Uneasy Lies the Crown

by N. Gemini Sasson

  As Rhys Ddu pled his case in Llywelyn’s Hall of Harlech Castle before all of Owain’s generals and family, he could see the rage building deep within Owain. Though dormant, the sparks were there, just beneath the surface. Owain’s eyes were fixed on the floor during the entirety of the report—his hands gripping the arms of his throne. To Owain’s right, on the far side of the dais, stood Edmund Mortimer. To the left, Maredydd. Somewhere to the side were Margaret and Iolo. When Rhys finished, the prince pushed himself up with stiffened limbs.

  Finally, Owain raised his chin and damned Rhys with a stare. The gray of his eyes was a chilling shade. His voice was remote. “How could you, in all the world, betray me?”

  Rhys’s jaw dropped. He had feared this. Owain was proud and determined, but still, he had done all he could—and waited weeks for Owain to do something. To save him. Did Owain claim no part in this? Rhys drew a deep breath. “Betray you? Do you call saving the lives of two hundred of your men betrayal? How could you even think to question my loyalty?”

  But Owain gave his response no regard. He stood and opened his hands wide. “Once, we could ride the land from the Irish Sea to Offa’s Dyke and say that it was ours.” Then his arms fell to his sides, his fingers spread apart, grasping and empty. “Now, all that’s left are Aberystwyth and Harlech. If either falls, the other will for certain. If we are ever to regain what we once had, we must begin here. We must hold these two castles until the last breath. Our time will come again. In the name of honor and freedom, how could you so thoughtlessly toss that aside?”

  Rhys had done what he thought was the right thing—he had no other choice—and now that was being called into question by the very idol he lived to serve?

  “Harry set upon Aberystwyth because he thought you were there,” Rhys began, “because you so often are. What would you have done after endless months under siege, seeing your granddaughters begin to fall faint with hunger, watching the horizon, waiting for relief... relief that never came? Speaking of such—where the hell were you? I can damn near feel my spine when I suck in my gut, I waited so bloody long.”

  Owain drew back his shoulders. “I was gathering men to come to your aid. Two more weeks, Rhys. If you had just held out two more weeks I would have been there at Harry’s back.”

  “Two more weeks and you would have arrived to a pile of stones and rotting corpses.” Rhys clenched his fists. He felt as though he were trying to converse with a rock, not his closest friend or the just leader he had come to know and admire. “You’re afraid that the moment you step down from this glittering perch the English will swoop down and seize your cozy little nest.”

  In a moment Owain had closed the distance between them, his breathing audible, his nose inches from Rhys’s heated face. Owain slid his sword from its scabbard and tapped the edge of the blade across Rhys’s chest plate. “You think me a liar? I should cut off your head here and now for your treason!”

  “Then do it. If loyalty means nothing to you, then strike me down. I signed with Harry so that your soldiers might live to fight another day beside you. And I pray I will, too.” He had tried his best. God knows he had tried. A single tear spilled from the outside corner of Rhys’s eye. His voice, normally a booming, boisterous tenor, cracked. “I did it to save Myfanwy and Gwenllian. Have you forsaken your own blood, as well?”

  Owain’s jaw quavered. He lowered his voice. “Where is Nesta? Where are the girls?”

  “Gone.”

  “Where? Where did you send them?”

  Rhys leaned back to steel his spine. “I sent them nowhere. Nesta chose to leave Wales... and you.”

  A few eyes turned on Margaret, but she did not flinch or color—only stood with cool repose, her chin held firm, her shoulders pulled back.

  Owain slammed the point of his sword to the floor. As it struck the flagstones, sparks flew from the tip. He spun away, one hand pressed to his temple and the other dragging his sword behind him. “Gethin, how many men can you have ready to ride out by tomorrow?”

  Gethin shot a glance toward Rhys. The two men may have had very distinct approaches to life in general, and warfare in particular, but neither would ever have questioned the other’s loyalty to Owain or Wales.

