The Reckoning by Sharon Kay Penman
“I… I do not know what you mean. What makes you think I saw Prince Llewelyn?”
“Of course you saw him, lad. Where else would you go during those two ‘missing months’ of yours?” Davydd laughed, turning away before Hugh could muster up a more convincing denial. Hugh watched him saunter across the hall, more disquieted by Davydd’s parting shot than he wanted to admit. Mayhap Davydd was right. How was he to cope at Edward’s court, where nothing was as it seemed and men turned words into weapons? What if the King guessed the truth, just as Davydd had done?
“There you are,” Sir Gervase said impatiently. “Why were you tarrying with that Welsh knave? Did you not see the King beckoning? You’re not getting off to the best of starts, lad!”
Hugh said nothing, followed Sir Gervase toward the dais, where the King awaited him. It did not seem real to him, any of it, and as he knelt before Edward, he found himself thinking that, of all the unlikely turns his life had taken in the past five years, nothing could be more improbable than this, that he should be pledging his fealty to the King of England himself, and all because on a cold January eve, he’d offered to help Brother Damian carry candles into the sacristy at Evesham Abbey.
16
Worcester, England
September 1276
The citizens of Worcester turned out in a drenching rainstorm to welcome their King, escorting him through the mud-mired streets to the Bishop of Worcester’s palace. But the weather was less hospitable; the rain persisted. It was three days before Eleanora was able to enjoy the celebrated splendors of the Bishop’s lush riverside gardens. Coming in with an armful of autumn roses and Michaelmas daisies, she forgot all about the flowers at sight of the man sharing a wine flagon with Edward.
Davydd rose politely to greet her, but Eleanora was not mollified by his good manners, for Davydd’s courtesy always seemed as suspect as his motives. It irritated her enormously now to find him in their private chamber, utterly at ease, laughing and jesting with her husband as if they were boon companions, equals. Why did Eduardo find his insolence so amusing?
“Davydd has brought me welcome tidings, sweetheart. Another of the lords of Upper Powys has agreed to forswear his allegiance to Llewelyn ap Gruffydd. Good work, Davydd! By the time we take the field against him, your brother will stand alone, bereft of allies and hope.”
Edward smiled, but his eyes were focused intently upon Davydd’s face, probing for a reaction. Davydd was not about to give him one, though. “Yes,” he said evenly, “that is quite likely.”
“I will authorize you to receive our new convert and his men into the King’s Peace,” Edward promised, and Davydd nodded, but his attention was straying from Edward to his Queen. Eleanora was bustling about the chamber, fetching a cushion for her husband’s chair, then a bowl of shelled almonds, shifting the oil lamp so that he was closer to the light. Davydd was intrigued; was this the same woman who’d summon a servant to pour wine even if the flagon was right at her elbow? He’d occasionally wondered why their marriage was such an obvious success. Eleanora’s ten pregnancies were irrefutable proof of the pleasure Edward found in his wife’s bed, but Davydd had been blind to her appeal out of bed—until now. Good God, he thought, fighting back a grin, she dotes on him the way a mother might!
Davydd was so caught up in these unseemly speculations about Edward and Eleanora’s bedsport that Edward was able to take him by surprise. “As it happens, Davydd, I have good news for you, too. I’ve found you a wife.”
Davydd splashed wine onto his wrist. Setting the cup down, he said cautiously, “I was not aware that I’d lost one.”
“I ought not to have said ‘wife.’ I ought to have said ‘jewel,’ for she is that, in truth. She is young, about eighteen, and very highborn. Not only is she an Earl’s daughter, she is my own cousin.”
“And you’d bestow this prize upon a Welsh rebel? Why…is she a leper, by chance? A half-wit?”
Eleanora stiffened indignantly; Edward just grinned. “Jesú, but you Welsh are a suspicious lot! All right, mayhap I did omit a few minor facts about your bride’s background. There is a taint of treason in the family, but that ought not to bother you all that much, should it? Her father was ever one for hunting with the hounds and running with the hares, and eventually his double-dealing caught up with him. He—”
But he needed to say no more. “Derby,” Davydd said, and Edward nodded.
