Mary, he loved her so much it ached in his every sinew. “Then if I must be without you for a time, give me but one more kiss. Just one.”

  Leaning close, he closed his eyes and tasted her breath intermingling with his. Her lips brushed his, softly at first, then hungrily, greedily.

  He felt her arms tugging him down. His knees swayed and gave way as he sank to the earth with her, their mouths never parting. They lay down upon a bed of bracken, one aligned with the other. The scent of wood and earth filled his nose. Leaves rustled in the canopy above.