Here Be Dragons

by Sharon Kay Penman

  Joanna was drifting toward sleep; she stirred reluctantly as Llewelyn sat up, threw the coverlets back. “Can we not stay abed a while longer?”

  “No, my lazy love, we cannot. I hear appeals from the commote courts this forenoon, afterward meet with my council.” In council they would discuss an offer of alliance made by the rebel barons of England, discuss the resumption of war against his wife’s father. Llewelyn pushed that thought from him. “A pity I cannot go riding this day; I should’ve liked to make use of my new saddle.”

  Joanna sat upright. “What saddle?”

  “The saddle with ivory pommel and cantle, a silver girth buckle. The saddle over in yon corner, covered with a blanket.”

  “You wretch, that was to be your New Year’s gift!” Joanna grabbed for a pillow. Llewelyn was laughing too much to defend himself, and she was able to deliver several blows before he could pin her down against the mattress.

  “My lord, my lady, I’m so sorry!” Branwen was standing in the doorway, looking so flustered that Llewelyn and Joanna could not help laughing. But their laughter stilled abruptly at sight of the man standing behind Branwen, for he wore the colors of the English King.

  Branwen was still blushing. “I did knock, in truth,” she said faintly, stepping aside so the courier could enter.

  Kneeling, he held out a sealed parchment. As Llewelyn reached for it, he said hesitantly, “It…it is not for you, my lord, but for your lady.”

  Llewelyn glanced toward Joanna. She’d lost color, made no move to take John’s letter. After a moment, Llewelyn claimed it, laid it on the bed beside her.

  “Are you not going to read it?”

  Joanna shook her head. She rolled over, clutched the pillow to her breast. She heard the door shut, heard one of Llewelyn’s wolfhounds whimpering for admittance. She closed her eyes. What more did he want of her? Why would he not let her be?

  “Joanna, I think you ought to read it. He must have answered you within a day of getting your letter. That speaks of urgency, breila.”

  “I cannot. I know that sounds foolish, but in truth I cannot. You read it for me, Llewelyn…please.”

  She felt his hand touch her hair, and then he said, “As you wish,” broke the seal.

  But as he scanned the first line, “To my beloved daughter Joanna, Lady of Wales, greetings,” Llewelyn was suddenly reluctant to read further, to read a letter never meant for his eyes. “Joanna…”

  “Please,” she said, surreptitiously drying her tears against the pillow, not wanting him to know that she could be so unnerved just by the sight of John’s handwriting.

  Llewelyn was staring down at John’s letter; he’d had to read it twice before he could banish disbelief. “Jesus God,” he breathed, and there was in the look he now gave his wife no small measure of awe. “He’s agreed to your request, Joanna. He’s agreed to release my hostages.”

  “He did that…for me?” Joanna gasped, grabbed for the letter. John’s words soon blurred; the writing wavered, bled black ink wherever her tears touched the page. Looking up at last, she said softly, “But not Gruffydd.”

  She put her hand on his, half fearful he might pull away. He did not move; he was staring past her, dark eyes blind to the morning sunlight, the familiar furnishings of the chamber. For four Welsh families this would be a Christmas never to be forgotten, a time to give fervent thanks for the manifold mercies of God. Their sons would be coming home.

  But his son would not. Gruffydd would pass yet another Christmas in an English castle, his fourth as a prisoner. Shut away from the sun and sky, how long could a wild, free spirit survive? How long could he live on hope? How long ere he began to look upon death as a friend, as deliverance?

  36

  Rhosyr, North Wales

  March 1215

  On January 6, 1215, Eustace de Vesci, Robert Fitz Walter, and the more recalcitrant of the English barons came armed to John’s council in London, where they demanded that John confirm their traditional liberties, as embodied in the ancient laws of Edward the Confessor and the charter of Henry I. John played for time, refusing to give them his answer until Low Sunday, April 26, and the barons reluctantly agreed to wait. John at once dispatched a trusted agent to Rome. Eustace de Vesci followed soon after, for the barons, too, understood just how critical the Pope’s support would be. Both sides then began to prepare for war.

  Joanna leaned over her daughter’s bed. Elen turned her face into the pillow, mumbled, “Nos da, Mam.”

