Rhuddlan (35 page)

But before she went another step, a hand
reached out and grabbed her arm, and pulled her to the side. She
was too frightened even to scream. The grip on her arm slowly eased
and she looked up at her abductor.

“Lady Eleanor? Is that you?”

The voice was bewildered and demanding…and
familiar. The haze of fear which covered her eyes evaporated.

“Alan?” she asked hesitantly.

“I don’t believe it! That night when you
arrived with Sir Richard, I thought…but I decided no, it’s too
fantastic, just a trick of the light! But…what are you doing here?
In Wales?”

There were a million things she could say but
she didn’t know which to say first. She opened her mouth but
nothing came out.

“They said you were a Welsh witch brought to
cure Lord William from his deadly fever,” he said. “So I thought no
more about it. But then I saw you come out of the keep just now and
it nagged at me again. I tried to get as close to you as I could
but—”

“I didn’t know why you were chasing me!” she
burst out, finally able to speak. “I was afraid.”

He grinned at her. “Of me?”

“I didn’t know it was you, Alan. If I had
known it was you, I would have flown right into your arms.”

He held his arms out. “So come now. Greet me
as your long lost cousin,” he said, half-teasingly,
half-earnestly.

Something held her back. It was impossible to
move her feet. Was it the memory of the last man who had touched
her? A man who had beaten her and cursed at her? Her heart, which
had just returned to a normal rhythm after the shock of seeing Alan
d’Arques, started beating frantically again.

He frowned, puzzled. His arms drooped.
“What’s wrong, Eleanor?”

What could she answer? If she said the truth,
then the rest of it would come out. She had put it all so carefully
behind her and as the years went by she found herself thinking
about it less often. Bronwen was her sole direct link with the past
but Bronwen grew up every day and had become to her evidence only
of the future.

“I’m so filthy,” she said quietly. “I’m
ashamed that you see me like this.”

He grinned again, happily. “I see nothing but
your face, Eleanor. You.” He stretched his arms out once more. “I’m
so glad to see you, you could be dressed in rags and covered with
scabs and I’d still want to embrace you.”

This time she smiled in return and walked
forward until she was pressed against his chest and felt his arms
clasped firmly around her back. His pleasure in meeting her was so
obvious and his embrace so sincere that she wanted to give herself
up to it, to break down and confess all the horrible events that
had brought her to this point. But she didn’t dare. Six years had
passed since they had last seen each other; six years that had had
a profound effect on her life. Who was to say something similar
hadn’t happened to him? She wasn’t the same person; how could she
be sure he was? So she willed her mind not to crumble and held her
body rigidly.

He sensed it. He pulled back and held her out
at arm’s length. “Eleanor?”

“Tell me what’s happened to you, Alan,” she
said in a soft, urgent voice. “How did you end up at Rhuddlan
Castle?”

“I serve Lord William,” he answered. “And
this is where the king sent him after the war.”

“What war?”

“You don’t know about the war? Young King
Henry against his father?” He gazed at her in astonishment when she
shook her head. “Where have you been, Eleanor? Your husband sided
with the rebels against the king. I was at Dol when he was taken
prisoner. We learned earlier this year that he’d recently been
released from Falaise but his castle at Chester was confiscated and
put under Henry’s control. You know nothing about this?”

“No. I’ve been here for the last four years,
Alan. At the abbey of St. Mary. Living in peace.”

He stood perplexed, trying to make sense of
her words. “And Chester?”

“One day, I left,” she said, looking away. “I
felt a stronger call than marriage.”

“I’m sorry, Eleanor.”

It was her turn to be confused. “Why?”

“I never approved of the marriage. I knew you
had been promised to the church and there was something about the
earl I just didn’t like. I wanted to tell you but you and Gwalaes
seemed happy enough and I didn’t want to spoil it for you. And then
I thought perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad after all. The earl was
well-respected and in the short time I knew him I always saw him
open-handed and pleasant company.”

“He was not so pleasant with me,” she said
bitterly. “Especially after my brother died.”

