Time and Chance

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

May 1165

Trefriw, North Wales

War had come to Wales, but the first battle was being fought in the great hall of Rhodri’s manor in the hills above Trefriw. The summons from the English king had erupted in their midst with devastating impact, as incendiary as Greek fire and as difficult to extinguish. For days now, the quarrel had raged and showed no signs of abating. Rhodri had argued with Ranulf until his voice cracked. Eleri had been reduced to angry tears more than once, and Celyn had overcome his natural reticence to plead with surprising passion. Even the self-absorbed Enid had roused herself to observe that it would be folly to obey the summons, for if Ranulf fought against the Welsh, he would alienate his family and friends and neighbors beyond forgiving.

Ranulf already knew that. He was painfully aware how high the stakes were. If he answered the summons, he was likely to forfeit all that he held most dear in this life. But if he did not? Disloyalty to his king was a sin of such magnitude that it was almost beyond his comprehension. It went to the very core of his integrity, his identity. He had supported his sister over Stephen and never wavered in that allegiance because Maude’s claim was just and Stephen’s was not, even after it cost him the woman he loved. Harry was his liege lord, his blood kin. Could he betray that bond-and live with it afterward?

An exhausted truce had finally fallen and dinner was served in a dismal silence. As it was a Friday fast day, their cook had broiled a large pike, taken from the manor’s fish pond. Swimming in a pungent mustard sauce, fresh pike was a delicacy. But now much of it went untouched; only the younger children seemed to have an appetite. Rhodri was pushing his fish around on his trencher with his knife, Rhiannon intent upon feeding Morgan, Celyn crumbling a crust of the bread baked to cater to Ranulf ’s English tastes, and Ranulf slipping surreptitious mouthfuls of pike to Blaidd, his Norwegian dyrehund.

Eleri was the one to crack first, flinging her napkin down with an oath. “For the love of God, Ranulf, look around you! This is your home. For fifteen years, your home. How can you throw it all away like this? If you love my sister as you claim, you must-”

Rhiannon let her get no further. “Eleri, enough! I do not need you to speak for me. We’ve heard you out, each one of you. You’ve had your say. Now let it be. When Ranulf decides what he must do, we will tell you. Till then, this serves for naught.”

Ranulf’s throat tightened; what had he done to deserve this woman? But even as he reached for his wife’s hand, their son sprang to his feet, shoving his chair back so violently that it toppled over. “I’ve not had my say!” Gilbert’s face was flushed, his voice unsteady. “If you answer the English king’s summons, you are betraying Lord Owain!”

“Ah, lad,” Ranulf said softly, “if only it were that simple.”

“I will be fourteen by year’s end, so do not treat me like a child! At fourteen, I will be old enough to fight against our enemies-against the English! And if you fight with them, you’ll be the enemy, too!”

Gilbert’s voice choked and he wheeled, bolting for the door as Ranulf jumped to his feet and Rhiannon cried out his name. The boy reached the door just as it opened and he collided head-on with Hywel, whose arrival out in the bailey had gone unnoticed in all the uproar. Gilbert staggered backward and Hywel caught his arm as if to steady him, effectively blocking his flight.

“Easy, lad,” he said with a smile. “The last time I saw someone move this fast, his tunic was on fire. Is dinner done then?”

Gilbert tried to wrench free and failed; over the youth’s head, Hywel’s eyes sought Ranulf’s in a silent question. Ranulf hesitated, then slowly nodded. Better to give the lad some time to calm down. But he knew that he was deluding himself. An eternity’s worth of time was not likely to bring Gilbert around to his way of thinking.

Hywel’s arrival had defused the tension, at least temporarily. Accepting Enid’s invitation to dine with them, he kept them entertained with the latest court gossip, then shared the more serious news-that the English king had returned from Normandy, doubtless upon learning of Davydd ab Owain’s raid into Tegeingl. Moving with his usual lightning speed, Henry had led a quick expedition to relieve his castles at Rhuddlan and Basingwerk, then withdrew back across the border to organize a full-scale invasion intended for that summer. When Rhodri said glumly that they already knew of the English king’s plans for war, Hywel showed no surprise. His father’s surveillance system rivaled, if not surpassed, those of the English and French kings and the exiled Archbishop of Canterbury, and within a day of Ranulf ’s royal summons, Owain had known about it.

