Castle of the Heart (26 page)

“Small need,” Kenelm said. “They won’t live
long enough to starve. Guy, I wish you would let me try to get more
information out of them. They are all most unwilling to talk.” Guy
had that afternoon appointed Kenelm Captain of the Guard to replace
Captain John, and Kenelm seemed prepared to take his new post
seriously.

“There will be no torture,” Guy said. “They
will all hang for what they’ve done, but I want each of them able
to walk to the gibbet, so their fellow countrymen can see that what
I am meting out here is justice, not brutal vengeance. I want to
discourage further attacks, not make more enemies.”

“Is Gwenefer among the prisoners?” Arianna
asked.

“She is,” Guy said, “and more guilty than
most of the others. You already know, I think, that she was the spy
who gave the rebels the information about our defenses, and she is
the one who opened the postern gate. Selene told Thomas the woman
befriended her and tricked her into revealing a few unimportant
facts, but mostly Gwenefer employed her wits and her charms on men
most effectively, to learn what she wanted to know.”

“And I chief among those men,” Geoffrey said.
“Guy, I am heartily ashamed of my part in this. I’ll never trust a
woman again, and I’ll give up Tynant, turn it back to you at once.
I don’t deserve your confidence in me, or your trust any more.”

“By that speech you’ve proven your fitness to
keep it,” Guy responded, reaching across the table to clasp
Geoffrey’s hand. “You’ve learned a hard lesson, old friend, and you
will be the wiser for it. Tynant remains yours.”

“Thank you.” Geoffrey was perilously close to
unmanly tears. Seeking distraction from his overflowing emotions,
he nodded toward the dark young man standing behind Guy’s chair.
“Have you taken a new squire? He looks familiar to me.”

“This is Benet,” Guy told him. “He has well
earned his position. I’ll tell you all about it later. At the
moment, I badly need a few hours’ sleep.”

“When will my mother come home?” Cristin
asked. “I wish she were here now.”

“I told her to remain at Kelsey until I sent
word it was safe to return to Afoncaer,” Guy replied, rising from
his seat, “but I know my Meredith, and I expect the messenger to
meet her on the road. I’d not be at all surprised to see her ride
through the gate in a day or two. Now go to your bed, my brave
girl.” Guy left the great hall with one arm across Benet’s
shoulders for support, and the other around his daughter.

When Arianna stood up to leave, too, Thomas
came to her.

“Reynaud told me how you faced down the Welsh
leader.”

“It was Reynaud who struck the necessary
blow,” Arianna said. “Did he tell you how?”

“He did.” Thomas’s blue eyes laughed down
into hers. “You were very brave, and very foolish, Arianna. I am so
proud of you. Meredith will be, too, when she hears of it.” He took
her hand and kissed it, and reached out to brush a stray curl off
her forehead. Then he bent and kissed her cheek. When he went away,
to the bedchamber he shared with Selene, Arianna stood looking
after him for a long time.

* * * * *

The prisoners’ cells at Afoncaer were carved
out of the solid rock beneath the storerooms, at the very lowest
underground level of the tower keep. Gwenefer, being the only woman
among the captured Welsh, had been given the smallest cell to
herself, and there she sat, or paced the few steps from one side to
the other, not knowing in that windowless, airless place, whether
it was day or night. Sir Kenelm, the Captain of the Guard, had come
to question her, full of his new dignity. When she refused to tell
him anything more than he already knew about her part in the raid,
he had gone away again, leaving her surprised that he had used
neither rape nor torture to make her speak. Surely torture would
come later, before a painful death. Gwenefer was glad she knew
nothing of her countrymen’s intentions beyond the immediate plans
Emrys had laid for Afoncaer. What she did not know, she could not
be made to tell.

She heard her cell door open and tensed,
believing pain was imminent. A guard came in, the torch he carried
adding to the light of the tallow dip they had given her earlier.
The guard stuck the torch into a wall bracket.

“You have a visitor.” He moved aside to let
Geoffrey enter the cell. “I’ll be at the top of the stairs, my
lord. Call out when you are ready to leave, and I’ll come down and
lock her in again.”

