The Chosen Queen

by Joanna Courtney

  ‘Where will we go?’ she asked Griffin.

  ‘Where the sails take us.’

  He gestured up to the great waxed linen sheets bulging in the wind as if they, at least, were glad to be free of the land.

  ‘But—’

  ‘To Ireland, cariad, just for a time. King Diarmid is always willing to offer aid against the English, especially for those who can pay.’ He indicated the great locked chest his men had hefted from the hall. ‘He will succour us for a few weeks until Harold stops raping my home and then we will return.’

  Edyth turned her eyes back to the receding shore. Rhuddlan blazed more ferociously than ever and they could see the English forces, dark demons against the light, dancing in fury at losing their quarry. Griffin smiled grimly but Edyth had caught another sound on the bitter wind – a whinnying and stamping of hooves on wood.

  ‘Môrgwynt!’ she cried, pained.

  Griffin’s hand closed over her knee.

  ‘Môrgwynt will be safe. Even the bastard English don’t destroy good horses and she is one of the best.’

  ‘But she is my horse.’

  ‘Not any more.’

  His words sat cold upon her, grief upon grief.

  ‘My father is dead.’

  The fact dug into her bruised heart like a jagged flint.

  ‘I am sorry for that, cariad, truly. He was a good man. A little impetuous at times but I liked that.’

  Edyth nodded but did not dare speak. She watched Harold’s men running around in a hell of their own creating, trying to hook herself into this present crisis, but all she could see in the leaping flames were pictures of her father – throwing her in the air as a little girl, taking her up before him on his horse, sitting her on his lap at dinner.

  ‘My best girl,’ he used to whisper as she drifted to sleep, lulled by the adults’ dull conversations. ‘My angel.’ And now he was the angel.

  Despite her grief Edyth smiled at the image. Her father had been many things but never an angel. He had loved as fiercely as he had lived. He’d made mistakes, yes, but mistakes caused not by foolishness but by passion.

  ‘You made him very proud,’ Griffin whispered in her ear and Edyth pictured Alfgar’s face when he’d first seen her wearing her beautiful crown and knew it was true. She bit back tears.

  ‘He’d be furious if he saw this,’ she said now.

  ‘Furious,’ Griffin agreed. ‘Earl Harold has tarnished his memory with this barbarism.’

  A fresh pain cut through Edyth; what Griffin said was true. She hated that her beloved father was dead, hated that her maid’s wedding was spoiled, that her palace was burned and her people in danger. Above all, though, she hated that it was Harold who had done this to her; she’d thought him a better man than that.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Deheubarth, May 1063

  ‘You may hate me all you like – it has ever been thus – but one thing you should know: you need me. Wales needs me.’

  The crowd muttered violently. It was only a few months since they had fled Wales but Griffin had let nothing stand in the way of reclaiming his country, not even its bitter internal rivalries. Way back when he had first shown Edyth his ships he had told her firmly that they were not so much for escape as to ‘regroup and mount a renewed assault’ and that was exactly what he was trying to do now. The Welsh, however, were not leaping to his side.

  Today they were in the beautiful seaside moot-point at St David’s and Edyth’s heart was scudding with fear as she faced Deheubarth’s greatest nobles. She’d been pleased, fool that she was, when Griffin had told her they would tour his kingdom. He’d warned her time and again how it would be in the south but still it had been a shock. She’d been spat at, jostled and, just a short time back, coated in flour. The coarse grains clung to her hair yet. She could feel them prickling her scalp beneath her hastily changed headdress but she was not going to scratch at them. That would belittle the crown on her head – the crown with the four rubies to represent the four quarters of Griffin’s kingdom. She’d always been so proud of carrying his father’s dream on her brow but it was only now, eight years after he’d first placed it on her head, that she was realising how much of a dream it still was.

  The southern territories acknowledged Griffin’s rule begrudgingly. He had told her as much time and again but now she was truly seeing it for herself. In Glamorgan they had been met with icy politeness. The burghers of the city of Cardiff had been cautiously welcoming but the old lords, led by the nephews of the king Griffin had assassinated, had refused to sit with them. Even the people in the street had stood in stony silence as they’d ridden through and it had been even worse in Deheubarth. Now they stood before an assembly of the rich and disdainful elite of this fertile southern territory, led by the snooty-nosed Lady Gwyneth and her slimy nephew, Lord Huw, and their hatred was palpable.

