Joan frowned. ‘Joanna and I are not close. You know that. We are only half-sisters. She is unlikely to forget that I was not the child of her father’s queen.’ She sounded bitter.
‘But Uncle Henry declared you legitimate,’ Eleyne reminded her gently. ‘And Joanna speaks of you with much affection. She sends you her fondest greetings.’
‘I’m surprised she can remember me.’ Joan caught her breath as a spasm of pain wrenched at her stomach.
Eleyne jumped to her feet in distress. ‘Can I get you something to drink? Have you medicines? What do the physicians say, mama?’
Joan shook her head. ‘Nothing, nothing. It will pass. Don’t fret! Yes, tell me about the wedding.’ She lay back on the pillows and closed her eyes. Her face was grey.
When she slept at last Eleyne slipped from the chamber and slowly descended the stairs to the great hall, but they spoke again that evening. Joan, her hair brushed and her face sponged by one of her waiting women, looked stronger. She smiled at Eleyne. ‘I wish you and I had been friends sooner,’ she whispered. ‘Eleyne, I should like to see Margaret and Gwladus and Gwenllian and Angharad. Write to your sisters, child. Tell them to come.’
‘Mama,’ Eleyne was afraid, ‘you’re not going to die?’
Joan smiled and shook her head. ‘No, of course not. I am just feeling silly and weak and sentimental. What better reason to ask one’s children to come and see one?’ She reached for Eleyne’s hand. ‘I wish I had not given you to Rhonwen. I stayed much closer to the other girls. She made us enemies, you know.’
‘Rhonwen would not do that.’ Eleyne was on her guard at once.
Joan nodded. ‘Oh yes, she was jealous because she had never given birth. She wanted you for her own. You were so much younger than the others, Eleyne.’ She paused. ‘Rhonwen wanted us to call you Bridget, you know, for the day you were born in the fire, but we named you after St Helena. She was a great ancestress of yours; a daughter of King Coel…’ She seemed to drift away for a few moments, then she opened her eyes again. ‘Someone told me that Ellen too was a goddess; a goddess of light.’ She was silent again. ‘Your father was afraid once that Rhonwen would contaminate you with her heathen ways. I told him she wouldn’t dare.’ She lay staring at the opposite wall. It was freshly plastered and painted with bright roses. ‘One of your father’s bards believed in the old ways. These mountains. They are full of such people… enemies of Christ. Your half-brother, Gruffydd, I sometimes think he is one of them.’ Her voice was growing weak.
Eleyne said nothing, her eyes fixed on her mother’s. Her fingers strayed once more to the beads at her girdle.
‘Eleyne!’ Her mother’s voice was suddenly sharp. ‘Are you paying attention? Remember, Rhonwen is evil. I am so glad she is no longer with you…’
Rhonwen was downstairs in the great hall listening with most of the household to a travelling harper who had ridden into the city the night before. ‘Rhonwen is not evil, mama. She loves me. She would do nothing to harm me,’ she said gently.
‘No? Perhaps not. But she would not hesitate to harm anyone else who crossed her path. Or yours.’ She gave a little half-smile. ‘It was she who told you to betray William and me to your father, wasn’t it?’ It was the first time she had ever made any reference to that night.
Eleyne bit her lip. ‘Mama, it was so long ago. It’s all forgotten now.’
‘Forgotten!’ Joan’s eyes blazed. ‘No, it’s not forgotten! I loved him, you know, though not the way I love your father.’ She subsided back on to the pillows and took Eleyne’s hand almost pleadingly. ‘It was something strange and new and forbidden. It was an excitement in a world where I had come to accept the fact that I was growing old. I was used to the flattery of courtiers, but William was different. He made me feel alive.’ She closed her eyes and Eleyne felt her fingers growing slack. ‘You were jealous, weren’t you, child? You didn’t want your old mother taking his attention from you and that monstrous horse. You didn’t understand. I wouldn’t have betrayed your father for the world. I loved him so much, but…’ Her words trailed to a stop.
