Here Be Dragons

by Sharon Kay Penman

  “Yes,” Richard said slowly, “I expect they would be.” Joanna could not have given him a more disquieting answer. Had Llewelyn merely acted to seize what lands he could for himself, it would be much easier to dismiss him as just another of the power-hungry princes and lords of the Welsh Marches, a region that seemed to spawn more than its share of renegades, outlaws, and rebel barons. They could be troublesome, the de Braoses and Maelgwns and Fulk Fitz Warins, but their aims were understandable, their vision was limited, and sooner or later they over-reached themselves, were undone by their own greed. But a man who would voluntarily yield to others land he had himself won at swordpoint, such a man had ambitions above and beyond filling his coffers, plundering his weaker neighbors. Such a man posed a genuine danger to England’s interests, would have to be dealt with.

  “Joanna…what does Llewelyn want for himself, for Wales?”

  She surprised him then, said, “Are you asking for yourself, Richard? Or for Papa?”

  “For myself,” he said, and she smiled, reached out to brush the hair back from his temples. But she did not answer his question.

  Branwen approached with mulled wine, retreated discreetly out of hearing range. Richard drank, studying his sister. Despite the fact that John’s mother’d had one of the best political brains in Christendom, or perhaps because of it, he had never encouraged Joanna to take an interest in statecraft. He’d pampered her and protected her, indulged her and lavished love upon her, but he’d never asked her what she thought, never shown any curiosity in the workings of her brain. Her political education had come from her grandmother, during those months she’d spent with Eleanor in Poitiers. And, it was becoming disturbingly apparent to Richard, from Llewelyn ab Iorwerth.

  Richard drank again, spat out sediment that had not settled to the bottom of the cup. He found himself wishing that Joanna were not becoming so quick to comprehend the subtleties and consequences of power, to grasp that which women need not know. Far better for her if she were like Isabelle, if she cared only for womanly whims and the joys of the moment, if she were not aware of the gathering clouds.

  Suddenly he felt very dispirited, felt caught up in currents beyond his control. He knew his father had no liking at all for Joanna’s husband, that he distrusted the Prince and disliked the man. But Richard did like Llewelyn, for he could not help but see the changes marriage had wrought in Joanna. Neither he nor his father had been able to give Joanna what she most needed, a sense of belonging. Llewelyn had somehow succeeded where they had not, and Richard was grateful to him for it. He knew Joanna had found more than contentment in her marriage, that she’d found a rare and real passion. He knew how deeply she loved Llewelyn, and he wished that she’d never laid eyes upon the Welsh Prince, wished that he had the power to blot the past thirty-one months from her mind and memory, for he did not think her present happiness was worth the suffering that was sure to come.

  She had refused to answer his question, but he knew what her answer would have been, knew all too well what Llewelyn ab Iorwerth wanted. He wanted a Wales free of all English influence, wanted a united country under his own rule, a sovereign, independent kingdom like Scotland. And Richard knew his father would never allow it to be. No English King could.

  “Richard…was Papa very wroth with Llewelyn for laying claim to Powys?”

  “Yes, I fear so,” he said reluctantly, hoping she would not interrogate him further, not wanting her to know the true extent of John’s rage when he was told that Llewelyn’s red-and-gold lions were flying over much of mid-Wales.

  “I knew he—” Joanna gave an audible gasp; her wine cup splashed its contents onto the window-seat cushions.

  “My God, Joanna, is it the babe? Do not move, I’ll fetch your women…”

  Joanna’s breath was coming back. “You need not panic,” she said, sounding faintly amused. “It was just a stray pain. They come and go in the last days, mean only that my time is growing nigh.”

  Richard’s relief was considerable. Like most men, he knew next to nothing about the birthing process, was quite content to keep it that way. “You’ll have a midwife, of course, and women to help, to do whatever…whatever must be done?” he asked awkwardly.

