Uneasy Lies the Crown

by N. Gemini Sasson

  “Yes... bless the bloody traitor.” Rhys glanced at Owain. He ruffled Maredydd’s hair and then, as if realizing the gesture was too much like the affection one would share with a small boy, pounded him on the shoulder. “Get yourself to one of the other mounts. Hold tight. The ride’s a treacherous one.”

  With the flaccid Dewi clamped against Rhys’s chest, the others were mounted. Just as Rhys had said, a brief ride of a few minutes led them to a rudimentary shelter: a narrow cave, high up on the mountain, where the vestiges of the once formidable Welsh army huddled.

  “You’re quite thin,” Owain said, as he stretched his feet toward the small fire near the mouth of the cave.

  “And you need to trim your beard,” Rhys retorted. He tested the meat roasting on the spit with his knife, grimaced to see it was not yet done, and settled himself on a smooth stone that served as his stool. “Not like you to let yourself go. I’ve seen you in better clothes. Too far out of touch with the fashions in London, you are.”

  If it had been possible, Owain would have smiled upon hearing the familiar banter from Rhys. Instead, one glance at Dewi speared his heart. Dewi was past fighting or feeling pain. At least for now he slept. Maredydd had slit his brother’s boots carefully with his knife when they arrived at the cave to reveal the worst of it. The toes were grotesque and rotting from the frostbite like a piece of fruit gone putrid. Already the fever had set in and there were red streaks tracing their way up his legs. All bad signs.

  “Brother-in-law, it has been long.” Phillip Hanmer touched Owain on the shoulder and offered him a bowl of food. “Here.”

  Phillip had always been on the fringes—a follower without the will to find his own way. It surprised Owain to see him there, for he imagined Phillip would have just as well freely accepted Harry’s offer of pardon, but perhaps the opportunity had not been timely. For certain Phillip was no traitor, although he was never the valuable tool that John had proven to be before his capture. Just the same, he was a good enough fighting man to have lasted this long. Owain accepted the bowl and, tilting it, forced himself to swallow. It tasted more of ashes than anything. He wasn’t even sure what it was—barely warmed beans with an occasional hunk of fat, perhaps.

  Not including the recent arrivals, Rhys and his men totaled only seven. There was Phillip, who, despite his Englishness, was a well known rebel; the Tudur brothers, who would always prefer to be where they were bound to be the most trouble to King Henry; the bear-like Cadogan from the hills, who had split a hundred enemies each with one blow of his axe; Griffith ap David, who had brought Gethin to Owain years ago—now less his right hand and yet always trying to hide the obvious beneath an oversized sleeve; and sitting cross-legged and mute just outside the cave’s entrance despite the cold, Gethin himself, recently blinded and justifiably bitter.

  Maredydd scooted closer to Rhys. “What’s he doing out there?”

  “What he always does. What he can do.” Rhys poked at the logs with his knife. “He listens.”

  Rhys ap Tudur, who stood just beyond the gathering, snorted loudly. “And he can hear the bloody English a league away. Like a fox, he is.” He rustled through a small chest of his belongings, plucked out a needle and length of thread and joined the ring. He squinted in concentration as he threaded the needle and went to work on the dangling sleeve of Owain’s padded tunic which he had spread across his lap.

  “How did he lose them?” Iolo asked with a rasp in his throat, referring to the empty purple sockets in Gethin’s skull. The effort made him erupt in uncontrollable coughing. He clutched at his stomach and rolled himself aside.

  Gwilym spat into the fire. “Don’t know. He doesn’t say and we don’t ask.”

  “Got too damn close to the English camp.” Rhys ap Tudur leaned in close, showing his rotten teeth with a snarl. “Probably took him for an archer, took out his left eye and just to be sure they gouged out the other.”

  “So you were at Harlech... or at least close?” Owain asked. They had come, after all.

  “All of us, yes. Well,” Rhys paused and jabbed again at the undercooked meat, “there were more of us then. But it didn’t take long to figure out there wasn’t anything to be done.”

  Gwilym nudged his brother with an elbow. “Least when we stole Conwy, the odds were in our favor.”

