III
Llywelyn settled her in the manor at Llanfaes, where she did not need to see Isabella too often, but nevertheless Isabella came. She was smiling. Her pretty face had lost its puffiness again, her hair was wreathed in a coronet of twisted gold.
As she was shown into the hall, Eleyne felt her stomach clench warningly, but she rose and stretched out her hand with a smile. Isabella dimpled and sat down next to her with a rustle of silks. It was unseasonably hot outside, but it was cool in the hall.
‘Did you know that Dafydd has had to send Gruffydd and Owain back to Criccieth?’ Isabella asked at once.
Eleyne nodded. Llywelyn, tired and ill, had retired permanently at last to the Abbey of Aberconwy and donned the cowl of the monks to spend his last days in prayer, leaving Dafydd in full control of all his lands. She had been told of the trick by which Dafydd had immediately captured his brother, luring him into a trap with his eldest son and making them both prisoners. He did not mean to brook any opposition in his final bid to become Llywelyn’s only heir. Already Eleyne was planning a visit to her father on Gruffydd’s behalf.
Isabella smiled. Obviously this was not the purpose of her visit. Her next words revealed what it was. ‘Dafydd has had letters from Scotland.’ Her voice rose a little as she faced her sister-in-law under the curious gaze of their attendants. ‘I thought I should be the one to tell you.’
Eleyne already knew what Isabella was going to say; it had come to her in her dreams. Alexander was married. Another woman was his queen. She clenched her fists, tired of always having to show a brave face, tired of the pain, tired of the pleasure others seemed to take in her unhappiness, yet unable to fend off this new wave of grief.
‘You know, don’t you?’
She realised that she had risen from her chair and that Isabella was standing behind her. ‘Your lover has married – a baron’s daughter, from France.’
‘I know.’ Eleyne managed to keep her voice steady.
‘What will you do?’ The spite in Isabella’s tone had softened; in its place there was genuine curiosity.
‘I don’t know.’
‘What about your husband?’
‘I don’t know that either.’
‘You have to go back to him.’
‘No, I’ll never go back to him, never.’
IV
It was easy to be alone at Llanfaes. Dafydd and Isabella had spared her few servants, but she had not wanted more. Her body needed rest to heal. Her soul needed silence. She often walked alone and the servants respected her orders not to be disturbed. It was easy to extend that order to the long rides through the soft Anglesey countryside, with its rich corn fields and its woods, accompanied only by the pup. Alexander’s gift had become inseparable from her. She had called him Donnet. It meant ’given’.
There was something that she had to do: she had to summon Einion.
It was hard to find where he was buried. Rhonwen had led her there in the dark and so much had happened since that terrible night; a lifetime of happenings which had left them, for the time being at least, far apart. Rhonwen was still safe in London.
She began at the hermit’s cell which Einion had made his own. The roof had fallen in and weeds had grown through the floor. Tethering Tam Lin in the clearing and telling Donnet to stay with him, she walked slowly towards the collapsing stone walls and stared around.
In the distance a curlew called, a lonely cry which echoed in her ears. Her skin prickled with fear, but she forced herself to move on, stepping across the threshold and pushing her way through a tangle of nettles and willow herb to the centre of the hut.
His few possessions were still there on the rudimentary shelf. So great was the respect in which he had been held that no one had touched them. The little boxes of herbs and spices lay tumbled in a heap, the boxes swollen with damp and mildewed. Some of them had fallen to pieces and their contents had long disintegrated or rotted away. His books, his knives, the little cauldron he had used to infuse his herbs – they had been buried with him.
She looked around warily, but there was no feel of him. She was alone. Picking up one of the rotting boxes she sniffed it curiously. It smelt of the damp forest floor in autumn. There was no clue to what it had held, no clue to what Rhonwen had used to summon his spirit.
The sun beat down on the top of her head beneath her veil and she could feel her temples starting to throb. She stood for a while in the clearing. Beneath the trees she felt better. Taking the horse’s rein, she began to walk slowly into the trees with Donnet at her heels. The track was indistinct now, overgrown, but she remembered it from that single afternoon so many years before when Einion had led her into the forest and taught her about the birds.
His grave lay beneath an oak tree some yards off the track. She recognised it by the stone. She dismounted and tied Tam to a tree, then she called Donnet and put her hand on his head. ‘Stay close,’ she whispered, and the dog whined.
She had no herbs, no flint to light a fire. If he wanted to speak, he must come on her terms. He was the one who had lied.
‘Why?’ she called out loud. ‘Why did you tell me I should be a queen?’
Nearby she heard a wren singing in the undergrowth. The wind stirred the trees and Donnet growled quietly in his throat.
‘That was what you wanted me to know, wasn’t it? That you were wrong? That I had no destiny in Scotland?’ Her voice rang amongst the trees and further up the ride a hare stood up on its back legs before it bolted into the shadows. ‘Well, now I know! Your gods were wrong, Lord Einion. They had no great plan for me! How they must have laughed when they saw me with my dreams!’
But, as her voice echoed in the silence, she knew there was no one there to hear.
V
Eleyne went to see her father three days later.
She did not speak of Alexander, what was the point?
‘You cannot let Dafydd lock up his brother like this!’ She sat close beside him, knowing his eyes had grown weak. ‘Please, papa, you are still the prince!’ Her hand strayed to the head of the puppy at her side.
He shook his head. ‘You must speak to Dafydd, Eleyne. He rules Gwynedd now.’
‘And unjustly,’ she said heatedly.
He smiled. ‘Are you still as hotheaded as ever, child? No, he does not rule unjustly. He was the right choice.’
She went to Dafydd, risking Isabella’s acid tongue, and she went to Criccieth to see Gruffydd and Senena, but she could do nothing. Dafydd was adamant.
