Crown in Candlelight Read online

  ‘God save us!’

  ‘Amen. Do your best.’

  ‘Michelle … attends the Dauphin, and he is loath to leave Paris.’

  Marie was mentioned. ‘… in seclusion. The little one …’

  ‘Of course, the favourite. God, sir; be hasty!’

  Katherine got up just as the nun returned, her eyes bright, wearing an odd little smile.

  ‘Princess, make ready. You are going to Blois. Madame has been delivered of her child.’

  Joy and with it beauty flooded Katherine’s face.

  ‘They’re waiting.’ Dame Alphonse turned from Katherine, fixing her eyes upon the flame beneath the image of Christ, while Katherine ran about, collecting clothes in an untidy bundle. She did not offer to help, for she did not trust herself. ‘God go with you, child,’ was all she said, as the light feet left the room and the door slammed shut. After some little time, she heard the rattle of wheels and hooves departing from the courtyard outside. Then she knelt once more, and very soberly resumed her prayer.

  It was the worst journey of Antoine l’Astisan’s life. He was so saddle-weary from the swift ride north that he shared the princess’s litter on the return journey. He had rested for only an hour, and now there were fifty miles to cover again. So he sat with Katherine and tried to avoid her eyes. He feigned occupation with documents carried in his satchel, letters half-drafted, meaningless and blurred to his eyes, one or two of his lord’s poems awaiting fair copying. Yet Katherine, sitting very straight and important, demanded his attention. He shuffled the parchments away and looked out of the narrow window, at the trees sparkling with September colour, orange and ochre and gold, and heard her asking him questions.

  ‘Where are we now? Shall we be much longer?’

  ‘This is Chartres, my lady. And it depends on the road how long we take. Look out, Princess, and you’ll see the cathedral. When one goes in, it’s like standing inside a sapphire.’

  She looked and saw massed spires, silver arches, the diamond of windows, all this beauty nesting in a maze of trees, their leaves splendid in death. The sun was already beginning to decline, its light mellow and lovely. There was the merest breath of frost.

  ‘The weather is drier today,’ said Antoine l’Astisan, for safety.

  ‘Tell me—’ the diversion of the cathedral was over—’is the child pretty? Shall I be able to hold it? What is its name?’

  ‘The little maid is very pretty,’ said l’Astisan, fidgeting with his satchel. ‘She is not named yet.’

  ‘I’m longing to see her, and Madame!’ At this, the secretary leaped to his feet in the swaying litter and, through the window, rapped on the panels outside. The carriage slowed; an outrider bent to look through at him.

  ‘Can we go no faster?’

  ‘The horses are tired. We must rest them at Bretigny.’

  Antoine l’Astisan cried: ‘Make all speed!’ and then to Katherine: ‘We must stop at Bretigny but …’ He passed a hand over his eyes. He heard her say gently: ‘Do they hurt you?’ and in a voice so like Isabelle’s, a voice loved by all: ‘I think my brother-in-law works you too hard!’ He could not answer. He shook his head and delved about in his documents.

  ‘Where do we go after Bretigny?’

  ‘We cross the northern Loire near Orléans … then we’re almost there …’

  He heard her say wistfully: ‘If we had wings!’ and answered, his mind made up to propitiate whatever gods worked on this journey: ‘Very well. We’ll ride through the night.’

  We will ride through the night. An old memory awoke. She fancied she saw, through the moving window, her mother’s spur spraying red from the horse’s side, beads of her own blood running from a wounded foot. She fancied she felt the ache in her lungs, the burning of thirst, the plunging of the horses as the Loire met the Yonne, the pain and terror of the night in Tonnerre. Fears laid away during the shady time at Poissy renewed themselves. But Belle had come … she reached out and touched l’Astisan’s knee.

  ‘How is my sweet sister?’

  ‘She is very tired, Princess,’ he said, reading a letter and making nonsense of it. ‘She had a difficult accouchement.’ Then he closed his eyes as if to doze, and secretly began to pray. If there is any mercy, great God, give it now. Give us one little hour.

