Uneasy Lies the Crown

by N. Gemini Sasson

  “Your kinsman, Davy Gam,” the man said with a sneer. “We served Henry of Bolingbroke, both of us. At Berwick. I bring a message from him.” And with that he threw himself at Owain.

  A dagger flashed in Davy Gam’s hand. Owain had only a fraction of a second to suck his torso backward. The blade snagged his garments just as Gethin’s strong forearm deflected Gam’s thrust. The dagger’s edge caught Gethin across the top of his hand, but he took no notice as he loosed his sword and slammed the butt of its hilt across Gam’s jaw. Gam stumbled backward. His dagger went hurtling to the ground. He lunged for it, but Gethin kicked it into the crowd and tackled him.

  Gethin brought his sword up and aimed it at Gam’s heart.

  “No!” cried Owain. A tremor gripped him and he shook it off. “Take him! Put him in chains. Put him away. I will not have blood spilled before me today. Get him out of my sight—now.”

  Backing away, Gethin obeyed. The guards hoisted the flailing little madman to his feet. His face pulsed scarlet with every profane syllable as they dragged him kicking down the crowded street. Gethin followed close behind for added security, searching for accomplices in every face he passed.

  Maredydd was supporting his limp brother as they shoved their way through. Owain grabbed Gruffydd and pulled him into his arms.

  “Are you harmed?” Owain said with deep concern.

  Wincing, Gruffydd leaned back. He was sporting a black eye. “I don’t know what a broken rib feels like, but I think I may have one.” He attempted a smile, but the cut on his lower lip brought a grimace. “I heard him, in the tavern last night after Maredydd left. He boasted that he would carve out your rebellious heart and bring it to his good friend Henry on a silver plate. When he left, I followed him and challenged his cowardly words. He knocked me down with the first blow. The devil is ten times stronger than he looks.” He settled his forehead on his father’s shoulder. “Father, there were others there who heard him and none would put him in his place. He might have killed you.”

  “I’m fine, Gruffydd. Very much alive, still.” He hugged his son hard, not wanting to let go. “Now, let Rhys lend you a shoulder and come with us. Traitors can be taken care of in due time. We have important work this day and nothing should hinder us.”

  That night the howls of Davy Gam from the cellar of the Royal House robbed Owain and his sons of any notion of sleep. Gam was finally gagged and the following day he was transported to Dolbadarn, where Lord Grey had been shut up not so long before. The session of parliament flowed smoothly and Owain wrote many letters to rulers abroad. Attached to these letters was the Great Seal that bore his likeness and the signature that he put on them was Owynus Dei Gratia Princeps Wallie: ‘Owain, by God’s grace, Prince of Wales.’

  That was how he signed the treaty with France when John Hanmer and Griffith Young returned with it that summer. Wales was no longer a wart on the cheek of England. And Owain Glyndwr was no longer a mere gnat to be swatted at.

  Aberystwyth Castle, Wales — June, 1404

  When the first Welsh Parliament finally dispersed, Owain returned to Harlech, but not directly. He stopped with Rhys at Aberystwyth. Gruffydd, however, would not go there. Owain’s oldest son feigned eagerness to greet his siblings and did not spare his father a stinging comment about how happy his mother would surely be to see them all.

  That Gruffydd had fancied Nesta when she first joined their camp was an unspoken fact—just as Owain’s infidelity with her was also well known. So, as Gruffydd rode off alone, passing Aberystwyth from the road without ever giving it a glance, Maredydd stayed at his father’s side. Owain was beginning to discover the true character of his sons. Gruffydd was pure emotion—flaring in jealousy one minute, drowning in despondency the next. Even so, Owain could not begrudge him those feelings. Maredydd thought before he acted and he did so with a strong, unwavering silence. Thus, Maredydd found himself ever more in his father’s company and privy to his thoughts and plans while Gruffydd drifted away with increasing frequency.

  When they arrived at Aberystwyth, Owain and Maredydd were served a hearty meal. Famished, Owain rushed through it and excused himself before the others were halfway done. As he went from the hall, he was aware that Rhys was watching him. Maredydd, though, did not look up from his plate.