As the evening wore on, a patchy, pale mist drifted in from the Menai Straits, slowly engulfing the river valley and eventually reaching the hillside manor above Trefriw. One by one, the family members retired for the night, and Hywel’s men bedded down in the hall. A fire burned erratically in the hearth as the last of the log was consumed. By midnight, the only ones still awake were Hywel and Ranulf.

Reaching for the flagon, Ranulf emptied it into their cups. “I think there is more mead in the buttery.”

“Then I’d better fetch it, for if you stagger off in search of the buttery, God only knows where you’ll end up.”

“Are you implying that I’ve had too much to drink, Hywel?”

“No… I’d say you have not had enough. If you are going to drown your troubles, you might as well do it right. The aim is to blot out all the voices.”

“What voices?”

“The voice of reason, to start with. Then the voice of conscience. But we’ve only had two flagons… or was it three? Based on my experience, it will take at least four. The conscience, in particular, floats like a cork… devilishly difficult to drown.”

Ranulf laughed, but it had a sad sound to it. “You think I’m a fool, don’t you?”

“No…”

“That was not a very convincing denial,” Ranulf complained and Hywel submerged a grin in his mead cup.

“Indeed, you are no fool. In fact, you are about as far from a fool as a man can get. Is that better?”

“But…?”

“But you do have a few bad habits-one of which is that you invariably hope for the best instead of preparing for the worst. Our people have a saying, Ranulf, that you ought to take to heart: that it is dangerous to run with the hares and hunt with the hounds.”

“When you say ‘our people,’ Hywel, that does still include me?”

Hywel set his cup down in surprise. “Of course. You’re Welsh by choice as well as by blood-your besotted loyalty to the English king notwithstanding!”

Ranulf knew that the other man was joking, but it was difficult for him to find much humor in his plight. “I understand why your father and Rhys ap Gruffydd and the others have rebelled, God’s Truth, I do. How could I blame them for wanting to free Wales from a foreign yoke?”

“But you also understand why Henry feels compelled to crush that rebellion.”

Ranulf nodded miserably. “Yes,” he admitted, “I do. As king, he has no choice.” He snatched up his mead cup and drained it, too fast. “I understand too much for my own damned good.” Shoving the empty cup across the table, he leaned forward, cradling his head on his arms. “But God help me, for I still do not know what I will do…”

Hywel finished his own drink, then reached for a spare blanket on a nearby bench. Draping it over Ranulf’s shoulders, he stood for a moment, gazing down at his sleeping friend. “God help you,” he murmured, “for you do know…”

Hywel departed the next day, as did Eleri and Celyn and their children. Quiet settled over the manor like a tattered, faded quilt, too worn to offer much comfort. On Sunday, Ranulf’s family heard Mass at Llanrhychwyn, a small church nestled in the hills above Trefriw. Ranulf loved this whitewashed stone chapel shadowed by towering yew trees; it was here that he and Rhiannon had been wed on Shrove Tuesday fifteen years ago. As the parishioners filed out into the cool May sunlight, he caught Rhiannon’s hand and led her toward a corner of the churchyard. There were tombstones there, green with moss, and the woodland scents perfumed their every breath. When he described for her a hawk gliding on the air currents high above their heads, Rhiannon smiled and then said, “You are going to answer the English king’s summons.”

He plucked a dandelion from a grave and crushed it into a golden dustfall. “Yes,” he said, “I am. If I am with Harry, mayhap I can convince him to settle for less, a victory that does not leave Wales awash in blood.”

She wondered why Harry would heed him in Wales when he had not at Northampton. But there was nothing to be gained by pointing that out. “Do what you must,” she said wearily, for if there was pain, there was no surprise. She’d known from the first what he would do.