  Joanna hesitated, but decided it was best to allow Elen her aggrieved sense of injury; Elen was seven, old enough for pride. “I bid you good night, too, dearest,” she said gently, and then crossed the chamber to her son.

  Davydd was wide awake, primed with questions to forestall bedtime. “Tell me why Papa has gone, Mama.” His French was flawless, but Joanna knew that Welsh came more readily to his tongue, that Welsh formed his thoughts, and that realization had been a surprisingly unsettling one for her, as if a barrier had somehow been erected, leaving her on one side and her children on the other.

  “Your father and the other Welsh Princes have gone to Rhyd y Groes to meet with the new Bishop of Chester and Coventry, who brings an offer of alliance from the English King.”

  The English King. But what else could she say? Your grandfather? When not a day passed that Davydd did not hear John vilified as a child-slayer, as Herod? Davydd was so young; how could she expect a six-year-old to understand what she herself could not at twenty-three? Was it not better to wait until he was older, until he began to ask questions? Mayhap by then she’d have some answers for him. Joanna reached out, playfully rumpled Davydd’s dark hair, and hoped she was being honest with herself, that she was truly thinking of Davydd and Elen’s pain and not her own.

  Llewelyn returned that same night, shortly after Compline. As glad as Joanna was to see him, she was not eager to hear what he had to say, so sure was she that he’d spurned her father’s olive branch. She delayed the inevitable with feigned cheer, with an animated account of all that had happened in his absence, and while he ate sparingly of smoked herring and rice, she told him that his Seneschal was still ailing, that Ednyved’s wife had given birth to a daughter, and Elen had fallen from a tree, knocking out a tooth.

  “Luckily it was one of her baby teeth. But I felt I had to punish her, Llewelyn, if only to keep her from breaking her neck, and now she’s sulking.” Joanna smiled ruefully. “I can always tell when I’m not in her good graces; she’ll talk to me only in Welsh!”

  Llewelyn laughed, pushed his trencher aside; they were less than a month into Lent, and already he was heartily sick of fish, yearning for forbidden foods: butter, milk, cheese, eggs, and, above all, meat. “I’ll warn Elen that tree-climbing is one of the Seven Deadly Sins.” Rising from the table, he moved toward Joanna. “We need not talk about it, breila.”

  “How well you know me. But no, I was being childish. Tell me what happened. What did my father offer for your support against the northern barons?”

  “Everything but eternal life everlasting. As always, John is profligate with his promises.” Llewelyn turned back to the table, picked up a dried fig. “But you’ll not believe what John’s new Bishop told us. It seems that John is of a sudden afire with crusading fever, and on March fourth, he took the cross!”

  Joanna stared at him, openmouthed. “My father?” But after a startled moment to reflect, she realized how clever a stratagem that was, and said so.

  “More than clever, Joanna. To give the Devil his due, it verges upon brilliance. Whatever else John lacks, it’s not imagination. Nothing could be better calculated to win the Pope’s goodwill; Innocent has been striving for fifteen years to prod Philip and John into another holy war against the Saracens.”

  “I know,” Joanna said, and for an unguarded moment there was in her voice the echoes of indulgent affection, of the love she’d once given to John in such free and abundant measure. “I remember the Pope’s letters, but my father never foun
d the prospect of dying for the Holy Land all that alluring!”

  “Well, he’s now seen the light…at a most opportune time, in truth. Since a crusader’s person and possessions are inviolate, that puts his foes at a distinct disadvantage—the most Christian King and the infidel barons. De Vesci would have done better to bypass Rome, to spend these weeks fortifying his castle at Alnwick. For as long as John talks of Jerusalem, the Pope will buy whatever he has to sell.”

  It was a cynical assessment, but Joanna could find no fault with it. “What of Gruffydd? Did my father offer to release him?”

  “Of course…after I help him prevail over the rebels.”

  “And…and you do not believe he would keep his word?”

  “Do you, Joanna?”

  “I do not know.” Joanna averted her gaze. “Mayhap he might,” she ventured, and Llewelyn’s eyes narrowed.

