Crown in Candlelight (46 page)

‘Dover,’ said Owen.

‘Not Dover, my son.’ The monk was mixing poppy-juice in a little vial. ‘Southampton.’

Out of the dream’s turmoil came the shouts of captain and crew as a September storm ripped the sea apart and hurled the
Petite Marie
round the southern tip of England, spewing her up into Southampton Water …

… he knelt on the deck and offered wine to Harry the King. Swans flew overhead, good omens like elongated pearls. Davy Gam chuckled in approval …

‘But that’s nine years ago!’ he said in amazement.

‘Drink.’ Bitter and syrupy, the juice went down. He slept again, a little cooler, and the cell door opened and someone entered without sound. Lissom, long-handed, sweet-hearted, she lay beside him, so light that not a blade of straw was displaced. She spoke to him in the soft tongue of the beasts and the wind and the flowers. Across his cheek lay her hair with the look of fire and the scent of water and he knew she had washed it in the spring that leaps from the breast of Eglwyseg Mountain. The pain made him moan.

‘Hywelis,’ he said. ‘Help me.’

‘
Cariad
,’ she answered. ‘My love.’

She slid down and pressed her lips and her keen bright fox-face against the dreadful foul oozing wound and she was there, neither dream nor memory but real, flesh and scent and bone. He could even see the blood beating gently in her pale blue-veined wrists, they were holding out a posset of beaten eggs and milk.

‘Try to eat a little, my son,’ said the monk.

‘The woman. The woman. Where is she?’

‘No women here, my son.’ A soldier. Mind always on women or war. The monk carefully unwrapped the wound and appraised it. The redness had paled considerably, the edges of the gash looked moist, the black streaks were receding. He raised his gaunt, cloister-white face and smiled.

‘St Francis heard me. I was afraid the leg would have to come off, and I’ve not the skill.’

‘
Diolch i Dduw
!’ Owen sat up against the monk’s arm. He ate a little of the posset, felt strength returning. She was here, he told the monk. A friend, whom I haven’t seen for years. ‘Then, my son,’ (with bent head) ‘it must have been her spirit, sent from the grave to assuage you.’

‘No.’ The wound was itching, its heat had gone. ‘She’s not dead.’ He wondered, without much concern, whether he would ever dance again. ‘I’d have known if she were dead.’ (So I would. How, I do not know. But I would.)

‘Spirits,’ said the monk very softly, ‘can sometimes apport themselves of the living.’ He removed the empty bowl, applied fresh bandages. ‘Sleep now. Sleep again.’

Owen wanted to say how good, how kind, but time spiralled and caught him in blackness, with the fever pouring away in a good sweat, and no visions or visitations this time. Only a dream of his own making. The dream of anguish and longing that he both dreaded and craved. It could have been two years or twenty years, the dream was the same. For ever loved, for ever lost, the dream hung like a homing lantern never to be reached by the lonely traveller across the endless moor.

He called the dream by name: Cathryn, Cathryn … and it came, obedient to hurt his heart. Weeping at your father’s madness. Laughing and shining at Gaff, Gaff, catch him then, bring! Lilies and roses, honey and musk. The thick dark braid over one shoulder. In love! at Melun! sorry and glad I was that you were in love. Your feet, your lovely feet, clothed by me in soft hide, I could have kissed them and been punished for it. And you have a pleasing voice, Jacques, you shall sing me a song one day … in love, in love, I can’t remember a time when I did not think of you, or want you, or dream of you beside me upon some shining mountain, your face chilled by the Welsh wind, and mine, mine .…

… and the worst part, the most barren, bitterest part, the part that made me stay behind in France, knowing it useless to follow you further. The last sight of you, in mourning for Harry. Your face, when the King’s bones and the fabricated corpse were lifted aboard the bier. I knew then that even the dream had gone from me. You were utterly remote, where once you were merely unattainable. Lost in your loss, you were a star on the further side of heaven. That is why I stayed in France these two years, keeping what little essence I had left of you close within my heart. These last two years have been the most unhappy in my life …

He began to weep, and woke with tears streaming, and a voice cutting through the unbearable pain of the dream, a voice from the past. He wiped his face and lay, trying to place the voice.

‘In here, is he? When I heard there was a soldier lying sick, I had to come. Is he bad?’

The voice and steps approached the bed. Owen saw a round face, dark sentimental eyes, and for a moment his mind smelled pitch-smoke and heard the roar of armaments against the Harfleur palisade. John Page. No longer in black leather jerkin but elegant with a fine worsted tunic and deerskin thigh-boots. He carried a leather satchel.