  The knife dangled from Rhys’s stubby fingers. “We should have done something. We used to be good at that—doing what they least expected. Odds against us or no. What happened to us, Owain?”

  “Harry happened,” Owain said. Like the damn plague—Harry happened. Figured out what his father refused to acknowledge. “Instead of descending upon the whole of the land like a tempest, he stung, as a bee does, one place and then another. He came and he waited and he found the soft, tender spots, the festering places and there he worked like a salve to heal them. He showered Welsh soldiers with clemency and spoke of peace to a people ripped apart and suffering from war. And then, he went to our very heart—first to Aberystwyth. And he squeezed and choked until there was no will left and —”

  “We fought until we could fight no more!” Rhys said.

  Owain touched him on the elbow. “And you fought well and honorably. As well as any could. But that is the brilliance of young Harry. He knew our strengths as well as our weaknesses and used that to his advantage. To Harlech, he brought his vast army and pounded and shot and mined and...”

  Harlech. Margaret was still there. What have I done? His hands crept up over his face. He peered through his fingers at the burning embers. “Oh, dear God. How could I have left her? The children?”

  His hands dropped away. No, he could not give up out of convenience and weakness.

  Then he spoke, his voice suddenly steady and full of purpose. “We must go back... raise the siege. I cannot leave my family to English wolves.”

  Maredydd’s eyes plunged to the ground. Inside his warm, dry wool blanket, Iolo shrank. Rhys ap Tudur looked at his brother and shook his head.

  Then Rhys Ddu, as was his usual place, said what no one else dared. “You can’t.”

  “I must. We must!” Owain was weeping freely by then. He had saved his own skin and in the process lost one of his sons to drowning, with another doomed to die slowly and horribly.

  He knelt close to the fire, so close he could feel the flames hungering to light his hair. His head sank until his forehead met with the hot stones that circled the fire. Then he rolled to his side and slammed his fist onto the rock littered floor. “Will none of you fight beside me? Or have you all turned coward? We’ll raise an army and go —”

  “Look at us, Owain!” Rhys shot to his feet and went to stand over him. “What kind of an army are we? A handful of us—against the greatest force that ever was. We have fought. And we have won. But of late, we have only lost. With Scotland, France, Ireland to give us arms, ships, soldiers... there was a chance. But that’s all past and gone. Gone. Long gone. And now, we don’t care much anymore for the clang of battle and the glory of having beaten our foes. We’re tired. Hungry. Right now, we just want to bloody live through tomorrow.”

  Rhys dropped his knife beside Owain and went outside to join Gethin in angry silence.

  Owain contracted into a tight ball and for an hour wept. His heart cried out in agony. He felt a traitor to himself, to his family, to his country. Now that he was here and alive and without hope, he knew he would have rather died defending Harlech against the inevitable, with his Marged beside him, than without her.

  How could he have known that in a last pitch to save everything, the world beyond would prove so utterly dismal?

  For two excruciating weeks, Dewi lingered, slipping in and out of consciousness. It was a blessing, Iolo once remarked, when Dewi slept and that comment inspired the men to give up every last drop of ale they possessed, until they were left with nothing to drink but melted snow.

  For Owain, seeing another of his sons so brutally dying was a torture that gnawed at his soul. Always a man of carefull
y measured words, he became during that course a man of almost none. The selfishness by which he had survived his own certain capture and death evolved into self-loathing. The very reasons he had lived and fought so hard for were now unknown to him. The inferno of a dream had reduced itself to cinders. Had an army of fifty thousand Welshmen come marching to his aid then, he would have denied his own identity.

  One day, near the end of January, when a rare winter sun thawed the surface layers of snow and ice in the valley below the cave and the wind ceased its howling, Dewi died. He was no more the victim of burning fever or oozing, smelly green stumps where his hands and feet used to be. He was at peace. They dug as far into the frozen earth as they could with their weapons and covered his grave with heavy stones to thwart any scavenging animals that might come to feed on the remains of his flesh.

