When Christ and his Saints Slept eoa-1

by Sharon Kay Penman

  That was the greatest surprise of all-how fast he’d become so fond of this hitherto unknown family of his. It went well beyond the natural gratitude he might have expected to feel. Memories of his mother had come flooding back along with his bygone Welsh, and that was part of it, but not all. He liked them enormously, as simple as that.

  He remembered that his uncle was two years younger than Angharad, which put Rhodri in his midforties. His hair was short and already so grey that it was impossible to tell if he’d once been flaxen-haired like Angharad. He was not tall, but he had a powerful wrestler’s build, and it was no surprise when he boasted that in his youth he’d excelled in the sport, equally popular on both sides of the border. He was one of the most affable men Ranulf had ever met, cheerful and expansive, with a serene good humor that Ranulf found truly remarkable once he learned about his uncle’s past. Other men, if they were lucky, had merely a passing acquaintance with tragedy. But Rhodri had a long and intimate relationship.

  He was the sole survivor of four siblings, having lost his sister to the English king, his two elder brothers to untimely deaths. He and his wife, Nesta, had been blessed with six children, but three had died in childhood, and his last son, Cadell, had died in a fall from his horse two days before his twentieth birthday. Cadell had outlived his mother, though; by then Nesta was already six years dead and Rhodri wed again to a neighbor’s widow. Enid was a classic Welsh beauty, dark and sultry, and it was obvious that Rhodri adored this voluptuous young wife of his, too much ever to put her aside-even though she had been unable to give him a son. A man who’d buried so many loved ones, a man with a barren wife, no male heir, and a blind daughter-such a man might well have despaired of his lot. But Rhodri bore his losses with the patience of Job, and Ranulf could only marvel at his uncle’s faith and fortitude and life-affirming optimism.

  A bed had been set up for Ranulf in the great hall, screened in at night so he could sleep. He liked this arrangement, for it enabled him to observe comings and goings in the hall, practice his Welsh on all who came within range of his bed, and get to know the three very disparate women of his uncle’s household.

  Enid was a pleasure to watch, gliding gracefully about like a sleek, dark swan, indolent, incurious, accommodating as long as it did not inconvenience her too much, as placid and lovely to look upon as a Welsh mountain lake. She was the mistress of the manor, but she seemed quite content to delegate her responsibilities to her stepdaughters. She was not the wife Ranulf would have wanted for himself, but he did envy Rhodri the way her eyes sparkled as soon as her husband walked through the doorway, and he could not help wondering if Annora smiled so sweetly for Gervase Fitz Clement.

  Fourteen-year-old Eleri won Ranulf over at once, for she seemed like a younger, Welsh version of his favorite niece. Like Maud, Eleri was lively and playful, with a penchant for practical jokes and a taste for mischief. She was a pretty girl, with dimples, dark eyes, and a heart-shaped face framed by pale ash-brown hair that looked shot through with silver in bright sunlight. She was her father’s pet, and was not above taking advantage of that when it suited her purposes. She treated Enid with an amused indulgence that few fourteen-year-olds could have carried off, doted upon her father, signified her approval of her new kinsman, Ranulf, by teasing him unmercifully, and was utterly and fiercely devoted to her elder sister.

  Rhiannon did not resemble Eleri in either appearance or temperament, but she returned the younger girl’s devotion in full measure. Ranulf guessed her to be in her midtwenties. She was taller than Eleri, slim and straight-backed. Her hair was her most striking feature, a rich russet shade of chestnut, and like Eleri, she’d gotten their mother’s brown eyes. If Enid was a swan and Eleri a frisky kitten, Rhiannon put Ranulf in mind of a young doe, wary and elegant and as careful as her younger sister was carefree. She was deliberate in all that she did, but whether that had always been her nature or was the result of her affliction, Ranulf couldn’t tell. He prided himself upon being a good judge of character, but Rhiannon eluded him at every turn, for he kept colliding with his own presumptions about the blind.