“Rhiannon… I am sorry. I know what I risk. Whatever the outcome of this war, it seems likely that I’ll no longer be welcome in Wales.”

“Hush,” she said, putting her fingers up to his lips. “We can only cross one river at a time.”

“I know… ‘Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof,’ ” he agreed, reaching for her hand. Although they both knew there was nothing more to be said, they lingered a while longer in the churchyard, midst the familiar sounds of spring and the enduring silence of the dead.

The day had begun with a sunburst dawn the color of molten gold, but as the afternoon advanced, dark clouds gathered along the horizon and the June warmth soon slipped away. Usually men on a hunt were boisterous and rowdy, but this hunt had been different from the first. Their quarry was a large male wolf that had been killing sheep in Herefordshire and Shropshire, so light in color it had become known as the “grey ghost.” While wolves were often hunted in France par force de chiens-by strength of hounds-in England they were looked upon more as pests than prey, and men were commonly hired to set traps and snares when villagers complained to their liege lord of slain livestock. But as soon as Henry heard about the grey ghost’s depredations, he had determined to hunt the creature down, insisting that a wolf could not be permitted to roam the countryside at will; today it was taking lambs, but on the morrow it might carry off a child.

Henry’s companions knew the real reason for his sudden hunting fervor: he was growing bored and restless at Ludlow Castle, impatient to speed up the preparations for next month’s invasion of Wales. The others showed little enthusiasm for tracking a wolf, an animal generally viewed with unease. But Henry was not to be denied, and a hunting party was soon galloping west into Herefordshire.

The grey ghost proved to be well named, elusive and spectral. Although the dogs had been able to pick up its scent at its latest kill, the trail soon petered out. The men finally halted in a clearing for a meal of dried beef, washed down with ale. A would-be poacher crept closer to observe them, seeing more than two dozen men sprawling in the shade, sweat-stained and muddied. He knew they must be men of rank, their dishevel ment notwithstanding, for hunting with hounds was the sport of the highborn. But he’d have been stunned had he known that he was spying upon England’s king, the Earls of Leicester, Cornwall, and Chester, the Bishop of Worcester, and the king’s out-of-wedlock kin, Ranulf and Hamelin. Deciding to postpone his own hunting for a safer day, he made a stealthy retreat, as soundlessly as the great grey wolf itself.

Rainald announced he was going to “take a piss,” shrugging off the inevitable round of ribald jokes about the dangers of stinging nettles. When he returned, he headed toward a large oak and dropped down into the grass beside his younger brother.

“I’d rather be hunting any prey but wolves,” he grumbled. “There’s no sport in it since they won’t turn at bay the way a boar does. And if that were not enough, the wretched creature has a poisonous bite.”

Ranulf swiveled around to stare at him. “Where did you hear nonsense like that?”

“It is not nonsense,” Rainald insisted. “All know it to be true, most likely because they eat toads.”

“Next you’ll be telling me that a man who eats chickens will start to lay eggs,” Ranulf scoffed, laughing in spite of himself.

Rainald grinned triumphantly. “I knew I could get a smile out of you if I tried.”

“I do not have much reason for smiling these days, Rainald.”

“I keep telling you this war with Wales will be over in a fortnight. The Welsh princes will submit, as they always do, and Harry will pardon them, and we’ll all go home. Ere you know it, you’ll be back on that Welsh mountain of yours, counting your sheep or whatever you do to pass the time.”

Ranulf knew better. A sudden burst of laughing echoed across the clearing and he turned toward the sound.

“That was a most unseemly joke for a bishop to be telling,” Henry declared, frowning in mock disapproval at his cousin.

“So why did you laugh at it?” Roger queried innocently, and Henry grinned.