  Edyth was weary. She had been long in the saddle and missed Môrgwynt sorely. On their return to Wales she had hunted the ruins of Rhuddlan for her precious mare but, though many of the other royal horses had been found, there had been no sign of hers and she had been forced to ride out on a new mount. She had slept in a different bed every night, and that but little with guards at all four posts and Griffin jumping for his sword at the slightest sound. She felt as if she had not rested properly since before Harold had brought his flames down the hillside to Rhuddlan and could see little chance to do so ahead. She was, indeed, with child again and the babe grew large within her but she was afraid for it. She had thought the people would be pleased to see evidence of another heir for Wales but instead they had booed.

  ‘Do your children not offer them security?’ she’d asked Griffin.

  ‘They do not want security, Edyth. They prefer uncertainty – it is easier to drive a knife into.’

  Edyth had thought of England, so desperate for a valid heir that they had sent Harold all the way into Hungary to dig one up, and marvelled at the contrast. She and Griffin were offering Wales all the security England craved but they were being hounded away like outlaws and she was so, so tired.

  King Diarmid of Dublin had, as Griffin had anticipated, been most welcoming, especially when he’d set eyes on Griffin’s casket of jewels. The refugees had been richly clothed and fed but Diarmid’s court had made Griffin’s look tame. They’d dunked wooden bowls into great pots on the fire to fish out their food and mopped up the mess with coarse dry bread. They’d drunk a rich dark ale in vast quantities, washing away the bitter taste with a golden fire water.

  Edyth had tried it but once and had felt as if her very innards were being burned out. She’d coughed till her chest nigh on burst and King Diarmid had laughed so much he had fallen off his bench, revealing to all exactly what he did – or rather, did not – wear beneath the strange woollen tunics they favoured, and causing even more laughter. Edyth had had to work very hard not to purse her lips like her mother and had been hugely grateful when Griffin had declared it was time to sail for home. Home, though, had been a pile of ashes blowing about in the last of the winter winds.

  ‘We will rebuild,’ Griffin had declared stoutly. ‘Rhuddlan will be bigger and better than before with stone defences and double ditches. No one will ever surprise me again.’

  He’d been so determined, so strong. The new hall had gone up faster than any could have imagined possible and the royal bower had followed just as fast. For a few weeks Edyth had caught sight of some cherished form of normality but then spies had reported murmurings in the south – rumours that Griffin was weak and ripe for the taking – and he had not been able to bear it.

  ‘There’s no way I’m sitting here waiting to be sprung again. They needn’t plot to come to me; I shall go to them.’

  And so here they were, the royal family of Wales, with Griffin in full armour wherever he went and the boys, to their delight, kitted out in miniature versions and even Edyth with a cleverly worked chain-mail tunic beneath her gown. It lay heavy on her shoulders and even heavier on
her now-bulging belly. It clinked when she moved but she was grateful for it all the same. So far the flour was the worst thing to have hit her but it was impossible not to fear a more damaging missile.

  ‘The English are coming,’ Griffin was saying to the gathered nobles of Deheubarth. ‘King Edward wants Wales and if you think I am a poor excuse for a king, wait until you see him.’

  ‘If he’s so puny, he will never defeat us,’ Huw challenged.

  ‘True, but know this, Edward does not really rule in England. Earl Harold does and Earl Harold might well defeat us if we do not stand together. They say he has the greatest army in Christendom and the riches to pay for it, even to march as far as Deheubarth. You are not immune out here, you know. Harold destroyed Rhuddlan. There is no target in the north now and he will have his sights set on Cardiff and Swansea and, yes, St David’s.’ Griffin swept an arm around the beautiful city in which they now stood. ‘Our only chance is to stand against him together.’