  “Two midwives, Dame Rhagnell and Dame Meryl. And Branwen and Alison, of course. I should have liked Catherine to be with me, but her youngest has been ailing.” Joanna frowned; having Catherine with her would have gone far to allay some of her anxieties. “I wish I were not so fearful, Richard, wish I did not dread it so, for when a woman is tense and fearful, the pain is worse. If I did not remember Elen’s birth so vividly…But I will not be so afraid if I know Llewelyn is here. As long as he is close at hand…”

  Joanna’s voice trailed off; after a moment, she looked up, gave Richard a shy smile. “I never knew it was possible to be so angry with a man and yet want him so much, too. But right now I think I’d gladly forgive him any sin on God’s earth if only he’d walk through that door, if only he comes back for the baby’s birth…”

  Richard would never have admitted his doubts to Joanna, but he thought it very unlikely that Llewelyn would return in time. Richard had known few husbands all that eager to endure long hours of waiting outside the birthing chamber, and he found it hard to believe a man would interrupt a military campaign because of a young wife’s fears. Mayhap for a first child, but Llewelyn already had seven children, already had a son. He said nothing, however, did what he could to raise his sister’s flagging spirits, and was never so pleased to be proven wrong as when Llewelyn rode into the castle bailey just before Vespers on November 20.

  Richard awoke with a start, a sleepy sense of disorientation. After a moment or so, he remembered where he was, in the great hall at Dolwyddelan, and glanced over at the pallet where his brother-in-law had been sleeping. But Llewelyn’s pallet was empty. Despite the hour, Richard felt no surprise; several times in the night he had heard Llewelyn rise, go out into the rain, and each time he returned, wet and shivering, he had answered Richard’s low-voiced queries with a shrug, a shake of his head.

  Pulling on his boots, Richard moved to the heavy oaken door, opened it a crack. It was just before dawn, a blustery, cold Monday; the wind was still gusting, and after a night of unrelenting rain, the bailey was ankle-deep in mud. Llewelyn was mounting the stairs up into the keep. He’d not be given entry, Richard knew; men were strictly barred from the birthing chamber. But Branwen or Alison would join him on the drawbridge in the forebuilding, would give him word on Joanna’s progress.

  Richard retreated back into the hall, sent his squire for a chamber pot and then a cupful of ale. It was a quarter hour before Llewelyn returned. Moving at once to the center open hearth, he stood as near the flames as he could, blew on his hands to combat the crippling cold, and rejected an offer of bread and cheese to break his fast. In the harsh morning light, he looked to be a different man from the one who’d come back in such triumph just three days ago, jubilant after six weeks of successive victories. He suddenly seemed a stranger to laughter; lack of sleep and a failure to shave gave him a haggard, unkempt look. And remembering how he’d doubted that Llewelyn would return for Joanna’s travail, Richard wondered how he could ever have been so stupid.

  “How does she?” he asked, again got a weary shake of the head in reply.

  “No change, or so they claim.” Llewelyn accepted a cupful of ale, swallowed without tasting. “Eighteen hours it’s been,” he said, and Richard realized he did not even know if that was an excessive length of time.

  “Is that overly long?”

  “Not if the pains are light, feeble. But Branwen says Joanna’s pains are right sharp, and coming close together. She got no rest at all last night. If the birth drags on…So much can go wrong, Richard, so much. If the babe is lying in the wrong position, the midwife has to reach up into the womb and try to correct it. If she cannot, both mother and child are like to die. Or the babe can be too big. Or the pains can go on so long that the woman’s strength give
s out. There’s always the danger that she’ll lose heart, the danger of sudden bleeding. And afterward, the danger that she’ll not expel the afterbirth.”

  Richard looked utterly blank, and Llewelyn said impatiently, “That is the skin that held the babe when it was in the womb. If it does not come out of its own accord, and the midwives cannot pull it out, the woman will sicken and die. And even if she gives birth safely and then expels the afterbirth, there is still the risk of milk fever. They say as many women die from that as from the birthing itself.”

  Richard had already been told more than he’d ever wanted to know about childbirth. “How in God’s name do you know so much about it? The midwives I’ve met have been as closemouthed as clams.”

  “I asked Catrin to tell me.” Llewelyn was staring into the fire, caught up in memories of a woman with hair the color of the flames, in memories of a summer seven years past. After a long silence, he said, “I wanted to know why Tangwystl died.”

