The Lost Brother (21 page)

“I want to visit Cilcain’s chapel too,” King
Owain said, “even if it isn’t on the way.”

Gwen had a vision of Father Alun making
welcome the royal company, which would proceed to run roughshod
over the villagers, causing Gareth no end of grief. But again, she
acquiesced and promised to bring him there before turning south to
Lord Morgan’s fort. Privately, she didn’t think he would make it
that far and, unfortunately, she was right.

Shortly after riding through the pass south
of Moel Arthur, Cynan made a stab with his hand for his father and
shouted, “He’s going over!”

Everyone pulled up as the king fell more
than dismounted from his horse. He landed on his knees beside the
road and brought up what little he’d eaten and all the water he’d
recently drunk. Then he lay on his side in the grass, shaking and
shivering, unable to rise to continue the journey even in the back
of one of the carts.

Gwen and Tudur were beside him instantly,
working to get a blanket underneath him. Gwen covered him with two
more. Then she hovered over him, wrapping her arms around his bulky
shoulders in hopes of warming him. The snow had long since melted,
so he wasn’t lying in it, but the grass beside the road was wet and
the ground water-logged. The damp would soon seep through
everything.

“I’m sorry, Gwen,” King Owain said, his
teeth chattering. “I shouldn’t have come.”

The truth of his statement was so obvious it
needed no reply, so Gwen said, “My lord, may I suggest that you
send everyone who isn’t absolutely needed for your guard on ahead
to the princes’ camp? They can tell Prince Hywel and Prince Rhun
what has happened. Perhaps they can return with help.”

King Owain gave a jerky nod. “Better that my
nobles don’t see me in my weakened condition for longer than
necessary, eh, Gwen? You would have made someone a fine queen.
Politics is in your blood.”

He waved a hand at Cynan, who’d been
standing close enough to be attentive but far enough away such that
he remained out of range of King Owain’s sickness.

Gwen had meant only that they were holding
up the whole caravan, and the nobles would soon be anxious and
irritated at the delay. It was still the right choice, however, as
was clear once Gwen explained her suggestion to Cynan. His
expression lightened.

“Madoc can take them.” And then he gave a
swift grin. “It will serve him right to have to speak to people and
lead them for once. Being the younger brother, he doesn’t often
have to.”

There was no bite in his tone—just
mischievousness and love. Rhun and Hywel had a similar
relationship, except Hywel was more outgoing than Madoc, and Rhun
was the heir to the throne instead of third in line like Cynan.

Soon the only people left in attendance were
a reduced guard of fifteen, Tudur, Cynan, and Gwen. They’d been
left a cart and a driver too, for when the king found the ability
to rise, they would need it.

The bed of the cart had been full of cooking
supplies, but it had been a matter of a few moments work to
disperse them among the other carts. King Owain’s men set to work
building a fire, and soon it blazed up, bathing everyone in its
heat. Meanwhile, they moved the king to a dryer spot under the
spreading branches of an old oak tree and covered him with more
blankets that Cynan had collected before the carts departed.

The new spot they’d chosen was damp, but
that was the extent to which the weather was a problem. If need be,
they could erect the king’s tent around him right beside the road.
After a brief consultation, they deferred doing so for now. While a
tent would protect him from rain or snow, he couldn’t lie as close
to the fire if he was inside it.

“We have less than a mile to go to the
village,” Gwen reassured the king. “We will get there, if not this
hour then in the next one.”

“If I don’t live to see them again, tell my
boys that I love them,” King Owain said.

Gwen felt at the king’s forehead. His fever
had returned. Until this moment, he’d managed to sustain a gap of
almost six hours between bouts of vomiting, which was probably why
he’d decided he was well enough to ride. According to Tudur, the
previous day, King Owain hadn’t kept anything down for longer than
the time it took Tudur to empty the chamber pot and return.

“You’re not going to die,” she said flatly.
“Two steps forward, one step back, my lord. You’re recovering.
You’ve just done too much today.”

And her words proved true, because now that
he was lying down again, he was no longer vomiting. If she could
keep him warm, and if she could eventually get him settled in a bed
so he didn’t have to move, she could start over with the regime of
broth and put him back on the road to health.

