Rhiannon (41 page)

At midafternoon Echtor sent a messenger to say that the
vanguard of the army had reached Hereford, crossed the Wye, and turned south
again. Simon found this very interesting and went north himself with the man
Echtor had sent. By the time he arrived, it was certain that the group turning
south was no mere work party or scavenging expedition. Simon clicked his tongue
against his teeth in disapproval. If the king and his mercenary leaders had
learned anything from their experiences in August, it was not much. There were
a few outriders at the front of the column to give warning in case a large body
of enemy should appear, but that was all. They would be as easy to rout as
ants.

The baggage train was not yet in sight, but in his mind
Simon was already counting its worth. He told Echtor to wait for it and send
him word of how it was guarded and whatever he could determine of its contents.
As they were speaking, the king and his nobles and mercenary captains rode down
through the marching men and on toward the south. Simon sent two men after
them, but without much hope. If they remained on the road, they would soon
outdistance their followers, and there would be no way to tell which side road
they turned off on, if they turned off at all. However, Simon was not much
worried. Presumably the army would end up wherever the royal party was going.

He did not have to wait that long to find out, however. By
evening one of the men was back with the news that the king and his party had
entered Grosmount. He had struck it lucky on a shortcut he had taken, coming up
on a rise of land quite a distance behind but not so far he could not recognize
the colors of the men entering the keep.

This was news of real moment. The area around Grosmount had
not been attacked by Pembroke. There was a concentration of castles from
Monmouth in the south to Grosmount in the north, all in the control of
Poitevins. It had made the area too dangerous for Pembroke to raid seriously,
and there were probably supplies for the army there. Simon did not think Henry
had pressed the Poitevins hard during the preceding campaign. Now they would
have to victual his army—and that would mean a stay of a day or two, surely
time enough for Llewelyn to mount a surprise attack that might be very
profitable indeed. Simon went to watch Grosmount himself, taking his horse.

To Ymlladd, twenty miles was nothing. As soon as Simon was
sure the army was settling down in the fields surrounding the keep at
Grosmount, he set out for Builth. Shortly after compline he was reporting to
Pembroke and Llewelyn. Fortunately, neither of them had yet been asleep, and
those other leaders who were, were roused as soon as the significance of
Simon’s news was understood. There was an avaricious glitter in Llewelyn’s eyes
and trouble in Pembroke’s by the time Simon had emptied his budget.

“I do not wish to attack without provocation,” Pembroke
began.

“I do.” Llewelyn’s voice cut off any further protest. “This
is an opportunity to do us much good and the king’s forces much harm with
little bloodshed. If you will not come in your own person, so be it. Let the
blame fall on me. However, you have just made an agreement to prosecute a war—”

“Only to fight if attacked. For the king to march his army
here and there is no attack.”

“My lord,” Gilbert Bassett put in, “I know that much of your
trouble is on my account, and I should be accepting of your rule in gratitude,
but the king’s intention is clear. Really, you go too far in patience.”

“The king in his own person is there,” Richard said.

There was a soft sound, almost like a pack of beasts
snarling. Richard sighed. It was all too obvious that no one agreed with him,
that all had abandoned hope of any settlement outside of force, and that the
king’s presence at Grosmount was an inducement rather than a detraction to the
idea of attack. It was also obvious that every man who was not directly his
vassal intended to follow Llewelyn. To withhold his own men, then, would merely
increase the danger for his allies without preventing the action. And most
probably they were right after all. Nonetheless, Richard could not bring
himself personally to lead a surprise attack on the king.

“I will go back to Abergavenny,” he said, “and send my men
out under Bassett’s command. I am sorry, but I cannot lead them myself. I—”

“If God had sent me such vassals as you,” Llewelyn
interrupted, “I would be prince of the Garden of Eden.” Then he laughed. “I do
not know whether that would be entirely to my taste. So much peace and justice
and mutual respect… No, I cannot imagine it.” He put out his hand to Richard.
“But one or two like you, Pembroke, would be the greatest gift God could give a
ruler. What a fool Henry is.”

