“Either way, we will know if they’re alive and in what condition,” Constance said, glad Lord Bohun, at least, understood her plan.
Lord Bohun’s company reached the River Dee and met Edmund and his men at the crossroads just past the ford south of the castle. Lyons was on the Welsh side of the river, which was what had necessitated Warenne’s decision to bow to King Llywelyn in the first place.
As Bohun related all that had transpired, Edmund’s expression changed from one of suspicion to relief. “I am appalled by the plot, but more glad than I can say to hear this from you, my friend. I was worried. Why didn’t you tell me what you were doing?”
“I begged the king to keep my secret. Nobody could know my true intentions. Nobody. Besides, neither of us knew if it would ever come to anything.”
“But your wife? Your son?”
“Why do you think I sent William to Ireland? I could not bear for him to think I was a traitor.”
Edmund put a hand on Bohun’s shoulder. “I knew my brother was up to something. After all these years, why does he choose this moment to revolt? King David has never been stronger or more beloved.”
“King David chose to go to Ireland. Regardless of how necessary that decision was, it left the field open for men with treacherous minds,” Bohun said. “Besides, the Scots are involved.”
Edmund spat on the ground. “Balliol.” Then he lifted his chin to single out Constance. “And what’s this I hear about William Venables? His father betrays the king, and yet he does not?”
Constance drew in a breath. She’d spent the last few hours specifically avoiding thoughts of Venny’s father. He was involved in a plot not only to overthrow the king, but to assassinate him. And believed his co-conspirators had already done so. It was heartbreaking. “I know Venny well. He is not his father.”
“And we can be grateful for it.” Edmund looked down his nose at Constance, but not in an arrogant way—more as a man who understood, and she supposed that Edmund, the second son destined for the church before his elder brother died, would know all about what it was like to try to fill too-big shoes. In Edmund’s case in particular, King Edward had favored Roger, the third and youngest brother, and confirmed him in his holdings before he’d grudgingly done the same for Edmund.
Bohun gazed around at the men who surrounded him. “None of you are making a mistake in holding to the king.”
“What if King David really is dead?” This came from one of Edmund’s men, echoing Constance and who-knew-how-many-others in the last hours since they’d learned of Roger Mortimer’s plans. The moment he spoke he looked as if he wanted to take back the words.
“If he is gone, we defend the true king, Arthur, David’s son, with our lives,” Bohun said. “But until someone other than Roger Mortimer tells me David is dead, I will count him among the living.”
Edmund gave a sharp nod of his head. “As will I.” Then he grinned, though it made his expression look more villainous than happy. “Now let’s see what Warenne has to say for himself, shall we?”
At the head of their greatly expanded host, Bohun and Edmund rode towards the castle gates. Lyons Castle was built so the main entrance was on the north side and included a drawbridge across a moat fed by water diverted from the Dee, forcing the road to circle even farther to the west before curving to meet the castle road. This close to the Dee, which flowed north towards Chester at this location, the land was relatively flat, and the men were able to spread out, not in a threatening way, but so they weren’t jostling each other.
Once they approached the drawbridge, Bohun urged his horse ahead of Edmund’s. He didn’t set foot on the bridge, however. He couldn’t. Its end was raised two feet above the ground. Warenne had seen their company coming and wasn’t in a mood to be hospitable—but he wasn’t such a fool as to close the gates entirely, especially since Humphrey de Bohun was known to be on his side.
As he’d done in the road on the other side of the Dee, Bohun rested his forearms on the pommel of his saddle and leaned into them. He spoke without shouting to the three men who stood on the other side of the bridge. “You know who I am.” It wasn’t a question.
“Yes, my lord Bohun.” As a sign of respect, their apparent leader took off his helmet to reveal his face. With brown hair and beard shot with gray, he looked to be the oldest of the three men.
“But I see I am less than welcome.”
“That isn’t the case, my lord.” The man shook his head. “These are dangerous times.”
“So it seems. Is Earl Warenne within? I would speak to him.”
