Rhiannon (5 page)

“Is it an excuse?” Simon asked, his eyes glinting with
interest. “I thought he intended to attend the council.”

“The council is canceled,” Walter told them. “The
earls—Cornwall, Norfolk, and Ferrars, who are the only ones who have
come—refused to hold a meeting when nearly no one else is here and, in
particular, when Richard Marshal is not here. It is mainly his complaint that
was to be heard. But that is just an excuse because Isabella is sure Richard is
on the way and would be here in time. As to the funeral, that is no excuse.
Richard was in this man’s keeping for some years, just before and after King
John died, and he has remained closely tied to the son. Even if the council had
been held, he would have gone.”

“Then it is just as well that it is canceled,” Ian remarked.
“But what the devil are we to do now? Stay here? Go home?” He was frowning, and
there was anxiety in his eyes. “Does Cornwall know what his brother plans to do
next?”

“I do not think so,” Walter replied. “At present they are
not speaking to each other, and Isabella tells me that Henry is so furious that
he will lash out at someone.”

There was a brief silence while everyone considered this statement.
Then Geoffrey put his hand on Ian’s arm. “There is something else. What is it?”

Ian stared at nothing, then said slowly, “A slip of the
tongue—if it was a slip—during my talk with Winchester. He said that instead of
uniting, the barons would fall to fighting over who should lead ‘unless
Pembroke—’ and he stopped. I do not like it. There was no real reason to call
this council, and Winchester and the king must have known there was little
likelihood that many would come. Yet…”

“Yet the king dismissed Rodune, which must infuriate Richard
Marshal, and offered this council to discuss the matter—which meant that
Richard would probably be here nearly alone.” Simon’s voice was too loud in the
quiet that had followed Ian’s unhappy remarks.

Geoffrey covered his face with his hand momentarily. “Your
questions are answered, Ian. We must stay. Norfolk and Ferrars and Cornwall
have delayed matters by gaining this cancellation, but that has only increased
Henry’s anger. Walter is right. Henry will lash out at someone.”

Rhiannon lay in the long grass of the high meadow and
watched the clouds drift across the sky forming and re-forming, building keeps
and beasts, men and monsters, mountains and rivers. Always the high meadows had
brought her the peace of absolute freedom, but she found no peace there now—not
in the soft, warm air of a sunny day, nor by moonlight, nor in mist or rain.

She found no peace anywhere. In the flames that burned in
her mother’s hearth, a dark face formed and flickered. When she hunted, she
found herself turning to look for the astonished and delighted expression of a
laughing companion who had kept pace and had not outrun her—although he could
have. And when she sang, she felt the draw of the longing in the
green-gold-flecked eyes that had added a meaning to the words describing the
love of the heroes for their ladies.

It was not only when she sang that Rhiannon felt the pull of
Simon’s desire. Often she woke in the night with the feeling that someone had
whispered her name, and now, lying on the sun-warmed earth, she found her head
turning toward the east, where Rhuddlan keep lay, or to where Dinas Emrys
towered above the Vale of Waters. She told herself that one naturally chose a
southern meadow because there the sun felt warmest, and the mornings in the
hills were chilly even in the end of July on the fairest day. But when the wind
murmured
Simon seeks
across the tall grass, Rhiannon rose and fled.

“I am not happy,” she cried to her mother, whom she found
seated before her loom.

Kicva lifted her head from the intricate pattern she was
weaving and looked steadily at her daughter. They were alike to an unusual
degree, except that the mother’s hair was lighter and streaked with gray;
Rhiannon’s thick black mane came from her father.

“I have noticed,” she said, and looked back at her weaving
to hide the amusement in her eyes.

It was a wool as fine as silk with which Kicva worked, dyed
just the leaf-green color of Rhiannon’s eyes, and the pattern in gleaming gold
was of interlaced branches upon which many birds perched. Rhiannon did not look
at her mother’s work; Kicva was always about some household task. The
daughter’s sensitive nostrils flared with irritation.

“Am I such a fool as to be ensorcelled by a handsome face?”
Rhiannon asked furiously.

“I did not think so,” Kicva replied, “but you must know
yourself better than I can. What you say, I must accept.”

“What?” Rhiannon cried, stamping her foot. “You say I am
like all those others, creeping after him to beg for a kiss for the sake of his
beauty.”

“I did not say that at all.” Kicva’s voice was perfectly
grave, and her eyes did not lift from her weaving. “I have no idea what you
will do. You heard what I said. If you want to know more certainly what I mean,
you must ask me. If you want to decide for yourself what I mean—that is your
right.”

“Why am I so uneasy?” Rhiannon asked plaintively.

“Because you desire Simon de Vipont,” Kicva replied, and
this time her lips did twitch with amusement.

