Rhiannon

by Roberta Gellis

  “You are most urgently wanted in the hall, my lord. Your men will be quartered and word sent to you.”

  Such a summons to a very junior member of the army could only have to do with Rhiannon, so Simon was not surprised to find her sitting with Llewelyn, Pembroke, and Gilbert Bassett. Although Simon’s predominant emotion was outrage as he threaded his way through the bailey and entered the keep, the expressions on the four faces—no, five, for Math was sitting in his mistress’s lap—when they saw him struck Simon so funny that he whooped with laughter and could barely walk straight.

  Llewelyn’s face became rigid as wood and his eyes were suffused. To Simon it was clear his overlord would have been laughing too, if he were not afraid of offending his companions. Bassett was seated as far from Rhiannon as possible. One could not call the daughter of a major ally a witch, but… Pembroke, staring at her, simply looked stunned. And Rhiannon… Simon choked. Rhiannon and Math both wore the same smug, self-satisfied look of contentment.

  Llewelyn signaled a servant to bring another stool. “Sit before you fall down,” he said to Simon. “We must settle this quickly. There are more important matters in hand than the behavior of my idiotic daughter, but I must be rid of her before I can deal with them. Simon, I will have you locked up! What the devil are you laughing at?”

  “She—she—do you know what she did?” Simon hiccuped. “She—in the middle of the battle she shrieked at me that she was willing to marry me where and when I chose. The—the whole army…both whole armies are witness. Eneit, you do not do things by halves, I will say that for you.”

  Rhiannon shrugged. “It was no one’s business but ours, and there is nothing shameful in agreeing to a marriage. Of course, you are a Saeson, but not so many in the army know that,” she teased.

  “Rhiannon!” Llewelyn roared.

  She went silent and lowered her eyes—she had not meant to say anything offensive to Bassett and Pembroke but had just forgotten they were there—but Math made a rude noise, a weird mixture of a hiss and a belch. Llewelyn looked at the large cat with marked disfavor and then looked up. Bassett’s eyes were going from Rhiannon to the cat and back, and Llewelyn did not like the look. Other men were looking around at the group impatiently. There was no more time to be spent on this minor matter.

  “I gather from what you have said that you are still willing to have her. Is this true, Simon?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “No buts. If you are willing to have her, take her now. And you are responsible for her. Keep her off the battlefield and away—from—these—gentlemen. I do not care how you do it, just do it. And do not present yourself to me again until you stop laughing.”

  Simon did his best to swallow his unseemly mirth, which was, of course, compounded of lack of sleep, overexertion, too much tension, and a great and sudden relief. He seized Rhiannon firmly by the wrist and retreated hastily, ignoring the fact that Math had fallen from her lap when he jerked her upright. In the back of his mind, he was surprised that Math had not scratched him nor had Rhiannon protested; she went willingly right to the edge of the hall. Here she pulled back a little.

  “Wait, Simon, where are we going? The keep is packed like a cask of herrings.”

  Simon paused and looked into her eyes. His half-hysterical laughter had ended as soon as he gripped her. When his fingers closed on her arm, it was like taking hold of some great source of strength. Warmth and refreshment flowed into him, and it was like being back in the tent after freeing de Burgh. Rhiannon’s eyes had the same deep luminescence, and he had the same aching need. His face went rigid with desire.

  “I do not think my father is really angry,” Rhiannon said, seeing the change in his expression and misreading it.

  “No, and I do not care if he is,” Simon replied through stiff lips.

  Then she understood, and fire coursed through her also. She turned her hand so that she could grip Simon’s wrist while he still held hers. They stared at each other. They could not go outside the keep. Not only was it dangerous, but it was too cold in the middle of a November night. Inside, even the lice would feel crowded, so close were the pallets packed together. Then Simon called to mind the stone storage sheds where bins of grain and roots were kept in Roselynde. If Abergavenny had them too… He started off again and Rhiannon followed, with Math at her heels like a dog.

