Child of the Phoenix (20 page)

Lord Huntingdon called Eleyne to him three weeks after they arrived. ‘I have had a letter from your father.’

He was still tired after the long journey, but the frailty and misery in the child’s eyes dismayed him far more than his own failing health. Her face lit however at the mention of her father and she went to him eagerly. So, after all, he missed her as much as she missed him; he was calling her home; it must be that. Her eyes on her husband’s face, she waited for him to hand it to her, but he held it curling loosely in his hand. There had been no message for Llywelyn’s daughter in the long document, no piece of news of home which he could tell her, save one. ‘Your father tells me your brother, Dafydd, is to be married soon to Isabella de Braose,’ he said after a pause. ‘It appears the wedding is to take place as though nothing has happened. She has arrived at Aber.’

‘Isabella?’ Eleyne looked stricken. ‘But I wanted to be there.’ Somewhere deep inside herself she had kept the hope that her father would relent, that he would allow her back for the wedding – the event she and Isabella had dreamed of and planned together for so long.

‘I am sure you’ll see her soon.’ Instead of giving her the letter he dropped it into a coffer and locked it, then he turned back to her and smiled. ‘So, how do you like this part of the country?’

‘Well enough, my lord.’ Crestfallen, she dragged her eyes away from the casket where the letter had disappeared, trying to hide her disappointment, and she forced a shy smile. She had seen little yet. The weather had been too wet for riding, but the rooms to which she and Rhonwen and her ladies had been shown were comfortable and richly appointed. Fotheringhay, one of the chief castles of the huge Honour of Huntingdon, was a large stone-built fortress set beside the River Nene in Northamptonshire amid a gentle landscape of flat meadows and fields, of fen and forest. The village outside its walls was small, augmented by a church and a nunnery of Cluniac sisters.

At Fotheringhay they kept considerable state, and the household had swiftly fallen into its routine. Lord Huntingdon was rich. He was important. His household was larger by far than even her father’s, but to Eleyne it all seemed strange and alien. Her only comfort besides the presence of Rhonwen and her companions was that her husband had still shown no inclination to order her into his bed. Her suite of rooms was far away from his.

She explored the castle at his suggestion, sometimes with her ladies, sometimes just with Luned or alone, finding her way to the stables and to the walls from where she could stare out across the country-side, watching the thick mist of the early morning lie like foaming milk across the river meadows, where willow and alder rose disembodied from the whiteness. She explored the towers and the living quarters, smiling shyly at the men and women she met as she toured kitchens, bakehouses, brewhouses and storerooms, the great keep on its mound and the chapel. She sewed and read and played quiet absent-minded games with Luned and from time to time she rode. There was no further news from Aber. She might have been in a different world.

John gave her what he considered enough time to settle in and to grow used to the place, then he sent for her. ‘In time you will oversee all my castles, but for now we’ll let things stay as they are. I have competent chatelaines who will continue to run the establishments while they are teaching you how it should be done, and you can continue your lessons and your reading, and of course you may ride whenever you wish.’ He walked across to the fire which smouldered sullenly in the hearth. He stared at it for a moment, trying to choose his next words with care. ‘While we are alone, Eleyne, there is something I wish to speak to you about.’ He frowned. ‘I have been told that you have bad dreams. Is anything special worrying you?’ He waited, hoping that she would trust him enough to reply.

She had gone pale. ‘Who told you I had bad dreams?’

‘One of your ladies mentioned it to my steward.’ He turned and smiled gently. ‘Secrets are hard to keep here, as I am sure they were at Aber.’

If he had hoped to comfort her, his words seemed to have the opposite effect. She stood as if paralysed, her eyes riveted on his face.

‘If it is to do with –’ He hesitated, at a loss how to put it. He had seen the way she shrank from his touch, sensed her physical fear of him as a man. ‘If it is to do with becoming my wife, Eleyne, there is nothing to fear.’ This was not the kind of thing a man discussed, but her helpless frailty touched him deeply. ‘We shall wait to be man and wife properly until you are ready.’ He smiled again, reassuringly.