“So I’d not hurt your feelings, of course.” Getting to his feet, he sauntered across the glade toward his uncles. “Why are the two of you hiding over here? Surely you’re not still brooding about the Welsh matter, Ranulf? I assure you that I want you there merely as an interpreter and peacemaker once the fighting is done. As well as you know Owain Gwynedd, you’re the best man for-”

The rest of his sentence was lost in a sudden clap of thunder. The horses stirred uneasily and Rainald lumbered to his feet. “Enough is enough, Harry. We’ve been chasing this phantom wolf for half a day and all we have to show for it are saddle sores and sweat. I’m damned if I’ll get drowned in the bargain, too. I say we go back to Ludlow.”

“I’ve never heard of a man melting in the rain like a lump of sugar, Uncle,” Henry scoffed, but the other men then added their voices to Rainald’s, and he reluctantly agreed that the hunt was over. Mounting up, they headed toward the east, toward Ludlow.

But the approaching storm outran their lathered horses, and they found themselves caught in a drenching downpour while the castle was still miles away. Rain pelting their faces like liquid needles, seeping down the necks of their tunics, collecting in the brims of their hats, they were soon thoroughly miserable and arguing that they ought to find the closest shelter. Henry merely laughed at their complaints. Then the storm intensified. Half deafened by thunder, flinching each time lightning seared the black-smoke sky above their heads, the men struggled to control their skittish stallions and urged Henry to reconsider.

By now even Henry was impressed by the fury of the elements. But when his brother Hamelin suggested that they head for Avreton, where the Marcher lord Fitz Hugh had a castle, he balked. “Ludlow is only four or five miles past Avreton. We’re already soaked to the skin, so we might as well press on toward-”

Lightning forked from the clouds, shooting earthward with a blinding flash. There was a bang and then the smell of burning wood as a nearby tree was riven in two. The accompanying crack of thunder filled their world with reverberating, roaring sound, and in the ensuing chaos, one of the Earl of Leicester’s squires was thrown from his panicked horse.

The boy’s face was pasty-white under a smear of mud and a drizzle of blood. “I am sorry, my liege,” he gasped as Henry knelt by his side. “I think I’ve broken my arm…”

“You’ll be all right, lad,” Henry said reassuringly. Straightening up, he blotted rain from his face with a soggy sleeve. “Well, you milksops win,” he said. “Avreton it is.”

Avreton perched on top of a steep, rocky hill, on the Herefordshire side of the River Thames, just west of the tiny village of Boiton. A deep ditch encircled the outer bailey, a narrow causeway in the south-east side giving entry to the castle. As the men rode into a small inner bailey, a woman teetered on the steps of the great hall, flanked by servants. She was clad in an oversized mantle that enveloped her from head to toe and seemed loath to brave the storm. But from the moment that the king’s identity had been shouted up to the guards upon the ramparts, events had taken on a momentum of their own. By the time they dismounted, she had overcome her reluctance and was gingerly edging around the muddi est puddles toward them.

“My liege, I… I am so honored,” she stammered. “My lord husband is not here, for he rode to Ludlow this morn upon learning of your presence there. He… he will be back soon, I think…”

Henry was accustomed to having this effect upon people. “Lady Fitz Hugh,” he said, kissing her hand with a courtliness that would have amused Eleanor enormously. “One of our men has been hurt. We need to get him inside.”

Deftly steering the flustered woman toward the hall, he supervised the move of the injured squire, while the Fitz Hugh servants hastened to lead the horses to the shelter of the stables. The rest of the hunting party and their dogs followed Henry and their fretful hostess into the hall, where confusion soon reigned. Amice Fitz Hugh was so obviously incapable of taking charge that Henry found himself giving the necessary orders: sending a rider out into the storm to fetch a doctor from Ludlow, instructing servants to heat water and stoke the fire so that they could wash up and dry their sopping clothes.

Amice, a thin, wan woman dressed in an unbecoming shade of grey, relaxed somewhat once she saw that these royal intruders were on their good behavior and she even ventured to offer a timid invitation. “If you would care to stay the night, my liege, we would be so honored.. ”

Henry stifled a smile, for she’d used the word “honored” in virtually every sentence since their arrival. “That is most generous, Lady Fitz Hugh, but we do not wish to disrupt your household any more than necessary. If you can put the lad here up for a day or two, that is more than enough. We’ll be on our way as soon as the storm lets up.”