‘Dark in here!’ said Page. ‘And stinking!’ The monk threw open the one dirty little window and departed. Page whistled.

‘Saint Mary Virgin! Welshman!’ He held out his strong well-kept hand. ‘I thought you were dead!’

‘Likewise,’ said Owen with a feeble grin. He took the hand. Page looked at the straw bursting through the pallet, the grimy coverlet. ‘What a wretched state you’re in! What a hellish hole!’

‘The monks have been very good to me.’ Clinging to Page’s hand, he groaned upright.

‘You’re still with the wars?’ Page asked. ‘I thought you’d have left active service when Harry died.’ He bowed his head in a little gesture of memoriam.

‘I left
active
service long before he died,’ Owen said. ‘Not everyone came home with the corpse. I attached myself to the Duke of Bedford, in the Wardrobe service.’ Talking made him sweat more. Page wiped his brow with a square of fine linen. ‘Near the Loire … there was a big battle on the Verneuil-Danville road. We were guarding Bedford’s baggage. A party of Lombards ambushed us.’ He showed Page his leg. ‘The blade must have been poisoned. Someone carried me aboard ship and put me down here …’

‘I heard that Bedford was coming home.’

‘Impossible. The wars are hotter than ever … Dauphin proclaimed King of France .… he has a great force, Scots and Italian mercenaries … Bedford and Salisbury are both hard pressed. Could I have some water?’

Again, Page’s little flask, after all these years. ‘Don’t drink the wine,’ he said, laughing. Remember?’

‘I don’t even trust the water!’ Affection sprang with the memory. ‘How fine you are, John. Still a poet?’

‘I’m in the service of Bishop Beaufort! I’m one of his emissaries to the Customs here. He holds the commission on Southampton and its subsidiaries. He enjoys all profits, and should this port be closed, he’s to have the Port of London. Already he’s received eleven thousand pounds in revenue. He’s been financing your French campaign. Did you know that Harry, God rest him, borrowed over twenty thousand from the Bishop, with most of the Crown jewels as security?’ He laughed. ‘Humphrey of Gloucester’s chewing his doublet with rage—says Beaufort seeks to defraud the Crown of its treasure. The feud’s no longer a jest. And the little King sits in the middle—a little bone! with Gloucester, Beaufort and Bedford (though I’m not calling
him
a dog, you understand) snarling over wardship of him. Beaufort will soon be Cardinal Archbishop and then Humphrey will blow up—like that cannon we once saw, remember? Gloucester’s solid rage. He and my master think of little else but money. Yet I’ve no complaints—I’ve a post with a pension and the Bishop treats me fair.’ He laid his hand on Owen’s bandaged leg. ‘It feels very wet. What’s the monk been treating it with? No matter. I’ve access to the best doctors in the port. We’ll soon have you walking.’

‘I was a dancer,’ said Owen. ‘First a soldier, then a dancer.’

‘Well, you’ll jig again,’ said Page kindly. ‘Have you any plans?’

‘I thought I’d go back to Wales,’ he said. ‘Home.’

Page said: ‘I forgot to tell you. I heard your name some weeks back, when I was at Windsor. They wanted some harps mended, or some such.’

‘Who are ‘they’?’

‘Queen Katherine. She was asking for you …’

Warmth. The cell filling with light. The leg gloriously painful under the pounding of the blood. Page’s face shimmered, his lips talked on, unheard. Why? Why didn’t I know, in every part of me, wherever I was, that she had spoken my name?
Duw annwyl!
the miracle. The dream. He could smell the lilies and roses and honey and the subtle musk of her body. A surge of feeling gripped his heart, and something else, so magnificent in its reassurance and power that he gasped. He had felt it very seldom for two years. Only in dreams that ended in sickening barren loss. Now it was back, warm and transfixing and beautiful. Swiftly he pulled the covers over his loins before Page could see.

‘Are you listening?’ said Page. ‘I said some compatriots of yours are at court. They asked for you too. John ap Meredyth and Howell ap Llewellyn.’

‘Kinsmen,’ said Owen faintly. ‘Of Glyn Dwr and me. From Gwydir. John. John. I must get up. I must get well. Bring me your surgeons. I have money, I can pay. And stay by me. I must go to London.’