“None other. Now I’ll grant you that some men might balk at taking Judas as their kinsman. But do not forget that the girl is my kinswoman, too. Her mother was a de Lusignan, my father’s niece.”
Davydd was well acquainted with the Earl of Derby’s chequered past. Robert de Ferrers had the dubious distinction of being the first English nobleman to have been imprisoned for a non-political offense. During the civil war between King Henry and his barons, Derby had taken advantage of the unrest to rob and plunder his Derbyshire neighbors, and Simon de Montfort had shattered tradition by casting him into the Tower of London. He’d been freed after Evesham, and had then been foolhardy enough to rebel again. Edward’s response was swift, his anger understandable, but his justice less than scrupulous. Under the terms of the Dictum of Kenilworth, Derby’s estates could not be confiscated outright. So Derby had been forced by buy his freedom for the exorbitant sum of fifty thousand pounds, a sum he could never hope to raise, and his lands and earldom were then forfeit to Edward’s brother, Edmund. And there could be no better evidence of Derby’s ability to make enemies that so blatant an extortion stirred up no sympathy among his fellow barons, who usually closed ranks against any abuse of royal power.
Davydd shared the prevailing view that Derby deserved the raw deal he’d gotten. His concern now was not with Derby’s fall from grace, but rather with the consequences of that fall. Leaning back in his chair, he drawled, “My people have a saying, ‘Diwedd y gan yw y geiniog.’ Roughly translated, ‘The end of every song is money.’ And I doubt that Derby has any, not after you and Edmund plucked him cleaner than a Michaelmas goose.”
“You ought to learn to be more forthright, Davydd, to speak your mind instead of hemming and hawing like this.” Edward was still smiling, but his sarcasm had a sudden sting to it, for he had not been amused by the Michaelmas-goose gibe. “Derby is not destitute, still holds the manor of Chartley. I’ll squeeze a marriage portion out of him. The lass has more to rely upon, though, than crumbs from Derby’s table. She was wed as a child to William Marshal, a de Montfort supporter who died before Evesham, and she has dower rights in his manors at Cherleton, Norton, and Witlebury. So far she has not had much luck in asserting those rights, for Marshal had a son by an earlier marriage, and he has been resisting her claims. Of course, with a husband to support those claims…”
Davydd did a few mental calculations. “You left out something, I think. The little widow is still a virgin…no?”
Edward did some quick arithmetic of his own, then nodded. “You’re right, by God. The marriage was never consummated for certes; she was only seven or eight when she was widowed. And I expect that Derby keeps her on a tight lead. So unless she’s been creeping into the stables to meet one of her father’s grooms, I think we can safely say that you’ll be her first.”
Edward and Eleanora were both looking at him expectantly. Davydd knew they were waiting for him to express his gratitude, his eagerness to wed Derby’s daughter. Instead, he reached for his wine cup, saying, “Tell me what she is like.”
“What else do you need to know?” Edward sounded bemused. “I’ve already told you what matters. In all honesty, I do not know her very well. The few times that she has been at court, she seemed a bit on the sullen side…though to be fair, living with Derby would be enough to sour a saint!”
“I very much doubt that she was ever a saint, Eduardo,” Eleanora said, so sourly that Davydd gave her a speculative look, thinking that if Eleanora disapproved of his bride-to-be, the lass might have promise.
“Eleanora is right,” Edward concede
Davydd hid a smile. “Indeed,” he agreed, “what Welsh prince would not consider himself blessed to be able to claim kinship to the King of England?” But he saw that Edward’s patience was fast running out. “I am curious about one more thing,” he said and grinned. “What is my bride’s name?”
Edward grinned, too, good humor restored once he saw that he was to have his way. This marriage mattered to him, for he thought that offering Derby’s daughter to Davydd was a master stroke, satisfying Davydd’s demands for money at the girl’s expense, whilst humiliating that whoreson Derby anew, denying him any say whatsoever in the marital negotiations. “Elizabeth. Her name is Elizabeth. Now if you want to satisfy your curiosity further, I suggest that you keep close to the priory, for she arrives tonight.”
