Child of the Phoenix

The early winter was mild. The gales blew themselves out and late roses budded and came to bruised, torn flower. The roads remained in good condition, and so, at last, Eleyne came to Aber in the second week of December.

The last month had been bitterly unhappy. John had withdrawn from her completely. Since their quarrel over Margaret’s letter he had remained angry and cold, refusing to believe her tearful insistence that she had not intended to ask the king about remarriage. Perversely, his health had improved. He had put on weight and he rode and hunted regularly now, a more robust colour animating his face, but he had made no further attempt to touch her. Their reading too had stopped. He was too busy, he said, with the administration of the additional huge earldom of Chester.

When the prince’s letter had come, asking him and his wife to Aber for Yule, John had written back excusing himself, but Eleyne could go and welcome. She was ecstatic when he told her. She could go home; she could see Rhonwen; she could see her father. She closed off John’s rejection in one corner of her mind and concentrated on preparing for the journey to the place she still thought of as home. She did not think about her mother or Einion at all. Nothing must be allowed to spoil her return.

John spoke to her once, on the eve of her departure, at her request.

‘You are packed and ready?’ He looked up from his desk without a smile.

She nodded. ‘We leave at first light, my lord.’

‘Good. Carry my greetings to your father and mother.’

‘When shall I come back, my lord?’ The excitement she felt at returning home could not fill the strange gap his withdrawal had left. She longed to run to him, to touch him, to feel him hold her protectively in his arms.

‘I will summon you back when I want you, Eleyne. If I want you,’ he said slowly. He laid down his pen. ‘Do not return until you have heard from me. I’m not sure I still want you for a wife. I’m not sure at all. It is not too late to annul this marriage. It is not consummated in the eyes of God.’ He turned back to his letters and did not look up again. She turned slowly, fighting her tears, and walked from the room.

VII

Rhonwen was waiting for her in a guest chamber at Aber. Never again would the beloved nursery wing in the ty hir be hers. It was already being refurbished for Isabella’s coming child.

‘Cariad! but look at you! how you’ve grown.’ For a moment neither of them moved, then Eleyne flew across the room and into the other woman’s arms.

‘Of course I’ve grown, Rhonwen. I’m grown up now!’

‘You are indeed! A countess twice over, with a train of followers bigger than your father’s!’ Rhonwen held her away for a moment surveying her face. If he had taken Eleyne and made her his, she would know. She searched the girl’s eyes. There was something there, but not what she sought. Of that there was no sign. ‘You’ve been unhappy, cariad. I can see it in your eyes; see it in the thinness of you. What’s wrong?’

‘Nothing’s wrong.’ Eleyne turned from the sharp scrutiny. ‘I’m tired, that’s all. There is always so much to do at Chester, so many people to talk to.’ The dowager had helped, staying on at the castle at Eleyne’s frantic entreaty, but even so she had found herself busy at all hours, even when it was only the business of being entertained. Without John’s support it had been a nightmare of strain and tension. ‘My father, Rhonwen. When will I see him?’

‘Soon, cariad.’ Isabella had done her part; Dafydd had persuaded Llywelyn to issue the invitation, but that was as far as it had gone. ‘I have no wish to see your sister,’ he had said to his son firmly, and the day before Eleyne’s arrival he had left Aber with a large contingent of followers to ride south.

Joan was there however, and only an hour after Eleyne’s arrival she summoned her youngest daughter to her solar. Dry-mouthed, Eleyne stood before her, sharply conscious that she was now taller than her mother and far more richly dressed, for Joan was wearing a black gown and cloak – much to her husband’s irritation, her habitual dress since her return from exile. But her eyes were the same, fiercely critical, as she looked her daughter up and down.

‘So. You have become a beauty.’

Taken aback, Eleyne blushed. She still felt antagonistic towards her mother, but her fear had gone – and her respect. But for this woman and her betrayal of her husband, Aber would still be her home and she would still be sure of her father’s love. Her disappointment at not finding him at Aber had been intense.

‘Why have you come?’ The directness of Joan’s question shocked her.

‘My father invited us,’ Eleyne replied. She raised her head defiantly. ‘And I wanted to come. I have missed you all.’

‘Indeed?’ Her mother’s voice was dry. ‘But your husband has not come with you.’

‘He is too busy.’ Eleyne answered too quickly.

‘And you are not too busy,’ her mother echoed quietly. ‘You are not breeding yet, I see.’ Her eye skimmed critically down Eleyne’s slim figure. ‘Your friend Isabella is six months gone.’

‘Is she?’ Eleyne turned away, but not quickly enough to hide her unhappiness from her mother’s sharp eyes. Joan’s expression softened slightly. ‘You and your husband are content, Eleyne?’

‘Yes, mama.’

‘And he has made you his wife?’ She paused. ‘You do know what I mean?’

There was only the slightest hesitation, but it was enough. Joan frowned. Unexpectedly, and for the first time in the child’s life, she felt a wave of tenderness for this wayward, fey daughter of hers. Her own unhappiness and loneliness over the last three years had made her more thoughtful, more understanding. Her attitude to other people had, she realised, changed.

She had been dreading seeing Eleyne again, well aware that it was Eleyne who had seen her that fearful, fateful night, but now, with her daughter sitting on the stool near her, gazing unhappily into the fire, she could feel her loneliness and misery as a tangible cloak around her. She responded to it with an unlooked-for wave of sympathy.

‘Is it his illness?’ she asked, her voice more gentle.

Eleyne shrugged. ‘At first he said I was too young; then he was ill. Then, when I thought he wanted me at last… we quarrelled.’ Her eyes were fixed on the soft swathes of smoke drifting across the fire as the flame licked at the damp logs. The air smelt sweet and spicy from the gnarled, lichen-covered apple.

‘You must make up your quarrel.’ Joan picked up her embroidery frame and selected a new length of silk for her needle. ‘You have been lonely, I think.’

Eleyne nodded.

Joan squinted at the branch of candles, holding her needle up to the light. ‘It was the same for me when I first came here. I was English and a stranger in your father’s court. I was lonely and afraid.’

‘You?’ Eleyne turned to stare at her.

‘Why not?’ Her tone was defensive. ‘I was young – oh not as young as you – and just as vulnerable and without the loving family behind me which you had.’ She paused, unaware that her use of the past tense had brought tears to her daughter’s eyes. ‘I barely knew my father. He and my mother were together such a short time and yet here I was branded -’ her voice grew heavy with bitterness – ‘branded as the bastard daughter of King John. Not a princess, even though I had been declared legitimate, but the child of a woman of the night and a butcher!’

‘Was he really so evil?’ Eleyne’s voice was quiet. Her grandfather had died four years before she was born, but she too had grown up in the shadow of the hate his name still roused.

‘He did some bad things. He was a king,’ Joan went on after a long pause. ‘Kings and princes must sometimes be cruel if they are to rule effectively.’ There was another silence.

Was she thinking of her own imprisonment, Eleyne wondered, and she realised with a shock that she had stopped thinking of her mother with hostility. This, the first real conversation they had ever had, had revealed a vulnerable, sensitive woman beneath the tough, unsentimental exterior, and Eleyne warmed to her.

Her needle threaded at last, Joan put the silver thimble on her finger and began inserting minute stitches into the linen in her frame. ‘Why did he dismiss Rhonwen?’