Amice demurred politely, her relief obvious. Turning her attention then to the ailing squire, she showed unexpected skill in soothing the boy’s fears. He became noticeably less agitated under her ministrations and even perked up enough to ask the identity of a girl just entering the hall. Amice glanced over her shoulder, then gave a shrug. “My younger sister,” she said dismissively.

She was alone, though, in her indifference to her sister’s entrance. Every male eye in the hall was upon the newcomer as soon as she shed her mantle, revealing a crown of curly blond tresses only partially covered by a crookedly pinned veil, and a surprisingly voluptuous body for one barely five feet. Her face was heart-shaped, her skin flawless and fair, and when she smiled, the squire momentarily forgot the pain of his broken arm. Hugh de Gernons, the young Earl of Chester, trampled on several toes in his haste to reach her side. But his gallantry was wasted, for her response was polite but preoccupied; from the moment she’d hurried into the hall, the only man she seemed to see was Henry.

Henry had noticed her, too; he always had an eye for a pretty girl. This particular pretty girl seemed vaguely familiar, though. Where had he seen her before? Ranulf was wondering the same thing. The memory was somehow connected with his son Gilbert, but it was as evasive as the wolf they’d been chasing all day. Henry’s memory proved more reliable. “Woodstock,” he said suddenly. “Clifford’s little lass

… of course!”

Ranulf now remembered, too. “The girl you rescued out in the gardens. I knew I’d seen her somewhere. Well… she has grown up for certes, has she not?”

“That she has,” Henry agreed and moved to meet her. “Mistress Rosamund, this is indeed a welcome surprise. How is it that you happen to be at Avreton?”

“You remember me!” Her smile was blinding. “Amice is my sister-”

“Rosamund?” Amice was staring at the girl in disbelief. “You know the king?”

“Mistress Rosamund and I met at Woodstock two summers ago,” Henry said smoothly, “and it is a pleasure to be able to renew our acquaintance.”

“You are staying?” Rosamund entreated. “At least for supper?”

Amice started to shake her head, but Henry forestalled her. “Yes, we’re staying. Thank you, Lady Fitz Hugh, for your generous offer of hospitality.” He was speaking to Amice, but smiling at Rosamund Clifford.

Rosamund offered to nurse Giles, the injured squire, until a doctor arrived from Ludlow, and stirred up massive envy in the younger men each time she gently bathed his face with a wet cloth or rubbed salve into his gashed forehead. Amice excused herself to change into her best gown, but Rosamund didn’t bother. Utterly unself-conscious in her faded everyday blue homespun, she seemed to have a remarkable lack of vanity for a young woman of such striking appearance. Neither flustered nor flattered by all the male attention she was receiving, she conscientiously tended to Giles until supper was served, but she so rarely took her eyes off Henry that even the most smitten of her swains, the Earl of Chester, could not help but notice. Some of the men began to joke amongst themselves that the king was about to make a conquest ere he even set foot in Wales, but the bawdy humor was curiously muted. If Rosamund’s bedaz zlement with Henry was innocently obvious, so too was she obviously innocent, and even men who normally took a predatory attitude toward women found themselves feeling unexpectedly protective of this one.

Supper that evening was a surprisingly festive affair for men who were soon to ride off to war. Jokes flew along the length of the table, and the hunt for the grey ghost was spun out for Rosamund’s benefit-greatly embellished, of course. The last course of roasted capon had just been served when Osbern Fitz Hugh arrived, accompanied by the doctor and his father-in-law, the Marcher lord Walter Clifford, who had joined the king at Ludlow several days ago. Amice Fitz Hugh had so far been sparing with wine and ale, for her husband was notorious for his frugality, not an admired trait in a man of rank. But the brash, overbearing Clifford would have none of that and immediately sent servants to raid the buttery. Wine was soon flowing freely and the only men in the hall not enjoying themselves were Fitz Hugh, who had to watch helplessly as his wine kegs were drained one by one, and Ranulf, whose thoughts kept stubbornly dwelling upon the coming bloodshed.

