Time and Chance (41 page)

ON THE DAY AFTER CHRISTMAS, Henry followed through on his threat and expelled as many as four hundred people, including Becket’s sisters and nephews, his clerks and servants and their families. A steady steam of refugees made their miserable way to Pontigny and Thomas Becket was indeed distressed, as Henry had intended. But it was a Pyrrhic victory, one that left a lasting stain upon Henry’s honor and his reputation.

Henry and Eleanor patched up their Christmas Eve quarrel the way they usually did, in bed, and when they departed Marlborough, she was pregnant again.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

 

 

 

 

 

 

>AR HAD COME to Wales, but the first battle was being fought in the great hall of Rhodri’s manor in the hills above Trefriw. The summons from the English king had erupted in their midst with devastating impact, as incendiary as Greek fire and as difficult to extinguish. For days now, the quarrel had raged and showed no signs of abating. Rhodri had argued with Ranulf until his voice cracked. Eleri had been reduced to angry tears more than once, and Celyn had overcome his natural reticence to plead with surprising passion. Even the self-absorbed Enid had roused herself to observe that it would be folly to obey the summons, for if Ranulf fought against the Welsh, he would alienate his family and friends and neighbors beyond forgiving.

Ranulf already knew that. He was painfully aware how high the stakes were. If he answered the summons, he was likely to forfeit all that he held most dear in this life. But if he did not? Disloyalty to his king was a sin of such magnitude that it was almost beyond his comprehension. It went to the very core of his integrity, his identity. He had supported his sister over Stephen and never wavered in that allegiance because Maude’s claim was just and Stephen’s was not, even after it cost him the woman he loved. Harry was his liege lord, his blood kin. Could he betray that bond—and live with it afterward?

An exhausted truce had finally fallen and dinner was served in a dismal silence. As it was a Friday fast day, their cook had broiled a large pike, taken from the manor’s fish pond. Swimming in a pungent mustard sauce, fresh pike was a delicacy. But now much of it went untouched; only the younger children seemed to have an appetite. Rhodri was pushing his fish around on his trencher with his knife, Rhiannon intent upon feeding Morgan, Celyn crumbling a crust of the bread baked to cater to Ranulf ’s English tastes, and Ranulf slipping surreptitious mouthfuls of pike to Blaidd, his Norwegian dyrehund.

Eleri was the one to crack first, flinging her napkin down with an oath. “For the love of God, Ranulf, look around you! This is your home. For fifteen years, your home. How can you throw it all away like this? If you love my sister as you claim, you must—”

Rhiannon let her get no further. “Eleri, enough! I do not need you to speak for me. We’ve heard you out, each one of you. You’ve had your say. Now let it be. When Ranulf decides what he must do, we will tell you. Till then, this serves for naught.”

Ranulf’s throat tightened; what had he done to deserve this woman? But even as he reached for his wife’s hand, their son sprang to his feet, shoving his chair back so violently that it toppled over. “I’ve not had my say!” Gilbert’s face was flushed, his voice unsteady. “If you answer the English king’s summons, you are betraying Lord Owain!”

“Ah, lad,” Ranulf said softly, “if only it were that simple.”

“I will be fourteen by year’s end, so do not treat me like a child! At fourteen, I will be old enough to fight against our enemies—against the English! And if you fight with them, you’ll be the enemy, too!”

Gilbert’s voice choked and he wheeled, bolting for the door as Ranulf jumped to his feet and Rhiannon cried out his name. The boy reached the door just as it opened and he collided head-on with Hywel, whose arrival out in the bailey had gone unnoticed in all the uproar. Gilbert staggered backward and Hywel caught his arm as if to steady him, effectively blocking his flight.

“Easy, lad,” he said with a smile. “The last time I saw someone move this fast, his tunic was on fire. Is dinner done then?”

