The Wind From Hastings

by Morgan Llywelyn

  “Be sure you do come home safe to me, Griffith. I would not have your son growing up fatherless.”

  Griffith took half a step back and looked at me. “My son? Our son? Aldith, are you sure?”

  “Emma thinks so, and your own court physician is agreed.”

  He threw back his head and gave a mighty bellow that so frightened the hounds sleeping at the hearth that they fled from the room. “A son! A son!” He grabbed both my hands and whirled me around in a mad caper that left us both breathless and laughing. “An heir to Gwynedd from my Aldith!”

  The very next day heralds were sent out to the folk roundabout to give the good news. Gwerstan blessed our unborn son in chapel, and Emma whispered to me that some of the Cymry who still set store in the old ways were sending their own prayers of thanksgiving to pagan gods. She disapproved.

  Griffith assured me that that was no sacrilege as far as he was concerned. “Christ of the Cross and Epona the Horse Goddess, I would ask the blessings of every benevolent spirit on our unborn babe, Aldith.”

  “You would traffic with pagan gods?”

  “Christianity is the true faith, surely, and I would run a sword through any man who denied it. But the gods of the woods and water were here long before the coming of the first man to the land of the Cymry. Their place has not been taken by the religion of men; they still have their own laws and are deserving of respect. I pray each day to the God of the Christians, but I do not challenge the power that hurls the lightning.”

  Griffith had many deeps in him. In a lifetime I could not have learned them all. If we had had a lifetime.

  So my Griffith left me to attend the business of war, and I was left with the business of women. Day by day my belly swelled with the fruit of our lovemaking until the babe growing inside me even crowded out some of my loneliness for my absent lord.

  “He will be a fine, lusty boy, my lady!” everyone assured me.

  “He must be; Griffith wants a son so much. But how can I be sure?” Then I remembered Angharad, the woman from the beach who had “the sight.” I sent Madog to fetch her to me.

  “Angharad, it is said of you that you can see things unknown to others. Is that true?”

  She gave a simple nod of her head. “I can tell some things, my lady.”

  “I would know—truly—if the child I bear is a son or no. Can you tell me this thing?”

  She gave me a gap-toothed smile. “Spit, my lady.”

  I was startled. “Eh?”

  “Spit! Into your palm, like this; then give me the taste of it.”

  I never heard of such a strange thing! But she seemed so sure of herself that I did as she bade me, though I felt extremely foolish.

  After her hot tongue flicked across my wetted palm she shut her eyes a moment and then nodded. “Aye, my lady, you carry a son. Be certain of it.”

  The days were long; the summer moons waxed and waned. It was not Griffith’s custom to wage war in the wintertime, so I hoped he would return to Rhuddlan before our child was born. I was worried about him, but there was nothing to be done for it; such news as we got made it seem that the war was a sizeable one, and that the Prince was acquitting himself well, as always.

  We heard that a fleet came from Norway led by one Magnus, son of Harald Hardraada. “Hardraada is a giant!” the message bearers said. “He is reputed to stand full seven feet tall, and this son Magnus is near to his sire’s height. He will wreak fearsome devastation on England!”

  Griffith and my father seemed to have picked for themselves a frightening ally. I waited with apprehension for each new titbit of information, always hoping and fearing together.

  “You will do yourself harm, my lady!” Emma remonstrated with me. “You should think only of the coming child!”

  “Mayhap. But I want to know, Emma, I want to know!”

  Emma shook her grizzled head and muttered, “It is a curse, this ‘wanting to know.’ Why can you not be content with women’s matters?”

  “My husband’s life is my affair, too! I would not be shut all day in a chamber, ignorant of everything beyond the door! Who knows what might be sneaking up on me unawares? As a child I was ignorant, Emma. I do not want to be that way anymore.”

  In time we learned that a fleet came from the Orkneys, the Hebrides, and Dublin, all intent upon attacking England. But the winter came on early and savage that year, frost killing the crops even before the harvest, and the storms that raked the coast eventually forced the invaders to turn back. Griffith came home, bitterly disappointed, with news that the Earl Aelfgar had once more been outlawed and that his own adventures against England were temporarily halted.