King Owain looked somewhat mollified. “You
really believe that, don’t you?”

“I do.” What she didn’t say was that he
would still be believing it too if he hadn’t refused to listen to
her and Tudur.

“If I lie on my left side and don’t move at
all, I can contain myself.”

“Then don’t move,” Gwen said. “I’d like to
eventually get you into that cart bed, and then you can sleep there
all night if you have to.”

“The driver can park me in the stable.” King
Owain actually managed a slight laugh. “If it was good enough for
our Lord and Savior, it can be good enough for me.”

Gwen remained beside the king as the sun
slowly lowered behind the hills to the west. She didn’t have any
broth, but she warmed mead in a pot they’d been left and fed him
that. It was sweet and soothing—and something with which to fill
his stomach, which was all she cared about.

The king slept for a time; when he awoke, he
seemed better until he tried to rise, at which point he vomited yet
again. As he shuddered and shook in his blankets, curled up around
his belly, the king gripped Gwen’s hand. That it was a strong grip
gave her hope that what she’d told him was true: he wasn’t dying.
But then he tugged her closer so she had to put her ear right next
to his head.

“I never should have allowed your father to
leave Aber.”

“Sire, please—”

The king squeezed her hand again. “My temper
has been my downfall all my life. It was the same for my father,
though some might say it was the fire in him that gave him the
drive to overcome every obstacle to regain his throne. But it also
sent my brother to his death. I pray that my stubbornness never
sends my sons to theirs.”

Gwen didn’t know how to answer that except
to say, “You are not your father.”

“We’ll see.” The king’s eyes closed. For a
moment she thought he had returned to sleep and that his outburst
had been a form of sleep-walking, but then he said, “I never should
have married Cristina either.”

Gwen made no reply to that, because there
was none to make, and she glanced around quickly to make sure she
was the only one within earshot. Then the king’s hand loosened in
hers, and he really did sleep. A coldness ran all through her that
wasn’t due to the breeze that had risen now that the sun was going
down.

King Owain shouldn’t have married Cristina.
Everyone at Aber had known it long before the wedding. If Cristina
knew the king had regrets about their marriage, she would be
anxious and enraged, never a good combination in their queen. Her
jealousy of King Owain’s other women and her protectiveness of her
sons were already troublesome.

The last time Gwen had seen Cristina and the
king together, a shouting match had erupted between them in the
queen’s quarters, ending in the king storming from the room. He’d
left a few hours later for the front lines of this war and had not
returned to Aber.

As the king slept on, Gwen calculated and
recalculated the time it would take to get to the camp and hoped
that Rhun or Hywel would come at any moment. Gareth had said that
it lay only a mile and a half beyond Cilcain, but perhaps her sense
of time and distance was distorted by her anxiety for the king.

Cynan, for his part, maintained a constant
vigil on the road. He paced back and forth along it, leaving them
occasionally to scout the road at either end beyond the limits of
what they could see from where the king lay. Afraid of Ranulf’s men
coming upon them unawares, Cynan sent other men in all
directions.

At one point he came back to her and said
under his breath. “I almost regret sending Madoc with the others
instead of going myself. I hate waiting, and I would have returned
with help by now.”

Privately, Gwen thought Madoc would have
stayed behind and done all the same things, but without the nervous
energy Cynan displayed.

But then at last, before another half-hour
had passed, Rhun rode around the corner to the east, accompanied by
Godfrid and his men. Cynan ran forward to catch the bridle of
Rhun’s horse as he reined in, and Rhun dismounted and loped towards
his father, with Cynan beside him, detailing all the while what had
happened. Rhun fell to his knees beside Gwen. At the sound of his
eldest son’s voice, King Owain lifted his hand weakly in greeting,
a vague smile on his lips, though his eyes remained closed.

Rhun took King Owain’s hand, even as he said
to Gwen, “You were supposed to keep him at the monastery.”

Gwen gave a gasp of protest, but before she
could actually speak, Rhun made a dismissive motion with his
hand.

“Ignore me. I was a fool to think anyone
could stop my father from doing what he chose, when he chose. He is
pig-headed.”