  The child Nesta had given birth to was a girl: Myfanwy. She was the mirror image of her mother and secretly for that Owain was thankful. She was a robust child with a black mop of curls and dark, sparkling eyes and a set of lungs to make her mother proud. When Nesta settled the baby in his arms, his brow clouded momentarily.

  “You are not pleased?” Nesta asked, tilting her head. The baby was only three weeks old, but Nesta’s belly was already slim.

  He kissed Myfanwy on the forehead and placed her, sleeping, into her cradle beside Nesta’s bed. “I have a granddaughter older than her. I was reminded, only for a second, of my age. I wish we were not so far apart in years, my little bird.”

  “I don’t,” Nesta said without hesitation. “Do you think that I love you only for your looks? That I will flee when your head is too gray or your steps too slow to match mine? Men my age are impetuous and selfish. If you had not lived so many years upon this earth you would not be the man you are and not half as intriguing to me.”

  He sat on the edge of the bed, his hands folded in his lap. “But because of who I am, there is only so much of me I can give to you.” He was not sure if she understood what he meant. No doubt he had no one to blame for the complexity of his own life, but being with her was bittersweet. “Tomorrow I must be off to Harlech. I will need to stay there for awhile.”

  “Of course.” She approached him on silent, small feet. One of her shoes could almost fit in the palm of his hand, he mused. Her next sentence cut coldly. “You have your children and your wife.”

  When he looked up at her he could not hide the ambiguity that wrestled in his heart. “I am sorry.”

  “Sorry?” She forced a smile, but in the grit of her strained voice the hurt was there. “Say it not. Just come back to us as soon as you have played the dutiful husband. Be with me. When you can.”

  “How could I not come back to you?” He took one of her hands and kissed her fingertips. “There is talk about us.”

  Nesta’s eyebrows flickered. “It is only jealousy that makes their tongues wag.”

  “Perhaps.” He gave a little laugh and squeezed her hands. “But it is our adultery they speak of.”

  Settling herself onto his lap, she whispered warmly into his ear, “Then call on your priest tomorrow, for you will have a sin to confess.”

  Nesta’s warm breath on his neck stirred the blood in his veins and set them on fire. With anguishing slowness, he lay back on the bed, letting her needy kisses pour over him.

  Owain heard Maredydd’s voice in the hallway and his eyes flicked toward the chamber door as Nesta’s hands wandered over his entire body, which was growing weak with desire for her.

  “The door is not latched,” he said, although he could not will himself to move. Tomorrow he would be with Margaret and their children. Gruffydd would be there. Could he still be father and husband, while loving another so helplessly and completely? He closed his eyes. The solid thud of a door reverberated. Maredydd’s voice was gone. The child, Myfanwy, was asleep. Margaret was miles away. The soft, promising rustle of linen stirred the air and he opened his eyes to his lover’s invitation. Her waist was so tiny it amazed him that she had ever carried a child inside her at all. His child. Their child.

  An unlocked door mattered not at all to him anymore. He might have died in Machynlleth by Davy Gam’s knife, or at Hyddgen on the tip of a Flemish spear, or on the slopes of Cadair Idris by Hotspur’s keen sword. He could die any day in battle. How many times had he cheated fate, walked away from death while others around him fell to the blade?

  He had only this night to share with her, to lose himself in her, to forget all his pains. Only the now in which to live.

  Late the
next day Owain left for Harlech, both sated in his passions for a young, fulfilling beauty and gnawed with shame over his persistent weakness toward her, but during the months following, whenever he rode out on a raid or to tend to business throughout his realm, he always tarried at Aberystwyth on his way home. With each lingering visit, the guilt that weighted his conscience became less and less and the days and nights he spent at Aberystwyth became more and more. Before the first snowflake of winter descended, Nesta’s belly was already growing with another child.

  40

  Bangor, Wales — February, 1405

  A gale hammered down upon the waters of Conwy Bay. Waves that would have swallowed a ship whole slammed against the shore. It was at the home of Dafydd Daron, the Dean of Bangor, that Owain and his son-in-law, Sir Edmund Mortimer, waited in the main hall with Gruffydd and Master Hopkyn. Sixteen year-old Madoc leaned crookedly against a doorframe, watching his father vigilantly. He readjusted the short sword tucked at his belt and swallowed a yawn.