  Leaving the plains of Normandy, they entered the county of Blois and the Loire valley. With fresh horses entrained at Bretigny they came just before dawn to their destination. It was to be another fine day, and the sun’s gleam climbed in mist up the château of Blois, piercing the vapours on the river-moat, highlighting the flamboyant architecture and the candle-snuffer turrets. The standards flew; the peacock feathers and broom, the fleurs-de-lys. The sun touched their misty colours to jewels.

  Katherine was out of the carriage almost before it had stopped, running over the drawbridge and under the portcullis, diminished by its great height. Into the hall she ran, and Charles of Orléans moved slowly to greet her. His hands were cold; he looked over her head, mutely seeking the face of Antoine l’Astisan. Very softly their voices drifted, the secretary speaking first.

  ‘We are too late …’

  ‘By half an hour.’

  Antoine l’Astisan fell to his knees, his hand on Katherine’s shoulder pulling her down beside him. He crossed his breast.

  ‘Madame is dead,’ she heard Charles say. ‘My wife. My life. My lovely princess. Ah, Death! what made thee so bold!’

  There was no reality. The hall was a place in a dream, the weeping servants half-seen ghosts. Even the distant mew of the new-born infant the wail of an imaginary fiend. She allowed Charles to take her hand once more and lead her into a great chamber. There, colourless, almost translucent, lay her sister, made traitor by death.

  She spoke to Belle softly, and the carved lips kept their distant secret smile under the ranked candles about the bier. As surely as if the knowledge had been laid before her, a signed and sealed decree, she knew that her childhood was over. It left the windows of her mind as swiftly as the white bird, flying inland from the storms of the sea.

  Part Two

  THE PROPHECY

  Wales, 1414

  I did not refuse the collar which bound me,

  The poet’s peer, for her arms around me

  Were white as the chalk or a circlet of snow—

  How gay the gift a man’s throat will know …

  Dafydd ap Gwilym, 1325–80

  Hywelis was watching the vixen and her cubs. She lay upwind of them, pressed deep into the bracken and heather that spread over the whole of Llangollen Vale. Looking through a tunnel of green fronds, each tipped with a tiny perfect Bishop’s crozier, she was quite still, save for the rippling of her long red hair moved by the wind from Eglwyseg Mountain. She had known the cubs from their conception, had watched the mating one night under a tremulous moon. Now they played two yards from her hiding-place where the June sun warmed her back and the past night’s dew dampened her breast. She saw how quietly and intensely they played, biting one another. The largest was exactly like his father Hywelis whispered: ‘Madog. Madog, old Reynold’s heir.’ Bronwen, the vixen, lay nose between paws, stern eyes on them all. It was rare for them to appear in daylight.

  Hywelis played with them in her mind, running with them until they were silhouetted against snowy cumulus at the top of a bank, then sporting down again with fierce embraces. They were fed; on the ground was a tossed chewing of fur, stripped small bones. In thought, too, Hywelis had shared the feast, tasting the warm blood, cracking the carcass between her own sharp teeth. For today she felt three-quarters vixen, and anyone seeing her might have fancied her face more pointed, her hair shining redder, the tilt of her eyes more evident. She came and went as she pleased within the vale, moving through it even in darkness since she was a small child seeking completion in the wild, and learning, and although there were boar and wolf roaming her domain, she had never been harmed.

  Once long ago, the Lord of Sycharth and Glyndyfrd
wy had sent a search-party with torches for her; the night was perilous with storm. She had been beaten. Not a hard beating, for the Lord, above all others, understood her craving. Still she came and went at will and now, at eighteen, she had seen things at dusk, in moonlight, at dawning, beyond the comprehension of the world. Things not only of nature (the fight to the death between badgers, the mourning of a swan for its mate), but of supernature, like the procession of men and women, none of them over two feet tall, who sang as they vanished into a cleft in the hill; the ring-ouzel who, playing in a tributary of the Dee, had looked at her with human eyes; the speckled grouse that had once, clearly, spoken her name. Hywelis had the lore, the knowledge, the sight. The Lord of Sycharth’s blood beat in her veins. He who could whisk up a storm, darken the moon with a wink, and whose plumed horses rode the air with grace. Upon this heritage she had built her power.