Rhiannon, who had turned a little away, whirled back so
violently that her swirling skirt flashed into the face of an abnormally large
cat, which leapt backward hissing.

“So you
do
think I have been entrapped by a handsome
face.”

“I saw a great deal more in Simon de Vipont than his
handsome face and magnificent body,” Kicva said calmly. “However, if you can
find no more in him than his beauty, and if that has the power to destroy your
peace, then I suppose what you say of yourself is true.”

“But I am
not
a fool, Mother. I am not. What is wrong
with me?”

“I have told you that already.”

“But
why
should I desire him? I have known handsome
men before.”

“Perhaps because Simon is
more
than just a
magnificent male animal.”

“Are you pleading his cause?” Rhiannon stooped and lifted
the cat, who had come and rubbed his head forgivingly on her ankle.

“Not at all.” Kicva laid down her shuttle and looked up. “I
do not usually need to explain you to yourself, Rhiannon. I thought I had
taught you that lying to yourself is the most dangerous lie of all. Why do you
do it now?”

“Because I am afraid. Did you ever love a man, Mother?”

“You mean aside from Gwydyon? No. I have not that nature. I
have been fond of many, but love…I think not.”

“Was that all you felt for my father? Only fondness?”

Kicva smiled. “For Llewelyn? Not even that—no. Llewelyn is
not a man of whom a woman can be only fond. One can only love him to madness
and self-exclusion—or not love him at all.”

“Then why is he my father?” Rhiannon asked, obviously
surprised.

This time Kicva laughed aloud. “Did you think he had cast me
out? Or that I nursed a wounded heart? You know I would have told you. You
wished to believe me tender—and so I am, but not in that way. Llewelyn and I
were good friends. We still are. Why I chose him to father you? I admired him,
and my body craved his.”

“As you say mine craves Simon’s?”

“That I do not know. I did not wish to be Llewelyn’s woman
as my mother Angharad was my father’s woman, only to take pleasure of him, to
give him pleasure, and to beget a daughter. I wanted him to father my child,
not to be mine—well, I knew that was impossible.”

“You said you did not want him because you could not have
him,” Rhiannon said angrily. “Who is lying to herself now?”

Kicva’s clear eyes met her daughter’s. “I could have had him
and held him—but what I held would not have been Llewelyn. Your father is more
prince than man. To hold him to me, I would have had to turn his nature inside
out and tear him from his first love—the glory and power of Gwynedd. Besides…”
Kicva left that unfinished and began again. “You and I are much alike in looks,
my daughter, but not in our hearts. Believe me, I never longed to bind any soul
to mine, nor have my soul bound to another’s.”

“Yet you desired a daughter.”

“Our line breeds one daughter, at least, in each generation.
And the tie between parent and child is a bond that does not tether, or should
not. You are free to go and never return, if that is your need. It is different
between a man and a woman.”

Rhiannon sighed and sat down. The cat was heavy, and she knew
it was useless to try to bait her mother, who really did have a calm of spirit
that surpassed Rhiannon’s understanding.

“Very well, let us say I
do
desire Simon—what am I to
do?”

“How should I know?” Kicva asked. “It is your desire. Only
you can know how to satisfy it. All I can tell you is to make sure
what
you desire before you grasp for it. Is it only your body de Vipont has wakened?
You have been very long about growing into a woman, Rhiannon.”

The cat was purring in a steady roar so loud that Rhiannon
had to raise her voice a trifle. “I began my flux at the usual time. What do
you mean?”

“The flux does not make a woman. At ten or twelve, a girl
with her flux is still a child; at forty or fifty, a woman without her flux is
still a woman—in every way. All I meant is that until now you have shown no
sign of interest either in bedding or begetting.”

“It is not a child I want,” Rhiannon said quickly, and then
wondered if that was true. Simon’s child? That was a pleasant thought.

“Probably not,” her mother agreed.

“Perhaps I merely wish to couple?”

“That might be so. All beasts have their seasons,” Kicva
said judicially.

“And am I no more than a beast?” Rhiannon cried.

“Your body is no different from the body of a beast—it is a
body.
You
are not a beast because you can rule your body. A heifer
couples when she is in season. If the bull is not there, she bellows for him;
when he comes, she yields—any bull, any time. You can choose your time, your
bull, or not to couple at all according to the dictates of your soul. Thus, you
are Rhiannon, and a heifer is a heifer. But the desire is the same.”

Rhiannon knew all that. Kicva might not have been so
explicit in the past—she never offered more than her daughter asked for—but the
body/soul dichotomy in humankind had been discussed thoroughly in other than
sexual aspects. Suddenly Rhiannon began to laugh. The big cat rose, stretched
himself, leapt down to the floor, and stalked away.