  It was not seemly to appear to rejoice over my husband’s failure, so I did so in private. I felt pity for my father, of course, being now dispossessed of the earldom his own father had held so long and well. But I was mightily thankful that my love had come home safe to me, to stand by my bed at the lying-in and hear our baby’s first furious cries. It was a son, of course.

  We christened him Llywelyn.

  Then we had more good news: The English king, the saintly Edward, had decided to make a grand gesture of magnanimity. Once more the Earl Aelfgar was restored, and the holdings in Mercia returned to him.

  “It is safe enough to do that now,” Griffith commented when we heard the tidings. “The campaign took much out of Aelfgar, Aldith; he is like an old dog with pulled teeth. I fear he will make no more trouble for Edward and the Godwines, and they know it as well. When he is gone Mercia will go to your brother Edwin, and the struggle will begin anew.”

  “I doubt it,” I said dryly. “Edwin will simply ally himself with whichever seems to be the strongest side, and that will be that.”

  “You do not understand politics, Aldith.”

  “I understand my brother.”

  Aelfgar was Earl in Mercia for four more years. In the autumn of the Year of Our Lord 1062 word was brought to us of his death as I lay abed giving birth to our third child. Llywelyn and his little brother, Rhodri, were too young to understand the death of a grandsire they had never seen, but even amid the birth pangs I felt the death pang of my father.

  Once my father’s dying would have been a loss past all imagining or bearing. How strange to find that the miles and the years cushioned me from it, made it a thing which had happened to someone dear but no longer indispensable to me!

  We spoke of it as our new daughter took milk from my breast, and Griffith watched with that contented look of a man who already has sons. He could well afford to enjoy the beauty and delicacy of this tiny female person who chewed my nipple and rolled her eyes at him.

  “Were you much grieved when your father died?” I asked Griffith.

  “I felt his loss, to be sure. He was a noble man and a good sire to me. But in a way it was just as if he had stepped aside and left a place for me to fill. I continue in his stead, and so Llywelyn ap Seisyll is not lost; when I am gone our son will do that for me, God willing.”

  “It is not the same with daughters,” I commented sadly.

  Griffith looked as if this were a new thought for him. “No, I suppose not! But your father’s blood flows on in your children; mayhap you would like to name this new girl with a name from his family!”

  What a generous idea! “His mother was called Godiva …” I began.

  Griffith frowned. “Yes, I’ve heard of her. Perhaps another name might be more, ah, seemly?”

  I thought a moment. “Agatha?”

  “It has a hard sound.”

  “Emma?”

  “Please, Aldith, your maid is named Emma!”

  At last we named the child Nesta, after a famous and beautiful Welsh princess who happened to be an ancestress of Griffith’s.

  But the peaceful time was short for us. When Nesta was six weeks old my dear Emma fell ill with the burning sickness, and before the babe was weaned we held a Cymric funeral for her on the plain before Rhuddlan. Emma would not have approved of the old Welsh custom
s by which her passing was mourned, but it did my heart good to know that her bones rested within ear-shot of my children’s laughter as they played.

  In spite of the deaths, the coming Christmas festivities were muchly anticipated; court mourning for the Earl Aelfgar was to be put aside in celebration of the holy time. The cooks prepared a great feast, and Griffith invited all his kinsmen from as far away as Deheubarth and Morgannwg. Then I sat by his side at table; then was I honored and admired and my opinions much listened to!

  “Your Saxon wife does you credit, my lord,” commented one of Griffith’s numerous cousins. “If I were to close my eyes, my ears would tell me she was born within our own borders.”

  “That may come to pass, in a way,” smiled my Prince. “It is well known that the borders of countries are not immutably fixed; someday we may see East Anglia within the borders of Wales, may we not?”

  All of the company laughed and cheered at that, and I raised my goblet in toast with the rest, though I privately wondered what King Edward and the almighty Godwines would think of such a boast.

  I found out soon enough.