  The nobles murmured amongst themselves, turning their backs on Griffin, who stood rigid, staring ahead. Edyth could not tell what he was thinking, but her own thoughts were in a whirl. Did she stand against Harold? She remembered him walking her into Westminster all those years back. Despite finding her falling out of a damned tree, he’d shown her great respect and she held him deep in her heart for that, so how had they ended up on the opposite sides of such a bitter struggle?

  Prince Huw squared up to Griffin.

  ‘We do stand against the English. We will always stand against the English.’

  ‘So you are with me?’

  Huw shifted his feet.

  ‘We are with you – for now.’

  Griffin held out a hand.

  ‘For now, my prince, will suffice. We must make plans.’

  Huw shook his head.

  ‘The plan is simple, Griffin. If the English come to Deheubarth we will defeat them. If they come to Gwynedd, you will defeat them.’

  ‘It’s not enough.’ Edyth heard Griffin’s ready temper flare and tensed. ‘Can you not see, man – if the English come they will bring great numbers of infantry, highly trained.’

  ‘We are highly trained.’

  ‘This will not be skirmishing, Huw, this will be war.’

  ‘Yes, but on our terrain. We will trap them like mice in a barn.’

  The crowd roared approval. Griffin glanced back to Edyth and she saw frustration in his blue eyes and something else too – despair?

  ‘You may trap some,’ he tried again, ‘but they will keep coming. They mean to annihilate us.’

  Huw, however, just smiled.

  ‘Nay, my lord king, they mean only to annihilate you.’

  Huw was right. Edyth and Griffin were barely back in their newly built hall at Rhuddlan before news came that the great earl had sailed his ships into Cardiff and that the city had surrendered almost before he’d set foot on the beach. From there he marched his army through Glamorgan and on into Deheubarth, making straight for Rhuddlan. Griffin’s spies brought daily news, offering it to the floor at their lord’s feet, afraid of its terrible power, and all said the same – the brave Welshmen were parting before Harold like the waves before Moses.

  ‘He is putting up stones,’ one lad told Griffin. ‘Stones inscribed in Latin – Hic Fuit Victor Haroldus – and wooden crosses. He is leaving camps around each one to ensure no resistance gathers once he is passed.’

  ‘How can the Welsh do this?’ Edyth hissed in the royal bower one night. There was precious little sleeping room in the broken compound and even here their only privacy came from the curtains of their bed, beyond which Griffin’s guards slept on pallets. ‘Have they no pride? Do they want to be ruled by the English?’

  Griffin kissed her quiet.

  ‘They do not want to be ruled at all, cariad.’

  ‘Well, they should and by you.’

  ‘Your good opinion means more to me, Edyth, than you will ever know but I have never expected it from these bastards. Wales is not ready for a single king.’

  ‘So why welcome King Edward?’

  ‘They do not, they welcome . . .’

  ‘Earl Harold, I know, but he fights for Edward. He is not a god, Griffin, just a soldier, like you.’

  ‘Not like me, Edyth, no. Earl Harold has no foolish dreams to drive him. He is a pragmatist – a winner of battles, not a forger of nations. He does a job and, sadly, he does it well. If he wins, Edyth, he will split Wales up again so that we will spend all our time fighting each other and leave England well alone. And it will work.’

  ‘If he wins.’

  ‘Which he will not. I will muster the men of the north and we will ride to battle. He will not ride past Caernarfon alive.’

  The words chilled Edyth’s blood and as Griffin turned Rhuddlan into a battle camp her fear grew. Princes Bleddyn and Rhys marched in with a thousand grim-faced soldiers and news came that more were waiting to join them at Conwy and Bangor. The mood was ferocious against the man who dared to bring the English around Welsh shores and, fearing for Harold’s life, Edyth began a tearful letter to Svana.

  Even as she was searching for the words to express her sorrow, however, two messengers skittered into the tent-strewn compound, eyes wild and hands shaking as they leaped down from their lathered horses. Gratefully abandoning her letter, she ran from the bower to join Griffin and his brothers in his hall. The Welsh king looked imposing in his war gear with his copper hair flowing from beneath his royal helmet, but he was unusually pale. She rushed to him.

  ‘Griffin? What has happened?’

