Here Be Dragons

by Sharon Kay Penman

  Joanna squared her shoulders, nerved herself to get through this ordeal with what grace she could. But her resolve carried her no farther than the great hall, for there Gwladys awaited her.

  Gwladys had passed a sleepless night; her shock was only now yielding to a raw and very bitter rage. “You made a fool of my father, made fools of us all. You even turned me into an accomplice of sorts, taking care of your duties in the hall whilst you took care of Will de Braose, and in my father’s own bed!”

  “Gwladys, no! That’s not so, I swear it!”

  “And upon what do you swear, your honor as a faithful wife, a devoted mother? Gruffydd and Senena were right about you, right all along. What grief we might have been spared, had we only heeded them!”

  Gwladys no longer trusted herself, whirled and plunged back into the hall. Joanna forgot all else; intent only upon telling Gwladys the truth about Will’s presence in her bedchamber, she started after her stepdaughter, and the most hostile of her guards grabbed her by the arm, swung her about so roughly that she cried out, as much in shock as in pain.

  “Get your hands off her…now!” At sight of Davydd, the crowd fell silent. To many, he was an object of sincere if embarrassed sympathy. But to others he was still the alltud—the foreigner—who had usurped the rightful place of Llewelyn’s more deserving son, his Welsh son. The guard was one of these, and although he obeyed Davydd’s command, released Joanna, he did so grudgingly.

  “I am but following orders,” he said with a belligerence he’d never have dared to show if not for Joanna’s disgrace.

  “Not any longer. You have just been relieved of your duty.”

  The man’s eyes flickered. “My lord Ednyved told me I was to take the woman from Aber,” he said stubbornly, and Davydd stared at him, incredulous.

  “Are you defying me?”

  There was in Davydd’s voice the arrogance of one accustomed to unquestioning obedience, the arrogance of a Prince’s son. But was he? How could they ever be sure now? The taunt never left the man’s lips, though, checked in great measure by fear of Llewelyn, but in part, too, by what he saw now in Davydd’s eyes.

  He had not misread Davydd; for a moment, he’d truly found himself hoping the guard was defying him, giving him justification for what he’d wanted to do since first walking into his mother’s bedchamber, seek to ease his pain and disbelief in a killing rage. It unnerved him now to realize how precarious was his self-control, for after that stable confrontation with Gruffydd, he’d vowed never to allow his emotions such free rein again.

  The guard yielded, turning away in sullen, resentful silence, and Davydd raised his voice. “Bran!” A man at once detached himself from the crowd of onlookers. The other guards were shifting uneasily, no longer sure what was expected of them. “You are to answer to Bran, to take your orders from him.” Davydd paused and then said very deliberately, speaking for the benefit of all within hearing, “The Lady Joanna is to be treated with the respect due her as the King of England’s sister…and my lady mother. Bear that well in mind, for the man who forgets it will have cause to regret it.”

  Davydd paused again, to make sure that his warning had taken effect. And then Joanna stepped forward, touched his arm.

  “Madame?” It was said with such cold, remote formality that to Joanna, it was as much of a rebuff as a physical recoil. Her hand slipped from his sleeve; he heard her indrawn breath.

  “Davydd…where am I to be taken?”

  “My father has commanded that you be ferried across the strait to Llanfaes, held there until he decides what should be done.”

  Llanfaes! Joanna had not dared admit until now just how truly frightened she was, how much she dreaded the thought of incarceration in a darkened castle dungeon. But Llanfaes held no dungeons; it was a seacoast manor. She deliberately dug her nails into the palm of her hand, for Llewelyn’s unlooked-for leniency threatened to shred her composure as even the crowd’s hostility could not. “Davydd, I must speak with your father. I must see him, if only for a few moments.”

  But Davydd was already shaking his head. “He is gone. He rode out at first light.”

  “Can I not wait till he returns?”

  “It would serve for naught. He’ll not see you.” Davydd gestured abruptly and Bran touched Joanna’s arm, politely but firmly indicating that she was to follow. She did, but gave Davydd one last despairing look over her shoulder, and Davydd cried out, “Wait!”