“He loved your brother. He married you
because Robert asked him to do it…Eleanor, I want to know
everything that’s happened to you since I last saw you. Does
Chester know you’re here?”

A shiver ran through her. Until recently her
husband had been a terrible but much faded memory. This contact
with the Normans, however, was breathing new life into fears she
had thought she’d never again experience. She almost didn’t answer;
perhaps if she refused to talk about it, the whole looming specter
of Hugh would dissipate and leave her at last in peace.

But Alan’s face was so open and earnest, so
obviously solicitous and remindful of the happier time when he’d
come to live with her family, that she knew she could trust him.
And so she described to him her long journey to the abbey. The
careful planning of her escape from Chester, the cold trip to the
Church of St. John, slipping through a rear door, the deliberate
footsteps to the edge of the city in the darkening gloom, the need
to keep walking, walking, walking even though she had only a vague
sense of the direction to Wales because she feared a humiliating
capture and return to the castle; the frigid November nights during
which she dared not close her eyes for fear the wolves would attack
her or the wild Welsh warriors of whom she’d heard such terrifying
tales; of walking, walking, walking until her fine leather shoes,
unused to the punishment, split and she’d had to rip strips of
cloth with numbed fingers from the hem of her gown to tie around
them just to keep them on her feet; of the hunger which had finally
attacked her on the second day and made her dizzy by the third and
half-crazed that she was killing her unborn child by denying it
nourishment; of the fear, worst of everything, that her journey
would never end, because she had no idea where she wanted to go or
how she would recognize safety when she found it.

“A child?” Alan interrupted. “The earl’s
heir?”

She nodded. “A little girl. I call her
Bronwen, a Welsh name…” Her voice rose eagerly. “I left her at the
abbey; you have to come and meet her.”

The dawn broke mistily on the fourth day.
Every tree branch and every blade of grass seemed to sparkle with a
thin sheen of ice but there was a dampness to the air which made a
wispy fog while promising a warmer day. She woke from a fitful nap;
miserable, cold and starving, and felt she couldn’t move. She
didn’t want to go on. She thought about her baby but was too
exhausted to feel guilty that it, too, would die if she died in
that spot under the tree. Then she had heard the faint toll of a
bell. For a confused moment she imagined it was God calling her
home to heaven. But the bell was insistent and finally she had
gotten up and stumbled towards it, out of the forest, down a barren
slope and up to the entrance to a small, stone church from which a
dozen or so brown-draped women were leaving…and collapsed in the
midst of them.

They washed her, propped her up in a bed and
fed her. They addressed her in Welsh and she responded in kind. Her
name was Gwalaes, she told them. Even though she was grateful that
the abbey had taken her in without question, she couldn’t risk
revealing who she really was. The sisters were all Norman
gentlewomen; they might have felt an obligation to convince her to
return to Chester and to her duties as a wife and countess. She
spoke passable Welsh, and although she suspected that the lay
people who served the nuns weren’t fooled by her rough accent into
believing she actually was Welsh, they apparently never said so to
the sisters. Months later, she heard it rumored that she was a
slave who had run away from a harsh master, and because the nuns
were morally opposed to slavery they didn’t press her on the
subject of her past.

Anyway, there was so much present to be
concerned about. It was soon obvious that she was pregnant. One of
the nuns employed her services in the infirmary. She discovered an
aptitude for the work; she had a quick memory and was soon able to
recognize the various herbs and plants which the abbey grew and
knew their purposes. Five months after her arrival at the abbey,
she delivered a perfect baby girl whom she named Bronwen in memory
of the true Gwalaes’ mother, who had for all actuality been her own
as well.

“When Sister Infirmarer died a year later, I
simply took her place. And then, last month, your Lord William was
brought to me. And now I’m here.”

Alan was shaking his head in disbelief. “My
God, Eleanor! What a fantastic tale! You—who had never set foot
outside your father’s house except to journey to Chester—suddenly
took it in your mind to walk to Wales?”

“Perhaps it was because I’d never been
anywhere that I thought I could do it.” She shrugged. “I was
frightened but at least I could speak Welsh. Gwalaes’ mother always
spoke it to us and most of the servants at Chester are Welsh.”

