Castle of Dreams

by Speer, Flora

  “My man missed his calling.” Guy inclined his head toward Captain John. “He should have gone into the church. He could easily have become Pope.”

  A low chuckle from the usually serious Reynaud surprised him.

  “If he is as skillful in dealing with the workers, both local and imported, as he is with Lady Isabel, we will be fortunate indeed,” said Reynaud in his slightly pedantic way. “I have heard the Welsh never really submit to Norman rule but continually find ways to subvert our intentions, as they did here, under Lord Lionel.”

  “We will stop any attempt at revolt, Reynaud, beginning with the outer fortifications. You and I and John will meet together this evening to discuss the plans for rebuilding. Use your time until then to investigate the site thoroughly. You will need to know everything about it before you put pen and ruler to parchment.”

  “My lord, I am well aware of my duties.” Reynaud’s quiet voice held a rebuke.

  “Perhaps I am overeager,” Guy said, marveling that he felt it necessary to explain himself to this cleric. “I did not mean to offend you. Unlike some barons, I do not despise those who can read and write, I admire them. I have tried to write and I can’t do it, except for just my name. So I know how hard it is to learn. I need you, Reynaud, to draw up the plans for my castle and to direct the reconstruction. And you need me to protect you while you do the only work that matters to you: building. Let us work together without quarreling.”

  “Agreed, my lord.” Reynaud, his pale eyes holding a startled look, as though he wondered how Guy had so quickly detected the one creative urge that directed his existence, followed his new master into the wooden hall.

  “Aunt Branwen.” Meredith flung her arms around Branwen’s still-slender waist. “The most wonderful thing has happened. I have seen a knight. He was glorious, all glittery and silver. He has golden hair. The sun came out and shone on him. I can’t tell you how beautiful he was.”

  “No Norman is beautiful.” Branwen pursed her lips and pulled out of Meredith’s embrace. “And all Normans bring trouble with them. Now that they have come back, there will be no fair treatment for the folk who live near Afoncaer. We should leave here, move further into Wales, but we can’t go. Rhys is ill.”

  “What’s wrong? Branwen, tell me.” Meredith noticed for the first time that her aunt was stirring an odd-smelling brew in a small pot. The fumes were bitter, the liquid a viscous green that bubbled and plopped and bubbled again as Branwen threw a handful of small branches on the fire, making it blaze until the flames seared the sides of the cauldron. “Where is Rhys?”

  “I’m here. I can still walk.” Leaning heavily on his staff, Rhys emerged from the shadows of the vast underground chamber that lay beyond the outer cavern they used for living quarters.

  Meredith knew Rhys kept his most precious medicines in the cool darkness of the inner cave. She had helped him often enough, and she remembered where each item was stored. She watched as Rhys handed a glass vial to Branwen, who added precisely three drops of the contents to her pot before returning the vial to Rhys. A cloud of smoke rose from the pot, the acrid fumes stinging Meredith’s eyes.

  “What is it you are making, aunt? I’ve never seen that mixture before.”

  “You will see it often enough from now on,” Rhys assured her, “and learn to make it, too. It’s for the pain around my heart. I am very old, Meredith, and medicine or not I will die before too many more years have passed.” Rhys sat down on a smooth boulder, flexing the fingers of his left hand. He tucked the vial into the folds of his grey woolen robe and then began to massage his left arm and shoulder, while the white cat rubbed itself against his ankles as if to offer comfort. Rhys’s face was pale, his lips a purplish-blue.

  He spoke only the truth, Meredith realized. When she and Branwen had first come to his cave five years before, and she a mere girl of twelve, she had thought Rhys was ancient. As she had grown to respect and then to love him, she had forgotten his age. His mind was young and full of wondrous knowledge to satisfy her curiosity, and that was all that mattered to her.

  She knew how old he was. He had lived for seventy summers, an incredible age. Rhys had been a middle-aged man of thirty-five when William the Conqueror had come to Wales with his Norman army, and he had lived through the later depredations of the Conqueror’s son, William Rufus, but he would not live much longer.