  “I see. Do you also believe that unicorns can only be caught by virgins? Do you believe, too, that the barnacle goose is spawned in the sea like a fish and may be eaten during Lent?”

  “Llewelyn, stop! You asked me what I believed, and I told you. It’s not fair to blame me because you did not like my answer. Would you rather I’d lied to you?”

  A moment passed, and then another, before Llewelyn was able to summon up a taut smile. “How do you expect us to get a satisfactory argument going if you fall back upon logic?”

  He stepped closer, let his hands rest upon her shoulders. “I know you want to believe that John would keep faith, set Gruffydd free. I would to God I could believe it, too, Joanna. But I know better. John promises gold and delivers dross. He’ll never let Gruffydd go, never. Not unless he’s forced to it.”

  Joanna said nothing. Llewelyn’s way was not hers. She’d have bargained all that Heaven held, would never have risked the war that brought about twenty-eight deaths at Nottingham Castle. But Gwynedd was not her homeland, and Gruffydd was not her son.

  “Joanna…there is something else I must tell you. William de Cornhill was John’s sworn man long ere he was made Bishop of Coventry and Chester. He spoke for John, at John’s bidding, offered to free Rhys Gryg, to buy our swords and let the dead bury their dead. But he warned, too, what we might expect should we make of John an enemy and not an ally. He was quite blunt, said that if I joined with the rebel barons, I would be excommunicated.”

  Joanna gasped. “And you’d risk even that?” She knew that her father had not been greatly troubled by his own sentence of excommunication. But she knew, too, that Llewelyn’s faith was not as tenuous as John’s. “Llewelyn, beloved, think what you do. When you ride into battle, you’ll be offering up more than your life. You’ll be offering up your soul.”

  “I do not believe that, Joanna.”

  “But to be excommunicated is to be cast into darkness, eternal damnation—”

  “For the sin of not supporting John? In my eyes, that is no sin, Joanna, and nothing the Bishop of Chester or the Pope says can convince me otherwise. Am I to believe that John Plantagenet is now the anointed of the Lord, the chosen of God? Not my God.”

  While Joanna shared Llewelyn’s sense of outrage, she could not accept the comforting dichotomy he’d drawn between the stringent teachings of their Church and the infinite mercy of the Almighty. She believed in the Pope’s power to damn her husband, however unjustly, for she was not like Llewelyn, not a rebel, and in despair she wondered how she’d find the strength to endure what lay ahead.

  “So it will be war,” she said softly. “War yet again.”

  On April 26, Robert Fitz Walter and Giles de Braose, Bishop of Hereford, led an armed force to Northampton. But John did not appear as agreed upon, and the next day the barons moved on to Brackley, where Saer de Quincy had a manor. At Brackley they set forth their demands in writing, calling for a return to “the old laws and customs of the realm,” and warning that if John did not agree to their terms, they’d resort to force. John’s reaction was pithy and predictable. “Why,” he snapped, “do they not just ask for my kingdom?”

  With John’s refusal, events seemed to take on their own momentum. The arrival of letters from the Pope did nothing to diffuse the tension, for he commanded the barons to abandon conspiracies and render their customary service to their King. On May 3, the barons formally renounced their homage and fealty to John, and chose Robert Fitz Walter as the “Marshal of the Army of God and the Holy Church.”

  John did not respond as they expected. He stayed his hand, offered to submit their differences to the Pope and a jointly picked council for arbitration. Despite the grandiloquent title they’d bestowed upon Fitz Walter, the barons were well aware that John had already preempted the high moral ground in this coming war. Few were willing to gamble upon a papal judgment against a crusader King, and their answer to John’s offer was to lay siege to Northampton Castle.

  John had so far trodden with great care, had shown unexpected restraint, and he now began to reap the benefits of his forbearance. The vast majority of the English baronage were neither royalists nor rebels, and while many were sympathetic to the idea of a charter of liberties, these same men were not as enthusiastic about a civil war. The siege at Northampton was an embarrassing failure. On May 12, John commanded his sheriffs to seize the lands of all rebels. But just five days later the political landscape was changed beyond recognition. For on Sunday, May 17, as Londoners were at Mass, Robert Fitz Walter’s friends opened the city gates, and London, “the capital of the crown and realm,” was surrendered to the rebels.

