Child of the Phoenix (30 page)

Then: ‘I’m sorry. I have a cramp.’ He tipped her from his lap without ceremony and stood up. Dropping the letter on to the chair, he walked over to the fire, and stood looking down into the flames. ‘So you expect me to die soon and leave you free to marry the man of your choice.’

‘No!’ She ran to him and put her hand on his arm. ‘No, it’s not like that. Margaret said – ’

‘Margaret!’ He spun to face her, throwing off her hand. ‘Margaret has some excellent advice for her little sister which you obviously discussed together – was it before John de Braose died or after? Perhaps it was a plan you both hatched to have him ride that accursed horse, to free your sister to marry her lover. Was that it?’ His face was white with anger. ‘Holy Virgin, but I’ve been mistaken in my estimation of you, my lady! Was I to ride it too? Was that the plan? It would be so much easier, wouldn’t it, for me to fall, sick and feeble as I am! Or perhaps you had decided not to bother with helping my demise along. After all, I’m likely to die soon anyway!’ His face was hard and angry, his lips white as he glared at her.

‘No.’ Eleyne was beside herself with anguish. ‘No, it wasn’t like that. You must believe me, please.’ He had pushed past her, making for the door. ‘Please listen, let me explain – ’

‘No explanations are needed.’ For a fraction of a second she saw the devastation in his eyes. ‘Do you have a lover, Eleyne? Is that it? Or is there someone you want to marry? Someone you prefer to me?’ He looked away. ‘Suffice to say, my dear, that in future I shall be on my guard.’

She stared at the door for a long time after he had slammed it shut, then she turned miserably towards the bed she had hoped to be sharing with him and threw herself on to his pillow, kneading her fingers deep into the silk-covered down.

V
CEMAES, ANGLESEY
November 1232

Isabella was walking in the gardens of the
llys
, ignoring the wet, straggling grasses which caught at the hem of her gown. She lifted her face to the unseasonably warm sun and closed her eyes, feeling gratefully the gentle heat on her skin. A gaggle of ladies followed, the garden noisy with their chatter and laughter, but she was paying them no attention. The pain had returned: a low, nagging ache in her back, coupled with a strange tiredness which frightened her. She stopped, conscious of how wet her shoes were. Behind her the ladies stopped too, their conversation unabated.

Princess Joan was resting indoors. She often rested now and, from time to time, her hand went unobtrusively to her stomach, as if she too had a pain. Isabella wasn’t interested. All she cared about was her coming child. Was it all going to be this unpleasant? The nausea; the inability to keep any food down, save a warm milk pap and gentle syllabubs; the aching and the tiredness; the strange tenderness of her skin which made her hate it when Dafydd touched her, as he still did sometimes when he was there, laughing off her pleas that he leave her alone in her pregnancy. The women laughed too while they clucked around her; they cosseted her and gave her the food she asked for and held the basin when she vomited, but they still laughed and nodded their heads and said it was the same for everyone; it would pass; soon she would be better. She took a deep breath, trying to master the pain in her back, wishing she had not decided on this walk and had elected to retire to her bedchamber.

From her seat on the wall Rhonwen watched her sourly. Isabella was pasty-faced, bloated from the coming baby, though it was early yet for that; more likely it was her constant nibbling at sweetmeats. The girl looked unhealthy and discontented. Rhonwen hid a smile. For the first months of the marriage Dafydd had stayed close to his bride, petting her, stroking her under the chin, fondling her before the world, clearly delighted with her charms; but now, bored with her company perhaps or sated with bedding her, his duty done as her pregnancy had become obvious, he had left with his father for Caernarfon and Isabella had been left alone with the womenfolk. Rhonwen’s eyes narrowed. She had not forgiven Isabella that letter to Eleyne. She saw Isabella stop and put her hand to her back, discomfort plain on her face. Her ladies, too preoccupied with their chatter to notice their mistress’s distress, did not see as she leaned against the wall of the small windswept bower and tried to catch her breath.

Rhonwen stood up and approached her cautiously, half expecting to be dismissed, but Isabella did not seem to have noticed her.

‘Are you unwell, highness?’ Rhonwen saw the superstitious fear in Isabella’s eyes as she noticed her. So she had heard it too, the story that Einion and Rhonwen served the old gods. The man who had spread the tale had died, his boat caught in a squall of wind off Pen y Gogarth, and Llywelyn, shocked, had firmly suppressed the rumour, but the gossip had stuck fast. Rhonwen and Einion had known it would and, each for their own reason, it had pleased them both.

‘My back hurts.’ Isabella’s voice was peevish.

‘The child is lying awkwardly,’ Rhonwen said. ‘If you wish I can give you a salve which can be rubbed on your back to ease the ache. Princess Joan used such a mixture when she carried her children and it helped her greatly.’ She smiled at Isabella’s ladies who had paused some feet away. ‘One of your damsels can rub it in for you, or I will if you wish it.’

‘You did it for Princess Joan?’ Isabella pulled her cloak around her, emphasising her prominent stomach.

‘I did indeed.’ It wasn’t a lie. Once, when Joan’s handmaids had been busy elsewhere, Rhonwen had indeed stroked the scented ointment into the princess’s taut, agonised back only days before Eleyne was born.