  Even as we sat at table that feast day there were those among us who could not be trusted, men jealous of my Griffith’s power and anxious to ingratiate themselves with his enemies. I cannot understand it! Griffith was a goodly Prince, fair and generous to all his people. Yet for his very virtues some men hated him.

  The wreaths and garlands we had hung in the hall were still glossy with life when word came from Chester. I was sitting at my loom, I recall, giving instructions to Gwladys, Emma’s replacement. We heard a mighty commotion outside and much running about, and I sent Gwladys to find out what was the matter. While she was gone I sat frozen, remembering the long-ago sounds of the King’s men come for my father.

  But it was not Gwladys who told me what it all meant. My Griffith himself came storming into our chamber, black as a thundercloud, bellowing to have the chamberlain and the captain of his guards sent to him.

  “My lord! What is it?”

  “Godwine,” Griffith snarled, and the look on his face was one I had never seen before. It was the face of hate and war. “Godwine has attacked Chester.”

  My thoughts were numbed. “The old Earl?” I could not picture him leading troops, he must have been well nigh in his dotage!

  “Not the Earl! His son, Harold, leads men against us, and the cub is much more dangerous than the tiger who sired him! They have swept aside all resistance and are marching upon Rhuddlan this very moment! Rhys? Rhys! Attend me at once!”

  Rhuddlan—under attack? I simply could not shape my mind around such a thing. All my life I had heard the names of the Earl Godwine and his sons, but they had always been “the enemy,” distant and apart from me, a situation to be dealt with by politics or battle. Now they were bringing the battle to Rhuddlan! our home!

  Shock upon shock. Rhys came at last, hotfoot and out of breath, to report that there had been some kind of a defection among the household guards, and our troop strength was muchly reduced. “By the gods!” thundered Griffith, “that damned Godwine has dipped into his bottomless purse and lured my own men away from me! I’ll slice him into sections for that! I swear to you, Aldith, by next Christ Mass we will feast on Harold Godwine stewed and served in a pudding!”

  A counting of heads convinced Griffith that Rhys was right; not enough armed men remained at Rhuddlan to defend it. “Will you stand and fight here anyway?” I asked my husband. “You can defeat a mere Godwine even without troops, I know it!”

  Even in that extreme moment he paused to give me a quick, tender smile. “So I could, my love, and I bless you for your faith. But there is one weapon to Harold’s armory I cannot face.”

  I was indignant for his sake. “What weapon!”

  “You, my Aldith. You and our children. I cannot risk battle with you here. I will not take a chance with your lives. We must do as the wolf does when he is outnumbered, seek a safe den and fight when we have a position of strength once more.”

  Horrified, I reached out and touched his arm, feeling the muscles clench and unclench as he made fists of fury. “Flee Rhuddlan, Griffith? Is that what you are saying? We will abandon Rhuddlan to Godwine?”

  “Only for now, Aldith,” he assured me. “Only for now.”

  In a matter of hours Griffith, the children and I, with a few servants and our most trusted courtiers, were miles from Rhuddlan and riding a-gallop for the mountains to the west. As the land began its first gentle rise beneath us, Griffith pulled up his steaming horse and turned his face in the direction we had come. What I saw mirrored in his eyes horrified me. “Don’t let the children look!” he told me hoarsely.

  All along the eastern horizon was the glow of fire, from the mouth of the Clwyd where Griffith’s ships lay at anchor to the Toot-hill itself. Harold had put all to the torch.

  How cold the west wind was! Snow stung our faces and whipped around us, blinding the horses. At night we slept on the hard ground, wrapped in our cloaks like soldiers. The boys were brave in their ignorance, thinking it was some exciting new game we were all playing, but I worried for the baby’s sake. She was so small, so dainty!

  Griffith was making for Caerhun, where he hoped to put together a force of men capable of fighting Godwine. Madog thought he would have a better chance of getting enough men at Conway, but Griffith rejected that.

  “Conway is on the coast, and Godwine is bound to send ships there looking for me. If I am to be hunted down like a dog, I do not choose to fight with my back to the sea; I am no great swimmer, Madog! We will go instead to the mountains, where I know a hundred secret places and ten thousand friends will aid me!”