  For Llewelyn, those hours just before a battle always passed with excruciating slowness. But nothing in his past had prepared him for the way time fragmented and froze as he waited for Joanna to give birth to their child. When it had become clear that Joanna’s delivery would be neither quick nor easy, he’d sent for Catherine, hoping that her presence might give Joanna comfort. But although she was only twelve miles away at Trefriw, she had yet to arrive, and he did not know whether to attribute the delay to the rain-swamped roads or to the continued illness of her child. Each time he made that grim trek across the bailey, sought scraps of information from an increasingly evasive Branwen, he was aware of a new and frightening feeling, a sense of utter impotence.

  The rain fell intermittently all morning. Just before noon, the cloud cover began to break over the mountains; patches of sky became visible. Llewelyn at last humored his ten-year-old daughter, agreed to Gwladys’s pleas that he allow the cooks to prepare a meal for him. He was making desultory conversation with Adda and Richard, relating how Maelgwn razed three of his own castles in Ceredigion rather than have them fall into hostile hands, when Branwen appeared without warning in the doorway of the hall.

  Her hair was falling about her face in wind-whipped disarray, her gown mud-stained to the knees, and when Llewelyn reached her, he saw that her eyes were filling with tears.

  “The baby will not come,” she whispered. “We do not know what else to do, my lord. We’ve massaged her belly and anointed her private parts with hot thyme oil, laid agrimony root across her womb, given her bark of cassia fistula in wine, even given her pepper to make her sneeze. The pains are coming very quick now, very sharp, but the babe is no nearer to delivery than it was three hours ago. My lord…she cannot go on like this much longer. Her strength is all but gone and she has begun to bleed.”

  To Llewelyn, that was a death knell. It showed on his face, and she said quickly, “No, my lord, bleeding need not be fatal, God’s truth! She’s lost mayhap a cupful, no more. But she’s losing, too, her will to endure, losing all hope. And once she begins to believe she and the babe will die…”

  She was weeping openly by now. “My lord, Dame Rhagnell did send me to tell you that we do need a vial of holy water. Will your chaplain—”

  “Holy water? No! No, I forbid it!”

  “But my lord, you do not understand! It is for the babe. By pouring holy water onto a baptismal sponge, we can insert it up into Lady Joanna’s womb, baptise the babe whilst it still lives!”

  “Are you mad? You’ve just admitted that Joanna now despairs of delivering this child. You tell her you want to baptise the child whilst in her womb and you’ll be passing a death sentence upon her!”

  “I know,” she said, and sobbed. “But if we do not, if the babe dies unbaptised, its soul will be lost to God! What choice have we, my lord, what choice?”

  “Llewelyn, she is right.” Morgan, Richard, and Adda had come up behind them. “She is right, lad,” the priest repeated softly. “If a child is not baptised, it is forever denied Paradise, may never look upon the face of God. Your child, Llewelyn. Can you risk that?”

  When Llewelyn did not answer, Morgan reached out, put his rosary into the younger man’s hand. Llewelyn’s fingers closed tightly around it; he could feel the beads digging into his palm. He brought them up, touched them to his lips, and then handed them back to the priest. “If I must choose between Joanna and the child,” he said huskily, “I choose Joanna.”

  Alison opened the door just wide enough to allow her to slip through to join Llewelyn out on the drawbridge. When he grabbed the latch, pushed past her into the bedchamber, she cried out in shock, “My lord, no!” but made no move to stop him. Nor did Branwen, a mute, miserable ghost trailing him across the bailey and up the stairs. Both midwives, however, reacted with outrage.

  “My lord, you cannot enter the birthing chamber! You must go from here at once!”

  Llewelyn did not even hear them. He stood immobile for a moment, staring at Joanna. Although the chamber was chill, she was clad only in a chemise. It was linen, not a clinging material, but it had molded to her body like a second skin, so drenched was she in perspiration. Her head was thrown back so far that her hair was sweeping the floor rushes, and the taut, corded muscles in her throat told Llewelyn more of her pain than any scream could have done.