  He gestured to the messengers, both on their knees.

  ‘These men come from my mother in Powys. She is under siege.’

  ‘Siege? But Harold is surely in the west?’

  ‘He is, my lady,’ Prince Bleddyn confirmed, ‘but our mother is under attack all the same.’

  ‘By whom? Who has invaded?’ She turned to Griffin. ‘Is it Hardrada?’

  ‘No!’ Griffin laughed bitterly. ‘No, not Hardrada, Edyth, though he may be at the root of it. It is Earl Torr. He and Harold are working together to trap us from both sides.’

  ‘Torr and Harold? Together?’

  ‘That surprises you?’

  ‘Harold hates Torr.’

  ‘Not as much, wife, as he hates me. I knew I should not have taken the Viking into England.’ For the briefest moment he looked lost but then his eyes hardened, the aquamarine run through with flint. ‘No matter. We will ride east to see off Earl Torr and then we will turn west and kill Harold. No one fights the Welsh in their own land and goes home to tell the tale.’

  He kissed her, hard and fast, then strode out to summon his captains. Within but a few hours, the entire camp of soldiers had marched out and the women were left to pace the half-buildings of Rhuddlan. Edyth felt as if she had been plunged, warm from her bed, into ice water but now was no time for shivering.

  ‘Griffin always wins,’ she said stoutly to Becca as they closed the curtains on the boys’ bed, tucked, for now, into the opposite corner of the bower from her own. ‘No one defeats him.’

  ‘Not even Earl Harold?’

  ‘He’s not battling Earl Harold.’

  ‘Not yet.’

  Edyth dismissed this with a scornful wave.

  ‘This first battle should not trouble our troops too greatly; Griffin will not let a self-seeking, jumped-up idiot like Earl Torr defeat him. He’ll be back before Harold gets anywhere near Caernarfon.’

  She could not, however, stop herself opening the curtains to check on her boys, as if they might already be under threat and, sure enough, Harold moved with the speed of a hunting hawk. Within two days messengers rode in to say that he had reached the city. Edyth received them on her throne with just her sparse guard and her maid for company.

  ‘What do we do if he brings his army here?’ Becca dared to ask as the messengers were shown to the rough camp kitchens for food.

  Edyth looked down at her belly, so full n
ow she feared she might give birth at any moment, and then to her maid’s, also sweetly curved.

  ‘We can hardly fight, Becca. We would have to surrender but Griffin will be here. He will not abandon us, I know it.’

  She banged the arm of her husband’s vacant throne in defiant affirmation and sure enough, as the sun began to set, one of the young guards left on watch shouted out that the troops were sighted. Edyth was out of the hall and up the steps of the half-built watchtower within moments, Becca hot on her heels. As they reached the top they saw men coming over the hillside beneath the great dragon standard.

  ‘They return victorious!’ Edyth called down to the other women, amassing in the compound below.

  They cheered but Becca was tugging urgently at her sleeve.

  ‘What is it, Becca?’ she demanded.

  ‘My lady, look, please. Does that seem like a victorious army?’

  Edyth turned back to the horizon and she had to admit that although the men marched in formation of a sort, their shoulders were low and their steps slow.

  ‘It looks like a tired one, that is all.’

  ‘And a small one.’

  The troops were all over the smudge of the horizon now and it was clear that there was scarcely a quarter of those who had marched out this morning. Becca’s hands went to her mouth.

  ‘Lewys,’ she choked and then she was gone, clattering down the wooden steps and heading through the gap where the gates would one day, God willing, be hung again.

  The other women ran after her and suddenly the night was filled with names sent hopefully out towards the bedraggled troops like fishing rods into a dark ocean. It was horrifically clear that too many would hook no prize and Edyth felt despair close in on her. How had this happened? How had the first King of all Wales been defeated? She could see Griffin riding at the head of his men, seemingly whole, but Harold was coming and how was he going to fight again now?

  Slowly Edyth went down the steps. She fetched the boys from their makeshift nursery and stood with one either side of her at the base of the tower, a miniature guard of honour to welcome her husband home. ‘My lord.’