Crown in Candlelight (64 page)

The cold air hit Owen like strong drink, making him falter dizzily for a moment before running on. The starlight and sunset blazed in his eyes, restoring instantly all their old beauty and brilliance. Still running, with the priest going like a deerhound beside them, he turned and seized Huw by the hair and gave him a smacking kiss on the mouth. Then he laughed, running, and from every corner of the network of little streets and from the entrances of alleys and courts and tavern-yards and from the road to freedom and the open fields, the strong shadows came hurrying to greet. him, some riding, some leading horses; the men of Wales, bloodkinsmen all, some unknown until now, some known from childhood, those whose fathers had grown in wildness under the law of the Lord, Glyn Dwr. His cousins, the fighting bards, Howell ap Llewellyn and John ap Meredyth reached him first, clutching him in their arms, kissing him, clouting his back with great blows that drove out his breath, talking wildly, crowing with laughter. Then Rhys and Gruffydd, Llywd and Hywel and Gwylym and the Theodor cousins from Penmynydd who had scarcely set foot in England the whole of their lives … all of them, crowding him into their embrace, ruffling his hair, exclaiming over his thinness in the snow-blue shadows and starlight and setting sun. They had a cloak of thick Welsh wool for him, for he had on only his doublet and hose, and their love and loyalty and shared triumph had set him shivering and near to tears.

And the beloved tongue fell sweetly on his ears once more, the full vowels and guttural consonants, each syllable a song, rippling with laughter and pride and loving mockery.

‘We’ve come to spring you, Owen, boy!’

‘Ah, well met, well met, my little one!’

‘But you didn’t need us, did you? Not with this villain!’ and Gwyl ap Vychan smote the priest such a clout on his back that his thin frame almost doubled, and he felt wildly to see that his purse was intact.

‘Nor with this one! Ah, God! there’s blood on you, boy!’ … said John ap Meredyth with terrible pride as he looked at Huw. And Owen embraced Huw again, feeling more tears on the boy’s face, saying: ‘Don’t cry, you fool! it’s over …’ and snatched up the reins of the strong fresh horses that had been brought for them. The priest had already mounted his; there seemed a lot of noise being made so near to Newgate and his skeleton’s face was worried. The leaders were of like mind. The blackbearded Theodor raised his hand. Some of the excitement was tempered.

‘Time we were away!’ They mounted, the horses’ whirling hooves churned silently in the melting snow; Howell ap Llewellyn’s horse bumped up against Owen’s mount. Hywelis wished us well, he said. She awaits our coming …

The horses sprang forward. The leaders began to set a fast pace towards the meadows of Smithfield and the outer ward of Farringdon. The company rode close, cloaks lifting to reveal weapons glinting in the snow-bright evening. The sky was turning a delicate lilac, more stars were out. Faster they rode, past cottages, with their little plumes of smoke, away from London. The horses’ hooves were a mere ghostbeat on the soft ground. Owen rode in the middle of the pack. He was dazed and disorientated after the long months without sky or air. They had travelled half a mile before realization thrust at him. He forced his mount close to the leaders, hauling on the reins so that the whole company jostled to a cursing halt behind him.

‘For Christ’s sake!’ he cried. ‘This isn’t the way!’

‘It’s the way home, boy,’ said Theodor.

Owen seized the leader’s bridle. ‘Devil damn! Where are we going? We must go back! Back, before they close the gates! through Ludgate and past St Paul’s and over London Bridge!’ He wrenched the horse’s head round, it screamed and reared. ‘South! Over the river! Or we shall be too late!’

They pressed about him: Howell ap Llewellyn and John ap Meredyth were closest, their faces stark and silent.

‘Why in Hell did you think I sent for you all?’ he cried. Most of the men were quiet. Yet a little chill whisper arose.

‘
South!
’ Owen shouted, as if at deaf madmen. ‘To fetch my little girl away!
Cathryn!
To burn down bloody Bermondsey!’

The horses stood quietly in the starry snow. In the distance St Paul’s great voice sounded. John ap Meredyth began to speak. His words faltered and faded away.

‘Oh, sweet God. Sweet Christ. Owen.’

He turned to Huw and said: ‘Damn you, boy. Didn’t you tell him?’ Huw bent his head, weeping.

Howell ap Llewellyn was the bravest. He reached out and took Owen’s hand, crushing it as if the pain might somehow shield him from the words.