“He is and asks you to choose five men to accompany you inside but leave the rest without.”
Bohun studied the guard. “I would first like to speak to John. Will you ask him to come out himself?”
The man hesitated, clearly discomfited at keeping such a great lord waiting, but Bohun’s request was outside what he’d been instructed to answer without further consultation. He bowed. “I will ask.”
It took some time, perhaps a quarter of an hour, which felt to Constance like a long time to wait when Warenne should have been aware of them and prepared to greet them. It made her think Bohun might be right that Warenne’s mind had faded. The wait did give Edmund time to move among the men, whispering the rest of the plan if things didn’t go their way. Warenne had no archers on the wall, but Bohun had many at his back, not just Constance.
Eventually Warenne came, and when he appeared, he was dressed formally in full armor and a thick maroon cloak, which looked too heavy for the relatively warm spring day. “Humphrey.”
“John.”
Then Warenne looked beyond Bohun to Edmund, and his eyes widened.
Bohun grinned. “I have brought another into the fold, John, but we are concerned about our reception here. We hear you have Lords Ieuan and Mathonwy hidden within. Could it be you have betrayed our cause and now side with the king?”
Warenne’s control was good, as one might expect from such a powerful baron, but Bohun’s opening parley was not what he expected. It set him back on his heels, and he took a moment to answer.
“The king is dead, Humphrey, I assure you. He is no longer a man one can side with.”
“Then you have turned Lords Ieuan and Mathonwy to our cause?”
Warenne’s expression soured. For some reason, he’d dismissed the guards who’d greeted them initially, though soldiers crowded the wall-walk above him and could hear every word. There was something masterful and brave about him standing all alone beneath the gatehouse. “They have been recalcitrant.”
“I would speak to them. Perhaps I might convince them of their folly. They have been my friends.”
Warenne was offended. “You don’t trust me?”
“Trust is a rare commodity, in royal politics more than most.” Bohun gestured impatiently. “Produce them and show your loyalty.”
“How dare you question me!”
“It is not I but Roger Mortimer who doubts. Your grandson has not comported himself well.”
That gave Warenne pause. “What do you mean?”
“Roger suspects he still serves the king, at your command. Even now Henry sits in prison in one of Beeston’s towers.”
Warenne’s nostrils flared. He hadn’t expected that either, and he knew now that he was cornered. After a moment, he gave a sharp nod of his head. “Wait here.”
Chapter Thirty-four
20 March 1294
Ieuan
When Warenne had spoken to Ieuan and Math sometime in the night, he’d pontificated at them, sounding less and less reasonable with every sentence, before being called away. Once they were left alone, perhaps a result of the continuing effects of the poppy juice, Ieuan had slept until morning, at which point he found Math kicking him in the leg again.
“Someone will come soon,” Math said.
“My head hurts.”
“Warenne really believes he can be king.”
Ieuan didn’t want to think about it, b
ut it seemed he had no choice. “How many men are going to die for that to be possible, especially if Roger Mortimer and Humphrey de Bohun are part of this?” A hint of Ieuan’s old animosity for Bohun stirred in his chest. He had thought he’d have to bury it forever. He’d been wrong.
“What do you think the messenger asked Warenne? He looked very concerned when he left.”
“I’d be pleased if I wasn’t so worried about our position.” Ieuan had been in his fair share of tight spaces before, some of them with Dafydd and some of his own making. In the past, he’d always escaped, but Lyons Castle didn’t have a Thomas Hartley in residence to burn down the stables for them like at Carlisle Castle all those years ago.
Ieuan took a tighter hold on the ropes that were supposed to be binding his wrists, though his hands were, in effect, free. “A chance will come to escape. We have to be patient.” They’d been speaking Welsh, so the guard in the next room couldn’t understand them.
Math turned to show Ieuan his wiggling fingers. “Leaving us in hoods and bindings was petty. It isn’t as if we can get through those iron bars.” Then his expression turned thoughtful. “Perhaps they fear us.”