  Ranulf had been told about his cousin’s accident. She’d been struck in the eye by an ice-encrusted snowball, and within a year, the sight in her other eye had begun to fail, too. That was often true, the doctors had explained to Rhodri, but they could not explain why it was so. All he knew was that at the age of eight, his daughter had gone blind.

  Ranulf could imagine few crosses heavier to bear than that of blindness, and it followed, then, that those so stricken would be lost souls, drowning in darkness, tragic and pathetic and helpless. He still thought Rhiannon’s plight was tragic. But she was certainly not pathetic, nor was she helpless.

  She startled him with occasional flashes of wry humor, for humor and blindness seemed utterly incompatible to him. She puzzled him by her stubborn insistence upon doing things for herself when it would have been so much easier to let others help. She made him feel self-conscious, for he had to keep censoring himself, lest he inadvertently say something she might find hurtful or offensive. And again and again she amazed him by her eerie ability to act as if she were sighted.

  Blindness was not an uncommon affliction in their world, but Ranulf had no firsthand experience of the malady; those fortunate enough to have families to care for them rarely ventured out on their own. The only blind people he’d ever seen were beggars, for that was the brutal choice they faced: begging or starving. Who, after all, would hire a blind man? What could he do? Nothing, of course.

  Ranulf would once have answered that question in the negative, too. But no longer, not after watching his cousin at Trefriw. Rhiannon assisted her sister and servants in running Rhodri’s household. She crossed the hall with sure steps, detouring around the center hearth without hesitation. She invariably recognized her father even before he called out to her, and when neighbors began to drop by, eager to get a glimpse of Rhodri’s long-lost English nephew, she greeted them by name. She mended clothes, and while she needed to have her needle threaded for her, she then reached into her sewing basket and selected the proper spool of thread. She changed Ranulf’s bandage without fumbling, poured him wine without spilling it, and whenever he spoke to her, she turned and looked toward him so attentively that he found it hard to believe those wide-set dark eyes could be sightless.

  And so he studied Rhiannon in mystified fascination, awed by what he could not understand, but his bafflement was a barrier between them-until the evening when she checked upon him before retiring, crossed to the table by his bed, and exclaimed, “Your candle has gone out!” And as he watched in amazement, she carried the candle over to the hearth, returning a moment later with her hand cupped protectively around the flickering flame.

  This was too much for Ranulf. “How in hellfire did you do that?” he blurted out. “How could you know the candle was no longer lit?”

  “Have you never heard of second sight?” she murmured, so earnestly that it was a moment before he realized he was being teased. When he laughed, she did, too, and then she explained that the quenched candle gave off no heat. At the time, he was amused by her wordplay, relieved that he’d not affronted her, and intrigued by the simple logic of her answer. Later, though, he would look back upon this incident as a turning point for them both.

  Having discovered that Rhiannon was so matter-of-fact about her blindness, Ranulf felt free to satisfy his curiosity, sure now that it would not be at her expense. She readily revealed her secrets. Trefriw was the only home she’d ever known; was it so surprising that she should know it so well? As long as the household members took care not to shift furniture around, she could move about with confidence. Nor was there anything magical about her ability to recognize others; she knew the sound of their footsteps, as she knew the sound of their voices. She did not overfill a wine cup because she crooked her finger over the rim and poured until she felt the liquid at her fingertip. Her sewing spools were notched so that she could tell if the thread
was white or black. She sewed tags into her clothes so that she would not make the mistake of wearing a garment inside out. She knew that venison was being served for dinner by the smell of roasted meat. She needed her fingers and ears to play her harp, not her eyes. There was no sleight-of-hand, she insisted, none of the “tricks of the trade” practiced by traveling jongleurs. It was just a matter of learning to heed her other senses, to rely upon memory, and to be patient.

  She’d made it seem so easy, and yet Ranulf knew it was not. He no longer saw her achievements as uncanny, even miraculous. But once he understood just how hard-won her victories were, he felt such admiration for her courage and perseverence that pity was crowded out. He thought of her now as “Cousin Rhiannon who is blind,” not as “blind Rhiannon,” and so began what was to be one of the most rewarding and significant friendships of his life.

