Child of the Phoenix (24 page)

‘My dear, the shadow of your father is coming between us,’ he said slowly, taking her hand gently in his. A master of the chivalric art of courtship, he had already plied his betrothed daily with poems and flowers and little gifts of love: scented kerchiefs and ribbons. ‘I cannot bear that to be so.’ He glanced at her solemnly and was touched to see her eyes had filled with tears. ‘There is something you should know, Isabella.’ He lowered his voice even more, so she had to bend close to hear him and he could feel the soft brush of her breath on his brow, see the fine bloom of youth on her rounded cheeks. He felt a sudden rush of desire and had to close his eyes to keep his feelings under control. ‘I know she was your friend, but I have to tell you. It was Eleyne who betrayed your father. He trusted her; he loved her almost as a daughter, and yet she betrayed him.’

There was a long silence. ‘No? Not Elly?’ It was a plea.

‘I am sorry, Isabella. But you would have found out in the end.’

She had cried a little, discreetly, so the chaperones would not see and interrupt their tête-à-tête, then slowly she began to realise what he had said. Eleyne, her friend, had killed her father! Anger replaced the tears, and then fire-spitting fury. ‘How could she! I hate her! I’ll never forgive her!’ She had forgotten, as Dafydd had intended, that her father had not been alone in his sin. That Dafydd’s – and Eleyne’s – mother had been with him, and that they had both been in her bed.

The wedding feast dragged on for hours; course succeeded course, trenchers and plates were piled high with spiced food: sucking pig, swan, hare, pike, quail, partridge, stews, broths, mussels, trout, leek tarts, custards and honey cakes, and cask upon cask of Gascon wine, Welsh mead, ale and whisky were emptied, rolled away and replaced. Beside her husband Isabella was hot, tired and overexcited, and she had begun to feel sick. She stared around the hall uncomfortably, wondering if she should excuse herself again and run to the nearest range of chambers of ease, where she would have to brave a queue of jeering drunken men. It was that or the shame of being sick in the corner. She was still trying to make up her befuddled mind as she stared at the wheels of dripping candles when she found her husband beside her, helping her to her feet. ‘Go, sweetheart. Make ready for me.’ He pushed her gently towards a group of giggling ladies who seemed to be waiting for her. Swaying slightly, she stumbled towards them, only half conscious of the full-throated roar of approval from the prince’s young friends and the chorus of lewd comments from the lower tables.

In the bridal chamber it was quiet and cool after the roar of noise and the heat of the great hall. To the accompaniment of much gentle teasing, Isabella’s clothes were removed by her attendants, her face and body sponged with flower-water and anointed with sweet-smelling salves; her hair was brushed and then she was helped into the high bed, decorated all over with garlands and flowers.

Minutes later, as she caught the silk sheet to her breasts with a little shriek, the door flew open and Dafydd appeared, accompanied by a number of boisterous young men.

Hazily she watched as he tried half-heartedly to escape his friends; she saw him caught and watched, half amused, half afraid as they tore his clothes none too gently from his body. Then he too was naked. She gazed at him in awe. The lithe muscular body was the handsomest thing she had ever seen; and he sported a magnificent erection.

With a cheer the young men pushed him into bed beside her, during which manoeuvre she clutched tightly at the sheet, but they got a more-than-adequate view of the rounded charms of their new princess. Then reluctantly they fell to silence as the figure of the bishop appeared in the doorway, surveying the scene tolerantly. With a smile he walked into the room. ‘
Pax vobiscum
, my children.’ He walked across to the bed.

Isabella closed her eyes as the holy water touched her face and breasts and realised with a sickening wave of nausea that the room was spinning around her. She opened her eyes again, feeling her stomach lurch as, beside her in the bed, she felt with a shock the touch of her husband’s thigh against her own. It seemed a long time before the bishop left the chamber, and with him her maidens and ladies and the prince’s friends, but at last the door closed and they were alone.

With a swift, almost angry movement Dafydd brushed the flowers and ribbons from the bed and threw himself back on the pillows.

‘Sweet Christ! I thought they would never go.’