King Owain opened his eyes. “Don’t blame
Gwen or Cynan, son. I’m a stubborn old fool.”

“You are not,” Cynan said staunchly. “Put it
down to how healthy you’ve been for so long. You have no patience
for illness.”

“Now that’s the truth there, my boy,” the
king said, and he even managed a wink at his younger son.

Leaving King Owain to Cynan and Rhun, Gwen
rose to her feet and went to where Godfrid waited with his
company.

“This wasn’t what we needed today,” he said
when she reached him.

“Has something else happened?” Gwen
said.

“The king’s spies near Mold say we are too
late. The castle is refortified,” Godfrid said. “Both he and Ranulf
moved at the same time, but Ranulf beat us to it.”

“Will we keep on?” Gwen said.

Godfrid grunted. “What can we do? For now,
we’re committed to the assault, but none of your nobles have the
stomach for a long siege, which, of course, is what Ranulf is
counting on.”

“We’ve had victories elsewhere,” Gwen
said.

“You have, but not this week, and now with
this—” Godfrid gestured to where the king lay. “Some will be
questioning Gwynedd’s leadership. You need a victory here, or you
will be forced to retreat with your tail between your legs.”

“Have you said as much to Hywel?” Gwen
said.

“I have.”

Gwen didn’t like the image Godfrid had
drawn, and none of the men would like it either. King Owain led the
coalition of nobles who formed the Welsh side of this conflict.
Those in Gwynedd owed him loyalty as a matter of course, but those
from Powys or from regions to the south followed him because his
leadership led to victories, which meant land, money, and
power.

In King Owain’s absence, the responsibility
for delivering those victories fell to Rhun and Hywel, as his elder
sons. That King Owain hadn’t actually fought in a battle in years
and this arrangement was no different from normal (except for the
king’s illness) was irrelevant.

In short order, Rhun accomplished what Gwen
and Cynan could not, which was to ride roughshod over the immediacy
of his father’s illness and order the men to lift the king bodily
into the cart. The king vomited twice in the process, but once he
was settled in the cart bed, braced against Cynan so he wouldn’t
rock too much, his stomach calmed down again. Gwen waved Tudur onto
the seat next to the driver, and she took a spot in the back next
to the king.

The cart set off, and after a half-mile, the
king fell asleep to the rocking motion.

Cynan’s face remained tight with concern.
“His condition is such that he could fall asleep and never wake!”
He spoke in loud whisper so Gwen could hear him over the clopping
of the horses’ hooves and the rumble of the cart wheels on the
road.

“I will tell you what I told Rhun: he is
very ill, but he isn’t at death’s door. I do hope, though, that he
will sleep even after we reach Morgan’s fort. I told him I’d leave
him in the back of the cart rather than disturb him.”

That got a smile from Cynan, though it
disappeared instantly. He twisted in his seat, trying not to
disturb his father’s rest but anxious about how much farther they
had to go. It was fully dark now, and Gwen couldn’t see anything
but the shadows of trees that lined the road and the faint outline
of fields beyond. The only light available was thrown out by the
torches carried by Godfrid’s men.

Like Cynan, she sat leaning against the side
of the cart. She had her feet tucked under her cloak and a blanket
wrapped around her shoulders and tried not to crack her teeth at
the jostling of the cart on the rough road. She’d take a horse any
hour over this.

When they reached the village of Cilcain,
however, Rhun didn’t turn south to Morgan’s fort. Instead, he led
them right through the crossroads. Gwen tried to hail him
unobtrusively, not wanting to question his leadership or his sense
of direction in front of the other men, but Godfrid pulled up
beside the cart and shushed her.

“Trust him, Gwen. He knows what he’s
doing.”

She subsided, and before another hour had
passed, they arrived at the new encampment, King Owain still
asleep.

The camp for the kings and princes sat on a
hill above the plain and was reached by a road that switched back
and forth across the face of the hill, much like the road to Lord
Morgan’s fort. The slopes were well forested, since the hillside
was no good for farming. It did seem as if the top had once housed
a settlement, since it consisted of a cleared space, a hundred and
fifty yards by two hundred. The larger camp for the spearmen and
archers was located to the southeast (and downwind) of the
hill.