  “Owain! Have you heard nothing? You can’t enter the castle,” Rhys protested. “If you do you will annihilate our chance at a pardon. You will sign the death warrants of your own soldiers. This is your chance to bargain. Hand over Harlech, too, and Harry will —”

  “Hand over Harlech?” Spinning on his heel, Owain brandished his weapon before him. “As if it were a bauble that meant nothing? I can hardly believe what I am hearing. You took sacrament with the enemy! Your cowardice and assumptions are beyond comprehension. You do not speak for me, Rhys Ddu. And you do not act in the interest of Wales, either. What a black day this is for us all.” He shoved his sword back into its scabbard and turned toward Gethin, motioning him to follow as he marched from the room with Edmund close behind.

  “Can you have a thousand ready to go then?” Owain said to Gethin.

  Gethin shook his head and mumbled something, but Owain pressed on.

  “Then find them. We have precious little time. The supplies are ready, I trust? If not, then we...”

  Their voices faded away in the corridor, the heels of their shoes striking the stones in unison. Maredydd bowed to Rhys and then hurried off after his father. Rhys was shaking when Margaret laid her hand gently on top of his shoulder.

  “He loves you,” she said. “You know that?”

  “He has a strange practice of showing it.”

  “He’s desperate to hold on to what he fought so hard to gain, that’s all. His anger will pass.”

  “I fear it will not pass, Margaret. Too much has been done to undo.”

  “Deep wounds leave scars, m’lady,” Iolo said softly at her side. “Prince Owain has been abandoned by the very people he has lived to serve. They flock to Harry’s promises of pardon for want of peace, to fill their bellies, to end their suffering. What our prince holds in esteem is beyond the comprehension of many.”

  Rhys grunted. “It’s not beyond mine.” He pulled himself up tall and cleared his throat. “But I’m not much of a soldier if I’m dead, now am I?”

  “Take care, Rhys,” Margaret said, hugging him.

  “I’d advise you say nothing to him until spoken to,” Iolo added.

  “Don’t worry.” Rhys pounded the slight bard on the upper arm. “I may have grown soft around the middle with age, but I’m not senile... yet.”

  50

  Harlech Castle, Wales — December, 1407

  Two days before the truce was set to expire, Owain arrived at Aberystwyth with a relief force, but with far fewer than the thousand men he had hoped for. The truth was he could barely afford the few hundred that he had ridden with, for it left Harlech in grave danger. Instead of admitting that to Rhys, he had blamed him for entering into the truce. His harsh words toward his friend had been fueled not by anger, but by desperation. Prospects were bleak. That should have been obvious to everyone. But if Owain admitted to that openly, then those around him would give up and all their efforts through all these years would have been for naught. No, he could not admit defeat. Not while he yet lived and breathed.

  The first snow that fell in Wales that season came on the last day of October. Too late in the season to begin another protracted siege, Prince Harry did not return immediately, but Owain knew he would be back and eventually they would lose Aberystwyth. If a miracle did not turn fate in his favor, he would lose Harlech, too.

  The whole world was wrapped in snow and overcome with a hush. Silver branches were still clinging to their golden leaves. The birds that summered even further north in the Shetlands and the Orkneys had not dallied nearby as usual on their way to kinder climes. Gently the snowflakes drifted down, piling softly upon the still warm ground. By Christmas, the ground had frozen solid and the snow, now driving hard, was still coming. It blanketed not only the ja
gged mountain caps of Wales, but even England’s tranquil valleys and stretching plains.

  Rhys would not reveal the whereabouts of Owain’s children or mistress. Owain could not deny that they did not belong there at Aberystwyth. And they certainly could not be brought to Harlech. So with swallowed pride, he did not hammer the matter. At Margaret’s insistence, he relented on his threats of beheading Rhys and gave Aberystwyth back into his friend’s reluctant care. The garrison there was fiercely loyal to Rhys and if the castle were to withstand another attack it would be better served with Rhys in command and Owain elsewhere to gather forces and formulate plans.

  In early December, a letter arrived at Harlech.

  The wind that shot up over the castle walls and swirled around the inner ward was deathly cold. In his hands, frozen at the fingertips, Owain numbly clutched the letter from Queen Isabelle of France, written on her husband’s behalf with an infinite regret and a distress that must have seeped onto the parchment with every nudge of the quill.