“I can see that you were awaiting my answer with bated breath!” But Edward had unwittingly planted a seed. Davydd began to look about the chamber with new interest. “As large as this room is, a man could sit over there in that window-seat and never be noticed—provided it was dark enough. What does Your matchmaking Grace think?”
Edward at once caught his drift, entered enthusiastically into the conspiracy. “We need only place a solitary candle here on the table, and everything beyond the flame will be utter blackness.”
Eleanora looked from one man to the other in disbelief. “Surely you are not planning what I think you are? You’d actually spy on the lass?”
Edward looked a little sheepish, but Davydd nodded. “Yes,” he confessed cheerfully, “that is exactly what we have in mind.”
Eleanora had never liked Elizabeth de Ferrers. But now she felt a surge of sympathy for the girl. The poor child, was it not penance enough that she must share her life and her bed with this brazen Welsh rakehell? Men and their foolish games!
She did her best to dissuade them, but soon realized that she was wasting her time. Conceding defeat, she made a dignified departure from the chamber, marred somewhat by the slamming door.
Davydd pretended to flinch. “I do not think we are in your lady’s good graces at this moment.”
“Oh, you never are,” Edward said with a grin. “I’m sure that comes as no surprise, though, for Eleanora’s not one for hiding her feelings. She is a wonderful woman, but bless her, she is so very serious about everything! Not long ago, I ended up making this lunatic wager with my laundress. I told her that if she could ride my roan destrier, I’d give him to her. What could be a safer wager than that? But would you believe she did it? She hiked up her skirts, scrambled into the saddle, and away they went! I had to buy him back from her. It was worth it, though, for that is a sight I’ll never forget. I laughed so hard I damned near ruptured myself. But Eleanora…she never so much as smiled, said it was not seemly to make wagers with servants. You know, Davydd, there are times when I wonder if the Almighty forgot to give women a sense of humor.”
Davydd had begun to laugh. “That’s passing strange, for the Welsh have long suspected the same about you English!”
Although nothing in her past justified it, Elizabeth de Ferrers was an optimist. She could think of only two reasons why her cousin the King should have summoned her so abruptly to Worcester. Either he had found her a husband or he had finally secured her dower rights in her late husband’s lands. And because she so very much wanted to believe it, Elizabeth soon convinced herself that the latter was true.
It was not that she did not want to remarry. She did, for she well knew that a woman’s only choice was between the marriage bed and the nunnery, and Elizabeth did not want to become a nun. What she wanted was to escape the life she presently led, trapped at Chartley with a father she feared and a stepmother she disliked, dependent upon their grudging charity, desperate for a home, a haven of her own.
But she was not so naive as to see marriage as her way out. A wife was too vulnerable—to her husband’s will, his whims, his fists. Elizabeth had no marital memories of her own, but she’d too often seen her stepmother serve as the scapegoat for her father’s erratic temper, had too often played that role herself. She did not want to wake up in bed with a stranger, a man handpicked by Edward for purely political purposes. She wanted a say in so momentous a decision, and although she knew women were rarely, if ever, permitted that privilege, she had spun out a fantasy in which it was so. Edward would intervene on her behalf, compel her hateful stepson to honor her claims. She would be given her own manor, her own household, and soon there would be a proposal from one of her neighbors, a man handsome and highborn and approving of her independent spirit. To Elizabeth, that did not seem so much to ask, and by the time she reached Worcester, she was already anticipating her liberation…at long last.
She was utterly unprepared, therefore, for what happened that evening in a darkened bedchamber at the Bishop of Worcester’s palace. She’d been heartened by the warmth of Edward’s welcome, and was further encouraged when he took her aside for this private audience. When Edward clinked their wine cups together in a playful salute, she could restrain herself no longer. “Have we something to celebrate?”
“Indeed, we have, sweetheart. I have made a brilliant marriage for you.”