  The sight and knowledge that was hers had been put to use on the day of her earliest memory in the time of Sycharth’s long-gone splendour; the Lord ensconced in his wolfshead armchair, she wandering among the hall-floor rushes. She had been two years old. All Sycharth was awaiting the return of Iolo Goch. Iolo the Red was the Lord’s prized bard, himself a lord and seer. His place was far above the three guild categories of the hierarchy of music: the pencerdd, chief of song, the teuluwr, or household bard, and the cerddar, head minstrel. Iolo had gone to Coed y Pantwn to commune with spirits and establish his prophecy.

  The summer dusk was haunted by owls. Impatient, the Lord had risen, lifting Hywelis to his shoulder and striding up to the battlements for a sign of Iolo’s return. He had worn a fur cloak with a great emerald clasp and Hywelis had hooked her fingers round the stone. Bats streamed in rays up from the tower and, mere flashes of black in the torchlight held by a sentry, danced above. Together lord and child looked out.

  To the west were the Berwyn peaks, fast losing shape as night fell, as did Llanrhaedar and further south, Llangedwyn in its bower of curving hills. Far behind the castle were the mountains of Llantysilio and Eglwyseg and behind them other ranges, their unseen tips disappearing in darkness and dewfall, great Mynydd Hiraethog among them. The last light was dying from the moat about Sycharth; sounds were enhanced—the squeak of the bats, the plash of the river and the noises of creatures fishing at the dam. Over the stream in gloom Pont Sycharth lay, and this Iolo would cross to reach home. A water fairy lived there, but she was harmless. They had burned a coracle in her honour for many years, pushing it downstream with offerings of bread and ale aboard.

  Hywelis pressed close to the Lord’s handsome head and gripped the emerald brooch tighter. She looked across the darkened moat to the bridge. ‘Iolo’s coming,’ she said. ‘Not alone.’

  The Lord shifted her weight from his shoulder and placed her feet on the battlements. Holding her fast, he said: ‘Are you sure? And who comes with him, friend or enemy?’ glancing, always wary, east to where the distant invisible border of the marches yielded to England.

  ‘It’s Iolo, my Red Iolo!’ said Hywelis. ‘With many lanterns.’

  ‘No, child!’ said the Lord, almost pleadingly

  ‘Yes!’ She was excited. ‘All about him, dancing, pretty lights.’ A voice, old yet strong, called out:

  ‘Merfyn! Take my horse. Diawl! I’ve dropped my lantern in the stream. It grows dark quickly.’

  ‘You see,’ said the deep voice in Hywelis’s ear. ‘You were mistaken. Iolo came from the bridge without light. Do you see him now?’ She leaned against his arm, out over the drop and looked where the bard was giving his reins to Merfyn at the stable-door. The lights were all around Iolo Goch, brightly playing, a steady shower of fire, each almost in the shape of a small slim man. She felt the Lord’s hand close over her eyes.

  ‘I see them, too,’ he said softly. But yours is the clearer vision. To me, he walks only in a gleaming haze. What see you? Truly?’ He withdrew his hand.

  ‘Like many candles,’ she struggled down. ‘Burning bright. Iolo is back …’ and she ran down the dripping spiral to where the bard, looking weary, doffed his mantle in the hall. The Lord followed slowly, thoughtful, sad, yet unsurprised; for the child was of his flesh, conceived of a dead concubine, a faery-woman. Her eyes were those of a seer. He thought: she will be greater than I in that respect. She is purer than I, pure enough to be cursed with the spirit-sight. She has power to frighten her enemies and alas, her friends, even unto death. He watched Red Iolo greet her with a kiss. The Lord clapped his hands and servers ran forward with mead. Iolo held up his drinking-horn appreciatively.

  ‘Blue mead,’ he said. ‘My journey ends in sweetness.’ He took a long pull from the silver-chased horn, and extemporized:

  We have drunk blue mead from the fountain of triumph,

  We have drunk red mead from the veins of a foe,

  Those that are princes are now our bondmen,

  Our rivers run with the mead of their woe.

  The Lord sat down opposite him.

  ‘You have learned?’

  ‘Lord, I am full of learning, from Coed y Pantwn and my lordship of Llechryd; and I stood before the true cross of Eliseg and heard his bones speak through fathoms of granite. Lord, your day begins. In my heart’s sight were four springs, four winters. When the fourth winter is done, there will be the sign of your greatness. I spoke with the Abbot of Valle Crucis. A hundred years seemed to pass in his words. He said: ‘The Lord has risen early.’ When the sign appears, you will rise to heights undreamed in the annals of Gwynedd, Powys, Deheubarth .…’

  ‘I shall be Lord of all Wales.’

