Uneasy Lies the Crown

by N. Gemini Sasson

  After Dewi’s death, Maredydd had broached the subject of trying to raise troops with his father, either in Wales or abroad, but Owain had defeated every suggestion, dug up some gaping flaw in it and pitched his son’s resourcefulness aside. He had forbidden Iolo to sing any ballads that spoke of the glory of his house or his fight against the English. Ballads of romance were limited to only the older, well known ones. The restrictions left his friend nearly mute, for Iolo was always proudest of his own creations and not an imitator of others.

  Sometimes, on rare days when he would accompany Rhys about the hills in search of game, Owain would talk with him about better times. Whenever the talk brought up Margaret’s name, Owain’s shoulders sank, his eyes went distant and he grew suddenly quiet.

  “Are you going to blame yourself forever?” Rhys tethered his horse to a fallen tree branch and claimed a spot in the shade. It was one of the first warm days of summer and already at midmorning the heat was building. They hadn’t spied so much as a hare and knew it would be another day of porridge for them all if their luck didn’t change.

  Owain plucked at his bowstring as he settled himself on a log. “Do I have any sway over the sun? Hardly. I don’t blame myself for what others have done... or failed to do. I am a prince without a people. A people who could not, would not, call themselves as one. What am I, one man, to do about that?”

  “So all that talk at Machynlleth,” Rhys said, sitting beside Owain to look out over a meadow crowded with yellow-faced daisies, “about churches and universities was a pile of dung?”

  “No, not that.”

  “The parliaments, the alliances, letters to kings and popes, the army you built that won back everything from border to seashore... what was that for? Why was it that I stretched out my neck on bitter cold nights, days drenched with rain, snow up to my ribs —”

  “Point made.” Owain pulled an arrow out of his bag and fitted it to the string. “I’m old, Rhys. We’re all old. Look at us. Harry is the rising sun. We are the pack mules who can no longer carry our load.”

  “I see.” Rhys reached beneath his shirt to scratch at a rash. “Harry is the greater man. And us? Just a couple of fusty arses sitting on a stump in the middle of bloody nowhere, gibbering about our aching bones and poor eyesight and how long it has been since we’ve tupped a wench and... What are you doing with that?”

  A small, black cloud erupted from the grass fifty paces away. Owain squinted, pulled back and let the arrow fly. The arrow smacked the bird down with a twang.

  “Grouse tonight?” Owain chimed as he rose from his seat and went to claim his prize.

  “Oh, so it’s just my eyes that are failing.” Hobbling, Rhys followed on his heels.

  Pierced cleanly through the breast, the grouse that Owain picked up was not full-grown. He swung it by its feet. “Not enough to go around.”

  “Pity. First sign of fur or feather we’ve seen all day.”

  “Or perhaps we will have had no luck at all today?” A small, crooked smile lifted one side of Owain’s mouth. “Flint?”

  “Never without,” Rhys said, digging in the pouch at his hip.

  They retreated back to the shady spot they had left and Rhys went to work breaking up the dead branches around them for a fire, while Owain plucked the bird. They both knew if the others found them out that this little private feast would not go over well.

  After they had devoured their meal in famished silence, Rhys licked the fat from his fingers.

  “Do you think,” Rhys mused, “that you’ll ever see Margaret again?”

  Owain sighed. “I don’t see how. She’s in the Tower. Not in our best days could we have freed her from there. I have nothing to give up for ransom. Henry might take me in her stead, though.”

  “Would you do that?”

  Scratching in the dirt with his knife, Owain gave his companion a sideways glance. “She would not want me to. And she was right in what she said to me before I left her. So long as I live, there is hope. Besides, if I were in Henry’s hands, he might just execute me and my whole family all at once. My pride, as well, prevents me from giving myself up. Do you actually think I would give that devil the satisfaction?”

  “Not likely.” Rhys’s gaze went distant, his thoughts obviously roaming. “Nesta is in Ireland with her mother’s family.”

  An abrupt switch in the course of the conversation, Owain narrowed his eyes at Rhys. “Then I take it she is well. The girls?”