“Math knows,” Rhiannon said, looking fondly at the
tiger-striped animal she had named for the high king of ancient Wales. “He
senses that I do not need comfort any longer. I think you are right, Mother. I
think this heifer has been wandering the fields bawling for a bull. And all my
bad temper has been owing to lying to myself about it.”

“And so what will you do now that you have decided this?”
Kicva asked.

“Go to my father and look around him for a bull, of course,”
Rhiannon said lightly.

Kicva smiled slowly and swung herself back to her loom. Her
eyes clouded for a moment as she looked at her weaving. Then she nodded. “Yes,”
she said, “if that is what you want, do that.”

She began to weave again without watching as her daughter
got to her feet and walked away, presumably to begin examining her clothing to
see what she had to take to court with her. Kicva would not argue with a
decision Rhiannon had made, nor would she offer her any except the most general
advice. In the past Rhiannon had always made the correct decision, but Kicva
had never seen her daughter so much disturbed. Would the fear she recognized
and admitted distort her reasoning and drive her into the arms of a man she did
not want, just to avoid one she wanted too much?

The cloth in the loom might then never be used for the
purpose Kicva had in mind when she began it. She had strung the loom the day
after Simon brought Rhiannon to Angharad’s Hall in the end of March. At first
she had wondered whether she could finish the cloth in time; now she wondered
whether she should finish it at all. If Rhiannon chose a bull at random, de Vipont
might be unwilling… That was ridiculous. If he was of the kind that cared so
much for a maidenhead, or could not see that such an act of desperation had
nothing to do with true feeling, then Rhiannon was far better off without him.

When that thought had been formed and absorbed, Kicva smiled
again and her shuttle flew faster. It was not likely she was so wrong about
Simon—or about Rhiannon either.

The blow that Walter and Geoffrey predicted the king would
deliver fell on Sir Gilbert Bassett before Richard of Cornwall returned from
the funeral in Oxfordshire. Without apparent cause, Henry disseisined Bassett
of Upavon, a manor in Wiltshire, and gave it to Peter de Maulay. Ian blamed
himself for what had happened. He felt that his conversation with Winchester
had confirmed the inevitability of war in the bishop’s mind. Thus, Winchester
had urged Henry to disseisin Gilbert Bassett to start the conflict before his
opponents could be ready.

Simon and Adam told him in one breath not to be ridiculous.
Certainly, they pointed out, he was not the only one who had warned Winchester
that the path the king was treading would lead to violence. Geoffrey agreed
with them.

“This action cannot be a wild start on the part of the king.
It is too clever, too apposite to the purpose. It must have been planned in
June, after the first summons to council was so ill-answered,” he said bleakly.
He was heavy-eyed and drawn, and his brothers-by-marriage looked at him with
concern. “Henry might act out of furious impulse, but Winchester would have
restrained him if he had not approved—and Winchester does not act on impulse.
It has nothing to do with you, Ian. The fact that it is Upavon and Bassett
shows planning.”

“Why?” Simon asked.

“Firstly, Bassett has a connection with Pembroke. They know
each other and have lands in the same area—the southwest. However, the
connection is not close enough that Richard should be obliged to support
Bassett. If he does so, the king could say he is interfering without cause.
Secondly, Upavon was the property of the Maulay family—to whom Henry has
returned it—in the past. It was taken from them and given to Bassett’s father
by King John. I do not know what the reason for the transfer was—”

“Sometimes John had perfectly just reasons for what he did,”
Ian remarked.

“Quite true. In any case, that is not the problem. Perhaps
the property
should
go back to Maulay. In truth, I suspect it was chosen
because Maulay had a good claim. What is wrong is not the transfer; it is the
way it was done. There are courts and judges to deal with such matters. If the
king did not trust the judges, he could have heard the case himself. That is
the point—there was no case, no judgment, only the king’s will.”

Adam mouthed an obscenity, adding, more practically, “I had
not thought of that. It is a pretty trap. Say justice is on Maulay’s side. If
we do not protest, we have agreed that the king’s will is law. If we do
protest, we are unjust in backing Bassett’s desire to keep the land.”

“There is a middle path,” Geoffrey offered. “We can demand
that Bassett’s claim be brought before the king’s court—but I greatly fear all
will forget that and remember only that Gilbert Bassett was deprived of his
land by the king’s will.”

“I do not care what they remember, so long as we do not have
to bow down like Moslem slaves,” Simon exclaimed hotly.

Ian looked at him and sighed. He wished Simon would go back
to Wales. Sooner or later his tongue would wag at the wrong moment, and he
would be in real trouble. However, Ian remembered the expression of unspoken
pain in his son’s face, and he suspected that a private hurt of which Simon
would not speak kept his son in England.

“One thing I do not see,” Adam said suddenly. “How can the
king be sure Pembroke will hear of this—oh, of course, Isabella will write to
him, I suppose. She is his sister, after all.”