She stared at him for a moment, her eyes on his, the relief at the implication of his words mixed with something else, something immediately veiled. ‘Not until I am ready, my lord?’ she repeated. ‘But Rhonwen said I must give myself to you whenever you require it, when you are well again.’ The view of the household, scarcely concealed, was that it was his uncertain health which kept their earl from his child bride’s bed.

He shook his head. ‘I am content to wait, Eleyne. We shall go to bed together when we both feel you are ready. Until then I shall not make that kind of demand on you.’ He sat down stiffly. How could he even contemplate taking this child, this baby with her flat, boyish figure, her face still with the unformed features of a child? He was no baby-snatcher; the women he found attractive were mature, intelligent; he fell in love with their minds before he allowed himself to touch their bodies. That he was unusual, if not unique, in this, he knew to be true, but he could not help it. He was not attracted by the animal, by the scent of musk, the voluptuous curves and reddened mouths of the court ladies with whom he mixed, and he had not for a long time lusted after one of the farm girls or serving maids.

He was dragged back from his thoughts by the sight of the woebegone small face before him. He had so few opportunities to speak to the child alone, away from the ever attentive Lady Rhonwen who, however much she might have insisted to Eleyne that she must give herself to her husband when required, had nevertheless seen to it with malevolent care that they had no time together alone.

‘Is there something else bothering you?’ His voice was gentle, coaxing, as it would have been to a small animal. ‘You can and should tell your husband everything, Eleyne. It is what he is there for.’ He said it quietly with a wry inward smile at the quizzical eyebrow a more experienced wife would raise at the comment. ‘Please. I should like to help you.’

She closed her eyes miserably, visibly struggling with herself.

‘Come here.’ He held out a hand to her and reluctantly she went to him. Resisting the urge to pull her on to his knee, he put his arm gently around her. ‘Tell me. Once you have told someone your nightmares will stop.’

Suddenly she couldn’t stop herself. Her voice punctuated by sobs, she told him everything: the visions, the dreams, the strange half-memories of the man with red hair, the meetings with Einion and that first harsh day of instruction in the smoke-filled hut where she had seen Sir William with the rope around his neck and not recognised him.

Christ and His Holy Mother! He could not bring himself to believe all he had heard. Eleyne had never tried to avoid attending mass with him every day in the castle chapel. She had never seemed, as far as he could tell, less than devout, and he had watched her carefully. Yet the child was a pagan, a witch, a sorceress and a seer! And still the words tumbled on. It was she who had caught Sir William in her mother’s bed, and who had told her father.

‘And why did you tell him, sweetheart? Why did you not keep it a secret?’ At last he had a glimmering of the source of her terrible guilt.

‘Because I hated him!’ She stamped her foot, her voice anguished. ‘He was my friend; he was Isabella’s father. He had let me ride Invictus.’ Huge wet tears were rolling down her cheeks and soaking into the soft gold velvet of her surcoat. ‘And I hated my mother. She stole him from me.’ She did not add that she had always hated her mother. That thought too brought anguish.

‘You hated them so much you wanted them to die?’ He was probing very gently.

‘Yes! No! I don’t know.’ Her voice was so husky it was almost a whisper. She rested her head desolately against his shoulder in a movement so trusting and so intimate he found himself unbearably moved.

‘Was anyone there with you when you saw them?’ He had to try very hard to keep his own voice steady.

‘Only Rhonwen.’

‘Ah, Rhonwen,’ he said drily. He paused. ‘And what did she say?’

Again the almost inaudible whisper. ‘She said it was treason.’

‘Which it was. A wife must not ever betray her husband, Eleyne. Your mother not only defiled her marriage bed, but did so with a man who had been her husband’s enemy and was subsequently his guest. She was guilty three times over.’

‘But I shouldn’t have told papa,’ she persisted.

‘If you hadn’t, someone else would have done so. And rightly. He had to know.’

