why he felt so weak when a woman bent over the bed. She held a basin of water, dipped a cloth into it, and laid it upon his forehead. Her touch was sure, her fingers cool against his skin. He studied her through his lashes; she seemed somehow familiar and yet he could not remember seeing her before. “Who…are you?” The sound of his own voice startled him, for his words emerged as a croak. She was even more startled. She gasped and her hand jerked, spilling water onto the bed coverlets. When she spoke, her voice sounded strangely familiar, too, but he did not understand what she was trying to tell him. “I am sorry,” he mumbled. “I speak no Welsh…”
More Welsh rang out, but this voice was male. Joining the woman at Ranulf’s bedside, a greying, burly stranger beamed down at him. “We’d about given up on you, lad!” This Ranulf understood, and it puzzled him for a moment, before he realized that the man was now speaking French. Turning away, the man switched briefly back to Welsh, and another figure emerged from the shadows, this one a young girl, no more than fourteen or fifteen. “Ranulf…men do call you Ranulf? No, do not try to talk. For more days than I can count, we were sure each breath you drew was like to be your last! You do not know me?” The query followed by a hearty, booming laugh. “How could you? I am Rhodri ap Rhys, your uncle. And these are your cousins, Rhiannon and Eleri.”
“Your…your daughters?”
“My lord king’s message said that you were in a bad way. I thought it best to bring my lasses along, so that at least they’d have a chance to bid you farewell. And glad I am that I did. I’m not sure you’d have made it if not for Rhiannon here.”
Rhiannon murmured in Welsh, and her father patted her on the arm before turning back to Ranulf. “She speaks no French, but she still suspects that I’m bragging on her. I’m just speaking God’s Truth, though. Even after the doctor gave up, my girl did not. She never left your bedside if she could help it. She prayed for you and talked to you and held your hand, so you’d know, she said, that you were not alone.”
“Tell her,” Ranulf whispered, “that I did know…”
His young cousin had squeezed between Rhodri and Rhiannon so that she could get a better look at Ranulf. “Papa, his eyes are closed! He…he is not dead, is he?”
“No, child. He is sleeping again, that is all.”
Rhiannon leaned over, brushing her fingers lightly against Ranulf’s cheek. “He feels cooler,” she said. “Papa, do you truly think he will recover?”
“Yes, lass, I do. But I did not,” he admitted, “until now.”
Ranulf would have few memories of the days that followed. Mostly he slept. Owain Gwynedd was gone, back to his royal manor at Abergwyngregyn. The monk-priest had returned to his brethren at Basingwerk. Declaring that Ranulf no longer needed his care, the doctor, too, departed. But each time Ranulf awoke, his uncle and cousins were there.
He came to rely upon it, that they’d be close at hand whenever he needed them. Rhodri straddled a chair by the bed, translating French into Welsh and back again, demanding that Ranulf eat all the food he brought over from the castle kitchen, putting Ranulf in mind of a shepherd hovering over a lamb long given up for lost. When the boredom of the sickroom became too much for Eleri, she slipped out to explore the castle grounds and flirt with the garrison. But she volunteered to wash Ranulf’s hair, tried to talk him into letting her shave off his beard so he would look “properly Welsh,” and borrowed a lute to play for him at night before he fell asleep. And he was convinced that in all of Christendom, he could not have found a more devoted nurse than Rhiannon.
Unlike Eleri, Rhiannon never seemed to tire of her vigil. During the day, she was always within the sound of Ranulf’s voice, and after dark, she slept on a pallet by his bed so that she could hear him if he needed her in the night. It did not matter that he could not understand what she said; he lay still, listening to the ebb and flow of her soft-spoken Welsh, as lulling as the familiar patter of rain upon a roof, and he knew that he would not die in this alien place called Yr Wyddgrug, the “burial mound.” His cousin Rhiannon would not allow it.
When Rhodri opened the shutters, spring sunlight flooded the chamber. After a fortnight in the semi-gloom of a sickroom, Ranulf was dazzled by this sudden blaze of brightness. “Another week in here,” he told Rhodri, “and I’d have been blinder than any bat.”
Rhodri swung around to glare at him. “Do not joke about that-not ever!”
Ranulf blinked. “What did I say amiss?”
His bewilderment was not feigned, too sincere to doubt. “You truly do not know, Ranulf?”
“Know what?”
“That Rhiannon is blind.”
“No…that cannot be! She has been taking care of me, bringing me food, even pouring me wine…I saw her do it!”
“You sound just like all the others,” Rhodri said impatiently, “those who believe that to be blind is to be utterly helpless. Do not deny it, Ranulf. When you think of a blind man or woman, you think of a beggar, seeking alms by the roadside.”
“It is not that,” Ranulf insisted, not altogether truthfully. “You just took me by surprise. It never occurred to me that…that she could not see. She did not stumble or bump into things or-And I am proving your point,” he said, and Rhodri nodded.
“You’ll learn, lad,” he said tolerantly. “But do not start treating her any differently now that you know. My girl cannot abide pity.” Moving toward the bed, he looked down pensively at Ranulf. “I’ve a question to put to you. You’re on the mend for certes. But do you think you’re strong enough yet to travel? I think you’d do well enough in a horse litter, but if you’d rather wait a few more days, we can. It is up to you.”
“Where would we be going?”
“Why, home, lad. Back to the Conwy Valley, to Trefriw. You’ll stay with us whilst you regain your strength. You’ve grown up in your father’s world. Now it is time you got to know your mother’s world, too.”
“I do not understand,” Ranulf confessed. “I am a stranger to you, the son of your enemy. Why have you opened your hearts to me like this?”
Rhodri was puzzled, for the answer was so obvious. “Because,” he said, “you are my sister’s son.”
41
Gwynedd, Wales
May 1148
For Ranulf, Wales was one surprise after another. He’d known it was very unlike England, a land of deep, trackless forests, jagged mountain peaks, sky-high icy lakes, barren moorlands, and no towns or cities. He had not known, though, that it was so beautiful, a country of untamed grandeur and lofty, soaring vistas, and for the first time, he understood why his mother had never stopped looking back.
He was surprised by how well his Welsh kin lived. Wales was a much poorer country than England, but even by English standards, Rhodri ap Rhys had a comfortable home in the hills overlooking the Conwy Valley, where his cattle grazed-for the Welsh were hunters and herdsmen, not farmers. As in England, the great hall was the heart of the manor. The kitchen and private quarters were set apart, but otherwise, the layout of a Welsh manor house was not drastically different from its English counterpart. Reassured by the familiarity of his new surroundings, Ranulf hoped to make a quick recovery, and learn a little Welsh in the process.
His convalescence was to last far longer than he’d anticipated. He’d assumed-unrealistically-that he’d be up and about in a matter of days, but he soon realized that it was going to take weeks to regain his strength, a frustrating outlook for a man who’d never been gravely ill before.
He had better luck with Welsh, picking it up with what appeared to be impressive ease and remarkable speed. He let himself bask in the admiration of his newfound kin for a while, and then confessed that his mastery of Welsh was not as amazing as it seemed, for he’d spoken the language in childhood. He’d thought it had disappeared into the darkest depths of his memory after his mother died, he admitted. But all he’d needed was to fall into a Welsh well. His own forgotten Welsh had to bob up to the surface if he had any hope of keeping afloat, he laughed, and when his cousins and uncle laughed, too, he felt inordinately pleased, and not just because he’d made his first successful joke in Welsh. Their approval was already beginning to matter to him.
That was the greatest surprise of all-how fast he’d become so fond of this hitherto unknown family of his. It went well beyond the natural gratitude he might have expected to feel. Memories of his mother had come flooding