  Dame Rhagnell had stepped in front of him, barring his way. He thrust her aside, knelt by Joanna. The contraction was easing; she was no longer writhing upon the birthing stool, no longer gasping for breath. He murmured her name, and she turned her head toward him. Sweat ran down her face like rain, soaked the bodice of her chemise; he was close enough now to see that her skirt was filthy, soiled with mucus and urine, stained with blood. But what appalled him was the expression in her eyes, the hopeless, despairing look of an animal caught in a trap.

  “Llewelyn…” He’d never heard so much gladness compressed into one word, had never before heard his name invoked as a prayer. Her lips were cracked and bleeding; he touched them with his fingers, and she reached for his hand, clung tightly, desperately.

  “I’ve sent for Catrin. She’ll be here soon, love,” he said, saw her try to smile, and found himself blinking back tears. He’d long ago learned to freeze feelings until he could deal with them. If he had not, he’d not have been able to survive twenty years of border warfare, to see death claim men who mattered to him, and not mourn them until the battle was won. But the lessons of a lifetime now served for naught; he could not disassociate himself from Joanna’s pain. He watched the red stain widening over her skirt, and could think only of Tangwystl, bleeding her life away in the bed they’d so often shared.

  The midwives were by no means reconciled to Llewelyn’s alien presence in a female sanctum. But they temporarily abandoned their protests, turning all their attention to Joanna as her pain began anew. Dame Rhagnell knelt before the birthing stool, poured oil onto her hands, and began to probe under Joanna’s skirt. She withdrew her hand only when the pain subsided, beckoned the other midwife aside.

  When Dame Meryl continued to shake her head, Dame Rhagnell turned away from her, said abruptly, “From what I could feel, the mouth of the womb is fully open. But her waters have not broken and the membranes of the water bag are blocking the babe’s passage from the womb.” She’d not even glanced at Joanna or the other women, was speaking to Llewelyn and Llewelyn alone.

  “Do you understand?” Challengingly.

  He nodded. “Yes. You’re saying this water bag should have broken of its own accord by now, but has not. Can you break it?”

  “Yes. But there are risks in doing so. Ofttimes a woman’s delivery will be hastened by breaking her waters. But once the bag is broken, the pains become more severe, and if the birthing is prolonged, she’ll suffer more. Dame Meryl thinks we should wait for the bag to break on its own. I would rupture it myself. The mouth of her womb has been open for hours; the babe should have come by now. So…you tell me, my lord. Since you are here, you decide. What would you have us
do?”

  Llewelyn knew what she was doing, acting to protect herself should the wrong choice be made, should Joanna die. He knew, too, that she was also taking vengeance the only way she could, trying to punish him for his intrusion into her domain. What he did not know was which choice was the right one. How could he know? If he guessed wrong…

  He looked at Joanna in an agony of indecision. She was already exhausted, could not survive many more hours of this, that he did not doubt. Still he hesitated, but with him the need to act would always prevail in the end. He swallowed, opened his mouth to tell her to go ahead, when Joanna forestalled him. She’d not grasped all of what was said, but she did understand that the midwife was forcing upon Llewelyn a choice no man should have to live with.

  “It is my decision to make,” she said, speaking slowly and very carefully in her faulty Welsh. “I want you to break the water bag, Dame Rhagnell.”

  The midwife studied her for a long moment, and then nodded. “It is the right choice, Madame, I am sure of it.”

  They all watched tensely as she anointed her hands again in oil, seized a goose quill, and lowered herself onto her knees before Joanna. “My lord, sit behind her on the stool and put your arms around her, high over her belly. We must wait for the next pain.”

  Llewelyn did as she instructed, straddled the wooden plank protruding from the end of the stool, and braced Joanna back against his own body. She had closed her eyes tightly, was whispering rapidly, “Mary, Holy Mother of our Lord Jesus Christ, into thy hands and those of thy blessed Son now and forever I commit myself, body, soul, and spirit.” Llewelyn stroked her hair until he felt her stiffen, twist against him.

  The midwife at once jerked up Joanna’s skirt, leaned forward. Joanna continued to writhe in Llewelyn’s embrace. And then the midwife was pulling back, and suddenly there was liquid gushing onto Joanna’s skirt, onto the floor rushes, even splashing over Llewelyn’s mud-caked boots.