  A solid day of rain had changed over to stinging, wet snow as the bleak light of a February day faded to blackness. Tiny daggers of ice scratched at the windows and the draft swooping down the chimney challenged the hearth fire.

  Gruffydd stared at the logs, poking at them and adding more kindling whenever there was danger the flames were being defeated. “She keeps a lover twenty years her junior...” he said, “and openly. Who knows what secrets pass above her pillows?”

  “Kingdoms have been toppled from between silk sheets,” Edmund said. He paced back and forth across the room in obsessive rhythm. The room was not large enough to accommodate his furious stride and every four lengths he pivoted back toward the opposite wall. “We may prove ourselves fools to think that she has the means or the will to free my nephews. For years she has served Henry as their jailor. We have cast our fate into the hands of a wanton.”

  Inwardly, Owain cringed at Gruffydd and Edmund’s pious condemnations of Lady Constance Despenser. She had been selected by Henry to watch over Edmund, the Earl of March, and his younger brother Roger, who were now being kept under lock and key at Windsor. The plan was for her to get the boys out of Windsor and off to Glamorgan where Gethin was waiting for them.

  As Owain scooted his chair back from the long table, it scraped across the floor, causing Gruffydd to cease his tending and look at his father.

  “I do indeed wonder at Bolinbgroke’s reasoning behind placing the Earl of March and his brother in her care,” Owain said, “but she is, after all, the sister of the Duke of York. Like it or not, she is the key—and our only hope of freeing them.” Lady Despenser’s role in this meant everything to him, to Edmund, to Wales and England alike. “Northumberland says she loathes Bolingbroke—curses him with every breath.”

  “Northumberland?” Edmund scoffed. “I tell you, he plays the tepid partner in all this. Too afraid of being found out to show his face.”

  “Henry’s spies keep a close eye on him. If not him, who would we have then, half as powerful, to serve our cause, Edmund? Henry Percy is happy to scheme and manipulate. I will accept that of him. When the time is right, he’ll reveal himself.”

  Edmund resumed his pacing, every once in awhile glancing out through the rain-streaked window.

  “Master Hopkyn?” Owain said, “have you any encouragement for Edmund here?”

  Hopkyn’s gaze dropped. He had sat silently at the distant end of the table the entire evening, his liver-spotted hands folded neatly in his lap and his pale, sunken eyes barely moving from one face to another as he absorbed their banter. With his spindly arms, he pushed himself up from his bench and shuffled over to the fire. He stretched his hands out, the glow of the flames outlining his gnarled fingers in shifting shades of pink and yellow. “Knowing what is possible is not always enough.”

  “And of what possibilities do you speak?” Edmund said cynically. “Prophecies, perhaps? Whose?”

  “Myrddin Emrys’s,” Hopkyn uttered.

  Edmund darted toward Owain and spoke lowly into his ear. “It smacks of witchcraft, Owain. If Bishops Trefor and Byfort, who you wooed from England’s saintly breast, caught wind of you trusting in a prophet of Myrddin Emrys’s they might abandon you.”

  Byfort and Trefor had become some of Owain’s closest advisors. They had clandestinely withdrawn at first from Henry’s choking hold, preferring Owain’s plan for an independent Welsh Church. He knew them well enough to know which side of the Severn their God-fearing hearts lay in. “They will abandon no one. I assure you they are as political, if not more so, as they are pious.”

  Madoc edged closer, as if he feared he might miss something.

  The clang of an iron poker shattered the air. Gruffydd shook his fist at them. “Enough of your insane visions and perilous schemes. Enough of all of you! We must beat Henry by the sword. There is no other way. Hang your hopes on the ramblings of an old man or the vengefulness of a wayward widow if you will. May as well cast your fate to the wind. I am going to bed and there I will dream of which vein, when cut, will make the King of England bleed the most.”

  His stormy departure was a relief to Owain. After a door slammed shut upstairs, Owain rose and walked around the table to stand before Hopkyn. “Tell us what Myrddin Emrys foretold.”

