A Gift Of Sanctuary

Thirteen

Owen’s pacing took him through the inner ward and towards the practice yard. Divine inspiration it must have been, for Harold and Simwnt were loading several empty barrels into a cart cushioned with a good mound of hay.

‘Are you going far?’ Owen asked, interrupting an argument about whose clumsiness had caused a barrel to drop out of the cart on to Harold’s foot.

Simwnt turned round at the sound of Owen’s voice, his face brightening. ‘Captain Archer! God go with you, Captain. We are on a mission for you, truth be told.’

Harold made a great show of leaning against the cart, yanking off his left boot, and rubbing his foot. ‘I will not hold you responsible, Captain,’ he muttered.

Owen laughed, recognising a friendly quarrel. ‘I am glad of that, for I know nothing of your mission.’

‘No?’ Harold eased his boot back on. ‘We are after the bows for your recruits.’

‘Aye,’ Simwnt agreed. ‘The constable is in a foul mood about the bowyer who is late with the bows we ordered. Turns out the bows are ready but the bowyer’s cart is missing a wheel. He will not be paid if he is much later, and being kin, I thought to give him a hand. He is a good man and a fine bowyer.’

‘And you enjoy riding out into the countryside,’ Owen added.

‘It is not such a pleasure as you may think,’ Harold said. ‘But with matters as they are here-’ He dropped his voice, shook his head. ‘The castle is a place to be clear of.’

‘There is a search?’

‘Aye,’ said Simwnt. ‘They have searched for the vicar, now the maid Gladys. No one saw her leave the castle, you see.’

‘She being one the porter would remember seeing,’ Harold said with a wink.

Owen was pleased to find them playing into his hands. ‘Would you welcome a companion on your journey?’ he asked.

‘You feel the gloom as well,’ Harold said.

‘I would not call it gloom.’ Owen motioned for both to step round to the far side of the cart. ‘Would two companions burden you? Myself riding alongside the cart and one snug in the hay?’

Simwnt frowned down at the ground. ‘You are proposing trouble, Captain.’

Owen could not deny that. ‘I am wrong to ask such a thing of you.’ He began to walk away.

‘Stay a moment,’ Simwnt said. ‘Would the other companion be the fair Gladys?’

Owen slowed, turned. ‘It might.’

‘She is one enjoys a nice bit of hay,’ Harold said, nudging Simwnt.

‘I wish to take her to safety,’ Owen said, ‘not toss her into your lustful arms.’

‘Why would you be sneaking her out?’ Simwnt asked. ‘You are not of the mind she was the murderer? It took strength to do so much damage.’

‘It is for her protection. More than that I cannot say.’

Simwnt and Harold exchanged glances. ‘How far would you be going?’ Harold asked.

‘Not far.’ Owen described the valley in which his brother lived.

Simwnt nodded. ‘We shall bring the cart round to the guesthouse shortly.’

Gladys threw her arms round Owen. She smelled of sweat and the morning’s ale. ‘I shall work hard for them, make them glad they have taken me in.’

Owen winced. Now that the first flush of a brilliant idea had faded, he was feeling less optimistic about her welcome in Morgan’s home. While not in her presence he was able to imagine it, but now, watching her suggestive movements, her pouting expressions, the flutter of her lashes. Sweet Jesu, how could he fool his brother? ‘We do not know that my brother will agree to this. If you are right about your danger, my brother may think it is too much of a risk to ask of him. His first duty is to his family.’

Head tilted, hip thrust to the side — in another woman such gestures suggested far less — Gladys pouted, then quickly smiled. ‘How could your brother be less Christian than you? Did you not suckle at the same breast?’

Owen felt his face grow hot at the last word. ‘Morgan goes his own way, Gladys. I do warn you of that.’

‘I have been warned. And I trust that God will continue to watch over me.’

As a man, no doubt the Lord would watch over her. But there were things Owen might suggest. ‘My brother is a very devout man, Gladys. You must not — flaunt yourself so with him.’ He felt his face redden. He was glad Geoffrey was still out.