While this talk had progressed, Simon was shifting
impatiently from one foot to the other. Now Llewelyn turned his head toward him
and raised his brows sardonically. “And another vassal like you,” he said
affectionately, “would make me inquire why my men never bathed. If you itch,
Simon, then scratch. Do not stand there wriggling.”

“I do not itch,” Simon protested, “except to go at once. If
we do not move at once, they may victual and be away before we arrive. It would
be impossible to hide all traces, and…”

Half a dozen pairs of eyes fixed on him with varying degrees
of amusement and irritation. Simon swallowed. It was rather foolish for him to
be instructing a group of old war dogs, one of whom, at least, had been staging
successful surprise attacks for nearly forty years. Yet Llewelyn was least
annoyed and only said firmly that Simon should get a few hours of sleep,
assuring him that if he would stay out of the way, they would be at Grosmount
and ready to attack at the proper time.

At first light they did, indeed, set out. For his sins,
Simon was put in charge of the baggage animals, not wagons and oxen but
sure-footed asses that could climb the mountain trails that lay between
Grosmount and Builth. He cursed and laughed at the same time, recognizing that
the punishment surely fit the crime. It was not so bad, either. He arrived at
Llewelyn’s camp only an hour after the main body of the troops, well in time to
join the others for a late dinner. Llewelyn was not there. He had ridden with
Pembroke and Bassett to Abergavenny.

Scouts went out and returned to say there was plenty of
activity in the camp but no sign the army would move. The troops settled down
to give a last look to their weapons or to sleep, but Simon remounted Ymlladd
to bring in his own men from the camp on Orcop Hill. They were not needed, but
it would be a shame for them to miss the fun and what individual pieces of loot
they could pick up. By the time he got back to the main camp, Simon was
beginning to feel tired, but he went at once to join the conference that was
planning the attack. He had more news that would be of interest. His men had
discovered that all the leaders of the army, the king, Winchester, Seagrave,
Peter of Rivaulx, and nearly all the mercenary captains were inside the keep.
Only lesser men were with the army.

Rhiannon had reached Builth just before terce to find that
the keep was all but empty. The old knight whom Llewelyn had left in charge of
the skeleton garrison told her willingly enough where the troops and her father
had gone, and assured her that they expected to return to Builth and that the
women in the keep were ready to receive her. Rhiannon had all she could do not
to burst into tears of frustration. At that moment, for all she knew, Simon
might be fighting, and her selfishness had deprived her of saying farewell to
him.

Cursing herself, she climbed to the women’s quarters, but
the questions and greetings that met her drove her nearly to distraction, and
she fled down to speak to the old knight again. She soon understood that no
attack would take place until that night and that the troops could not even
have arrived at Grosmount yet. At first this frustrated her even more because
she knew she would have to wait that much longer before she had news of the
result of the battle, but she could not leave the subject alone. Pressing for
this detail and that, she finally realized she had extracted directions for
getting to Grosmount and a good knowledge of the surrounding area.

At this point, the crazy notion of riding to join her
father’s army took hold of her. She knew it was crazy; she knew Simon and her
father would be fit to murder her just for thinking such a scheme. She put the
idea away—for all of five minutes. Each time it recurred, it became more irresistible,
and she could not see that it could really do any harm. Excusing herself
abruptly, she went down to speak to her four men, nearly tripping over Math,
who had been following her like a striped shadow ever since he had been
released from his traveling basket. This was most unusual. Math’s normal
behavior was to explore any new place with extreme thoroughness, reducing all
the other domestic animals to subjection and ignoring his mistress until he was
in full command.

Rhiannon broached her idea to her men, half expecting that
they would threaten to tie her down as a madwoman or say that Kicva had
specifically ordered them on no account to permit her to do such lunacy.
Instead, a light of avarice and adventure lit all four pairs of eyes.

“Do you know the way, mistress?” Twm asked. “This is far
from our lands and we could easily go astray.”