  Although Shrewsbury was perilously close to the Welsh border, its citizens trusted to the security of the Severn, for the town was sheltered in a protective bend of the river. On three sides the Severn acted as a formidable barrier, as a deep, natural moat; on the north, the one landward approach was blocked by the stone walls of Shrewsbury Castle. But the borderland was in turmoil that May, and when rumors spread of a Welsh attack, people panicked.

  They had no luck in getting help from the Sheriff of Shropshire, for Thomas Erdington was a trusted agent of the English King, and these days John’s needs took precedence over all else. Nor could they rely upon neighboring lords; Fulk Fitz Warin, the de Hodnets, and the powerful Corbet clan were all allied with the rebel barons and Llewelyn. Shrewsbury’s common council met in urgent session, took the only action open to them, the fortification of the bridge that spanned the west bank of the Severn.

  Known as St George’s or the Welsh bridge, it was an imposing structure, would not be easily assaulted. A tower blocked the eastern entrance off the bridge onto the town’s Mardevol Street; a gatehouse with massive loopholed battlements barred entry from the west. Trenches had been dug behind the bridge, sandbags piled up. Frankevile, the little settlement on the opposite bank of the river, was all but deserted. Frightened villagers had long since driven their livestock into the hills, abandoning all they could not carry. St George’s and St John’s, the two hospitals on the wrong side of the river, had been evacuated. To the men gathered now upon the bridge, all seemed in readiness, but the eerie stillness was not conducive to confidence. Each time birds broke cover along the riverbank, men flinched, tightened grips on sword hilts.

  Richard Pride and his brother Walter had both served as provosts and thought it only natural that they should assume control of the town’s defenses. The deputy constable of Shrewsbury Castle thought otherwise, and there’d been several heated exchanges. When the constable demanded that more men be deployed in defense of the castle, Richard Pride accused him of wanting to sacrifice the town for the castle, and they nearly came to blows. It took the intervention of Hugh de Lacy, Abbott of the influential Benedictine abbey of St Peter and St Paul, to restore order.

  “Need I remind you whom the enemy is? It’s madness to squabble amongst ourselves when Llewelyn ab Iorwerth and his cutthroat Welsh could come into sight at any moment.”

  The Abbot’s acerbic rebuke sobered them all. John de Hibernia said uneasily, “Ought we not to send our women into the
castle for safety’s sake?”

  No one answered him, for at that moment they heard the shouting. It came from behind them, from the town. The streets had been empty for hours; shops were boarded up, families barricaded within their houses. But as they turned, they saw a man running up Mardevol Street, running toward them.

  “That’s Lucas de Coleham,” the constable said, needlessly, for Coleham was known on sight to all. The Pride brothers were already hastening to intercept him, with John de Hibernia and Hugh de Champeneys right at their heels.

  “The Welsh…” Coleham was sobbing for breath; he reeled to a stop, grabbed at Richard Pride for support. “Llewelyn…he’s at the bridge!”

  “Lucas, are you drunk? We hold the bridge, hold—”

  “The stone bridge…the English bridge! He’s swung around to the east, is attacking from the other direction, from England!”

  He saw horrified comprehension upon their faces. Someone swore; John de Hibernia muttered, “Holy Virgin Mother,” and made an instinctive sign of the cross. The Abbot had reached them by now, clutched at Coleham’s arm.

  “My abbey,” he panted. “What of my abbey?”

  Coleham’s throat was raw, his mouth parched. “It’s afire, Abbot Hugh. It’s burning.”

  “Spare the church!” Llewelyn’s stallion shied as the wind sent sparks and cinders flying. He wheeled the horse in a semicircle, gestured to his right. “Burn the other buildings!”

  Fire arrows had already embedded themselves in the thatched roofs of the laundry, the servants’ dorters, the stables. Horses bolted in panic, several even floundering into the abbey fishpond. The Abbot’s lodging had begun to burn; the guest house was already in flames. Dogs were barking frantically, and freed livestock milled about, but no monks were to be found, no resistance was offered. Most had fled as the Welsh rode into the abbey precincts; some had taken refuge in the nave of the church.