  Beckoning to the nearest man, he gave a terse, low-voiced order, one that earned him a look of surprise. But the man obeyed, hastened across the bailey toward Joanna’s lodgings, reemerging a moment later with Topaz straining upon a leather leash.

  Davydd stood motionless, watching as Joanna moved to claim her dog, as she was then escorted toward the gateway. He ignored the stares, the whispers. Even the most probing eyes could read nothing in his face, and many marveled that he could be so impassive a witness to his mother’s banishment from his father’s court, his father’s life. None was close enough to see the tears welling in his eyes.

  As Joanna’s guards carried the coffer chests into her bedchamber, Glynis said apologetically, “They would not allow me to take your jewelry, Madame. But I was permitted to pack your clothing and your harp and your bath vials and—”

  “That is more than I expected, Glynis.” And more than she deserved. During Ingeborg’s years of confinement at Étampes Castle, it was said that Philip had denied her warm blankets, a physician’s care. But I, Joanna thought bleakly, I am to do penance in my own bedchamber, with silver brushes and bath oils. Her guilt suddenly seemed more than she could bear. For the first time, she could understand why repentant sinners sought to expiate their wrongdoing with hair shirts, with sackcloth and ashes. Such gestures no longer seemed extravagant or suspect; theirs was actually the easier way, mortifying the flesh in order to mend the spirit.

  As the men withdrew, Joanna moved toward the younger woman. “It was kind of you to come, Glynis. But you need not stay with me.”

  “I know that, Madame. Lord Davydd said that if I did not want to come to Llanfaes, he’d find another to serve you. But I told him it was my wish to be with you.”

  Joanna felt tears prick her eyes, but she blinked them back, fearing that if she started to cry, she’d not be able to stop. She hugged Glynis wordlessly, and the girl said shyly, “Madame, will you tell me how this came to be? I do not understand, for I know you love Lord Llewelyn.”

  “Yes…I do. And I will try to answer you, Glynis. But there is something I must do first. Did you bring parchment, pen and ink?”

  Glynis nodded sadly. “They were the very first items I packed, my lady.”

  It took Joanna most of the afternoon to compose the letter to her husband. Again and again she had to scrape the parchment clean, but at last the words began to come. She did not try to make Llewelyn understand her infidelity; she knew that was hopeless. She gave him, instead, a factual account of the chronology of her brief liaison, swore that it was over long before Will’s foolhardy intrusion into her bedchamber. She told him she loved him, would always love him, and she begged him to do what he could for Davydd, and to find the right words when telling Elen. And then she sent Glynis in search of Bran.

  “Will you take this letter back to Aber, to Lord Llewelyn?” Seeing him about to refuse, Joanna hastily pulled a ring from her finger. “I would like you to accept this garnet ring as a token of my gratitude.”

  He eyed the ring with longing, but still he hesitated, and Joanna realized that he feared to face Llewelyn, to be the bearer of an unfaithful wife’s plea. “Take the letter to Lord Davydd. Tell him I ask that he give it to his father.”

  He reached for the ring, and then the letter, and after that, Joanna could do nothing but wait. He was back sooner than she expected, shortly after dusk. At sight of the letter she felt a sudden throb of hope, for she’d not thought Llewelyn would answer her. What mattered was that he would read her letter, learn the truth. But as she turne
d it over, she saw her own seal, unbroken, intact.

  Bran averted his eyes, made uncomfortable by what he saw now in her face. “As you see, Lord Llewelyn would not open it, and Lord Davydd said…he said it will avail you naught to write again. He said his lord father will not read your letters.”

  Joanna was standing at the window, gazing up at a spring sky as brightly blue as the Irish Sea; clouds drifted by like floating islands, trailing fleece in their wake. The meadows would be ablaze in gorse, a brilliant yellow flower she’d picked by the armful in springs gone by. How strange that something so simple as a walk on the beach could suddenly mean so much.

  “Glynis, is this a Thursday or a Friday? When I awoke this morn, I could be sure neither of the day nor the date.”

  “This is a Friday, Madame, the third of May.”

