Crown in Candlelight (65 page)

She lies no longer in St Paul’s. King Harry had her reinterred in the Lady Chapel at Westminster. Owen has never been to the tomb. Neither have I, for I follow him everywhere. Last week I saddled a horse and went after him through the winter gales. He rode to a certain beach along this coast. He would rather have been alone, but I do not let him from my sight. I knew then that I had so little time left of him. I stayed some way behind him while he walked to a cove and stood looking at it, while the surf lashed the rocks and the seabirds mourned. Then he turned and came back, his face very calm and sad. He put his arms round me. The seawind blew my thin white hair about. I thought: could I only have died in beauty, as she did! and how long since that moonlit night in the valley! He said: ‘Hywelis.’

I looked at him. I looked all about him, and my heart grew sick at what I saw.

‘Hywelis,’ he said, ‘I should so like to be with her again. Will I be too old for her now, I wonder?’

And I looked away out to sea and said: ‘Owen, my little one. There’s no age or time in that place. I have seen. Everyone is young
yn y Nefoedd
. The maimed are whole. The blind see. Everyone’s young in heaven.’

I could have told him then. He has only thirty days left. The corpse-candles were shining about him, the merry little fires dancing red and green against the rocks behind. I could have told him, but he did not ask, and the words outmatched me. Instead I looked again out to sea and saw the time to come; the great fleet approaching from Brittany, with Jasper and Davy Owen and Edmund’s son Henry, standing on deck under the banner of Cadwallader, ready to do battle with the Great Boar.

The Great Boar’s name is Gloucester, too. A gentler, nobler Gloucester, Richard of Gloucester, one of the chosen victims of destiny, defiled,
unjustly accused
. He will fall to Wales at a place named Bosworth Field. Now he is a child, the brother of Edward of March, the giant, Ysbaddaden the Terrible. In twenty-four years this will come to pass. The smoke has told me. The Lord has told me.

I seldom need to look in the smoke now; the visions come unbidden. I see the battle to come within this month, when we ride into Herefordshire, Owen in his red doublet, Jasper keen and strong and bound for safety. Little King Harry deep in his inherited madness, praying and singing even while the battle roars. And his Queen, Margaret of Anjou, as full of war-passion as Jeanne d’Arc ever was.

I see the rout at Mortimers Cross, the
galanastra
, the slaughter. I see the captives taken and brought to Hereford East, in the Market Place. The Lloyds and Howells, and Owen. I see the giant Edward of March victorious. The future king of England, the future destroyer of Little Harry. I see him full of vengeance. He fears the dynasty to come. I see Owen in his red doublet. I see the block. I see the axe. Owen will not pass Ysbaddaden the Terrible …

Last night I built the smoke and wept into the fire. Glyn Dwr came to me. He took a long time answering.

‘Girl,’ he said at last, ‘what is destiny? What is greatness?’

I answered, half-mad with grief. Destiny is a candle burning down to its bitter black end. Greatness is a man and a woman in bed. Destiny is foxes mating, pentacles and charms. Rain and sunlight. Good and evil. Heaven and Hell. Flowers and mountains. Jewels and blades. A bay horse and a white bird. Greatness is a delusion. Destiny is the child of murder. Greatness is the seed of love. Destiny is the axe and the block. Oh, my father, what can I do? Can destiny be cheated?

And he answered, with a look that said
you should know better
, then one of the other swirling faces leaned and whispered to him and through the thinning smoke, he said:

‘Do you recall the old custom that honours the gods of Wales, after the moment of death?’

The candles. Not the corpse-lights that presage the end, but the candles lit about the severed head by night: A hundred or more, burning about the head where it is placed on high.

‘It will be a still, frosty night,’ said the Lord. ‘He will shine in death as he shone in life.’

‘He is no god,’ I said.

‘No,’ they all answered, ‘but you can make him one. The people of Hereford will think you mad. Do it.’

I will do it. I will do it. Now he is ready to ride forth to his last battle, so straight and handsome, and time plunges me forward, too fast … I suffer doubly, always, through my terrible vision.

I see them rip the collar from his red doublet as he kneels before the block set among straw in Hereford Market Place. For a moment he looks about him as if expecting a reprieve, for he has never asked me when his death shall be, and trusts on pardon and grace in vain. But now he knows; the crowd is waiting for his final words. I see his faintest smile. The words are not for them, but for himself.

‘This head shall lie upon the block, that once did lie upon Queen Cathryn’s lap.’

His blood will run down and soak the straw. It will trickle down the Market Cross, where they will impale his head upon the highest point. Crisp clear evening will be falling. I will have more than a hundred candles ready to make him shine. The people—even the Yorkist partisans—will mutter as they wander away—what a good death he took! How meekly he put his soul and mind wholly unto God. I shall begin to light the candles, more than a hundred, the token of our gods. I shall climb the steps of the cross and wash the blood from his face and carefully comb his hair, and set my candles burning all around him.

He is no longer Owen ap Meredyth ap Tydier, Esquire.

He is Owen Tudor, founder of the greatest dynasty that Wales ever set to rule over England. It is done. He looks so young, so bright.

I will weep awhile, and then be silent.

Bestselling author both in the UK and North America, Rosemary Hawley Jarman was born in Worcester. She lived most of her time in Worcestershire at Callow End, between Worcester and Upton on Severn. She began to write for pleasure, and followed a very real and valid obsession with the character of King Richard III. With no thought of publication, she completed a novel showing the King in his true colours, away from Tudor and Shakespearian propaganda. The book was taken up almost accidentally by an agent, and within six weeks a contract for publication and four other novels was signed with HarperCollins. The first novel,
We Speak No Treason
, was awarded The Silver Quill, a prestigious Author’s Club Award, and sold out its first print run of 30,000 copies within seven days.
We Speak No Treason
was followed by
The King’s Grey Mare, Crown in Candlelight
and
The Courts of Illusion
. She now lives in West Wales and has recently published her first fantasy novel,
The Captain’s Witch
.

This edition first published 2008

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This ebook edition first published in 2013

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epub isbn 978 0 7524 9937 6

Original typesetting by The History Press