“I think I do,” Rhiannon said with confidence, in complete
ignorance of the fact that the old knight had described the paths taken by
merchants and other travelers, not the route the army would follow. “We must go
along the Wye to Clifford keep and then go south until we find the river Dore.
It runs, the old man says, in a deep valley, so if we keep to the low land as
we go south, we should find it without fail. There will be no danger in asking
if we lose our way, either. That land is all Welsh or the Earl of Pembroke’s,
and the people should be friendly.”

“Well, then, mistress, it is for you to say. There will be
rich pickings there.” Twm’s eyes glittered. “You can ride with the best of us
if we should need to flee.”

Math nudged Rhiannon’s leg, and she looked at him. “Go get
his basket,” she said, “and make the horses ready.”

Her final talk with the old knight was less agreeable than
her previous ones. Even though she did not tell the truth and only said she
would follow her father to Abergavenny, he protested. First he was amused, then
outraged, arguing that he did not know whether there were any suitable women
for company there and that her father would not want her mingling with so many
Saesones. Finally, grudgingly, he let her go, although he was by no means
happy.

Everything went according to plan, which made Rhiannon
forget for a while the lunacy of what she was doing. There were good roads
running along the Wye, and they made excellent time, skirting south of Clifford
and steering easily by the sun, which was intermittently visible near the
midpoint of the sky but low to the south, as was normal for the season.

Finding the Dore was not quite as easy as Rhiannon had
expected. At the point they met it, it was close to its source and little more
than a stream. They wasted several hours following streamlets that meandered
purposelessly, and Rhiannon began to have serious doubts about the sanity of
her enterprise. Just as she was thinking of giving up, the stream they were
following ran into a larger one. This engendered enough hope to keep her from
ordering a return, and she was soon rewarded by the stream’s turning south,
again joining a larger tributary, and running into what they knew must be the
Dore. There was a well-marked track beside the river—not a road but a passage
for cattle and packtrains. Again Rhiannon and her escort began to move with
confidence, unaware of the fact that they were on the wrong side of the river.
She had asked how to get to Grosmount, and the knight had told her, but
Llewelyn’s camp was some miles to the west.

The next check to their progress came late in the afternoon.
Rhiannon believed that they must be quite near their goal by then, and they
rode along in momentary expectation of seeing signs of the army or being hailed
by one of her father’s scouting patrols. Doubts entered Rhiannon’s mind when
they came first to a confluence of several streams the old knight had not
mentioned. They were not difficult to ford, the confusion of currents having
swirled rocks and sand together and spread the waters wide and shallow,
however, on the other side was a well-worn road marked by the imperishable
stones set by the Romans. This, too, the old knight had failed to mention.

“Either the old man’s memory is failing,” Rhiannon said, “or
we followed the wrong river after the ford. There is a little wood.” She
pointed about half a mile south to where the land started to rise toward a low
mountain. “Sion and Twm will come with me. You others go, one west and one
south, to find our people if you can.”

This was a sensible plan and was carried out without delay.
As soon as Rhiannon and her men found what they felt was a suitably sheltered
spot, they dismounted. The wood was utterly silent, for there were no insect
sounds and the birds that had not flown south were mostly in the fields. It was
cold, too, and Rhiannon, the men, and the horses were all tired. The men
loosened the horses’ girths and put out a little grain for them to eat.
Rhiannon shared out what food she had and let Math out of his basket for a
while. She was not yet frightened—except about what her father and Simon would
say. They would have been furious enough if she had reached the safety of their
camp before the attack. If she missed them…

She put aside the thought, though her worries were not
lessened when Math voluntarily got back into his basket and sat there. However,
there was nothing more she could do, so she wrapped herself in her cloak and
determinedly closed her eyes. She had been even more of a fool than usual, but
it was too late to worry. They could not have gone far astray. When the battle
began, they would be able to orient themselves on the sound and make for the
camp where the servants and other noncombatants would wait.