  “May third,” Joanna echoed, and then, “eighteen days.” She turned abruptly from the window. A week from the morrow would be the anniversary of her wedding. Twenty-four years since that fourteen-year-old girl had shyly clasped Llewelyn’s hand upon the steps of St Werburgh’s abbey church, twenty-four years. She almost spoke her thoughts aloud to Glynis, caught herself just in time. She was learning that to yield to memories was to embrace pain beyond endurance, was the surest route to madness.

  There was a knock upon the bedchamber door. Bran opened the door but did not enter; instead he stepped aside, allowed Ednyved to stride into the room.

  Ednyved was brutally blunt. “I’ve come to tell you that Will de Braose was hanged yesterday at Aber.” He was watching Joanna intently, but whatever reaction he might have expected, it was not this; she merely looked at him, showing no emotion at all, and he said curtly, “You did hear me?”

  “Yes.” He seemed to be waiting, and Joanna wondered what he wanted her to say. Was she supposed to show surprise? She’d known from the moment Llewelyn walked into her bedchamber that Will was a dead man. Was she supposed to grieve for Will? Mayhap one day she might, that he should have died at four and thirty, died so needlessly. But she would have to forgive him first, and she could find no forgiveness in her heart.

  Ednyved moved farther into the chamber. “I think he did not truly believe it, up to the last expected Llewelyn to relent. But when he realized there was to be no reprieve, he died well, with courage.”

  “Yes,” Joanna said again. Will had never lacked for courage. If only he had, he’d still be alive, and she’d be at Aber with her husband and son. She swallowed, said softly, “Ednyved…tell me. How is Llewelyn?”

  “Bleeding.”

  His answer was so graphic, so unexpectedly expressive that Joanna shuddered. Turning her back upon Ednyved, she moved blindly toward the window. He followed, grasping her shoulders and compelling her to face him.

  “What would you have me do, sugar the truth for you? Nay, no tears. The time for tears is past. Ere I go, I want you to tell me why. You weep for Llewelyn and not for de Braose. You did not love him?”

  He was hurting her, his fingers digging into her flesh, but she neither protested nor pulled away. She shook her head and he released her, stepped back, staring at her in baffled bitterness.

  “That only makes your betrayal all the more unforgivable. Sweet Jesus, woman, why? I’ve watched as you struggled and schemed and fought to secure the succession for Davydd, only then to play into Gruffydd’s hands like this! And for what? A tumble in bed with a swaggering cock, a rakehell not worthy of Llewelyn’s spit!”

  “What…what do you mean that I’ve played into Gruffydd’s hands? Whilst I daresay he is taking great satisfaction in my fall, the shame is mine, not Davydd’s.”

  “You think not? When you’ve given Gruffydd’s supporters a weapon they’d never dreamed within their grasp, an opportunity to cast doubts upon Davydd’s paternity?”

  Joanna gasped. “But…but that is the most outrageous of lies! And utterly impossible. Will was just a lad when Davydd was born, could not possibly—”

  “You truly do not see, do you? A woman’s honor is verily like her maidenhead, in that once it is gone, it cannot be regained. Now that you’ve been taken in adultery with one man, there will be those who’ll think de Braose was not the first, that there must have been others.”

  “My God…” No more than a whisper. “My God, what have I done?”

  “Madame…Madame, sit down.” Glynis was beside her, putting a protective arm around her shoulders. “Just sit there and I’ll fetch some wine.”

  A cup was hastily thrust into Joanna’s hand; the stem felt cool to her fingers, wet and sticky with wine. She drank deeply, without tasting, holding the cup with both hands. “Llewelyn…Llewelyn does not believe this? Tell me he does not, Ednyved,” she pleaded. “Tell me he knows Davydd is his!”

  “No…he does not believe it. I am sure of that.” Answering her unspoken question then, he added, “Nor do I. Nor would most people, I’d wager. Given your extreme youth at the time of Davydd’s birth, I think it unlikely that such a suspicion would gain widespread belief.” His voice hardened. “But do not deceive yourself. There will be some who’ll give it credence, if only because they want to believe it. Davydd’s enemies—and he does have them—will seek to use it against him, as they’d use any weapon at hand.”

  “And I…I gave it to them,” Joanna said, sounding so dazed, so devastated that Ednyved felt a flicker of unwelcome pity. But he did not contradict her.