Gwenefer studied her former lover, seeing the
deep new lines in his kind, honest face and the pain in the brown
eyes that had once looked at her so tenderly.

“Have you come to punish me in person, my
lord?” she taunted him. “Shall I bare my bosom for your blade?”

“I want you to tell me,” Geoffrey said, “why
you betrayed me. You let me believe you cared for me,
Gwenefer.”

“So I did. It was a
Cymreig
trick, my
lord, in order to gain access to Afoncaer. You know how sly we
Cymry
, we Welsh, are, how untrustworthy. You should have
been more careful.”

“There must have been some good reason for
what you did. Tell it to me, and I’ll explain to Guy. He’s not a
cruel man, and I know he hates the thought of hanging a woman. He’d
revoke your sentence for just cause, I’m certain he would.”

“Hanging? Every one of us? That’s all?” When
Geoffrey nodded, Gwenefer’s hands flew to her slender throat. “I
had thought he’d want to give us some long and painful ending. When
is it to be?”

“At noon tomorrow.” Geoffrey caught her hands
and held them against his chest. “Gwenefer, it need not happen.
Just give me a reason, some extenuating circumstance for what you
did, and I’ll arrange for you to be sent to some secure convent
where you may live out your days in prayerful peace.”

She pulled her hands out of his with a harsh
laugh. She would tell him the truth, but not all of it. She did not
want her parents’ names on Norman lips. She herself was no longer
worthy to speak their names.

“I doubt there is a convent anywhere that
could make use of my talents, my lord. You, who were the recipient
of my skills, must appreciate that. So you want a reason, do you?
I’ll give you one.” She fairly spat the next words at him. “You
Normans have invaded my homeland. You build your castles wherever
you can wrest enough land from us, and then you try to turn my
fellow countrymen into your serfs. Normans do not belong in
Cymru
. We will fight you however we can until we drive you
out again.”

“Gwenefer, please. Tell me something I can
use to help you.”

“I’ll tell you this, Norman. If you save me
from the noose and send me to a convent, I’ll find a way to escape,
and I’ll join the next band of
Cymry
that’s planning to
attack Afoncaer. I’ll be back to do as much harm as I can, so you
had better kill me while you have the chance.”

She saw by his face that he believed her. She
had deliberately left him no opening through which he could help
her. It was what she wanted. She had never swerved for a moment
from the path she and Emrys had agreed she would take, but the
tenderness she had come to feel for Geoffrey was a betrayal of the
Welsh cause and of her parents, whom the Normans had killed. For
that dual betrayal she deserved to die.

“Will you kiss me?” Geoffrey asked.

“Why?” She made herself laugh at him, wanting
his mouth on hers one last time, and denying herself the thing she
yearned for. It was part of her punishment. That, and watching his
face while she coldly destroyed his love for her. Considering what
she had done to him, it was only right to set him free of her, but
the pain of doing it was worse than that which the hangman’s noose
would inflict on her tomorrow. “I never wanted to kiss you,
Geoffrey. I certainly do not want to now.”

He looked at her with eyes gone cold and
blank, and then he went out, calling to the guard to come and lock
her door.

“A priest will come to you later tonight,
Gwenefer,” he said from outside her cell. “None of you need die
unshriven, and you will all be left unharmed until tomorrow.”

Gwenefer made no reply. She stood still,
listening to his footsteps on the stone stairway until a heavy door
slammed and all was silent once more. Then she sank onto the damp
stone floor, weeping quietly, loving him and deeply ashamed of her
love.
Cymreig
, Welsh, could not love Norman. But she did,
and would until she died. She choked back hysterical laughter.
Until she died. That would not be so very long. Less than a day.
She could bear it until then.

It began to rain during the night, a
drifting, misty rain to end the unusual stretch of sun and heat.
The cool grayness settled over Afoncaer, matching the subdued
atmosphere of the day. In the morning, those who had been killed in
the Welsh attack were buried. The prisoners would be executed at
noon. The entire population of Afoncaer, both castle and village,
everyone above the age of twelve, was expected to attend both
events.