  Even starved as they both were for each other, the crowded conditions and organized bedlam of the courtyards began to quell their desire. If Simon had not already been so tired, he would have suggested that they ride to his mother’s keep at Clyro. He began to consider the idea seriously while they struggled across the bailey, but the sheds were there. He chose the nearest, even though it was small and low-roofed, and prepared to break the lock—only the door was not locked, it opened easily to Simon’s pull.

  The odor of sheepskins in the shed was too strong to be pleasant, yet both Simon’s and Rhiannon’s eyes lighted and their smiles were unstrained and full of remembered gladness. The shed had been left open so that anyone who was cold could take a fleece. They were too large to steal easily and of little value in any case. Simon laughed and jammed the door shut. Whoever was cold would have to wait until tomorrow or find some other source of warmth.

  It was black as pitch inside, but when they tripped over a skin they fell soft on a pile of fleeces and lay kissing. The shed walls were thick so that only a muted noise drifted in through the air vents under the roof. They were separated from the crush and excitement in the bailey outside, and the feel and smell of the sheepskins—not so overpowering now that they were accustomed to it—carried them back in memory to the open hills and the shepherd’s quiet hut.

  They began to undress each other, fumbling and laughing in the dark, but the tension and passion of the raid were still in them. Simon’s teeth left bruises on Rhiannon’s breasts, and her nails scored his back and buttocks. She was so aroused—by abstinence, by the excitement of being captured and the battle that followed, by their strange yet familiar situation—that she came to climax almost as soon as Simon entered her. He was not ready. Near bursting but still reluctant to let his pleasure end, he held off, kissing and caressing until Rhiannon began to moan again, and he brought her with him to a second fulfillment.

  They slept at once, both of them, like mallet-struck oxen, snuggled into the fleeces and covered by their doubled cloaks, until a cat’s yowl and a man’s cry of pain and curse woke them. A faint light was coming in through the air vents under the eaves. Simon lifted himself on one elbow to call a warning, but it was not necessary.

  “Leave it alone,” a hoarse voice shouted. “That is the witch-woman’s familiar. She will curse you—if you need cursing after the cat has done with you.”

  “Damn Math,” Rhiannon said faintly, “he is giving me a dreadful reputation.”

  “And undeserved?” Simon teased. “Bassett is sure you are a witch. He would accuse you to the Church, only he does not wish to offend your father. And you have Pembroke badly worried, although not about witchcraft. What on earth did you say to them?”

  “I? I said nothing, as a modest maiden should,” Rhiannon exclaimed, but she started to laugh. “It was that silly man you sent with me and the wagon—Siorl. We had a little trouble because there was fighting near the road. We shot two or three, and then a few charged us. Ymlladd—perhaps by accident I gave the signal, or he knew what to do himself—he rose to fight. That must have frightened Math, and he let out a yowl that even startled me. I do not know what those stupid men thought it was, but they turned and ran. I suppose Siorl thought I had told my familiar to drive them away.”

  Simon had to laugh, too. He knew Siorl had regarded Rhiannon with awe ever since the stay at Dinas Emrys. After a minute he frowned. “It is funny and not funny. We will have to think of a way for you to redeem yourself. Someday this war will be over and Bassett and Pembroke will be reestablished. We cannot have word spread in England that you are a witch. But what I want to know is wha
t you were doing in that camp in the first place?”

  She told him the whole story, from Llewelyn’s letter through her capture. Simon laughed again at the Pwyll’s wife fabrication and Math’s defense of her when she resisted de Guisnes, but despite his amusement his eyes were troubled.

  “You need not tell me it was foolish and dangerous,” Rhiannon said seriously. “I will not do it again. I would have waited at Builth, or come here perhaps, only—only I was happy, and I wanted you to be happy, too, Simon. But I will never be so foolish again. I know I could have become a chain to bind you. What happened in the camp after I left?”