  It took Ranulf a month to recover, and another month until he began to feel like his old self again. Each time that he broached the subject of his return to England, his uncle and cousins raised such strenuous objections that he let the matter drop. It was easy enough to do, for he did not know where he wanted to go once he left Trefriw. He was content to let the days slide by, and before he knew it, the summer was slipping by, too.

  There was much about Welsh law that caused Ranulf to marvel, for this small, mountainous land was a crucible of political heresy. Of all the states in Christendom, in Wales alone did secular law take precedence over canon law, and the Welsh diverged from their Church’s teachings on a number of controversial issues. The Welsh took the provocative view that a failed marriage was a mistake to be remedied, and offered generous grounds for dissolution. Even more remarkably, women were given the same right as men to walk away from an unhappy marriage. Maude would have loved Wales, Ranulf thought, for Welsh women could not be forced into marriage against their will, nor did the husband invariably get custody of the children when a marriage did end, as was always the case elsewhere.

  Of particular interest to Ranulf were the laws regarding illegitimacy. Here, too, the Welsh were breaking new ground. In Wales, unlike the rest of Christendom, if a bastard-born child was acknowledged by the father, that child then enjoyed equal status with those children born within wedlock. This staggered Ranulf. Robert could have claimed the crown if England had such an enlightened law, and how much suffering they all could have been spared if only that had been so! But he was thankful that another Welsh law was not in force across the border, for in Wales, a youth reached his legal majority at age fourteen. Lord help them all if his nephew Harry could have claimed to be lawfully on his own at fourteen!

  It was this latter law which explained the presence in Rhodri’s household of several boisterous teenage boys. A Welsh youngster might legally reach manhood at fourteen, but he still had a lot to learn, and so it was the Welsh practice to place him in a local lord’s service to receive his training in arms, similar to the English squire’s apprenticeship. Sixteen-year-old Padarn had been with Rhodri only a fortnight, and was still settling in. Ranulf could not help noticing how uncomfortable the youth was in Rhiannon’s presence, and when his cousins wanted to show him their favorite spot for an outdoor meal, he picked Padarn to accompany them, hoping that time spent with Rhiannon would allay the boy’s qualms.

  Padarn and Eleri had raced their horses ahead, leaving Ranulf and Rhiannon to follow at a more sedate pace. Rhiannon was riding pillion behind Ranulf, and she soon announced that they were nearing the waterfall. The sound of rushing water came clearly to Ranulf’s ears, too, but he could not resist teasing her about her “second sight,” for that had become a running joke between them. Rhiannon agreed that second sight was indeed a useful skill, especially for those who lacked “first sight,” and he reined in his stallion to look upon this waterfall his cousins so loved.

  Rhaeadr Ewynnol it was called, “the Foaming Fall,” and well worthy of the name on this mid-August Friday, for the river was running high after a fortnight of steady rain. The dropoff was not steep, but spectacular in the sunlight, as churning white water spilled over mossy green rocks, down into a dark emerald pool below. Ranulf thought it a sight to behold, and felt a pang of regret that Rhiannon could see it only in memory. Helping her to dismount, he tethered his mount to an overhanging branch, and then cried out in alarm, “Rhiannon, stop!”

  To his surprise, both his cousins laughed. “What did you fear,” Rhiannon asked, “that I would walk right over the cliff? I can tell as I approach the edge by the movement of the air.”

  She’d long since established her credibility with Ranulf, but Padarn looked skeptical, and Eleri saw that. “Go on, Rhiannon,” she urged. “Show them how you can sense things they can only see.”

  As Ranulf and Padarn looked on in puzzlement, Eleri led her sister away from the bluff, and then gently spun her around. They watched as she started to cross the clearing, but when she headed toward a large oak tree, only Eleri’s vehement gesture kept Ranulf from calling out a warning. It was not needed, for Rhiannon stopped just in time.