  The shapeless form of inevitable change cast its shadow over the bright vision Meredith had seen earlier. The new Lord of Afoncaer, handsome and glittery though he was, would bring change, too. The harshness of Norman rule would fall upon them all, and this once-safe cave might no longer be a secure place.

  Still, she could not forget the knight. His blue eyes haunted her. There was sadness in them, she was sure. He had thick eyebrows, darker than his golden hair. His mouth was delicately chiseled, almost sensitive. Surely a man with a mouth like that could not be cruel. It was only after he had seen her that his lips had compressed into a tight, straight line, an arrogant sneer. Her heart beat harder with remembered terror as she recalled how he had ridden at her, sword drawn, ready to kill her. And yet – those eyes, that mouth. She had to see him again.

  She knew she ought to stay away from Afoncaer. It was unwise to go anywhere near the Normans. Two slow weeks passed while Meredith fought her unreasonable desire. She stayed close to the cave, helped Branwen to nurse Rhys, and listened to the gossip of the folk who came to ask for Branwen’s herbal cures.

  The Normans, she was told, had wasted no time conscripting local men into work crews to help the English masons who had come into Wales with the new baron. They had set about rebuilding the outer wall at once. Another group of men had been ordered to dig the unfinished moat deeper and wider. The Lord of Afoncaer insisted the workmen must be well fed, and had provided shoes for a few Welsh who owned none, a most unusual gesture for a Norman. There must be some trick to it. Everyone knew Normans could not be trusted.

  The lord of Afoncaer, the gossips said, had a squire, a pleasant enough fellow with an apparently endless supply of ale, who had been asking questions about a red-haired wench, seen and admired by Lord Guy.

  “You are the only red-haired girl I know of,” said the woman who provided Meredith with this piece of information. “I can imagine what that brutish lord wants with you. If you are wise, Meredith, you will stay well away from Afoncaer.”

  “She’s right, you know,” Branwen said after the woman had left. “No one knows better than I how the Normans treat conquered women.”

  “How did they treat you, Aunt Branwen? What did they do to you?”

  “I was a noblewoman once, long ago. Remember your own mother, child, and go nowhere near that cursed castle.”

  Meredith said nothing. She could not promise what Branwen wanted and she could not tell Branwen that every night, just before she fell asleep, she saw in her mind again the face of a man with blue eyes and golden hair.

  “They say she is a healing woman, my lord,” Geoffrey reported, “who cures with herbs and magic. She lives in a cave hidden deep in the woods with another woman, also a healer, and a wise old man, who may be a wizard.”

  Guy laughed.

  “A wizard, friend squire, is any person who knows more than you know yourself.” Guy watched Reynaud’s lips tighten as Father Herbert gasped and crossed himself at this flippant response. Guy sensed Reynaud’s reaction to Geoffrey’s information had been much the same as his own. He decided to test the silent cleric. “Well, what do you say, my builder? Shall I take an army and attack these people’s cave?”

  Reynaud’s mouth opened, but it was Father Herbert who spoke, interrupting.

  “This could be a more serious matter than you think, my lord,” Father Herbert cautioned. “Many of these Welsh are poor Christians at best, and in spite of all our efforts, they continue to cling to their old ways. The Church, in its wisdom, has made laws against the healing arts derived from the old religions of these lands. Too many such practitioners are
women. Learning is for men.”

  “Perhaps,” Reynaud said sensibly, “they are merely exercising the healing knowledge all women must have, to tend their own families. These women may only be extending charity to their neighbors.”

  “If that were all, there might well be no harm in what they do,” Father Herbert agreed. “But from what Geoffrey says, these brazen creatures have set up practice as though they were male physicians. No honest Christian woman would do such work outside the limits of her own home. It is a disgrace to the feminine sex and an affront to those good Christian physicians who are, as they should be, men.”

  “Midwives are accepted,” Guy pointed out, “and women in holy orders are sometimes nurses. I heard of an abbess in one of the German states whose healing powers were said to be miraculous.”