“They fear our association with Dafydd. Their masters tell them he is dead, but we are not behaving as if he is, are we?”
“No, we are not. And we will not.” As Math finished speaking, the door to the outer guard room opened. Ieuan was incredibly thirsty, but it didn’t appear they were going to be fed and watered just yet.
The man who entered was one of the garrison’s leaders, and he strode to the cell. His expression was so intent, at first Ieuan feared for their lives, but then the soldier unlocked the door. Three guards remained at his back, so when he pulled out his knife and cut the cords that bound their feet, neither Math nor Ieuan attempted to take the weapon from him.
“Get up!”
Two nameless soldiers, faceless too since they wore helmets, grabbed Ieuan’s upper arms and forced him to his feet. It was a relief to be able to walk, and with each step as he moved from the cell, he flexed his ankles, trying to get the blood moving in his feet. Unbound was a huge improvement, but it wasn’t yet running.
The guards took them outside, and again Ieuan feared they were headed for the block or the hangman’s noose, but the reality was much better. Passing under the three raised portcullises, they arrived at the entrance to the gatehouse, with freedom so close Ieuan could smell it.
He and Math hadn’t exchanged a word since they’d left the cell, and they didn’t now, even in Welsh, though the sight of Humphrey de Bohun, Edmund Mortimer, and Constance staring across the slightly raised drawbridge at them had his heart lifting.
That is, until Bohun sneered in that way of his and said, “I commend you, Warenne. It seems you do speak the truth.”
Back at Dinas Bran, they’d speculated on Bohun’s allegiance but to have these three whom they’d thought loyal smiling at Warenne had the pit of despair Ieuan had refused to acknowledge gaping wider, and he tasted bile at the back of his throat. If he couldn’t trust Bohun or Edmund anymore, despite all Dafydd had done for them—and they’d done for him—over the years, then the contagion that had infected Gilbert de Clare was endemic. Dafydd would have to fill his court with only Welshmen, and even the loyalties of Nicholas de Carew would be suspect.
Mortimer added, “Drop the drawbridge, if you will, Warenne. I haven’t breakfasted, and I’m hungry.”
Each of the castle’s defenses worked on a system of weights and pulleys. To lower the drawbridge required winching it down. All that was necessary to raise the drawbridge was to allow the giant counterweight to run free. It was the opposite for the portcullises, which had been raised when they’d come through. Truthfully, Warenne should have dropped the outermost portcullis to pen Ieuan and Math inside the castle. That he hadn’t done so was probably because he himself remained one foot off the drawbridge, and he, or his men, hadn’t wanted to risk having him caught outside the safety of the castle, stuck between the last portcullis and the bridge.
With a wave of his hand, Warenne gave the order, and the drawbridge was lowered down onto the wooden supports on the other side. “You and Edmund may come in with your guard. Leave the rest outside. We’re a bit cramped, as you will see.”
And then all hell broke loose.
But (as Bronwen would say) in a good way.
The forward ranks of Bohun’s cavalry parted, revealing twenty archers, and a heartbeat later, twenty arrows were shot from bows that until now had been lowered and hidden. Bohun and Mortimer had been among those to wheel their horses to get themselves out of the way of the archers, but others of the cavalry stayed behind in support, dismounting to protect the archers, who were otherwise undefended. In an old Saxon move, one that predated the use of cavalry, they formed a shield wall in front of the archers.
All this Ieuan took in with an encompassing glance, and he inwardly cheered as an arrow from Constance’s own bow pierced the neck of the soldier next to him, who’d been stunned into inaction by the sudden movement of Bohun’s men. Someone else shot the guard next to Math, who immediately took off at a run across the drawbridge. Another soldier had covered Warenne, saving his life, since the soldier fell to the ground with an arrow sticking out of his back, Warenne beneath him.