A harp and a lute were produced, and the members of the hunting party took tipsy turns dancing with Amice, her two ladies, and Rosamund. When Henry’s brother Hamelin tripped and nearly lurched into the fire while trying to show Rosamund a new version of the carol, Henry declared that one broken arm per hunt was more than enough and put a stop to the drunken dancing. Walter Clifford then announced that his youngest daughter would sing for the king. Rosamund’s reluctance was painful to the more sober amongst them, but her father was not a man to be gainsaid, certainly not by the females of his household, and she was soon obediently perched on a stool, clutching a harp. While she’d shown herself to be a graceful dancer, she’d not been blessed with a strong singing voice. Her song was hesitantly delivered, barely audible at times, and occasionally off-key. Nonetheless, she reaped a round of enthusiastic applause when she was done and only Henry’s merciful intervention saved her from the cries for more.

Sitting in a window seat, an untouched cup of wine in his hand, Ranulf watched the revelries and wondered how many of these men would be dead in a month’s time. The cockiness of the English notwithstanding, he was convinced that this war would be a protracted, bloody one. And whoever won, he would be the loser.

“There you are, Ranulf.” Henry sprawled beside him in the window seat, showing no ill effects from a day in the saddle, and not for the first time Ranulf marveled at his nephew’s almost inexhaustible store of energy. Laughing, Henry gestured with his wine cup toward Rosamund. “I could become fond of that lass. She looks as if she’s made of moonlight and gossamer, but she’s not all sugar. There is salt there, too. When I complimented her on her singing, she blurted out that I must be stone-deaf!”

Ranulf gave him a sideways glance. “So,” he said, “when is Eleanor’s babe due?”

Henry grimaced and then grinned. “Subtle, Uncle, very subtle indeed. I need no such reminders, for Eleanor is the last woman in Christendom a man could ever forget. But all wives should be as wise as she is. She knows full well that a man with an itch is going to scratch it, as she once bluntly put it.”

“I was not worrying about Eleanor. I was thinking of the girl. She is an innocent, Harry, and each time you smile at her, she glows like a flower that has been starved for the sun.”

“You’ve been living in Wales too long, Ranulf. Damn me if you’re not getting downright poetic-starved for the sun?”

Ranulf shrugged. “I’ve had my say. I just never thought you were one for hunting a nesting quail. Where’s the sport in that?”

“Not all hunts are done for sport, Uncle.” But even as he mocked Ranulf, Henry’s gaze wandered back toward Rosamund. As their eyes met, she smiled, then blushed, and after a moment, he sighed regretfully. “Hellfire… you’re right, I know. A lass’s maidenhead ought not to be sacrificed for a night’s pleasure-even if the pleasure was to be mine. I’d not want to jeopardize her chances of making a good marriage.”

“What is this talk about marriage?” Rainald demanded, weaving toward them so unsteadily that they hastily made room for him in the window seat.

“I was just taking counsel with the king’s conscience,” Henry said, unable to resist a good-natured jab at his uncle, whose scruples were both admirable and occasionally inconvenient.

Ranulf smiled, too, with a heartfelt hope that his nephew would listen to the king’s conscience during the war with Wales.

From Ludlow, Henry continued on to Shrewsbury, where his army was assembling. He’d hired mercenaries from Flanders, summoned vassals from Normandy, Anjou, Poitou, and Aquitaine as well as England, and had even arranged for the services of a fleet with the Danes of Dublin. By the end of July, he was ready to take the offensive, and the largest English army ever to invade Wales crossed into Powys, heading for the town known as Oswestry by the Welsh and Blancminster by the English. Owain Gwynedd and the other Welsh princes awaited their coming at Corwen in the vale of Edeyrnion.