  The Duke of Orleans was dead—ambushed on the streets of Paris. His sword hand had been severed at the wrist before he could levy one blow in defense of himself. A poleaxe had sent his brains splattering into the gutter. The irony of it was that he was purportedly en route to visit the queen, who had given birth to a stillborn child. The struggle for power between the Burgundians and the Orleans factions was sure to throw France into utter chaos.

  It did not bode well for Wales, either. He needed time to make sense of it all. Time to hope and pray. What else could he do?

  When the messenger arrived in the hall, Margaret watched as Owain received the letter. She heard the messenger’s French accent, saw her husband’s shoulders droop with each sentence that his eyes took in. As though he had not noticed her, Owain disappeared through the door that led toward the kitchen. When she found him an hour later, it was in his usual place—the turret of the Weathercock Tower in the southwest corner of the castle, overlooking the bay.

  Owain gave her a long, empty look and held the letter out.

  Pulling her woolen cloak tight as the sea wind pried between the seams of her clothing, she took the letter from him and read it. When she was done and her eyes wandered to his face, she saw there the deep shadows surrounding his features, the whites of his eyes gone gray, the bones of his shoulders protruding through his tunic where once there were solid, curving muscles.

  “Orleans dead.” He sighed, long and low. “France will soon be groveling at Henry’s feet, pleading for protection from itself. I almost felt invincible... once. How does it all slip away so easily? Something so close. So true. So certain. And now... gone.” His eyes went shut.

  “Do you think it will be so?” Margaret said as her teeth chattered uncontrollably. It had gone a whole day without snowing, but the cold was the worst she could ever remember. “Would King Charles actually consider peace with England?”

  A weak shrug lifted Owain’s shoulders. “I’m thinking I am too old to go on with this. When Rhys treated with Harry, I knew. Knew that it was coming to an end. Now I understand the despair that King Richard suffered and how it was that he abandoned hope altogether.”

  Pressing the letter back into his palm, Margaret braved a hand beyond the warmth of her cloak and pushed the silver-golden hair from her husband’s face. “Men have risen from lower depths than you, Owain Glyndwr, Prince of Wales.”

  “Ah, Marged... how strange those words sound to me now. What am I prince of? A wasteland. The world thinks of hell as being a cave of fires beneath the ground. Hot. Burning. Your flesh consumed by flames.” His breath hung before his face in a cloud of frozen vapor. “But I see it like this... like Wales is now. Frozen. Steeped in ice and snow. Sheep and cattle dying by the hundreds because the grass is buried too far beneath the snow. The ice too thick over the streams for them to drink. Firewood scarce. Children and old people dying. Sickness and famine and pestilence in the land. What does ‘freedom’ mean to a man who wants nothing but food and warmth?”

  Her only source of strength the past year had been in trying to hold him up, to keep his heart on the dream that she had once envied for taking him from her so often. How she yearned to return those golden days to him—the intoxication of victory, the easy power in his stride, the way he modestly looked down at his hands in his lap when the crown was upon his head, the earnest tilt of his chin as his generals argued strategies before him, the gleam in his eye when he shared plans with Griffith Young of places of learning and worship.

  “Come inside,” she begged. “There are no answers out here. Only the wind.”

  “Marged, my sweet,” he said, reaching toward her and taking her hand in his, slowly crumpling the letter in his other hand, “I love you with all my heart. I always have. Always will.”

  “And I you,” she said.

  Arm in arm, they retreated inside. Even in their grand suite, which dominated the whole of the third floor of the gatehouse, the air was frigid, but the cutting wind was held at bay by the thick walls of stone and the deeply set glazed windows. Beneath the down coverings, Margaret molded her body to his—his chest pressed to her back and his breath warm upon her neck.

  Iolo Goch:

  Rumors that King Henry lay mute and blind on his deathbed came as often as the rain that falls upon the Isle of Britain. But evidence was to the contrary. He was not so ill that he could not mastermind treaties with France, Brittany and Scotland. If Wales was to survive, it had no choice now but to do so entirely by itself.