  “But that is just the point, my lord,” Father Herbert insisted. “The women you have mentioned are all Christians, functioning within the strictures of the church and subject to its laws. The creatures Geoffrey speaks of are witches at the very least, and possibly,” here Father Herbert paused dramatically, “possibly even heretics!”

  “All these Welsh are mad, if you ask me,” Geoffrey spoke up. “D’you know what one of those fellows I spoke to said? He said in order to erect a strong building you must first sacrifice an animal and bury it under the northeast corner. He said Lord Lionel neglected the ceremony when he began the castle, and that’s why the wall fell down so easily when the Welsh attacked it.”

  “How interesting,” Reynaud murmured, making a note on a piece of parchment.

  “Merciful heaven, protect us.” Father Herbert solemnly crossed himself, and Geoffrey followed suit. “We are truly in a heathen land.”

  Guy knew well the things a man’s mind could do. He had seen men ride cheerfully to their deaths, convinced they would be instantly transported to Paradise because their mission was blessed by their god, and he had no doubt the Welsh rebels, believing Lord Lionel’s castle would fall for lack of a small body under one corner, had made that belief a reality.

  “We must destroy these people,” Father Herbert was saying. “You cannot in good conscience let them continue to practice their devilish arts, my lord.”

  “We don’t know that they are doing anything wrong,” Reynaud protested. “All we know is what the local gossips say.”

  “I agree with you, Reynaud,” Guy said firmly. “We were sent here to build a castle, not to root out native healers. These women have caused us no problems, the work is going well, and the workers seem reasonably content. If we, for no reason that makes sense to them, destroy something that is part of their heritage, we will make trouble for ourselves that we might have avoided. That trouble will surely cause delay in building, which will in turn anger King Henry, and his wrath will fall upon all of us. Do you want that to happen, Father Herbert?”

  “No, my lord, but all the same, something should be done about these people. Perhaps I should go myself and try to remonstrate with them. Geoffrey, where is this cave?”

  “No one will say. It must be very well hidden. I tried to find it on my own but I got lost. That forest is thick, and all trees look alike to me. If I hadn’t stumbled on the stream and followed it home, I’d still be wandering in there.”

  “Magic,” whispered Father Herbert, but Guy refused to be drawn into further discussion with him.

  When the priest and the squire left them, Reynaud spoke again. “Ancient customs are still found in many parts of Wales, my lord, and not all of them involve witchcraft. There is knowledge that could be valuable to us, were it recorded. Some of the medicines these healers use are said to be quite remarkable.”

  “I thought you were just an architect.” Guy looked at the cleric, thinking how little he knew about the man.

  “I have other interests as well. I think King Henry would agree with you about leaving those people in the forest alone, but Father Herbert is ill-educated and narrow-minded. He could do much damage were he allowed to treat the Welsh as he wants.”

  “He will do as I say,” Guy said coldly. “Father Herbert will stay out of the forest. I’ll see to that. Nothing will be allowed to disrupt work on Afoncaer. The castle is what is important here. Afoncaer is what matters.”

  Chapter 17

  It was useless to fight the urge any longer. She had tried for weeks. Now she knew it was a hopeless battle. She had to see the knight again. Just a glimpse, that was all she wanted. Meredith braided her hair and covered it with a linen scarf. The day being cool and cloudy, and her way being through the shady forest, she pulled a dark grey triangle of wool across her shoulders, then took up the basket she used for gathering plants and roots for medicines.

  Neither Rhys nor Branwen questioned her. She went out every day at about this time, so there was nothing unusual in her going. Nothing but the knot of fear in the pit of her stomach when she recalled Branwen’s warnings about the Normans. Dismissing that cautious advice, she fought back the fear and concentrated on the memory of Lord Guy’s handsome face.

  She moved easily through the green lushness of the forest. It was as much her home as the cave where she lived. She had only to walk to the stream, cross it at a place she knew where there were rocks to use for stepping stones, and then walk the short distance to the castle.

  She had almost reached the stream when she heard a cry, followed by the sounds of branches breaking and of something falling through the leaves. Meredith stopped, uncertain whether to run away or to investigate.

  “Help!” It was a child’s voice. “Is anyone there? Help me, someone.”