In the shell of a room that was part of the crumbling fabric of ruined Glyndyfrdwy, Hywelis lay cold and stiff on the floor. Anyone seeing her would think her dead, but there was none to see. After a long while she stirred. She got up in agony. Her red hair was damp with the sweat of her long journey; she bound it with a thong. She fell twice, crossing the room, and crawled raggedly to her feet. A day and a night had passed. She was a little frightened; this time her spirit had been reluctant to return.

She went through to another ruined chamber where the new generation lay mewling in its high-sided basket of rushes. She picked out the largest of the male cubs and held it up. Madog’s grandson. This was the one; he had the badger blaze. The line was pure. The rest could go back to the vixen. She might reject them, they would die. They were expendable. She rocked the cub in her arms, crooning to it through the terrible festering sore on her mouth.

And then it seemed that nothing could go wrong, that both the wound and the weakness had just been awaiting banishment like naughty courtiers at a royal word. The doctor brought by Page was a skilled Levantine Jew. He poked and prodded at the residue of proud flesh in the wound, while Owen clenched his teeth on Page’s leather satchel, making a permanent imprint, and Page watched, his own eyes watering with sympathy. Still a poet, Owen thought; still soft of heart. Wonderful, blessed John! He had not mentioned her name again, and Owen did not dare, yet his mind was still filled with light. The doctor wadded the wound with crushed cinnamon bark. Soon there was little to see, other than a wide rosy channel filling with new tissue. Soon, he was on his feet.

Page, out of charity but also anxious to show off his new status, behaved like a prince. Owen needed a horse, and a horse was at the door. Owen needed a cart and one was borrowed from the Customs office. Owen needed information as to the harps. Page had it. One William Menston had taken them down to Bore’s in Fleet for repair. For a moment his heart dipped, as he thought the chance had been lost. Yet the same Menston had not troubled to reclaim them. All well; thanks to all-knowing John Page. Page, Owen thought, has been sent to me. By God, or perhaps by Drwynwen, to whom he had once or twice prayed. The love-goddess of Anglesey.

He ordered new clothes, and a barber. He found he could not shave himself. But you’re better! said Page, and Owen could hardly say: it’s too soon. My hands still shake from the knowledge that within a short time I may be in the same room with her. He wanted to laugh, and cry. He felt slightly mad. Yet one determined thought rose from the tumult: I shall look at her. Whatever the current edicts and courtesies. I shall look at her. And she will look at me.
I say it will be so
.

You’ll find your place still open at court, Page said. All your old friends are there. Robert Waterton (though he’s somewhat changed, he can’t seem to stop mourning Harry’s death)—Tom Harvey. They’re short of staff in the Wardrobe. Several were pensioned off; Gervais died. There’ll be no difficulty. It was almost as if Page knew. He could not know, Owen thought.

No, nothing could go wrong, from the perfect fit of the blue doublet and hose, the good elegant fall of the tawny cloak, to the fact that even after paying the Jew he still had a good portion of his French wages intact. There were honest people left in the world. He was in love with the world. There was an intermittent stiffness in his thigh. When, you reach London, Page told him, have yourself massaged in the old Roman manner. (Grinning.) There’s a new place in Southwark. A friend said that a real Nubian girl, black as warsmoke, gave him new life—and he was sixty! What would you say, John, if I told you that no woman has touched me, and I have touched no woman, for over two years? though I am only twenty-five or so … you would not believe me.

No woman has touched me, but one has rooted in me like a flowering tree. The dream entwines about me, possessing my heart, my veins, my vitals. That’s why my hands still shake as I bid Page an affectionate farewell and crack my whip over the head of this good noble horse, who takes me again into the service of joy.

And then Fleet; driving past the prison and the shops hung with guild banners and the close-hugged dwellings, their lintels carved with angels and flowers and fruit. The prison, where folk lie rotting, all love lost; the houses, where folk dwell never having known love, at least not like this … urging the wagon through the press of citizens, while the scribes worked diligently in their doorways and traders cried their wares. Moving on, oblivious to the rubbish lacing the cobbles, the fish-guts and slops and parchment shavings; seeing nothing that was not fair. A golden haze caught permanently within his eye. The carved angels looked serenely on him with
her
face. Their wooden draperies were
her
soft garments that once again he might tend and store and cherish. And in his mind, the lily and rose and honey of her blotted out the smell of the spilled ale in the taverns, the clerk’s pungent ink, the heavy dankness of the river. London’s reek was purified. The dream was near.