Selene had existed for the last two days in a
state of barely suppressed hysteria. She was certain Reynaud sensed
that she had more to do with recent events than she’d admitted.
Hoping to divert any blame that might be placed upon her, she had
given Thomas a highly colored, truncated version of her brief
friendship with Gwenefer. She believed he accepted what she had
told him and would defend her against whatever suspicions anyone
might hold toward her for that ill-fated association. She had
confirmed her husband’s trust and devotion by flinging herself upon
him in a wild paroxysm of sexual abandon. She had successfully
convinced him that she had missed him terribly in his absence, and
that she was as disappointed as he to learn she was not with child
after all. Selene knew he imagined she was trying to conceive now,
to make up for that disappointment, and so he cooperated willingly
whenever she approached him, pleased and flattered by her frequent
invitations.

But what Selene was really doing was drugging
herself with Thomas’s body as she sought to forget her fear that
Gwenefer, or Cynan, or Emrys, their leader, would speak her name in
connection with what had happened at the castle and thus confirm
Reynaud’s impressions. She was afraid to ask any questions aimed at
discovering whether she had been implicated in the Welsh plot.
Questions could arouse more suspicions.

She put on a black gown and dragged herself
to the funeral service in the village church, pale and shaken at
what she had helped to bring about. There she prayed sincerely for
the souls of those whose deaths were partly her fault.

“I can’t go to the hanging, Thomas,” she said
afterward. “I can’t.”

“We all have to go, Selene. Arianna will be
there, and I’ll be right next to you.”

She could not tell him she feared one of the
Welsh, or all of them, would stand on the scaffold and point her
out and say she belonged with them, that she, too, should have a
noose about her neck.

Guy had decided not to hang the Welshmen from
the battlements, which was the usual punishment for prisoners taken
in such an attack. Instead, in an effort to display solemn,
measured Norman justice, a scaffold was erected outside the village
walls, in a narrow field too rocky for farming that ran along the
river. They all rode out to the spot, Guy leading them, followed by
Thomas and Geoffrey, Benet and the other squires, Selene and
Arianna, Kenelm and his men-at-arms, and lastly, on foot, the
household staff. Reynaud had come in a horse-drawn litter. They all
stood together, and behind them the villagers gathered in a
crescent. Only Guy remained mounted. The wound in his thigh pained
him badly, and he did not want to appear weak in public by needing
help to get off and on his horse, so now he sat high above them on
his huge black stallion, his face set in grim lines, watching the
village gate, waiting.

The six prisoners came last of all, riding in
a wooden cart and accompanied by the village priest, Guy’s sheriff,
and a few armed guards. One or two wore bandages over wounds they
had taken in the fighting, but it was perfectly clear that they had
been fed and well cared for, and that no one had been tortured. The
crowd fell silent as the prisoners were led to the scaffold.

It began to rain harder. Selene, forced by
the press of people to move forward until she stood much too close
to the wooden platform, saw Gwenefer lift her face to the sky, to
the last Welsh rain she would ever know.

The sheriff read the execution order he and
Guy had stamped with their seals the day before.

“Have you anything to say?” the sheriff
asked, and Selene swayed, holding her breath. Just a few moments
more and either she, too, would stand condemned, or no one would
ever know what she had done. Her fate depended upon the five men
and one woman standing before her.

Emrys began a short, impassioned speech,
declaring that the Normans would soon be driven out of Wales
forever. While he spoke, Gwenefer looked straight at Selene, who
thought her heart would stop in fear. Emrys ended his speech.
Selene knew Gwenefer would speak next and condemn her. She knew
it.

“Does anyone else have aught to say?” called
the sheriff.

Selene waited, transfixed by Gwenefer’s dark
eyes. There was a long, long silence. Or so it seemed to Selene,
but when she blinked the nooses had been placed about six necks and
Guy sat sternly on his horse, his right hand raised.

Gwenefer never took her eyes off Selene’s
face and it seemed to Selene that she could read the Welsh woman’s
thoughts. Gwenefer had decided not to speak. She would leave Selene
to the guilt so plainly written in her expression, and to the
possibility of further betrayal in the future. For how could Selene
ever be certain Gwenefer had not told someone else what Selene had
done, someone who might use that information as Gwenefer had used
it, to make her help the Welsh? That, Gwenefer’s dark eyes seemed
to say, would be Selene’s lifelong punishment.