‘Queen Cathryn died over a year ago, Owen. All your sons are safe and well. But your little girl is dead.’

Owen withdrew his hand. He rode forward apart from them all. He looked up at the sky. There was one star, most beautiful and bright; it grew larger and longer until it spread itself across his sight in a blazing blur of silver, invading his mind so that for a time nothing else could enter. Only the soft voices of his friends, and the feel of their arms about him as they rode close to steady him in the saddle. Then the star shrank again, becoming for ever distant in the amethyst sky, as he remembered the tolling bell in the winter’s night more than a year ago.

And he knew that the dance was over and the dream was done.

He looked back. He said: ‘Where is she?’

‘In St Paul’s. Owen …’

Not their entreaties, nor their curses, nor even their weapons could hold him. Theodor attempted to detain him with some force, but saw his eyes and was afraid for the first time in twenty years. Owen turned his horse towards London. The priest, scarcely comprehending, looked at him; the eyes looked back, communicating their dreadful wound.
Shrive me, priest. This man is dead
. He turned from them all and rode back through the closing gates of the City towards the source of the tolling bell.

He walked through the great dark doors of St Paul’s: He made no attempt to claim Sanctuary by touching the High Altar. He did not have to seek the place where she was; it drew him unerringly into a side aisle, quiet and almost hidden from view. The tomb looked very white against the other aged monuments. It was low and flat and plain; unembellished save for the arms cut into the top and a Latin frieze denoting whose mother and widow she once was. No flowers, no birds, no words or tokens of what had been. Nothing.

And across this nothingness he laid himself down. He let its bitter chill embrace him. Some time during the night priests and monks, unheard, unseen and unaware, moved softly to the High Altar with prayers and candlelight.

Her tomb bore no effigy. He became her effigy. And there he stayed until morning, when he was discovered by those who came to take him unresisting back to Newgate.

He looks so fine, so fair, in his red doublet. It is new velvet with a high collar. He let me help him put it on. I saw where his blood will soak almost invisibly into the red. He is mine, and has always been mine, and was never mine. I know the date and time and manner of his death. I have seen it in all its tragic nobility. I have heard his last words upon this earth. He will be brave. Will I? I have not told him.

He looks more than ever like the Lord these days, except that he is clean-shaven. His face is very gaunt, a fine falcon’s face, like the Lord’s, and he is about the same age as Glyn Dwr when he died. His eyes are still very beautiful. This past month the last of their bitterness seems strangely to have departed. He holds himself very straight, and he is pleased to be going again to the fighting. He has outlived most of his enemies and friends, and all but one of the three sons, Jasper.

Golden Edmund is dead these past five years, slain fighting near Carmarthen against the Yorkists, at the age of twenty-six. In time he will be re-interred before the High Altar of
Dewi Sant
. His purpose was accomplished. Although Edmund never saw his son, he, Henry, is now the one. The seed is sown. The line is pure. The dynasty is founded. Henry is five years old. His mother is Margaret Beaufort, great-niece of the Cardinal. She was fourteen when she bore Henry. Neither comely nor gracious, she is aware of her part in the whole pattern of good and evil and passion and war. Edmund was the one. Edmund was the child got in anger after the valets at Windsor had degraded Owen for his liaison with the Queen-Dowager. The bloody anger ran in Edmund, and now in his son, Henry. Wales will rule England. But first, there must be blood and sacrifice again. The foes who now rage are the enemies of the dynasty to come. It is war
à l’outrance
. York against Lancaster. Worse even than the French wars were.

All the black one’s efforts were in vain. The force beyond the spheres, known to my own tormented spirit, the cone of power raised by our mystic heritage, finally saw her damned and disgraced. She was discovered about to administer poison to the King—to ‘Little Harry’. The ensuing search was thorough—the black books, the corpses of animals, the secrets of herbal and alchemy—all was revealed, and Eleanor was stripped half-naked and flogged through the streets of London as a witch. And seven years ago she died, an outcast, and blackness had her.

Humphrey of Gloucester is dead these past fourteen years. The last seven of them he lived disgraced for Eleanor’s crimes. Suffolk murdered him. Some said that he fell in a stroke, but I know otherwise.

Suffolk himself is dead, beheaded for his allegiance to Lancaster—to ‘Little Harry’—on a log of driftwood on Portsmouth strand by the raging rebel Yorkists who seek supremacy now. This is the beginning of the last long struggle initiated by Richard of York. For Richard’s dead, his head spiked on the Bar at Micklegate in York. And his son, the giant Edward, rides forth in vengeance. The giant, bred by Richard and Cicely Neville.