Fully aware of the crossbowmen hiding in the gatehouse towers and shooting through the arrow slits, Ieuan opted to split their attention so he and Math weren’t in the same line of fire. Dropping the rope he’d kept around his hands, he dived into the moat. Thankfully, it wasn’t as filthy as some, since when the sluice gates were open, as they were today, cleaning the daily waste the castle residents dumped into it, the River Dee flowed continually around the castle. The water was unpleasant, but not putrid, and as he came up, he wasn’t puking.
But a crashing sound from the front of the castle had him swinging around and treading water. The drawbridge had been raised. From down in the water, Ieuan couldn’t see if Math had reached the far side or had been thrown backwards towards the castle’s entrance at the suddenness of its return to a closed position.
Math wasn’t in the water, so Ieuan forced himself to focus on his own swimming. The moat was only fifty feet wide, but it had been many years since Ieuan had done anything more strenuous than paddle about in a pond with Catrin in his arms. Still, he stroked vigorously towards the far bank.
Though Lyons was a grand castle, it didn’t have an outer curtain wall, making the moat its last defense. Moats were designed to prevent an enemy from getting close to the walls, either with grappling hooks or a siege engine. They weren’t intended to prevent a lone man who’d escaped the dungeon from swimming to freedom.
And then Edmund himself was there in the reeds that had grown on the edge of the moat, reaching down with a hand to pull Ieuan from the water. Ieuan had aimed his jump to take him away from the gatehouse towards the main course of the Dee in hopes of using the current to sweep him away from the castle—and take the bolts of the crossbowmen away from Math.
His gambit had worked a little too well, in fact, since as he came out of the water, a bolt hit the reeds right where he’d been a heartbeat earlier. Ieuan surged up the bank, gasping from the effort, but more determined than ever to escape. Fortunately, the disadvantage of a crossbow—they had to be wound and reset for firing—gave him the breathing room he needed. In the time it took Constance to fire ten arrows, the crossbowman managed two at most.
Ieuan’s boots were full of water, so he was lucky they hadn’t dragged him down. They would have if he’d had to swim much farther. As it was, he ran despite them, sloshing away from the castle towards the bulk of Bohun’s army some three hundred yards away, having moved out of bowshot of the walls. He glanced behind him to see the archers, Constance among them, retreating with their shield wall, one step at a time. After they reached a point a hundred yards from the moat, no more bolts came. Edmund realized it too and barked an order.
Like Ieuan, the archers turned an
d ran.
A small group kept to a hobble, however. As they came closer, Ieuan saw Math at its center, his arms around the shoulders of two of Bohun’s men, hopping on one foot and cursing with every step.
Ieuan crouched low to the ground to make himself a less obvious target, in case a crossbowman tried another shot, and waited for the group to reach him. Then he replaced one of the soldiers beside his friend. “What happened to you?”
Math cursed again. “You were smart to dive into the water.”
“You almost made it cleanly, my lord,” one of Bohun’s soldiers said.
Math snorted. “I was just at the end of the drawbridge when they dropped the weight. It sprang upwards and tipped me end over end. It would have been beautiful if I hadn’t landed on my ankle wrong.”
They reached the edge of the woods where Bohun stood with Edmund. He greeted Ieuan with a bear hug, which without a doubt was the most exuberant greeting he’d ever received from the Norman lord—or any Norman lord. “Praise be to God you’re safe.”
“Your timing is impeccable, Humphrey,” Math said.
“I regret to say we must withdraw, however.” Bohun proceeded to relate all that had transpired to reach this point. “We are at war.”
“Warenne delighted in how our loss was his triumph,” Ieuan said.
The men helped Math to an overturned log, and he removed his boot to massage his ankle. “I wondered why you didn’t take Warenne up on his offer to enter the castle, but you made the right decision, Humphrey. Warenne cannot be talked from his treason, and you risked being captured as Ieuan and I were. We don’t have time for a siege, and this war won’t be won at Lyons Castle.”
“Nor Beeston,” Ieuan said, “as much as it pains me to leave friends in captivity.”
“If we besiege Beeston, my brother would hang Venny from the battlements before he surrenders—out of spite,” Edmund said.
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