Elizabeth had wondered why the chamber was so poorly lit. Now she was grateful for it, pulling back into the shadows as she sought to get her emotions under control. “Who…who is he?”
“I’ve found you a Prince, Lisbet. Davydd ap Gruffydd, brother of—”
“No!”
Elizabeth was on her feet, looking so horrified that Edward was hard put not to laugh outright, although he could not resist glancing toward Davydd’s hiding place in the recessed window-seat. “Sweetheart, you cannot believe half of what you’ve heard about Davydd. The man has enemies, I’ll not deny it. But I can assure you that he—”
“No…please, you must listen to me. My father and husband were foolhardy enough to defy the Crown, and it cost them all they had. I’ll not be yoked to another rebel. I’ll not wed a Welsh malcontent whose only loyalty is to himself, for sooner or later, he’ll fall…and drag me down with him!”
Elizabeth’s first outburst had been involuntary, and she’d been encouraged to continue by Edward’s unexpectedly mild reaction. But that indulgence, that odd amusement chilled with her first words of defiance. Getting slowly to his feet, Edward gave Elizabeth such a cold, forbidding look that she shrank back, the rest of her protest catching in her throat.
“You disappoint me, Elizabeth. I thought you had more confidence in my judgment. Do you truly think I’d have you wed a man who’d make you unhappy? Now…ere you say something you’ll long regret, I would suggest that you think this over.”
Edward paused for emphasis, but he was mollified somewhat by Elizabeth’s submissive silence, and he said, more kindly. “I do have your best interests at heart, lass.” Gazing over her shoulder toward the window-seat, he bit his lip, and again that unaccountable look of amusement crossed his face. “In fact, I think you ought to stay right here, have some time alone. I’ll be back in a while. In the meantime, you make yourself comfortable, and give some very serious thought to what I’ve said.”
Elizabeth stared at the closing door, fighting a mad urge to flee, for where could she go? She did not have the courage to defy Edward. Nor did her father; he feared Edward even more than he hated him. But…but what if she took holy vows? That would thwart Edward. At what cost, though? Bride of Christ or bride of Davydd ap Gruffydd. She’d heard that a trapped animal sometimes gnawed off its own leg in order to escape the snare. But most of them wait
All her life, Elizabeth had been drawn to drama. Even as a child, she’d been one for turning a scratched knee into a lethal wound, a playmate’s rebuff into a blood feud, every joy, every slight, every dread magnified a hundredfold. She embroidered facts instead of threads, not because she was a liar, because she was a romantic. But now that she was facing a genuine calamity, she found herself unable to react, unable to scream or rebel or even to cry. She could only wait for Edward to return, listening for the sound of the hunter’s footsteps in the snow.
It was this sense of her own helplessness that stung her into a sudden flare of futile rage. She looked at Edward’s wine cup, the cup he’d used to toast her marriage, and then she was lashing out, sending it spinning off the table, down into the floor rushes.
Her burst of temper did not help. All she accomplished was to splatter her skirt and to lose the light, for some of the wine spilled into the oil lamp. Elizabeth muttered one of her father’s favorite oaths, sank down into the nearest chair. What now? To whom could she turn? Her grandmother? No, she had disinherited Derby after his disgrace. Might the Queen… Elizabeth’s head came up sharply. She was not frightened at first, for she knew that mice were no respecters of rank, as likely to be found in a palace as a peasant’s hut. By now her eyes had adjusted to the darkness, and as she glanced toward the sound, she could make out a shadowy form within the window recess.
“Who is there? What do you want?”
Davydd had been hurling some very creative mental curses at Edward’s absent head. But Elizabeth’s quavering challenge brought him hastily to his feet. “Do not be afraid,” he said soothingly. “I mean you no harm.”
His words were wasted, though; she heard only the accent. She’d spoken instinctively in English, for that was her first tongue. If French was the language of the court, English reigned in the nursery; like most children of the Norman-French nobility, Elizabeth had been tended since birth by English wet-nurses and English maids. Davydd had answered her in English, too, but with a distinctive cadence, one that held echoes of his native Wales.