“Where
is
Gwalaes?” he asked abruptly. “Is
she at the abbey?”

Eleanor didn’t look at him. “No. She didn’t
come with me.”

“Why not? You two are like twins. What one
does—”

“We argued at Chester,” she cut in. “She
hated it. She hated the earl and his retainers and their wives. She
was only another servant there and she resented it.”

“All the more reason for her to come with
you, I would think…”

That was true. Eleanor decided she would have
to lie. She looked straight into his face. “She returned to
Oakby.”

“I see…”

“Alan, I must go. I must get back to Lord
William.”

He put his arm under her elbow. “I’ll walk
with you. I have to see you again, Eleanor.”

“Yes. Yes. I’d like to know more about the
war—and what happened to my husband.” They emerged onto the ward
and she turned to him urgently. “Alan, you won’t say anything…”

“Of course not!” He smiled at her. “I still
can’t believe it’s really you. There were times I wondered if I’d
ever see my little cousin from Oakby again, and Gwalaes, too.”

She felt her stomach drop. He hadn’t changed
at all. Somewhat taller. Somewhat heavier. A calm confidence in his
manner. But he was as kind and pleasant as he’d always been. She
was tempted to blurt out the entire story but for his sake caught
herself. There was nothing he could do for Gwalaes so why not let
him live on in ignorant contentment? She forced herself to smile
back at him. “You don’t know how we wondered the same thing the day
we were informed you were no longer in Robert’s entourage. I’m glad
to see you, Alan.”

He gave her arm an affectionate squeeze—a
gesture which did not go unnoticed by Richard Delamere, who was
angrily waiting for Gwalaes on the landing outside the hall.

There was a knock at her door and then a
breathless servant burst inside without waiting for permission.
There was, she informed Teleri with an excited face, terrible
screaming and shouting coming from Lord William’s apartment.

Teleri rose from her seat. Her embroidery
fell to the floor. “Who’s shouting?” she demanded. “What’s being
said?”

Sir Richard was doing most of the shouting.
The miracle-worker was there and so was Gladys. Teleri’s heart
pounded and the blood roared in her ears. It had been done! The
healer had done it! She was so excited, she began to shake.

Her women didn’t understand what had happened
and why she trembled. They pestered her with questions until she
impatiently hushed them. There was only one curious twist to the
story; Sir Richard was shouting in his native tongue and the
miracle-worker was apparently answering him in that same
language.

“Get someone over there who understands
Norman French,” she ordered and the servant flew off eagerly. Now
there was nothing more Teleri could do but pace the confines of her
chamber and wait. She didn’t dare go over herself; she was certain
Delamere would point a finger at her if she happened to appear
before his eyes. No, better to wait it out, she thought, although
it was hard. She couldn’t keep still. She rehearsed speeches in her
head and twisted her face into various expressions of shock,
practicing for the moment Delamere came to give her the news of her
husband’s death. She prayed to God she would be able to keep a
straight face.

The waiting was unbearable. Once she stopped
pacing and strained her ears. She fancied she could hear Delamere’s
angry voice even though Longsword’s apartment was, by his design,
on the other side of the keep. It was hard for her to believe it
had really happened and she would soon be free. It was a little
frightening—humbling, too—to realize the power she possessed. What
was it that had convinced the healer? Teleri’s deft hand with
Gladys? Her imperious manner? The argument she had made with its
bloody details?

“Oh!” she exclaimed out loud, stamping her
foot into the floor in frustration. Her women looked at her,
puzzled, and began badgering her with questions again until she
told them to shut up.

Then the same servant came back. “What’s
going on?” she asked her urgently. “What are they saying?” But the
servant had no answer. She had returned to tell Teleri of a new
development: three horsemen had just ridden into the ward. One of
them had leaped off his horse and jogged off towards the keep in a
single movement and was at this moment clomping his way up to
Longsword’s chamber. The remaining two had been joined by other
knights; they were talking with great animation and waving their
arms around for emphasis. Teleri made an automatic grimace; wild
gesticulation was another Norman habit she found distasteful.