In spite of herself, Eleyne saw again the picture of her mother and William naked on the bed. She trembled. But at the same time she had begun to understand. She groped for the right words. ‘You loved father, but he never gave you pleasure,’ she murmured.
Joan’s eyes flew open, and she studied Eleyne’s face. ‘You do understand,’ she said at last.
Eleyne nodded. ‘I think so.’ She smiled sadly.
‘So.’ Joan caught her hand again and squeezed it. ‘Is it the same for you? But your husband is kind? Llywelyn was always kind. And it is not as though you have ever loved anyone else.’
Eleyne shook her head violently. ‘I would never, never betray my husband.’ It sounded sanctimonious and she was immediately sorry she had said it. She had not meant it that way; she had been thinking about herself.
Joan gave a bitter laugh. ‘That is so easy to say. Perhaps you have not had the opportunity. Try to put yourself in my place. What would you have done if your lover had beckoned you one night and kissed you in the shadows beneath the moon? What if he beguiled you away from everyone else on a ride and you found yourself alone with him on a mossy bank covered in dog roses and violets?’ She began to sob.
‘Mama!’ Eleyne leaned forward and kissed her forehead. ‘Mama, don’t cry.’
IX
She had not wanted to return to Scotland so soon. She had not wanted to return to Chester. Her mother’s illness and her father’s worry frightened her. She wanted to wait until her sisters were there. She wanted them all to be together, but Llywelyn was adamant.
‘It is your duty, child, you must convey our messages. Your mother will have the other children. It is not as though she is going to die.’
Eleyne scanned his face, trying to see the truth. What she saw was his blind determination that what he said was the truth. And with that she had to be content.
She rode fast to Chester and spent three days with John, then she was on the road again, riding north with a small escort of chosen knights and just two ladies, Rhonwen and Luned. Ostensibly she was answering an urgent summons from her Aunt Joanna to come to her sickbed at Kinghorn. In reality she carried two letters sewn inside the bodice of her gown, one from her husband and one from her father.
Free of the burdensome escort of the huge household which had accompanied them on their last trip, Eleyne set a fast pace, feeling the power of the great stallion beneath her as they rode the long road north. The nearer they got to Scotland the more nervous she became. The thought of seeing Alexander obsessed her. She wanted to be near him; she longed to see his face, to hear his voice, but at the same time she was bitterly ashamed of the longing and consumed with guilt. Why did she feel this way? She loved her husband. John was kind and understanding and handsome; what more could she want? It was so much more than many women had. The king had never really noticed her in any special way; he teased her, he was off-handedly affectionate – she was after all his niece and the wife of his heir. Each time her thoughts reached this point she would try to blank them off. Every thought was mortal sin. Her soul was damned and yet she could not stop her dreams.
As they forded the glittering silver sands of the Solway and struck north through the forest of Ettrick and Teviotdale the weather worsened markedly. The wind rose, the clouds settled on the hills and the rain drove across the tracks soaking horses and riders alike. Huddled in her cloak on the wet, cold saddle, Eleyne shivered, her teeth chattering.
The Forth was rough, the wind whipping the water into sharp, white-topped waves as they embarked on the ferry at Dalmeny and set out from the shelter of the land, leaving the horses behind. The far shore was invisible in the murk. Chilled and uncomfortable in her wet clothes, Eleyne refused the shelter of the rough, open cabin and settled in the lee of its walls, staring out into the gloom. The sailors had raised an old patched sail to aid the oarsmen and the boat lurched forward alarmingly, creaming through the water, its rigging creaking and flapping as the steersman, his eyes narrowed, tried to edge downstream before the wind.
‘I’ll be glad when we’re there.’ Rhonwen, her eyes streaming from the cold, sat down beside her and pulled her hood forward over her face. ‘It’s only a short ride to the king’s manor at Kinghorn, the ferry-man assured me.’ She