‘Then you do it. They won’t know how.’ With a dismissive gesture to her ladies, Isabella turned towards the palace. ‘Fetch it now. I ache so much I can’t stand it another minute!’

‘Spoilt little madam!’ Rhonwen’s muttered comment was lost on the retreating back as Isabella, followed by her attendants, swept out of sight.

She had a pot of salve in her coffer. For a moment as she rummaged beneath her belongings, she debated whether to add some irritant to the mixture, pounding it into the soft sweet-smelling salve, but she thought better of it. If she was to help Eleyne, she had to win the trust of this plump spoiled princess who had once been Eleyne’s friend.

Assisted by her attendants Isabella had removed her gown and kirtle and been wrapped in a silk and velvet bed robe. She was sitting on the great bed eating sugared violets and marchpane flowers rolled in cinnamon when Rhonwen arrived with her jar of precious ointment. When her plump white body was stretched out at last on the bedcovers, discreetly covered by rugs, Rhonwen exposed the girl’s lower back and rounded bottom. She resisted the urge to give her patient a sharp slap on the backside and instead dug her hand deep into the jar of salve.

Isabella groaned with pleasure as Rhonwen’s strong hands began to knead her cramped muscles.

‘You’re too tense, child,’ Rhonwen murmured. ‘Relax. Try to sleep while I work. Then the baby will lie more easily.’

‘Why did Eleyne send you away?’ Her head cradled on her arms, Isabella did not see the tightening of Rhonwen’s face.

‘She didn’t send me. It was him – Lord Huntingdon. Now they’ll be going to Chester, they’ll summon me back.’

‘Do you really believe that?’ The muffled voice was just sufficiently short of incredulity not to be insolent.

‘Yes, I believe it.’ Rhonwen scooped more salve into her cupped fingers. Looking down at it, she felt the emptiness threatening to rise again and she fought it down. There had to be a way of going back, and if there wasn’t then she had to see that Eleyne came back to her. And this spoiled girl was the key.

‘No.’ Isabella looked mutinously at the floor. ‘I don’t want her here. She killed my father!’

‘No, princess. Your father killed himself.’ Rhonwen kept her voice even. ‘It is cruel to blame Eleyne, who loved you like a sister. Please, for her sake. Speak to your husband. Surely, now she is Countess of Chester, Prince Llywelyn would want to keep a dialogue between her husband and Gwynedd. And Dafydd
bach
can persuade him. He would do anything if you asked him to.’

Isabella was pouting. ‘I haven’t even seen Dafydd for two weeks.’ It was a sore point; even when he had visited Rhosyr, on the other side of the island a few days before, he had sent no message; the ladies in the palace near the harbour at Cemaes were feeling ignored.

‘It would give you an excuse to bring him to your side, princess.’ Rhonwen’s voice was low and confidential. ‘And impress him with your grasp of the political scene. Tell him you have heard Lord and Lady Chester have taken up residence at Chester Castle and you think it would be a tactful moment for the Prince of Aberffraw to write to his son-in-law and invite him to Aber. Tell him that it will enhance his position with his father and with the King of England if he can repair this rift.’

VI
ABER
December 1232

The early winter was mild. The gales blew themselves out and late roses budded and came to bruised, torn flower. The roads remained in good condition, and so, at last, Eleyne came to Aber in the second week of December.

The last month had been bitterly unhappy. John had withdrawn from her completely. Since their quarrel over Margaret’s letter he had remained angry and cold, refusing to believe her tearful insistence that she had not intended to ask the king about remarriage. Perversely, his health had improved. He had put on weight and he rode and hunted regularly now, a more robust colour animating his face, but he had made no further attempt to touch her. Their reading too had stopped. He was too busy, he said, with the administration of the additional huge earldom of Chester.

When the prince’s letter had come, asking him and his wife to Aber for Yule, John had written back excusing himself, but Eleyne could go and welcome. She was ecstatic when he told her. She could go home; she could see Rhonwen; she could see her father. She closed off John’s rejection in one corner of her mind and concentrated on preparing for the journey to the place she still thought of as home. She did not think about her mother or Einion at all. Nothing must be allowed to spoil her return.

John spoke to her once, on the eve of her departure, at her request.

‘You are packed and ready?’ He looked up from his desk without a smile.

She nodded. ‘We leave at first light, my lord.’

‘Good. Carry my greetings to your father and mother.’

‘When shall I come back, my lord?’ The excitement she felt at returning home could not fill the strange gap his withdrawal had left. She longed to run to him, to touch him, to feel him hold her protectively in his arms.

‘I will summon you back when I want you, Eleyne. If I want you,’ he said slowly. He laid down his pen. ‘Do not return until you have heard from me. I’m not sure I still want you for a wife. I’m not sure at all. It is not too late to annul this marriage. It is not consummated in the eyes of God.’ He turned back to his letters and did not look up again. She turned slowly, fighting her tears, and walked from the room.

VII

Rhonwen was waiting for her in a guest chamber at Aber. Never again would the beloved nursery wing in the
ty hir
be hers. It was already being refurbished for Isabella’s coming child.

‘
Cariad!
but look at you! how you’ve grown.’ For a moment neither of them moved, then Eleyne flew across the room and into the other woman’s arms.