Gilbert tried to wrench free and failed; over the youth’s head, Hywel’s eyes sought Ranulf’s in a silent question. Ranulf hesitated, then slowly nodded. Better to give the lad some time to calm down. But he knew that he was deluding himself. An eternity’s worth of time was not likely to bring Gilbert around to his way of thinking.

 

 

 

HYWEL’S ARRIVAL had defused the tension, at least temporarily. Accepting Enid’s invitation to dine with them, he kept them entertained with the latest court gossip, then shared the more serious news—that the English king had returned from Normandy, doubtless upon learning of Davydd ab Owain’s raid into Tegeingl. Moving with his usual lightning speed, Henry had led a quick expedition to relieve his castles at Rhuddlan and Basingwerk, then withdrew back across the border to organize a full-scale invasion intended for that summer. When Rhodri said glumly that they already knew of the English king’s plans for war, Hywel showed no surprise. His father’s surveillance system rivaled, if not surpassed, those of the English and French kings and the exiled Archbishop of Canterbury, and within a day of Ranulf ’s royal summons, Owain had known about it.

As the evening wore on, a patchy, pale mist drifted in from the Menai Straits, slowly engulfing the river valley and eventually reaching the hillside manor above Trefriw. One by one, the family members retired for the night, and Hywel’s men bedded down in the hall. A fire burned erratically in the hearth as the last of the log was consumed. By midnight, the only ones still awake were Hywel and Ranulf.

Reaching for the flagon, Ranulf emptied it into their cups. “I think there is more mead in the buttery.”

“Then I’d better fetch it, for if you stagger off in search of the buttery, God only knows where you’ll end up.”

“Are you implying that I’ve had too much to drink, Hywel?”

“No . . . I’d say you have not had enough. If you are going to drown your troubles, you might as well do it right. The aim is to blot out all the voices.”

“What voices?”

“The voice of reason, to start with. Then the voice of conscience. But we’ve only had two flagons . . . or was it three? Based on my experience, it will take at least four. The conscience, in particular, floats like a cork . . . devilishly difficult to drown.”

Ranulf laughed, but it had a sad sound to it. “You think I’m a fool, don’t you?”

“No . . .”

“That was not a very convincing denial,” Ranulf complained and Hywel submerged a grin in his mead cup.

“Indeed, you are no fool. In fact, you are about as far from a fool as a man can get. Is that better?”

“But . . . ?”

“But you do have a few bad habits—one of which is that you invariably hope for the best instead of preparing for the worst. Our people have a saying, Ranulf, that you ought to take to heart: that it is dangerous to run with the hares and hunt with the hounds.”

“When you say ‘our people,’ Hywel, that does still include me?”

Hywel set his cup down in surprise. “Of course. You’re Welsh by choice as well as by blood—your besotted loyalty to the English king notwithstanding!”

Ranulf knew that the other man was joking, but it was difficult for him to find much humor in his plight. “I understand why your father and Rhys ap Gruffydd and the others have rebelled, God’s Truth, I do. How could I blame them for wanting to free Wales from a foreign yoke?”

“But you also understand why Henry feels compelled to crush that rebellion.”

Ranulf nodded miserably. “Yes,” he admitted, “I do. As king, he has no choice.” He snatched up his mead cup and drained it, too fast. “I understand too much for my own damned good.” Shoving the empty cup across the table, he leaned forward, cradling his head on his arms. “But God help me, for I still do not know what I will do. . . .”

Hywel finished his own drink, then reached for a spare blanket on a nearby bench. Draping it over Ranulf’s shoulders, he stood for a moment, gazing down at his sleeping friend. “God help you,” he murmured, “for you do know . . .”