But Gladys took his hand, pressed it firmly. ‘I swear to you that I shall be to him a chaste virgin with no thought of men, Captain.’ Her lashes fluttered.

He must be blunt. ‘You must meekly bow your head and keep your hands and body as still as possible.’

Gladys immediately took the stance.

‘Your gown. Do you have a scarf?’

Gladys surprised him by blushing as she raised her hands to cover her cleavage. ‘I have one, but I dare not return to my mistress’s apartment for it.’

They improvised with one of the squares of cloth with which Geoffrey cleaned his hands of ink.

Harold and Simwnt had been disappointed when Owen warned them that any conversation with Gladys might jeopardise her safety, and thus she must stay hidden in the hay throughout the journey. But Harold cheered himself and Simwnt with the observation that Gladys would be forever grateful to them.

Sitting high on the seat of the cart, their horses tethered behind, Harold and Simwnt whiled away the time with gossip of the garrison. Owen, riding close beside them, found one item of particular interest.

‘Bad luck if that priest has fled,’ Harold said. ‘We will lose our wager.’

‘Aye. I should know by now clerics are a sly lot,’ said Simwnt.

It seemed they had both expected the constable to attack Edern on his return, for the priest had persuaded Burley’s mistress to return to her husband a few years earlier.

‘He cannot forget her, you see,’ Simwnt explained. ‘Beautiful and spirited was Mererid. He says he has not seen her like since.’

Owen found it an odd thing for Edern to have done.

‘He won his comfortable post as a vicar in St David’s by the good deed,’ Harold said. ‘Mererid’s husband is brother to a white monk who has the ear of many of the archdeacons of St David’s.’

Owen remembered the white monk who had pretended sleep at the vicar’s house in the close. Had Edern now come on another mission for Brother Dyfrig?

When they arrived at the farm, Elen was puzzled by Owen’s request to take the cart into the barn.

‘You fear a thief might drive it away while we are within?’ She smiled. ‘I heard it long before I saw it.’ But at his insistence she tucked the baby Luc on to her hip and led them to the barn.

Once within, Owen called to Gladys to sit up. It took a bit of poking to find her, then some shaking to waken her. As she sat up and got her bearings, Owen explained her presence to a mystified Elen.

‘From the castle?’ Elen shook her head. ‘Morgan will not like this. He has little respect for the steward since he took to wife a traitor’s daughter.’

Owen had forgotten that in his concern about Gladys’s behaviour. Sweet Jesus, he had been a fool to begin this.

Gladys looked from Owen to Elen with a frightened expression. ‘I pray you, good lady, I cannot go back. It is the steward I fear, and his wife.’

Was she at last telling the truth, Owen wondered, or was she just a skilled manipulator?

Elen looked on Gladys with sympathy. ‘I shall try to convince my husband. Come within and have some refreshment.’

‘It is best that she stay in the barn until the three of us leave with the cart,’ Owen said. ‘And that Harold and Simwnt watch the barn while I talk to Morgan.’

It was a difficult meeting, to be sure.

As soon as Owen mentioned Gladys’s name and position at the castle, Morgan muttered a curse and Elen’s free hand went out to catch her husband’s arm and muffle the violence with which he brought his fist to the table. She told the older children to go outside.

‘You would ask us to harbour that Magdalen?’ Two red spots burned on Morgan’s pale cheeks.

‘Magdalen?’ Owen repeated, attempting innocence.

‘What do you know of this woman, husband?’ Elen asked.

‘Send her to the Devil,’ Morgan said.

‘Husband!’

‘What do you know of her?’ Owen asked.

‘I go to the Cydweli market, brother.’ Morgan hissed the last word as if it were a curse. His eyes were fixed on Owen’s good eye with frightening intensity, as if any moment now he would go into a fit. ‘She is known to all in the town as the castle whore.’

‘Holy Mary,’ Elen whispered. ‘Is this true, Owen?’

How could he deny it? ‘Elen, forgive me. I had hoped-’

‘To fool us, farmers that we are,’ Morgan said.