Reaching out an arm, he caught her shoulder and pulled her towards him. ‘My lovely Isabella – ’

With a groan she pulled away. ‘My lord,’ she started to cry, ‘I’m going to be sick!’ She threw herself from the bed and ran naked to the garderobe.

It was a long time before she returned white-faced and shivering to the chamber. Dafydd was sitting in the bed drinking and gave her a sympathetic grin. ‘Better?’

She nodded sheepishly, catching up a cloak and wrapping it around herself.

‘Here.’ He held out his silver goblet. ‘Rinse your mouth with this. You’ll feel better.’

She did as he bid, spitting ferociously into the ewer in the corner. Then she began to brush her hair.

‘That’ll teach you to mix your wine with mead!’ His teasing voice was just behind her. She jumped. His hands were on her shoulders, peeling away the cloak. ‘Come back to bed now and get warm.’ He was naked too and she found she was trembling with excitement as they went back to the bed and scrambled in.

She liked his kisses. And she liked his hands upon her breasts. She lay passively, feeling strangely guilty that she should so enjoy the sensations of her body. Her mother had told her with a certain grim satisfaction that it would hurt, but this, this was ecstasy and her Dafydd gentle and kind. She opened her eyes sleepily and reached up her lips for another kiss.

They made love three times that night; the first time it did hurt and there was blood, but skilfully he kept her excitement at fever pitch and the second time was better. The third, when she was sated and sleepy, heavy with contentment, was as the first rays of the sun crept across the strewn rose petals on the floor and played across their sprawled bodies. Isabella, the wife of Dafydd ap Llywelyn, was very, very happy.

II
FOTHERINGHAY CASTLE ❖ August 1231

The fever had deepened. Eleyne lay tossing uneasily on her bed. In her delirium she was walking in a valley filled with flowers. With her there was a man with red-gold hair, who took her hand and kissed it and smiled at her with eyes so full of love she found she was crying, her tears warm and wet on her cheeks. Then she woke up, and Rhonwen was sponging her face with rose water and the man had gone and left her alone and she cried again. She barely recognised her husband when he rose from his own sickbed to visit hers.

The castle was hushed, the household concerned for their small countess, of whom most of them were very fond. The pinched face and huge unhappy eyes when she had first arrived had touched many a heart, as had her rare smiles, her concern for others, her careful attention to learning how to oversee them, her occasional irrepressible laughter and her wild uncontrollable rides from which she would return tired but with her spirit refreshed, just such a ride as had, this time, laid her so low.

Working silently in the stillroom, Rhonwen pounded the dried herbs in her mortar, searching her memory for a formula which would break the fever. She had to be so careful. The earl still did not know she had returned; he did not know it was she who had provided the physic which had made him so much better before the king’s doctor had come. He did not know that Eleyne had thrown out the doctor’s medicines, quietly replacing them with Rhonwen’s; that Eleyne had smiled and nodded as the old man took the credit for the earl’s improved health. Now it was happening again, but with Luned and Marared now carrying the potions to the countess’s bedchamber. It was only at night when the castle slept that Rhonwen dared visit the child and smooth back her hair and bathe her wrists and temples with flower water.

She weighed the dried, powdered herbs carefully in her hand scale and poured boiling water over them. Their scent filled the small stillroom, already permeated with the smell of decades of dried herbs and flowers. As soon as the infusion was made she would take it to Eleyne herself. The bell for compline had rung from the nunnery beyond the walls a long time earlier. It would be safe to visit her charge.

Eleyne was asleep, her brow still damp with fever, her hair tangled on the pillow when Rhonwen tiptoed in. Beside her a single lamp burned. Ethil watched over her, dozing in the chair near her bed. She jumped to her feet as Rhonwen appeared. Rhonwen put her finger to her lips. Setting down the flask of liquid, she went to the bed and laid a cool hand on Eleyne’s forehead.

‘The fever is down, Lady Rhonwen,’ Ethil smiled. ‘The earl’s physician says she is getting better at last.’