  “Don’t know. News travels not at all in these parts. But... I have been thinking... thinking of joining her. Her mother’s family has some land where they mostly tend to sheep. It would be a lot like home. Owain? You and Maredydd can come with me. Iolo, too, if you want. I imagine the house is small, but —”

  “And what of Gethin and Phillip?Rhys and Gwilym? No, it is too much to ask and we would just as easily be found out there, as well.” Owain tossed a thighbone onto the remains of the fire. “I want to die on Welsh soil, not in some land not my own. You understand?”

  Rhys stretched his legs and yawned. “I do. If I was going to die—and I haven’t yet decided I’m ready to do that—then I want it to be while fighting the English.”

  “We don’t have any army to fight the English.”

  “Yes, but we don’t have to fight the whole damn English army. Remember when we used to raid their towns, just a handful of us, and come back with armloads of bounty? We weren’t many then.”

  Owain scraped a small pit into the earth at his feet, tossed the bones and entrails of the bird there and then covered it over with dirt and a few rocks.

  “Only a few,” Owain echoed. He smiled at Rhys as he stood, suppressing the groan aroused by stiff joints, and collected his bow and bag of arrows. “The spark that started an inferno.”

  Rhys cocked his head in contemplation. “There’s still plenty of tinder about.”

  “And Harry to douse us.”

  “He hasn’t stepped foot on Welsh soil since Harlech. This is a dull life, Owain. One I was not born to. Neither were you.”

  Owain shrugged and turned along the path back toward their humble dwelling in the mountains. He could never forgive the English their arrogance. Least of all could he forgive them for the deaths of his children and for taking away his sweet, beautiful Marged.

  Ah, Marged, all of Wales must think me dead, I have been so quiet, so timid. How do I give them hope when I cannot find it myself? Do they dare speak for themselves? For certain they would never have faith in a coward. Is that not what I have become?

  Near Welshpool, Anglo-Welsh Border — October, 1410

  The first gold of the harvest season tinged the fields below the mountain ridge. To the east lay gluttonous England. To the west, wild Wales.

  “We would get richer if we robbed Welshpool,” Rhys hinted, looking down the valley at the town a mile away. “Money, wine... a few extra horses. We’ll need those things.”

  “You and what army?” Owain said, glancing over his shoulder at the dozen faithful followers gathered on horseback. They were lightly armed, just like they would have been a decade ago—a weapon or two apiece and not a link of mail among them. At first Owain had resisted his own idea of a raid into the borders—an idea sown time and again by those around him. Maredydd with his gentle insistence and bright hope, Iolo with his odes of more glorious days, Rhys with his prodding to action... even blind Gethin, who bemoaned his lost purpose in distant snatches. They were only a few, but the dream was still there in their hearts, or else they would not have clung to this wandering existence. They could have taken their pardons and lived in peace. Instead, they were here, surveying this pastoral scene.

  The ground was yet wet from a storm the night before, but the sun had come forth in triumph, not yet ready to yield to the slate-gray clouds of October. Dotting the valley was a healthy herd of cattle, grazing in unsuspecting tranquility.

  Rhys raised a hand to shield his eyes. “Since our supper will not come to us... I suggest we go
get it.” He gathered up his reins and looked at Owain with hungry anticipation.

  Owain signaled with a single finger and Rhys nudged his horse in the flanks. While Owain and the rest waited, Rhys ap Tudur and Philip Scudamore, a brother-in-law to Owain’s daughter Alice, followed close behind Rhys Ddu on their horses. At an easy canter, they swung out wide around the slumbering valley in the direction of Welshpool to cut in behind the herd.

  “We’ll cover the south.” Gwilym brought his mount up beside Owain’s. “There are other pastures there and the cows will want to go that direction because they know the way.”

  “Take your time, Gwilym,” Owain said. “If we can take them quietly we’ll get much further along without alarm.”

  “And if the farmer discovers us?” Philip Hanmer added from behind them.

  “Whatever it takes to silence him.” Settling back in his saddle, Owain watched Rhys and the other two men move past a stand of woods.