‘It is a rumour,’ Owen said. ‘I have seen no proof of such behaviour.’ It was no lie — Geoffrey had witnessed it, but not Owen. ‘I had hoped that you would remember Christ’s championing of Mary Magdalen.’

Morgan muttered to himself, but his stance had subtly softened.

‘What would happen to her if they found her?’ Elen asked.

‘She fears that whoever murdered the chaplain will also wish to murder her. I do not know who committed the deed, so how can I know to whom I might entrust her? It will be on my conscience if anything happens to her.’

‘Why?’ Elen asked. ‘What have you to do with it?’

‘She asked for my protection. I am duty bound to do what I can.’ Was he a fool? She had also begged Geoffrey’s protection — he had not felt so bound.

Morgan sniffed. ‘You express fine feelings for such a woman.’

‘I would welcome some help,’ Elen said softly.

‘You would accept such a woman in our house?’ Morgan asked.

‘What if we judge her unjustly, Morgan? Then she is twice injured, by those who spread lies and by us, who believe them without allowing her to defend herself.’

‘Gossip. Aye.’ Morgan stared down at his hands.

Miraculously, Morgan was softening. Owen could see that Elen’s gifts of persuasion were his best hope. ‘I shall step without and allow you privacy in which to discuss this.’

Owen did not go far. He crouched down just without the shuttered windows to play with an obligingly friendly cat. He had to stay close to the window to hear the conversation over the shouts of the three children at play in the yard.

‘If the rumours are true, Gladys is no worse than her mistress,’ Elen was saying to Morgan. ‘And yet you do not condemn Tangwystl ferch Gruffydd.’

‘Bringing a child to her marriage is not the same as being the castle whore,’ Morgan said. ‘They say Gladys even lies with the priests.’

A brief silence, then Elen spoke again. ‘We might be the agents of her redemption. With whom can she sin in our house?’

‘I do not like it.’

‘If we send her back and she dies. . Oh, Morgan, you could not bear to have her death on your conscience. I know you could not.’

‘How is it my conscience now, wife? I did nothing. I did not ask my brother to bring her here. It is on his conscience.’

Slowly, patiently, Elen managed to wear Morgan down. Young she might be, but Elen had a clear head and stood her ground. Owen thought Lucie would like her.

At last Morgan stepped out into the yard. ‘Come, brother. Let us go to the barn. I shall relieve you of your burden.’

As he rode away, Owen said a prayer for Elen, the peacemaker. He asked God for a small favour — that for Elen’s sake Gladys did nothing to offend Morgan.

Harold hummed a melancholy tune as he drove the cart, his hood up against the rain that had begun abruptly as they reached the track beyond the farm.

Simwnt rode beside Owen. ‘You and your brother are good men to help Gladys. I have never known her so fearful. She is not a woman who takes fright easily.’

Owen was only half-listening, his thoughts on the conversation he had overheard. Tangwystl had a child. He had not heard of it at the castle. Did that mean the child was elsewhere? It was common enough, to send a child to foster parents. Is that where she had gone with the priest? He opened his mouth to ask Simwnt what he knew of it, but changed his mind. Poor Simwnt and Harold had already been burdened with what might be dangerous knowledge. He would involve him no further. But there was a place he might learn more.

‘Do you know where Gruffydd ap Goronwy lives?’ Owen asked, interrupting an inventory of Gladys’s physical virtues. He had intended to ask his brother, but had thought better of it.

‘What? Gruffydd? Oh, aye. The steward gave his wife’s family a comfortable farm. It lies south of the castle, on a bluff above the marsh.’

‘Could I reach it by midday?’

‘Riding hard, aye.’ Simwnt turned in the saddle, gave Owen an appraising look. ‘Milady does not need your escort, Captain. The steward sent a messenger there early this morning. If he found her, she will be on her way home already, I should think.’

‘If someone is following us, I thought I might confuse him,’ Owen said. ‘Force him to choose between you and me.’

Simwnt glanced behind him. ‘You have noticed something?’

‘No. But if he is good, I would not, would I?’

‘Oh, aye.’ Simwnt gave Owen careful directions to Gruffydd’s farm.