  “There is something ahead of me,” she said, and after reaching out and encountering the scratchy feel of bark, she grinned suddenly, triumphantly. But she could not explain to them how she’d known of the tree’s presence, able to say only that she’d sensed an obstacle looming before her. She called it her “inner vision,” and whilst it was not always reliable, she admitted, especially with objects close to the ground, it had spared her many a bruising fall, for certes.

  Padarn was so captivated by this mysterious skill of Rhiannon’s that he had to try to master it, too, and keeping his eyes tightly shut, he lurched around the clearing, crashing into trees and stumbling into thickets like a stag in rut. He was, of course, showing off for Eleri, but he got more than he bargained for when he tumbled headfirst into a blackthorn bush. Once she stopped laughing, though, Eleri was so solicitous that Ranulf suspected the boy counted his scratches well earned.

  Spreading their blanket under Rhiannon’s oak, they unpacked their basket. Eleri had wheedled their cook into yielding up roast chicken, thick chunks of goat cheese, ripe plums, and cider; there was even a round loaf of newly baked bread, primarily for Ranulf’s sake, for the Welsh did not eat nearly as much bread as their English neighbors. Borrowing Ranulf’s dagger to dig a thorn out of Padarn’s thumb, Eleri began teasing him about his “lamentable lack of inner vision.”

  Padarn bridled, pointing out that “inner vision was a poor trade, indeed, for the loss of sight,” and then flushed deeply, glancing toward Rhiannon and then away.

  When he began to stammer apologies, Rhiannon insisted it was not necessary. “You did but speak the truth, lad, for none would choose darkness over light. The choice is to live in that darkness with some measure of grace and contentment…or not. I am more fortunate than many, for I can take comfort in the love of my family, in my faith in God’s Mercy, and in the knowledge that at least my blindness has spared me the need to learn embroidery.”

  Padarn sputtered, choking on his cider. Eleri poured him another cup, adding that Rhiannon never had to weed their garden, either, and Ranulf chimed in with a reminder of all the money Rhiannon saved her father on candles. When Padarn joined, somewhat sheepishly, in their laughter, Ranulf knew he’d been right about the boy; he was worth the extra effort.

  Padarn was studying Rhiannon intently, as if seeing her truly for the first time. “May I ask you a question…a serious one? What is the worst of being blind?”

  Ranulf had wondered that himself. He expected Rhiannon to need time to think it over, but she answered immediately. “Other people. It would be much easier to accept my blindness if only they could accept it, too. But they shy away as if it were contagious. Or else they assume that since I cannot see, I cannot hear, either, and they shout as if I were quite deaf.”

  “Or they do not speak to her at all,” Eleri said indignantly. “Rhiannon will be standing right at my side, but I’ll be the one they ask, ‘Has she always been blind?�
�� God Above, but the world is full of fools!” And in the clearing by Rhaeadr Ewynnol, there was none to dispute her.

  Later, after the food had been eaten, Eleri and Padarn set off to hunt for wild blackberries. Ranulf found a hedgerow of blooming honeysuckle and collected a handful of the fragrant blossoms for Rhiannon. “What else?” he asked quietly, and she understood at once.

  “Waking up and not knowing if it is day or night. Even now I find that disquieting. I miss seeing smiles, for they are conversational clues, are they not? I also miss seeing things which cannot be touched, like butterflies or a night sky. But I think the dreams were the most troubling, Ranulf, the ones in which I was able to see again. They’d seem so real, so very real, full of color and light. But then I’d awaken and I was still blind.”

  “I had dreams like that after my mother died,” Ranulf said. “Waking up was like losing her all over again.”

  “Mourning dreams,” Rhiannon said pensively. “I’d never thought of it that way, but you are right. I was mourning my lost sight as you mourned your mother.”

  It occurred to Ranulf that they’d been about the same age, too. “You mentioned color in those early dreams, Rhiannon. Can you remember it, then?”

  “I think so,” she said, but she amended that, then, to, “Well, I remember red. But the other colors have faded. Papa tries to prod my memory, but he cannot seem to describe color in terms that are not…colorful.” She smiled, so swiftly that Ranulf almost missed it. “He talks about bright and dark and pale, which is not very helpful.”