  “We cleaned them out. They are naked as babes, and we are rich. We have everything, even the pay chests and the king’s tent and some of his plate and jewelry which, for some reason, were not taken to the keep. They have no horses, except the few that were in Grosmount, no oxen, no food, no tents for the men, no armor, no weapons. And we tried not to kill if we could avoid it, but they know we could have slit their throats in the dark.”

  “Is the war over, then?” she asked hopefully.

  “Not yet, but I do not think it will be long. The king will be hysterical after this. First he will blame Richard and make all sorts of useless threats that he cannot fulfill. Then, after another defeat or two, when he realizes he is helpless and is being beaten, he will turn his hatred on those who put him into this case.”

  “But until then you will be at war?” Her voice was tight with fear.

  Simon hesitated, but he said, at last, “Yes, Rhiannon. It is my duty.”

  “I will not try to turn you from it,” she assured him. “I am not that foolish. But I must be near, Simon. I cannot stay at Angharad’s Hall or Dinas Emrys. I must be near. I will stay where you tell me and will not add to your danger—so long as it be close enough that you can come to me—or I to you—when the battle is over, soon after the battle is over.”

  Simon burst out laughing. “Soon enough that I still desire to couple? Am I so worthless at other times?”

  “Simon, it is no jest. When I am near, I am not afraid.”

  “I understand, eneit, believe me, I understand,” he assured her, still smiling. “I will take you with me whenever I can, right into the camp. Was it that? Was that why you turned away from me? Or was it something I did? I must know, lest I drive you away again.”

  “No, that will never happen. I told you so many times that it was not you, but I who was at fault. You see, I never loved anyone except my mother and father and I—I only loved them as a child loves.”

  “I do not understand.”

  “It is so hard to make plain,” she sighed. “A child thinks its elders are invulnerable. A child does not believe in death. When Gwydyon, my grandfather, died and I saw my mother’s heart torn, I must have learned a dreadful fear, so dreadful that I closed off my own heart.”

  “I see. But then you agreed. What changed your mind after that?”

  “I never really agreed. I was pretending to myself that if we did not marry, I would feel less. It is stupid to lie to oneself, but fear makes one stupid. As for what frightened me away altogether—I met your family.”

  “But they loved you, Rhiannon.”

  “I know it. I felt it. That was what frightened me so much. You see, they were all real people, not like my mother and father, whom I still saw with my child’s eye and therefore never thought of as growing old or susceptible to any danger. I heard your father’s harsh breathing—” She stopped because Simon winced, and she kissed him softly.

  “Now I see better what you mean,” he said grimly. “I prefer to think of Papa as invulnerable, too.”

  “Yes, but I could not. And I saw how Gilliane fears for Adam—”

  “Which is about as sensible as fearing Roselynde will be washed away in the rain. Adam is a bull.”

  “Yes, I saw that, too, but her fear hurt me. And I worried about Sybelle and Walter… Everything hurt me. When I began to love you, my shell was forced open, and I was all soft inside. All I could think of was to run away.”

  “Poor love,” Simon crooned, stroking her and laughing softly. “And then you found you could not run away from love.”

  “Yes, but how did you know?”

  “I have tried it too, of course, but I always go back to Roselynde—and run away again.”

  “I made a song. When we go home to Dinas Emrys, I will sing it to you.”

  Those were beautiful words, home to Dinas Emrys. They would visit the other keeps, but Dinas Emrys above the Vale of Waters with the voice-laden winds was the right home for the witch-woman and her lover.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  I wish to apologize to my readers for the use of feudal terminology in discussing political and social relationships in thirteenth-century Wales. I am well aware that feudal relationships were only beginning to appear among the Welsh at that time (except, of course, in the English- or rather, Norman-dominated areas). However, I felt that a satisfactory explanation of the political operation of clan and blood ties could not be given without impeding the story; after all, this is a historical novel, not a textbook. Thus, I chose deliberately to use a terminology with which my readers have become familiar, and I hope I will be pardoned for the anachronism.