  “Well, I’ve had my say,” he said, thinking Llewelyn was wise in refusing to see her, to spare himself yet more pain. For as easy as it was to hate what she had done, it was not as easy to hate her, not as easy as it should have been.

  “Ednyved, wait. There is something you must know. I did allow myself to enter into an intrigue with Will de Braose, in a moment of weakness, of madness if you will, during that time Llewelyn and I were estranged, whilst he was waging war in Ceri. But I ended the affair almost ere it began. I did not ask Will to my chamber that night, and nothing happened between us, nothing.”

  When he did not reply, she fumbled for her crucifix chain. “You do not believe me? I’ll swear it, then, swear it upon the lives of my children, upon their very—”

  “That is not necessary. I think I do believe you, if only because your version makes more sense. I’ve known men like de Braose; they scorn the merlin hawk nesting free in the heather, must have the one under guard in another man’s mews. But women rarely share that lust for risk-taking, and I could not see you bringing a lover into Llewelyn’s bed, not unless you were love-blinded…or bewitched.”

  “Will you tell Llewelyn, then? Will you tell Davydd?”

  “I will tell Davydd. I cannot tell Llewelyn.”

  “But why? I am not asking this for my sake; I know he cannot forgive me. But if he knew the truth, his grieving might not be so great. Can you not see that?”

  “It is you who do not see, Joanna. Llewelyn is not about to believe anything you say, not now. Yours was the one betrayal he never expected. I truly think he’d have killed any man who dared come to him with suspicions, would never have believed it of you. And now…now he will not allow your name to be spoken in his hearing. Only once has he mentioned you, saying you were dead to him…and the measure of his bitterness is the measure of the love he once bore you.”

  13

  Dolwyddelan, North Wales

  May 1230

  Leaving Aber soon after Will de Braose’s hanging, Llewelyn began a wide circuit of his domains, maintaining a highly visible presence to discourage speculation and set gossip at rest. He was at Dinbych Castle by mid-May, where he was overtaken by a Cistercian Abbot who’d often served as an emissary of the crown; the Abbot was bearing letters from the English King and his Chancellor, and Llewelyn agreed to meet with the Chancellor at Shrewsbury in June. From Dinbych, Llewelyn moved south into Powys, and then on to the Cistercian abbey of Strata Florida. He did not linger, however, and the last days of May found him back in Gwynedd, in the heartland of his realm, the mountain citadel he most loved,
his castle at Dolwyddelan.

  He’d been traveling so rapidly, spending so many hours in the saddle that he’d outdistanced most couriers, and the table in his bedchamber was strewn with letters that had only recently caught up with him. He was sorting through them, dictating responses to a scribe, as Davydd entered the chamber.

  “Papa…” Davydd was unsure how to identify Richard, but after a moment’s reflection, he realized it was immaterial; announcing him as Richard Fitz Roy would not make him any the less Joanna’s brother. “Papa, my Uncle Richard has just ridden in. Are you willing to see him?”

  Llewelyn was not, but he was even less willing to admit it, so he nodded.

  The exchange of greetings was awkward for them all. Richard looked fatigued, and not a little embarrassed. “It is good of you to make me welcome.”

  “You are Davydd’s uncle,” Llewelyn said dispassionately, but Richard was not deceived, saw Llewelyn’s courtesy for what it was, an icy exercise in self-control.

  Richard had given much thought to what he would say to Llewelyn, but he realized that was time misspent. To offer this man sympathy would be to offer a mortal insult. Although he’d never lacked for courage, he did not find it easy now to make mention of his sister’s name. “Davydd tells me that Joanna is at Llanfaes. Have I your permission to see her?”

  “Yes,” Llewelyn said, still in those dangerously soft tones, and Richard thanked him, thinking all the while that Will de Braose must have been one of God’s great fools…second only to his sister.

  “I’ll see that my uncle and his men are fed and bedded down in the great hall,” Davydd offered, and when Llewelyn nodded, he ushered Richard toward the door. But within moments he was back, glancing first at the stacked parchments and then at Llewelyn’s scribe.

  “It grows late, Papa, and Celyn looks tired. Can the letters not wait till the morrow?”