‘Then why was he so angry with me?’ she cried. ‘Why did he send me away? Why did he blame me?’

The desolation in her voice was absolute. He tightened his arm around her, trying to comfort her, and noticed that she no longer shrank away from him. ‘It was just a reaction, sweetheart. He was hurt and angry and some of it rubbed off on you. It will pass.’

‘Will it?’ She eyed him doubtfully.

‘Of course it will. Prince Llywelyn is renowned for the love he bears his children.’

‘And the dreams? Will they stop now?’

‘I am sure they will.’ He tried to sound confident. Dear God, surely a child her age should be occupying herself with dolls, not this nightmare tangle of love and hate and death!

‘Have you had any strange dreams since?’ He tried to make the question sound casual. ‘Any more visions?’

‘No. No more visions.’

‘Your father’s seer was wrong to teach you those things, Eleyne. You know that, don’t you?’ He was feeling his way carefully. ‘They are absolutely contrary to the teachings of Holy Mother Church.’

She shrugged miserably. ‘Einion does not go to mass.’

‘No, I don’t suppose he does. But I thought your father was a good Christian, Eleyne.’

‘He is.’ She coloured defensively.

‘Then why does he allow this worship of ancient gods and spirits in his lands?’

‘I don’t think he knows.’

‘Who told Einion that you could see the future, Eleyne?’

‘Rhonwen.’ It was scarcely more than a whisper.

XIII

‘I should like you to return to Wales, madam.’ John’s lips were tight.

Rhonwen stared at him, her body growing cold. ‘Why, my lord? Have I displeased you in some way?’ Her eyes were challenging.

‘I consider you to be an unwholesome influence, Lady Rhonwen, on my wife.’ Humping his cloak higher on his shoulders, John paced up and down behind the long table. ‘You have deliberately introduced her to practices contrary to our Christian faith.’ He narrowed his eyes. ‘Heretical practices which I will not condone under my roof.’

‘No.’ Rhonwen refused to meet his eye. ‘That is not true.’

He swung to face her. ‘Are you saying that my wife is a liar?’

‘What did she say?’ Rhonwen looked at him defiantly. She was pleating her fingers into the rich blue silk of her skirt. She could feel the perspiration cold between her shoulder blades.

‘She said you encouraged her to go to this bard of her father’s, Einion Gweledydd, who –’ he stammered in his anger – ‘who initiated her in some way – ’

‘He was helping her, did she tell you that?’ Swiftly her courage returned. She leaned forward and put her hands flat on the table between them. ‘Did she tell you about her dreams? Did she tell you about the visions which possess her? Did she tell you how they tear her apart?’ She waited, her eyes on his.

‘She told me she saw the death of Sir William de Braose long before it happened,’ he said thoughtfully.

She narrowed her eyes. ‘She told you that?’

‘Yes, Lady Rhonwen.’ Looking up quickly, he saw her expression. ‘You look aghast. Did you not think she would confide in me, her husband? Perhaps you are not as indispensable to her as you hoped?’ His voice was harsh now. ‘She will have no more visions, Lady Rhonwen. I shall see to that. Please be ready to leave by the end of the week.’

‘No!’ The whispered denial was anguished.

He ignored it, and strode towards the door. ‘By the end of the week, madam,’ he repeated curtly.

She stood exactly where she was for several minutes after he had gone, staring round the empty room. From outside the deep embrasured windows she could hear the pure liquid trill of a blackbird. Behind it, in the distance, the call of the cuckoo echoed across the flat levels of the Nene. The room itself was silent. Her mouth had gone dry. She could feel a cold knot of fear in her stomach. This man had the power to tear her from Eleyne. He had the power to send her away.

Why had Eleyne betrayed her? Slowly, heavily, she went to the door.

Eleyne was nowhere to be found. With a snap of impatience Rhonwen made her way down the long winding stair which led from her solar into the great hall at the heart of the castle and then out into the courtyard.

Inevitably she was in the stables, watching a two-day-old colt staggering stiff-legged beside its dam as the pair were led out to the pasture.