  “Lord Bardolf,” Edmund muttered, alerting them to the arrival of riders. His breath steamed the pane of glass to which he pressed his forehead. “And he comes on a black horse. I pray that is not an ill omen.”

  Owain gripped Hopkyn tightly by the shoulder.

  “The mole, the dragon, the wolf, the lion,” Hopkyn chanted. “The dragon and the wolf, whose tails are intertwined, will unite with the lion and divide among them the kingdom of the mole.”

  Northumberland was sometimes referred to as the wolf of the north. Owain, of course, was the dragon. But the lion? Could that be Mortimer, or perhaps his nephew?

  Owain pinched Hopkyn’s shoulders with such force that the old man whimpered. “How do you know this? I have told you nothing about the purpose of this meeting.”

  “It was spoken. It was spoken,” Hopkyn said, his eyes pinched shut, his entire body shrinking from the force of Owain’s grip. “Long ago.”

  Dafydd Daron, who had been woken and alerted to the overdue arrival of visitors, flew into the hall. His shirt, hastily donned, hung crookedly from his shoulders. He dispatched two of his servants out into the frozen deluge to greet them. They returned with Lord Bardolf and two of his attendants.

  Bardolf, who was the same height as Owain but older by twenty years, swept back the hood of his dark cloak. Ice frosted his snowy beard. Gracefully, he bent his knee and spoke. “My Lord Prince, I come on behalf of Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland, and am assigned to do his bidding.”

  “Rise, Lord Bardolf,” Owain said, touching his shoulder. “We have the maps. Let us divide what will be conquered.”

  By lantern light, the three men—Owain Glyndwr, Sir Edmund Mortimer and Lord Bardolf—negotiated through the night. When all was done they had divided the whole Isle of Britain, but for Scotland, amongst themselves in an agreement they termed the Tripartite Indenture. Owain’s new Wales would extend far into the Midlands and give him Shrewsbury, Worcester and Chester. Northumberland was to rule over the whole north of England and the Earl of March, who would be placed upon the throne in proper course, was to have the remaining south of England.

  “The mole, the dragon, the wolf, the lion,” Hopkyn had chanted. “The dragon and the wolf, whose tails are intertwined, will unite with the lion and divide among them the kingdom of the mole.”

  So it would be.

  Owain had been sound asleep in his bed when Edmund came into his room and shook him hard.

  “What is it?” Owain rubbed at his eyelids and forced himself to sit up. Judging by the weariness in his bones, he couldn’t have had but a few hours of sleep.

  “Gruffydd is leaving. To join Gethin.” Edmund opened the shutters and scratched away the frost on the window. “
They’re saddling a horse for him now.”

  Owain sank back into his pillows. “And you want me to stop him? Let him go. Let him test whether he can brandish his sword as deftly as he does his tongue.”

  Quietly, Edmund watched through the window. Owain did not rise to look. He could not. Gruffydd would come back—wiser and more forgiving—when the time was right. His callow passion was simply misdirected. He would have a broad, rich land to look after one day. Gruffydd, his oldest, his heir, he would come back... He would. He must.

  “Owain? Madoc is with him,” Edmund said.

  In an instant, Owain was up on his feet and staring helplessly out the window. Young Madoc, so eager, so worshipful of his older brothers, had deigned to join Gruffydd. By then they were vanishing riders tearing along the shore, sprays of sand flying from their horses’ hooves, the wind fierce in their tangled hair. It was too late to catch them. They were excellent horsemen, just as their father had taught them to be.

  Bracing himself with a hand on either side of the frosty window, Owain hung his head. “Margaret will not forgive me for this. She cannot bear to see her sons go off to battle.”

  Edmund touched him reassuringly on the shoulder. “She cannot bear it when you go, Owain.”

  Simple words, and yet they cut so deeply into Owain’s already bleeding heart.

  Harlech Castle, Wales — February, 1405

  Owain had barely returned to Harlech with Edmund and Hopkyn when a letter arrived from Glamorgan. For an hour, Owain was alone in the first floor room of the Prison Tower, the letter clenched tightly in his right hand. He lingered above the trap door to the dungeon, presently empty of captives. Whenever there were any, he would not keep them there long—not with the children about. Prisoners were quickly sent off to Dolbadarn or Aberystwyth.