  Meredith recognized the French words from her lessons with Rhys. It must be a Norman child. That meant it was someone from Afoncaer. She hurried forward.

  “Where are you?” she called. “I can’t see you.”

  “Here. I slid down the hill. I’m covered in branches.”

  She saw the place, a hill so steep it was almost a cliff, slippery and muddy from the recent rains, and she saw the line of broken branches and uprooted bushes that had been grabbed in an attempt to slow someone’s fall. In the ravine at the bottom of that line was a pile of branches and green leaves. The pile moved.

  “I’m stuck,” the voice said. “I can’t get up.”

  From somewhere at the top of the hill came a warning growl, and Meredith paused again, uncertain.

  “Please,” the voice said, “My leg is caught.”

  Meredith set down her basket and scrambled down to the spot. She began pulling at the tangle of greenery. A face emerged out of the leaves. Meredith stopped what she was doing and stared.

  It was the face of a boy about ten or eleven years old, with blue eyes and golden hair, a face so nearly identical to that of the Lord of Afoncaer that Meredith was stunned.

  “If you could manage to pull the largest branch away, I think I can get my leg free,” the boy said.

  “What?” Meredith was still staring, unable to move. She was vaguely aware of another growl somewhere above her on the hill, this time nearer than before.

  “The branch, my lady. That one.” A small hand pushed its way through the leaves and pointed. “There.”

  “Oh, yes, I see it now. I’ll try.” Meredith braced one foot against a rock, then grasped the branch and pulled. As she did so, the entire untidy pile collapsed, and she found herself lying face down on matted, dirty leaves. She started to push herself up. Her hands slipped on a patch of mud and she went down again. A peal of childish laughter rang out. Screwing her head around, Meredith could see that impish, blue-eyed face, laughing at her.

  “Your nose is green and your cheeks are brown,” the boy said and suddenly Meredith was laughing with him. He had freed his leg, and now he crawled over the muddy leaves and broken branches to crouch beside her.

  “May I help you to stand, my lady?” He put out one hand, but he slipped on the wet mess beneath him and went sprawling on top of Meredith, and once more they laughed together, helplessly.

  The boy ma
naged to get to his feet at last, and again extended his hand to help Meredith stand. She was on her knees, reaching for his hand, when the growl she had heard before sounded again, just above her head this time, and a huge, hairy creature flung itself on her. Meredith saw a red, slavering tongue and pointed fangs. She screamed, throwing up one arm to protect her face, and the hound sank his teeth into the loose sleeve of her robe, scratching across her forearm.

  “Down, Clovis! Down, I say!” The boy was beating at the dog with a branch. Letting Meredith go, the beast turned on him, baring its fangs and snarling.

  “Down!” the boy shouted again. “Clovis, down!”

  Meredith tried to scramble away, but the dog attacked her again, catching her shawl in his teeth and pulling it off her shoulders. Meredith shrieked in terror. She saw the branch and the boy’s hand, and then the hound was lying on the ground.

  Meredith was shaking so hard she could not stand. Weakly, she leaned against a tree for support.

  “Please, my lady, if you would give me your belt, I’ll tie him up before he wakes. He’s only stunned.”

  “My belt?” She could not make her mind work properly.

  “Or your shawl. Do you care if I cut it into strips?”

  “No. It’s torn anyway. Go ahead.” Meredith slid slowly down the length of the tree trunk and sat on the damp moss at its base, her arms lying limply at her sides. Dully she watched as the boy produced a small knife and sliced her shawl into long pieces, then tied and twisted them together to make a rope. He fastened one end around the dog’s neck and the other around a sturdy nearby tree.

  “That should hold him. I’ll tell the master of the hounds to send someone to get him. He should never have gotten loose from the kennel.” The boy came to sit beside Meredith. “I am terribly sorry this happened. I told him several times to go home, but he wouldn’t obey me. Clovis has always been a mean dog, and he has been specially trained to attack. I think he imagined you and I were fighting, and he tried to get in on the kill. Are you badly hurt? Your arm is bleeding.”