  Again, as usual, Simon and Rhiannon and their families (except for Prince Llewelyn ap Iowerth) and servants are fictional, as are the individual adventures in which the fictional characters are involved. However, any major event in which the historical characters, such as Prince Llewelyn, Hubert de Burgh, or Richard Marshal, Earl of Pembroke, take part is a real historical event. These I have described as accurately as possible, even if the description is given through the eyes of a fictional character.

  To the best of my ability I have also presented living conditions in the period realistically. However, this necessitates a peculiar balancing act. In actuality thirteenth-century living conditions were unclean and uncomfortable. For example, all people, including the nobility, who bathed when convenient, were afflicted with fleas and lice. Sanitary conditions were appalling. It was not unusual to throw unwanted bits of food such as bone or gristle into the rushes that covered the floor where cats, dogs, rats, and mice, along with an incredible variety of insects, scavenged the remains. Much woolen clothing was worn, and this might be washed only once or twice in a year, although the linen might be done more frequently or special circumstances might produce an extra scouring.

  Yet, to the people who lived in these conditions, there was nothing extraordinary about them. They did not consider themselves dirty or uncomfortable, except in unusual circumstances. Therefore, to make a point of the discomfort of medieval life in comparison with our own is to falsify the conditions more surely than to ignore them or mention them lightly and in passing.

  Thus, I do not dwell on the dreadful fact that sixty percent of all children born died before they were two years of age, mostly of typhus or typhoid, and nearly thirty percent of all women died in childbirth. Nor do I emphasize the minor dismaying differences, such as the chilblains everyone, high and low, suffered in winter, or that human as well as animal excrement was carefully collected to be used as fertilizer, or the myriad other habits that would horrify a modern person.

  If man survives into the future without any of the catastrophes that now threaten us actually overtaking us, our descendants may well feel the same horror when they look back on the primitive conditions in which we live. As we are not aware of what we lack, neither were medieval people. They were happy or sad as extraordinary circumstances affected them—good and bad masters, love and hate, war and peace—and I have tried to show them as nearly as possible as they were.

  Roberta Gellis

  Lafayette, IN

  Glossary

  BALLISTA: a gigantic crossbow that hurled huge arrows.

  BARON: a man who held land in exchange for doing military service to the king or another superior noble; in medieval times the term was general and applied to the greatest as well as t
o minor noblemen.

  BETROTHAL: the engagement of a man or woman in a contract of marriage; a legal condition far more binding than a modern “engagement”.

  BLIAUT: a low-necked gown, usually laced on the sides to fit the body, and worn over a tunic; in summer it would be sleeveless and in winter it would have wide sleeves that showed the tight-fitting sleeves of the tunic.

  CASTELLAN: the governor or constable of a castle, assigned at the will of the “holder” of the castle and liable to removal at the holder’s will. There were some cases of hereditary castellanships.

  CHAUSSES: a garment much like modern pantyhose, except that chausses were sewn, not knitted, and therefore were not form-fitting; they were tied at the waist with a drawstring and fitted to the legs with cross garters.

  COMPLINE: approximately 9:00 to 10:00 p.m.

  CRENAL: an indentation in an embattled parapet; the opening, about knee height, in a battlement through which archers could shoot.

  CROSS GARTERS: long, thin strips of cloth or leather that were wrapped crosswise around the leg and tied below the knee to prevent the chausses from bagging excessively.

  CYFLYM: “swift” in Welsh; the name of Rhiannon’s mare.

  CYMRY: the Welsh people; this is what the Welsh called themselves in their own language.

  DESTRIER: a war horse, a highly bred and highly trained animal.

  DINNER: the main meal of the day, served usually from about 11 a.m. or a little later and lasting sometimes as long as several hours.

  DISSEISE: to put out of possession; to dispossess a person from his estates in such a way that his legal heirs were also disqualified from inheriting; the term was usually used when the dispossession was wrongful.

  FEBRIFUGE: a medication to reduce fever.