  Philip Hanmer and Gwilym took up their reins.

  “Wait,” Owain said lowly, squinting. “Something’s wrong.”

  From out of the woods around Rhys, poured a host of mounted men.

  “English,” Maredydd muttered.

  “How many?” Owain said, relying on his son’s youthful vision.

  Maredydd peered intensely. With the sun in his eyes, it took even him some time to assess the situation. By then, the rattle of weapons and the shouts of their commander carried across the valley.

  Finally, Maredydd turned to his father. “Well over a hundred.”

  The others pulled on their reins. The bits of their horses jangled.

  Twisting in his saddle, Owain glared at them. “What are you doing?”

  “Leaving,” Gwilym said.

  Owain drew his sword, prepared to fight. “But what of Rhys and your brother?”

  Gwilym simply threw his head around and with a shrug spurred his horse. All but Maredydd followed.

  With sinking heart, Owain braved one more look into the distance. There had been no chance of retreat for Rhys. The English had already dragged him from his horse without him ever raising his sword in defense. A stream of soldiers raced across the valley toward Owain and Maredydd. At their head was a detachment of thirty riders in light armor.

  “Father, please,” Maredydd pled, his voice strained.

  Owain heard the wild drumming in his ears. It was several moments before he realized that it was the sound of English hooves bearing down on them and not his heart.

  The rest of the Welsh were deep into the mountains before the English troops ever got near to them. Owain and Maredydd, separated from the others, did not stop riding hard for hours. When they reached a stream, Owain jumped from his saddle and threw his sword into the mists of a shallow pool at the base of a waterfall.

  Maredydd retrieved his father’s sword without a word. He did not offer it back. He knew his father would not take it just then—even if the English had fallen upon them that very moment.

  Iolo Goch:

  Rhys Ddu was granted a trial in London, albeit a mockery of justice, and was swiftly declared guilty of treason. In the same tower where he awaited his trial was the Lady Margaret. When she heard the roar of the crowd outside one day, she asked her guards what it was about. Gloatingly, they told her. She wished, then, that she had not asked.

  As Rhys went down on his knees before the block, he glared at the priest who was there to hear his final words and said in a steady voice, “Prince Owain lives and he will never yield to the usurper, Henry. Take my cursed head off, if it gives you English bastards pleasure. But when I die another will take my place. I warn you all, it will go on until there are no Welshmen left for your kind to enslave. And for each one of us that goes down, we will take ten Englishmen with us. Then the Scots will come down and take over the whole bloody island.”

  Then he turned his eyes heavenward. “Now forgive me, Father, I have not been to Mass regularly... in years, maybe...”

  58

  Tower of London, England — 1411

  Owain had kept prisoners, although how many and under what conditions, Margaret was never really sure. Mostly, they were kept at Dolbadarn or Aberystwyth, seldom at Harlech, for he regarded that as his home. But it had taken her a long time to share the opinion of Harlech being any sort of home. It was too much a fortress and ever full of diplomats and soldiers flooding through the gatehouse entrance. Only Edmund and Catrin’s children had brought to it any hint of hominess with their perpetual attempts at song. They had been a growing army of bards for Iolo’s tutelage. Lionel, in particular, had shown an interest in the harp and Iolo had sat with him many an evening in infinite patience, first teaching him how to care for the harp and then how to properly pluck the strings. But such trivialities were far too boring for bold little Lionel. He wanted to learn an entire song and his failure to do so at his first sitting nearly killed his ambitions altogether.

  The children... ah, the children. What short, undeservedly cruel lives they had suffered. So much different from her own childhood, half at Wrexham, half in London. After Margaret’s surrender of Harlech, Angharad had died on the way to London. The sweet child did not make it as far as Shrewsbury before her lungs filled with fluid, drowning her from the inside. Lionel—she was told soon after they had all been tossed into the Tower of London—had succumbed to ‘natural causes’. But she had not been allowed to see his body and suspected the ‘cause’ was most likely poisoning. Being an heir to Owain and the son of the traitor Sir Edmund, Lionel was better removed than allowed to live and one day incite trouble.

