Child of the Phoenix

companion’s face changed her mind. She stood up. ‘Good idea. Come, Lady Rhonwen, we’ll be more private in the solar. I should hate our talking to disturb the princess. I don’t want another tongue-lashing tonight!’ They glanced at the door to the princess’s chamber in the far wall – firmly closed. Rhonwen followed their gaze. ‘I thought the princess would still be in the hall flirting with Sir William,’ she said acidly. ‘She didn’t look to me as though she intended to go to bed early.’

There was a horrified silence. She looked from one to the other, then back at the door, and her eyes narrowed. For the first time she noticed the heavy cloak lying across a stool. ‘So,’ she whispered, ‘she went to bed early after all. But not alone.’

Ethil seized her arm. ‘For the love of the Sweet Blessed Virgin don’t say anything! The prince would kill us all!’ She dragged Rhonwen towards the small solar. ‘Please, Lady Rhonwen, come through here. We’ll do your sewing for you, and we’ll have some wine. And you must forget whatever it is you are thinking!’

‘How long has this been going on?’ Rhonwen allowed herself to be pushed into the best seat and accepted some wine as Marared closed the door.

Ethil shrugged. ‘It started when he was here before. When he was a prisoner. I don’t think the prince ever suspected.’ She closed her eyes miserably. ‘When he went away I was so relieved, but then he came back…’

‘So.’ Rhonwen smiled. She bent to take the folded gown out of her basket and handed it to Ethil. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said, ‘your secret is safe with me.’

XIX

Eleyne sat up, staring into the darkness, her heart thumping with fear. Was he there again, his mind seeking hers, trying to lure her from her bed and down to the river? But no, the room was empty. She could hear the wind moaning in the roof timbers, swaying the trees in the valley below the palace. She shivered. Luned was fast asleep, burrowed like a small animal into the soft sheets. There was no sound from the other bed.

‘Rhonwen?’ she whispered.

She knew already that Rhonwen was not there and neither was the nearly finished gown which had been hung from a bracket near her bed so she could see it as she went to sleep.

Slipping silently from the bed, she pulled her fur-trimmed bed gown over her bare shoulders and padded over to the fire. The room was cold. She bent and pulled the turf off the banked coals and reached for a log. The fire hissed and a blue flame ran across the wood. She flinched, then, unable to look away, stared down into it.

She could see the gallows; see the crowds standing around its foot. The people were excited, rowdy, in the mood to be entertained; as she watched, unable to tear her eyes away, she saw them surge forward, shouting. He was there in their midst, surrounded by guards, his short tunic open at the neck, and already he wore the noose. She could see the rope against the softness of his skin, see the artery in his throat beating, throbbing with life. He half turned towards her and she strained forward, trying to see his face, but the crowds seethed round him cutting off her view.

‘Wait! please wait!’ she cried out loud. ‘Oh, please…’

Behind her the door opened and the guard peered into the door.

‘Dew!’ He hurled himself across the floor as Eleyne sprawled forward into the fireplace, clawing at the burning logs. She was crying.

‘Please, come back! I can’t see you! Please!’

She let out a scream as the man grabbed her by the arm and pulled her to her feet. Behind them, Luned sat up in bed, frightened.

‘What are you doing, princess?’

The man-at-arms half shook her, slapping in panic at her bed gown, which was covered in ash. ‘Dew! You nearly set yourself on fire! Did you drop something?’

Eleyne was trembling. Suddenly she began to cry. ‘Rhonwen, where’s Rhonwen?’

‘She’s gone to see the princess, your mother,’ he said, and he found himself stepping back sharply as she pushed past him and ran out of the room.

Barefoot, she ran towards the ladies’ bower and her mother’s bedroom. She threw open the door into the solar and peered in. It was deserted. The fire had burned low and the candles were guttering. She stopped, panting. ‘Rhonwen?’ she whispered. Tears were streaming down her face. Then she heard the murmur of conversation from the bedchamber. Tiptoeing towards her mother’s door, she lifted the latch and pushed it open.

The fire in the hearth leaped up at the sudden draught, sending red-gold lights sliding up the walls and across the bed where the two naked bodies writhed together on the tumbled sheets. Eleyne stared. She saw her mother’s face contorted with some strange emotion, her back arching towards the man who knelt between her legs, his broad shoulders shiny with perspiration in the leaping firelight. They laughed exultantly and he bent forward to smother her face with kisses, his powerful hands kneading the full white flesh of her breasts. Totally wrapped in their pleasure, the two did not hear the door open or see the small figure in the doorway.

Frozen to the spot, Eleyne stared at them for several seconds before she backed out of the room and pulled the door closed.

Blindly she turned. She did not seem surprised to see Rhonwen and her companions standing behind her. The three women had heard the outer door open and run into the solar in time to see Eleyne creep white-faced from her mother’s room.

Eleyne stared from one to the other, wild-eyed. ‘Did you see?’ Her lips were stiff. She could barely speak.

Rhonwen nodded.

‘It was Sir William.’ Eleyne’s voice was tight and shrill. She felt utterly betrayed. How could he? How could he do that with her mother? Her mother who had looked ugly and wild and like a sweating, rutting animal.

‘Your father must be told,’ Rhonwen said quietly at her elbow. She was suddenly, secretly, exultant. Sir William and Princess Joan. The two people she hated most in the world, trapped by their own lust. She bit back her triumph, anguished by the raw pain on the child’s face. ‘He has to know, Eleyne. What you saw was treason.’

Eleyne stared at her for a moment, her lips pressed tightly together. ‘But he will kill them,’ she whispered.

Then she nodded.

XX

Prince Llywelyn had fallen asleep in his great chair by the fire on the dais in the main hall. A half-finished cup of wine stood near him. Most of the men around him lay sprawled asleep across the tables.

Eleyne flew across the great hall and threw herself at him in a storm of tears.

It took Llywelyn a minute or two to understand what his distraught daughter was saying, then, white-faced, he stood up. Striding between his followers, all now awake and staring, he seized a burning torch from one of the sconces and made his way out of the hall, dragging Eleyne with him by the wrist.

‘If you have made this up, I’ll have you whipped,’ he hissed at the terrified child. She had never seen her father like this. His eyes were huge and hooded, his mouth a thin line of pain. Frantically she cast around for Rhonwen, but there was no sign of her amongst the silent curious crowd pushing after them.

Llywelyn strode across the courtyard and into the ty hir. Climbing the stairs, he crossed the women’s bower in long strides and flung open his wife’s bedchamber door, holding the torch high.

Eleyne saw the two figures sit up in the bed, their faces rigid with shock; she saw Sir William snatch the bedcover and wrap it around his naked body as he leaped up, saw her mother’s white skin gleaming with sweat, flaccid, exhausted, before Joan too grabbed at a sheet and pulled it over her. Then she found herself spinning across the room as her father, with an animal howl of grief and anger, pushed her away and threw himself on to Sir William, reaching for his throat. For a moment the two men grappled together by the bed, before the prince’s men rushed forward and dragged Sir William aside. He had lost the sheet and for a moment he stood completely naked, his arms gripped by his captors, as he was dragged out of the room.

Llywelyn stood, panting, looking down at his wife. She stared back, rigid with fear, her beautiful hair matted