  ‘Supreme. Wait for the sign. A tail of fire in heaven and whirlwinds to crush the mountain tops. You will rise early, Lord, and you will defeat for ever Y Sarff Cadwinog: the chained serpent of whom Taliesin sang: the English!’

  ‘Diolch i Dduw!’ The Lord bowed, giving thanks to God.

  Then, raising his face, he cried: ‘Menestr!’ to the cup-bearer who came to replenish the horns. Hywelis leaned on his knee, studying Iolo Goch with intent, unchildish eyes.

  ‘I saw lights about you as you entered Sycharth,’ she said softly. ‘Like candles, they followed your steps.’

  Iolo Goch slackened his grip on the drinking-horn and it rolled to the floor. He closed his eyes and did not speak. After a time the Lord said sorrowfully: ‘It’s true.’

  The bard opened his eyes, smiled, sighed.

  ‘Do you know, girl, what you have said?’

  She came and placed her arms about his neck.

  ‘The candles were pretty. Now they’re gone.’

  ‘Were they many?’

  ‘Many at least a hundred.’

  He released her and raised his vessel to his Lord, who sat with tender, troubled face.

  ‘Then so be it. I have at least a hundred days of life left to me. I may put my affairs in order, compose my soul. I shall return home to die, to Coed y Pantwn. I shall be buried at Valle Crucis, where Eliseg died, fighting Y Sarff Cadwinog. My one regret is that I shall not see your glory. Your triumph riding on a tail of fire—your victory against the English, Prince Owain Glyn Dwr!’

  Why was she remembering Sycharth now? Where was the merit in craving the old days, when Sycharth was a prince’s palace of unparalleled splendour? Every goblet shone with beryl and emerald. Every draught was kept fangless by heavy wolfskin, deerskin, hanging from loft to floor. Every man a fighting man. Unencumbered by the full armour that the Saeson (Glyn Dwr’s contemptuous name for the English) wore, they were clad in skins and leather with steel protecting only their vitals. They carried bows of polished elm, far superior to the Saeson yew. The Lord’s men were pure, they would go into Hell for him and love the going.

  Yet she thought on, staring unseeingly now at the playing fox-cubs. From the night she had seen the corpse-candles, Iolo Goch had begun to decline in the gentle fading of a life well spent in song and story and comfort of his Lord. How fair Sycharth had been! When poets from all Wales had come on clera, the bardic circuit whi
ch by guild law they were bound to travel, they had been enthralled. The eulogies rang out in praise of the Lord and his ancestors, the legendary Cadwallader, synonymous with Owain himself, who was deemed the reincarnation of the earlier, mystical Owain, blood-kin to Arthur. They hymned Sycharth as none other had done; not Iolo, or Llewellyn Goch, or Gruffydd Llwyd of Powys, or Sion Cent, with his terse-metred verses. Or even the sublime, revolutionary Dafydd ap Gwilym, the Nightingale of Dyfed, the merry one who in his rhymes equated God with human love.

  They had praised the Lord Glyn Dwr, not only in their own tropes and similes but in the songs of Taliesin, who, two hundred years earlier had made paeans to three kings: Rhydderch the Old, Nudd, and Mordaf, who fought against Hussa. In turn Taliesin had likened these three to their own mighty ancestors; to Urien of Rheged and his son Owain ap Urien, who vanquished Deodric the Flame-Bearer. Urien the land’s anchor, whose son’s javelin drew blood from the wind. Those who came to Sycharth all those years ago were the Gogynfeirdd, the poets of the princes, speaking through genius loosed by Iolo Goch, and the Lord and his lieutenants had listened to them. Not as past princes had listened, inattentive, for the long eulogies were as familiar as the Mass, but sternly, with a growing tremor of excitement and eyes always aloft for the coming of the comet.

  There will be weeping and widows, and tearing of raiment,

  There will be blood in the stream and bowels on the thorns,

  Owain the seed of wain has said farewell to mercy.

  Riding on clouds with the fire in his fist,

  He will whirl the bones of the Saeson about his head,