Rhonwen sniffed. ‘If she is, it is none of his doing. See she gets this four times a day and give her nothing he prescribes. Nothing. Do you understand?’ She stroked Eleyne’s cheek gently. ‘There,
cariad
. You’ll soon be better –’ She broke off as the door behind them opened.

The Earl of Huntingdon stared at Rhonwen for several seconds without speaking, his eyes hard. Then he stepped into the room. ‘So my informant was right. You have sneaked back. What do you think you are doing here, madam?’ He moved towards the bed and looked down at his wife as she murmured restlessly in her sleep.

‘I am taking care of my child!’ Rhonwen took a step back. Her heart was pounding with fear. ‘Please, my lord, let me stay. You can’t send me away, not now, not while she’s ill.’ She dodged back towards Eleyne and stood protectively over her. ‘I’m the one who is curing her. Not your pompous old doctor. He knows nothing.
Nothing!
’ She grabbed Eleyne’s hand and clutched it to her. ‘Who do you think made you better? Who do you think saved your life? It was me!’

John shook his head. His face was dark with anger. ‘Enough! You disobeyed me, woman. I sent you away. I will not have you near my wife!’

‘You can’t make me go …’ Rhonwen clutched Eleyne’s hand more tightly.

‘Oh, indeed I can.’ John turned to Ethil. ‘Call the guard.’

Ethil hesitated. ‘Do as I say, woman!’ His voice hardened. ‘Call the guard. Now.’

Eleyne had awakened. She stared uncomprehendingly at the man and woman who stood over her arguing. Her eyes were unnaturally bright, her face flushed in the candlelight.

‘John –’ Her whisper was hoarse.

He looked at her and his face softened. ‘Hush, my darling. Go back to sleep.’ To Rhonwen he said, ‘I mean it, madam. My physicians are perfectly able to take care of my wife. She does not need your care. You are the reason she is ill! If you had brought her up properly she would not have had this need to ride at all hours of the night! But for you she would have forgotten these nightmares and visions which torment her.’ He swung around as two men-atarms appeared in the doorway. ‘Take this woman away. I want her off my lands by noon tomorrow.’ He glanced at Rhonwen. ‘Go back to Wales. You are not wanted here. If I see you near my wife again it will not go well for you.’

He watched, arms folded, as the two men advanced on Rhonwen. One of them took her arm and she spat at him, her eyes blazing. ‘I shall never forget this, John of Scotland,’ she hissed as she was pulled away from the bedside. ‘Never! One day you will die for this!’

III
August 1231

‘So. Are you better at last?’ The familiar gentle face of her husband swam into focus as Eleyne awoke. She moved painfully on the bed beneath the silk sheet as he put his hand on her forehead. ‘The fever has finally broken.’

Beyond him the room was shadowy. The curtains of the bed were drawn back, the heavy bedcovers gone.

‘Have I been ill a long time?’ She stared round weakly.

‘Indeed you have. You were caught in the storm, do you remember? Cenydd brought you back wet through and before we knew it, it was me visiting you, instead of the other way round.’ After Rhonwen had gone the fever had worsened again and she had grown delirious. He himself had totally recovered. The long summer days and the prolonged rest ordered by the doctor had brought some colour to his cheeks. He was coughing less and, his appetite recovered, had put on weight. Each day he had been riding farther, determined, though he did not admit it even to himself, that when his wife recovered, he would no longer be put to shame in the saddle.

He eyed her slight frame, so painfully thin, with the newly appeared small breasts barely visible mounds beneath the sheet.

He had been frantic with worry as the fever had raged, watching in an agony of helplessness as Ethil and Marared nursed her, holding to her dry burning lips a succession of evil-tasting tinctures and decoctions of herbs which the physician had prescribed for her. And like them, he had listened to her delirious descriptions of the burning of the castle she had witnessed on her ride.

Cenydd, summoned to the earl, had reluctantly told him what had happened.

‘She was sitting on the horse, staring, staring into the darkness, and her eyes were all over the place, watching, watching something I couldn’t see. She was crying and complaining that the smoke was in her eyes and begging me to help. She said there were soldiers stopping the bucket men getting near the river …’ His voice trailed away. ‘But there was nothing there, nothing …’