  We struggled on and on. The boys realized it was no game and became exhausted and fretful; the allies Griffith hoped to find seemed to melt away even as we approached. So savage had Harold Godwine’s attack been that he carried all before him like a storm wind. Griffith’s peace had made the Cymry soft; they were no longer used to fighting in their heartland. The Godwine seemed invincible.

  At Caerhun we learned there would be no army raised in that region. “It is rumored that Tostig, Harold Godwine’s brother, approaches already from Northumbria. There are ships of Godwine’s landing up and down the coast, taking hostages and demanding tribute.” The patriarch of the tribe at Caerhun was sympathetic but badly frightened. “We are not able to fight such a force, my lord!” he told Griffith. “Aelfgar is dead, his men are of uncertain allegiance now. And the Irish, the Norwegians—they are too far away! By the time they could assemble an army and bring it across the seas all Wales could be in flames! Besides,” he added, giving Griffith a sly look from beneath his brows, “it is said that the tribes to the south are not totally in sympathy with the Prince of Gwynedd anyway. It is well known you have no hereditary right to rule there, my lord, having taken control of that country from, ah, men you defeated in battle.”

  “So what do you suggest, you cowardly dog!” Griffith was white-lipped with rage. “Should I send my submission to Godwine and his lily-livered King? Should I turn over all of Wales to Edward Milk-Mouth? Pah!” He spat in contempt, and if most of his spittle hit the face of the patriarch of Caerhun it may not have been an accident.

  That night we sheltered in a cave in the forest. With a stone rolled into the cave mouth to conceal most of the glow of our fire, the place was warm enough and dry. I lay in my Griffith’s arms, and the scent of the smoke was sharp in my nostrils, like the peat fires in Ireland. Furs and boughs formed our bed, a supper of cold mutton and oatcakes filled our bellies. Strangely enough, though I was frightened, I was not unhappy. In those hours Griffith was more mine than he had been many times at Rhuddlan. With our children sleeping nearby I still had everything that really mattered.

  But we could not stay there. Scouts saw soldiers on the road, and we were off again, hares running before the hounds. We went ever deeper into the wild places while winter melted into spring and the promise of summer greened the
land.

  Many times we were promised aid that never materialized. Occasionally Griffith would gather enough men to stage an attack on the nearest English-held post, but we were so sorely outnumbered by that time that the best he could hope to do was to inflict some damage and get away with a whole skin. It was the defection of those Griffith had believed loyal that hurt him the most, even more than the destruction of Rhuddlan and his other holdings.

  “I have always been a loyal man, Aldith!” he mourned to me in his dark hours. “Loyal to my heritage, loyal to my friends and allies. Could I not expect loyalty in return?”

  “I heard once, my love, that you commented on the treachery of the Saxons and the Danes. Perhaps such things are commonplace with all men, even the Cymry?”

  “No!” He smacked his fist upon his knee. “I will not believe that! I would not have it so! Honor is sacred among us, it must be. So often that is all we have.”

  Oh, my love, I would have spared you the final treachery if I could!

  It was in the eighth month of the year, after a hard summer of running and fighting and running again. I felt that I had learned to be an Irish warrior queen in truth and had begun to fancy myself in that way; the children had grown hard and smart beyond their years and the few friends we still had had proved their loyalty thrice over. We had built ourselves a camp of sorts, by a waterfall and a clear mountain pool, and Griffith and I were enjoying a rare moment of peace. We sat together on a sun-dappled rock, paddling our feet in the pool like children and laughing. From the rocks above us came the voice of Madog, who was acting as sentry.

  “There are men on the path, my lord.”

  Griffith gave a sigh and lifted his feet from the water. I could see the drops fall, separate sparkling little jewels, from his toes. “Soldiers?”

  “I think not, my lord, they are dressed as Cymry. It is … yes … no … yes! I believe it is some of our own men, my lord, come back to us!”

  The pleasure in Madog’s voice found no answer in my Griffith’s face. He stood up swiftly, peering down the path, and I heard the gasp of his indrawn breath. “Aldith, quick! Go find Gwladys and the children and hide! Hide, do you hear!”