  Then, my lord Owain’s last remaining ally fell. Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland, ran up against the Sheriff of Yorkshire at Bramham Moor in the month of February in 1408. There, he was resoundingly defeated and killed.

  The worst was yet to come. Harry, once more, set upon Aberystwyth. This time, Rhys held out as long again, but by summer’s end, he surrendered. There was no fleeing to Harlech to plead with his prince, for Harry had already dispatched Sir Gilbert Talbot to begin the siege on Owain’s royal stronghold.

  51

  Harlech Castle, Wales — October, 1408

  A few hours more could have made all the difference in the world. One more barrel of water. One more sack of flour. A bottle of wine. A piece of fruit. All the difference in the world.

  For a furious string of days, Harlech was victualed to the highest stone. Harvest was yet a couple of weeks away and that immutable fact would prove a hardship to the Welsh and provide a feast for the oncoming English. Even by night, supplies were hustled across the drawbridge, carried on aching shoulders up the one hundred and twenty-seven steps from the water gate, or hoisted hand over hand on ropes over the walls of the outer ward.

  Harry’s dogs were on their way. The ships came gliding up the coastline first. Owain and Margaret watched the assaults from a crack in one of the shuttered crenels along the battlements. The Welsh sailors did not put up much of a fight. They were faced with an entire fleet of English warships far outnumbering them: single-masted, oared cogs with banners fluttering in arrogant surety. Many of the English vessels had assayed the lopsided fray from a safe distance, as if to exclaim how absolutely the English could and would dominate. Jars of pitch were launched at the Welsh ships. Flaming arrows followed. Black smoke billowed upward into a crystal blue sky. As the Welsh dove overboard, trying to swim to the refuge of shore, English archers eyed their bobbing marks from the fighting castles perched at the bow and stern of each vessel. Arrows hissed through the air. Pools of blood spotted the harbor and diffused outward, staining the beach vermilion. When the first dead Welsh sailor, floating face up with the shaft of an arrow protruding from his forehead, washed ashore, Margaret clutched her belly and retreated behind the merlon. Her face as pale as a drift of winter snow, she went to her knees.

  Owain crouched beside her. Stiff at first, she yielded to his protective arm and leaned her weight against him.

  “More times than I could count I have nursed soldiers,” she said. “Some back to health. Some I knew would die
within the day. And all I could do was hold their hands and stroke their heads while they cried out in agony. I asked their names and said prayers for them when the priests were too busy with others.” Closing her eyes, she reached an arm across her husband’s strong chest. “I often wondered what it was like for you, to witness the killing and dying, day after day after day.”

  He pulled her against him even tighter. A loose strand of her still-flaxen hair fell from behind her ear. Thoughtlessly, he wound it around a forefinger. His own hair was almost entirely silver now. But Margaret was still undeniably beautiful. How was it that she had held on to her youthful appearance through so much strife and sorrow?

  “There is too much danger in thinking about it,” he said. “You learn not to.”

  The air was thick with the scent of smoke. Every now and then, ashes floated on the wind and wandered inside the castle walls.

  “How long before the French come?” Margaret asked.

  Owain laughed dryly. “The French? Civil war consumes them. They couldn’t care less about Henry’s little Welsh parasites.”

  “Rhys?”

  Rhys? Rhys would not give me a drink of water if I were dying of thirst.

  “Soon, my love. He will not fail us.” How easily he had taught himself to lie to her. But how could he abandon hope before her?

  A long silence settled between them. The screams of dying sailors were becoming less frequent. Even the smoke was diminishing as the Welsh ships took on water.

  “I know that he wanted Nesta to leave long before she did,” Margaret announced bravely. Owain realized it was the first time she had ever spoken the name of his mistress.

  He swallowed and nodded once, thankful that Margaret had not looked at him just then. “She would have left a long time ago, but for the girls.” Owain glanced along the wall-walk, lined with jars of sulfur, oil and sand to be dropped scalding on assailants at the foot of the castle walls when they came with their towers and ladders. “I am full of regrets, Marged, and desperate for your forgiveness... but I know there is nothing I deserve less.”