  It seemed to Owain that they would all suffer the same fate. That winter would never end.

  56

  Harlech Castle, Wales — February, 1409

  Seated on the edge of their bed, Catrin combed Edmund’s hair from his forehead with her fingers. As she did so, a loose lock fell from his head and onto his pillow. In the weeks that had gone by since Christmas, he had battled a fever that anchored itself deep within his marrow. At first he merely complained of being tired—rising late from bed, falling asleep on the battlements even as stones battered the walls. Gradually, his appetite waned and if not for Catrin’s pleading he would have foregone many a meal. These last two weeks he had not left his bed. Margaret had taken over the command of the garrison, utilizing the instructions Owain had prudently entrusted her with before leaving.

  Catrin grazed her fingertips over Edmund’s cheek. The fire was gone. His skin was cool now. He was a wisp of the valiant soldier he once was: dutifully brave and strong of limb, even though he was not of great stature. What she had truly loved him for was his devotion to books and the knowledge they contained, and his sincere appreciation for small gifts of beauty in the world around him. Yet the man that Catrin had tended to of late was not that person. He had withered to almost nothing, like some old man of eighty, not one less than half that age. His speech was ambling, sometimes nonsensical. His mind was undoubtedly a void through which occasionally flitted sparks of memories dulled by famine.

  His sparse eyelashes fluttered. He opened his eyes and looked at her. “The children?” he uttered hoarsely, the cracks at the corners of his mouth splitting more deeply.

  She clutched at his chilled fingers, nodding. Then she looked across the room, the dim light of early morning straining to penetrate the frosty windows, and curled a finger at her children. Lionel marched forward by himself, a general leading the way, and Margaret carried the girls in either arm to their ailing father’s bedside. Only Lionel, nearing his sixth birthday, was old enough to guess that perhaps all was not well with his father.

  Lionel crept across the bed and buried his face in Edmund’s chest.

  Catrin reached for her son. “Lionel, please.”

  But Edmund stayed her with his hand. With every ounce of his strength, he wrapped his arms around Lionel in a feeble embrace. “Courage, my son.” His words were barely above a whisper. “I want you to be a good knight for your mother and sisters. Can you do that?”

  Perplexed by the request, Lionel sat back, but nodded dutifully. “I’m very brave for my age. Grandfather says so.”

  Margaret and Catrin exchanged a glance. They had heard nothing from Owain nor seen any sign of him since his departure. Winter was on its way out and spring heralding itself in bold hints. Rain and snow had been scarce recently, so travel would have been ideal. And yet there was no sign of him. None whatsoever. No signature harassing of the invaders. No indication of a detachment of English riding out to quell some uprising elsewhere. That meant he had either failed to gather a relief force or... or that he had not survived. There was no way of knowing.

  With curious determination, Gwladys hoisted herself up on the high edge of the bed. She wrinkled her nose at Lionel, for the two were ever arguing, and then smiled at her father. “Father,” she said in a sweet, pleading tone, “can we look for seashells today?”

  Edmund’s eyes drifted shut for a moment. When he opened them again, his look was blank, as if he had no focus or recognition of the faces before him. Black shadows lay beneath his sunken cheekbones. Silver tipped whiskers grayed his face even more than the colorless cast of his skin. He drew a long, slow breath and held it as if that were his greatest battle left to fight.

  Then Gwladys puckered her ivory forehead, clasped her tiny hands together and added, “Please?”

  A faint smile curled Edmund’s lips. He looked toward little Angharad, propped on her grandmother’s hip, a constant stream pouring from her tiny nose. Then, he turned his face toward Catrin again. “You... will teach them French?”

  “They have already begun, cariad.”

  Even as Catrin answered him, she knew that he did not hear her. The life faded from his eyes and a moment later his cheek fell softly to the pillow. The children could not see the vacancy in their father’s pupils, nor were they keen enough to note that he did not draw breath. Gwladys tugged at her father’s hand, still expecting an answer to her simple request, which even if he had been well, he would have been unable to fulfill because of the enemy surrounding them.