  For the first year of their imprisonment, Sion and Mary had shared quarters with their mother, but a fresh bout of the plague had taken Sion from them. He died in his mother’s arms within a day of the fever coming on. Mary survived, but she was taken away and Margaret never heard from her again. Since then, she had asked regularly of Gwladys and Catrin. At first, she was cursed and spat at. As she grew more insistent, her guards became more abusive. But apparently they had been given strict orders not to cause any harm to her person, because the backlashes seldom went further than a brusque shove or a stinging slap. Except for the one time, when one of her guards became particularly perturbed at her request for unspoiled food. A lanky, greasy-haired man with foul breath, he slammed the door shut behind him, pinned her down upon the ‘bed’, yanked her skirt up in one well-practiced motion and as he fumbled to free his manhood and fight off her struggles, another guard entered and knocked the perpetrator clear across the floor by slamming the stool into his head.

  “You’ll not hurt the lady,” her liberator said. Then he seized the other guard by the collar and tossed him out into the corridor.

  “You all right?” he said in a softer tone to Margaret.

  She smoothed her skirts and clamped her knees together, nodding. Then she rolled over on her side to face the wall and sobbed, not out of fear of her captors, but out of misery over her own helplessness.

  That was the extent of the kindness she was to receive. The next day the guard who had saved her from harm brought her freshly roasted fowl. The aroma was beyond tantalizing and when she reached for it, he caught her wrist and pulled her tightly to him. He was quite young and if not handsome at least fair smelling and clean-shaven. But there was no doubt about what the payment for decent food was to be. The unspoken proposition brought him a tankard across the jaw and ever after that he treated her just as roughly as the other man had.

  How opposite her life was now from that which she had shared with Owain at Sycharth and Harlech. Sycharth had been a golden dream of blissful union, with a fountain of children springing from her yearly like a carefully cultivated crop. All in all, the years at Harlech had not been wholly unhappy times. It had been an exceedingly comfortable existence. And she had been a princess. But what was she now? A companion to rats. A home to lice. A bait with which to tempt her husband into the snare. As long as she was kept alive, Margaret knew, Owain was out there and still giv
ing Henry trouble.

  Sitting on her poorly mended stool, Margaret held her thread toward the candlelight. She had to bring the needle a mere hand’s width from her face to try to put the thread through the eye. Her hands were cramped. She used to be able to work on a piece from dawn to dusk, her fingers flying over the cloth like a bee collecting nectar, but it was no longer so. After several failed attempts, she put the needlework back on the small bedside table, one of three pieces of furniture in her tiny, sunless room, permeated with unidentifiable odors. She studied the tray of food that had been left for her. The molded part of the bread could be torn off, but the meat was rancid... if she consumed any of it she would suffer the consequences.

  She gathered up her blanket and shook it—a habit developed to rid it of earwigs and spiders. Carefully, she arranged the covering on her bed, if one could call it such, for it was only three planks rough with splinters and so short that her feet hung over the end. Her only pillow was her arm and sometimes, on those days she considered herself lucky, her keepers would throw her fresh straw to soften the surface of her bed. Although she did not relish the dark, she cupped her hand and blew her candle out so that she might save it for some later time. For now, sleep invited and it was the one thing, the only thing, that brought her peace of any kind.

  She lay down and pulled her knees up inside her gown for added warmth. The single blanket she had was growing threadbare after three—no, it was going on four winters now that she had been here. All a fog. Days that melted into nights. Minutes like hours. Days like years. Nothing to mark one from the other. Like a constant state of being half asleep and half awake. A lifetime lived in a nightmare.

  Hearing no scurry of rodents, Margaret closed her eyes and let her thoughts disappear and the dreams take over. Every day she prayed that she would dream of Owain and better times, but it was almost never so. For when she dreamed, she dreamed of death and dying: maimed soldiers pleading for an end to their suffering, little children screaming in agony, old people frozen to death in their beds, the ghost of Edmund walking Harlech’s battlements.