 

 

 

HYWEL DEPARTED the next day, as did Eleri and Celyn and their children. Quiet settled over the manor like a tattered, faded quilt, too worn to offer much comfort. On Sunday, Ranulf’s family heard Mass at Llanrhychwyn, a small church nestled in the hills above Trefriw. Ranulf loved this whitewashed stone chapel shadowed by towering yew trees; it was here that he and Rhiannon had been wed on Shrove Tuesday fifteen years ago. As the parishioners filed out into the cool May sunlight, he caught Rhiannon’s hand and led her toward a corner of the churchyard. There were tombstones there, green with moss, and the woodland scents perfumed their every breath. When he described for her a hawk gliding on the air currents high above their heads, Rhiannon smiled and then said, “You are going to answer the English king’s summons.”

He plucked a dandelion from a grave and crushed it into a golden dustfall. “Yes,” he said, “I am. If I am with Harry, mayhap I can convince him to settle for less, a victory that does not leave Wales awash in blood.”

She wondered why Harry would heed him in Wales when he had not at Northampton. But there was nothing to be gained by pointing that out. “Do what you must,” she said wearily, for if there was pain, there was no surprise. She’d known from the first what he would do.

“Rhiannon . . . I am sorry. I know what I risk. Whatever the outcome of this war, it seems likely that I’ll no longer be welcome in Wales.”

“Hush,” she said, putting her fingers up to his lips. “We can only cross one river at a time.”

“I know . . . ‘Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof,’ ” he agreed, reaching for her hand. Although they both knew there was nothing more to be said, they lingered a while longer in the churchyard, midst the familiar sounds of spring and the enduring silence of the dead.

 

 

 

THE DAY HAD BEGUN with a sunburst dawn the color of molten gold, but as the afternoon advanced, dark clouds gathered along the horizon and the June warmth soon slipped away. Usually men on a hunt were boisterous and rowdy, but this hunt had been different from the first. Their quarry was a large male wolf that had been killing sheep in Herefordshire and Shropshire, so light in color it had become known as the “grey ghost.” While wolves were often hunted in France
par force de chiens
—by strength of hounds—in England they were looked upon more as pests than prey, and men were commonly hired to set traps and snares when villagers complained to their liege lord of slain livestock. But as soon as Henry heard about the grey ghost’s depredations, he had determined to hunt the creature down, insisting that a wolf could not be permitted to roam the countryside at will; today it was taking lambs, but on the morrow it might carry off a child.

Henry’s companions knew the real reason for his sudden hunting fervor: he was growing bored and restless at Ludlow Castle, impatient to speed up the preparations for next month’s invasion of Wales. The others showed little enthusiasm for tracking a wolf, an animal generally viewed with unease. But Henry was not to be denied, and a hunting party was soon galloping west into Herefordshire.

The grey ghost proved to be well named, elusive and spectral. Although the dogs had been able to pick up its scent at its latest kill, the trail soon petered out. The men finally halted in a clearing for a meal of dried beef, washed down with ale. A would-be poacher crept closer to observe them, seeing more than two dozen men sprawling in the shade, sweat-stained and muddied. He knew they must be men of rank, their dishevel ment notwithstanding, for hunting with hounds was the sport of the highborn. But he’d have been stunned had he known that he was spying upon England’s king, the Earls of Leicester, Cornwall, and Chester, the Bishop of Worcester, and the king’s out-of-wedlock kin, Ranulf and Hamelin. Deciding to postpone his own hunting for a safer day, he made a stealthy retreat, as soundlessly as the great grey wolf itself.

Rainald announced he was going to “take a piss,” shrugging off the inevitable round of ribald jokes about the dangers of stinging nettles. When he returned, he headed toward a large oak and dropped down into the grass beside his younger brother.

“I’d rather be hunting any prey but wolves,” he grumbled. “There’s no sport in it since they won’t turn at bay the way a boar does. And if that were not enough, the wretched creature has a poisonous bite.”

Ranulf swiveled around to stare at him. “Where did you hear nonsense like that?”

“It is not nonsense,” Rainald insisted. “All know it to be true, most likely because they eat toads.”

“Next you’ll be telling me that a man who eats chickens will start to lay eggs,” Ranulf scoffed, laughing in spite of himself.