  “Take them to the chapel,” Catrin said to her mother. Lightly, she brushed her hand downward across Edmund’s face, her fingertips sweeping his eyelids closed. She would have collapsed in grief, but she wouldn’t allow herself to do so in front of the children.

  So many men had died all around them these last few months—from putrefying wounds or raging fevers—and some, like her dear Edmund, had simply languished away. The deaths were so many that even the children had been numbed to the meaning of mortality. Catrin had tried to keep them inside behind shuttered windows when the missiles were flying at the fortress, but the barrage was so constant, it had proven impossible to continue for long. The girls had seen them toss the bodies of dead soldiers over the wall to bounce like straw dolls upon the cliffs above the sea. Lionel had been standing atop the Garden Tower next to a young soldier who had befriended him when an arrow split the man’s forehead clean open and half his brain splattered onto Lionel’s tunic. The emptiness in their bellies disturbed them more than the constancy of death.

  Margaret hustled the children out the door and into the care of one of her handmaidens. Soon, she was at Catrin’s side again, her hand kneading her daughter’s shoulder.

  When Sir Edmund Mortimer had come to Owain Glyndwr’s house, it was as a servant of the English king and a captive. Owain had impressed Edmund with his leniency, intellect and leadership, but it was Catrin who had been the victor of his heart. It was she who had converted him to the cause of the Welsh, not by persuasive argument or extortion or threats, but by the innocent grace of her smile. He had gambled his lands and his birthright, if only to be by her side. Owain had placed in Edmund as much faith as any Welshman and in turn Wales had gained a champion.

  But now, like so many others before him—Madoc, Tudur, Hopkyn, Llywelyn ap Gruffydd, Harry Hotspur and young Tom who once carried Owain’s banner—his beliefs, his actions, his very life had all led him to this inconspicuous end. Men who had risen with passion burning in their souls to fight gloriously, to live completely for but one single thing, an idea, were all in the end reduced to this: a hollow shell of flesh and bones, without breath or heartbeat.

  Silent tears slid down Catrin’s pale cheeks. She rubbed Edmund’s cold hands and squeezed them hard. “Oh Edmund, the years were hard, but happy. And yet, too few. My father will return. He will deliver us—save our children. One day they will live in peace. He will free Wales. You always believed so. And so it will be.”

  As Catrin tucked her chin against her chest and threaded her fingers through her beloved’s hair, Margaret backed herself against the wall. What she was soon to do, she knew Catrin would never forgive her for. Be
fore his escape, Owain had named a date and told Margaret that by the time that day came and went if he had not arrived to relieve Harlech and freed them all, or if he had tried and failed, that she was to use her soundest judgment to decide whether to hold out... or to give in.

  She had lost count of the number of dead. As of that morning, only four soldiers were stalwart enough to keep watch and defend the castle. The rest were ill or injured. Little Angharad was waning by the hour. There was enough food to last them all a day by normal standards—if they fed the sick ones, that is. Three days if they fooled their bellies with vinegar water.

  She must lay her pride down before her, because to her back there was only a crumbling wall.

  When Harry strode into Harlech at the reluctant surrender of Margaret Glyndwr, he could not say he was surprised to discover that Owain was not to be found within its wasted walls. He now had in his possession the last great stronghold of Wales—and was that not what he had come for? Wales was his, as it should have been all along. The Glyndwr family, or what was left of it, was herded into the great hall. Without laying eyes on them, he ordered Sir Gilbert Talbot to escort them to London where they would be locked up in the Tower for as long as it would take for Owain Glyndwr to give himself up.

  The rebels of Wales were vanquished, Scotland had been put to bed with the capture of its young king and France was consumed with its own squabbles. Only a few years before, England had been assaulted on every front. Now, it was never more secure.

  57

  Somewhere in Wales — Late Summer, 1410

  In the year and a half since he had escaped from Harlech, Owain had aged two decades. The once great warrior prince wandered the land in over-mended clothes. His hair was thinning and silver-gold. The glorious mane was now cropped at chin length and the neatly trimmed beard replaced by coarse stubble. That he had changed in appearance echoed the man within.