Cardinal Beaufort died the same year as his old rival, Gloucester. He died peacefully enough, having laid up treasure on earth, and lies at Winchester.

James of Scotland is dead, murdered by his nobles at Perth twenty-four years ago. And so is Joan.

And Owen’s little Owen. He lived long enough to take holy orders and died at Westminster.

And Cathryn’s dead.
Cathryn’s dead
. How many hundred times have I heard those words? I had to cling very tight to sanity when he returned to me as the Lord had promised he would, or we should both have been swallowed by grief and darkness. He came back to me quite soon after that second time in Newgate. He was there for only a few weeks, until they realized that he was of some notability and Little Harry roused himself from his holy trance. They took Owen to Windsor in captivity for some further time. Windsor, of all places! with its sublime memories. And then came mercy. Little Harry, aided by his favourite councillors, recalled that there was such a person as Master Tydier, for whom he had professed love in this very spot by the black and purple rocks of Pembroke. A general pardon was issued by the Council. Master Tydier was absolved of all his nebulous crimes.

And he came back. By then I had a house ready for him. The Howells and Meredyths helped me build it. He came back, mad and gaunt and grieving. More than once he struck me because I was not her. He began to drink himself to death. I brewed the white bryony for his madness. I smashed the jugs and poured away the drink. I gave him an amethyst to wear against the demon. And then I took him to my bed, where I had always longed for him. I held him while he wept and cursed life and prayed for death and vengeance and turned to me with a terrible passion that made me bleed, and he could have killed me to ease himself, but then he would have been left unprotected.

Hour after hour, month after month, he talked of her. How she looked, how she spoke, how she loved him. The first time, the last time, the times in between. He unrolled their life together like a blazing parchment before my sight; it burned and blackened and was finally blown to the wind. He need never have described her to me. I saw her. Although she was not my charge or care as he is, I took my spirit in charity, to ease her death.

She died very soon after being taken to Bermondsey twenty-four years ago. While she lay, quite pale and lovely, her life ebbing from the recent birth, I heard and saw them harassing her to repent her carnal sin. It made me very angry. I saw them dictate the will she made asking pardon of her son the King. She repented, but only with her lips. She was already far from them, a frail vessel riven by the madness of Valois. But I helped her. I took her mind within my spirit’s hands, and brought her safely through the gate. She saw me. She smiled. She called me Belle. I believe she once said: ‘We shall all be one love, having expiated our sins.’ At least, that is what Owen told me she said.

And then I went to him in a dream to try to prepare him while the bell tolled on and on. He did not understand. He has never understood that he and I are one.

I was never jealous. I know that she was good and generous and utterly true in her love for him. She gave him a season of rapture which he swears was the greatness I once spoke of. He has no idea of the greatness to come.

It was far harder to reconcile myself to Davy Owen’s mother. Three years ago he brought her home. He had met her in the house of one of his Denbighshire tenants during his stewardship of the King’s parks and forests there. She had long dark hair and a wanton smile. Old as he is, he looked at her once and she left her husband and came with him. They stayed together for one week. He knew a bitter disillusion. She returned briefly within the year, presenting him with some high words and with Davy. But even Davy Owen has his part to play. The smoke has shown it to me. Davy will be a great knight. He will be one of those to come ashore on this coast, at Dale, near Milford Haven, with the army of the prophecy, under the Dragon banner.

My essence was with him when needed. In Southampton … the wound on my mouth took months to heal. The few folk I saw shunned me. By the time it had mended he and she were safe, deep in their joy together at Hertford.

Edmund, created Earl of Richmond, and little Owen are dead, but Jasper will be safe. Strong, martial Jasper, who has proved himself so well already in the fighting against the House of York and in his support of Little Harry will live for many years, and be part of the glory. He will prepare a haven for Edmund’s son in Brittany, keeping him safe from the vengeance of the giant. Jasper’s arm is dedicated to Little Harry, not for the honours he has showered upon him (through it’s pleasing that Jasper now has Gloucester’s Earldom of Pembroke!), but through the King’s mercy and kindness to Owen. Little Harry writes to Owen as ‘our beloved Esquire’, but all the accolades were reserved for Edmund and Jasper. Owen has never been knighted. Neither has he been married, although he swears over and over that he and she were married. He believes it. Many believe it. It is now tradition.