Daughter of the Last King, page 1
part #1 of Conquest I Series
Daughter of the Last King
Conquest I
Tracey Warr
Published by Meanda Books 2023
https://meandabooks.com
Copyright © Tracey Warr, 2023
All rights reserved.
ISBN 978-0-9954902-0-3
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
First published in the UK by Impress Books 2016.
Created with Vellum
For Lola
Contents
Part I
1. A Small Massacre
2. Cardiff Castle
3. Becoming Norman
4. The Lay of the Land
5. An Heiress
6. Bitter Wives
Part II
7. A King
8. A Queen
9. Inaction
10. The Cheated Saint
11. The Court of Gwyddno
12. Phases of the Moon
Part III
13. Pentecost
14. The King’s Wedding
15. Nearness to the King
16. The Summons
17. The Fall
18. The Character of the Badger
19. The Chase
20. An Old Maid
21. A Blind Eye
Part IV
22. Into the Menagerie
23. The Gift
24. Being Welsh
25. Rebuilding
26. The Hobbled Claw
Historical Note
Bibliography
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Also by Tracey Warr
I
1093−1094
1
A Small Massacre
I was on the beach at Llansteffan with my brother Goronwy watching the sunlight winking on the water. In April 1093, the fifteenth year of my father’s reign as King of Deheubarth, I was twelve and Goronwy was thirteen. Our mother complained we were too old to play together. Goronwy should spend more time practising at the archery butts and I should be indoors, improving my very poor skills on the harp. But the sun was shining and our mother was heavy and sluggish with the child she carried in her belly, and we took advantage that she did not see us slip out of the compound and skid and slide fast down the hill to the yellow sands that we could not resist. Goronwy was building a splendid sand palace with a moat and a rivulet that ran to the edge of the sea and filled up more and more with each rush of the tide. ‘It’s your palace in Powys,’ he told me, referring to my betrothal to Prince Owain ap Cadwgan and that I would, in time, be the king’s wife in Powys, the lands adjacent to our own.
Something black was half-submerged in the sand between my feet. I bent and picked it up, blowing off the sand and turning with glee to my brother. ‘Look, Goronwy! I’ve found a claw at The Claw!’ We called this place The Claw because of the shape made by the three rivers that flowed into the bay here – the Taf, the Twyi and the Gwendraeth. It wasn’t a shape you could see. You had to imagine it, as if you were a bird flying high above, looking down at the three blue river talons reaching up into the land. Goronwy did not reply, absorbed in his building, so I turned back to the sea, twisting the bird’s claw between my thumb and finger.
I remember the sun shone in my eyes as I looked out to the sea and the next trickle of surf. The breeze whipped loose strands of my black hair into my mouth and I had to hold it from my face with both hands cupped to my brow, shading my eyes and opening them as wide as they would go. ‘I think I can hear bells ringing under the sea,’ I said. There was no response from Goronwy, so I turned around to protest it was true and ran toward his palace meaning to plant my claw in its crest as a sort of grisly banner when something made me look up to the fort on the cliff above us. Perhaps a stone skittering down the steep rock face or a blinding flash of sun on armour. I looked up and saw flames. ‘Goronwy, the fort’s on fire!’
He ignored me, slapping his sandy turrets into shape, thinking I was feigning. He often teased that I was a spinner of tales.
I tugged at his sleeve. ‘No, look! Really!’ We screwed up our eyes to see the fort high above us. There were horsemen in armour milling on the road and gouts of black smoke staining the blue sky. ‘Father!’ I said. Our father and older brothers had been away for the last few months, campaigning against the Norman invaders.
‘No, it’s not …’ Goronwy started to say, but then he spun swiftly to the right, where horsemen were galloping down the long beach toward us. Not the Welsh warriors we knew but Norman warriors we had heard about, sheathed in chain mail with conical helmets and metal strips projecting down their noses. Their big destriers kicked up spray at the water’s edge as they rapidly closed the distance between us. I pulled at Goronwy’s sleeve, twisting my body toward the dense undergrowth at the foot of the cliff where I knew places we could hide. The horses kept coming. I could see the whites of their eyes battling the pain at their mouths, the foam at the corners of their black lips. Now I could hear the clanking weapons above the sound of the sea.
One man at the front of the group leant forward in the saddle to shout in Welsh. ‘Boy! Are you the edling, the son of Rhys?’
‘Lie!’ I hissed, still pulling at his arm.
Goronwy resisted my pulling and turned to face them. ‘I am Goronwy, prince of Deheubarth, son of Rhys,’ he yelled, since he had been drilled to do so.
‘We have to hide,’ I said desperately, but it was already too late. ‘Goronwy!’ I moaned, pulling at him, but he stood his ground as they were upon us, milling around in a crowd of hooves, shields and sea-spray. One of them swept me up, slung me unceremoniously on my stomach across his saddle, a hand gripped in my belt. He turned his horse back toward the path up to the fort. Upside down, the long black rope of my plait dangled. I heard a cry from my brother and I tried to see what was happening, but there was just a blur of spurs and boots, the legs of the horses, their snorting. I closed my eyes on the sound of blades grating as they were drawn from their scabbards.
* * *
My captor’s horse hauled up the steep path to the fort, and I tasted acrid smoke that roiled around us like thunderclouds. I felt sick, jolted and bruised in every direction, the breath knocked from me, the warrior’s hand heavy on my back keeping me in place. We clattered under the gateway and I saw, still upside down, a dire scene of confusion. Servants and the few warriors my father had left to guard us lay dead, their blood congealing in dark red pools. I recognised the features of my father’s huntsman, but many of the corpses were too mangled or bloodied to tell who they were. Buildings were in flames, their timbers cracking loudly, heat washing over me as we passed close to the conflagration. A roof beam lost its hold and fell with a thud that shook the earth, carrying burning thatch with it, sending out more fire spores. The beautifully carved lintel that had stood proudly over the hall door lay on the ground, splintered in half. A small group of women and children had been herded into a corner and were eerily quiet as Norman warhorses milled around them. The iron scent of blood was in the air, but my nostrils seared with the charring heat.
The man who had swept me up, plucked me again by my belt and dropped me to the ground. ‘Nest!’ my mother screeched. I got to my feet, rubbing at my bruised upper arms, searching in the direction of her voice. She lumbered out between the horses, oblivious to their efforts to corral her, and grabbed me by my sore arms, causing me to cry out. Her white face was streaked with tears and smuts. Her belly was huge with the child she carried. I struggled to comprehend what I was seeing: the sudden transformation of my father’s well-ordered court, his llys, to this wreck and chaos, the translation of my mother from stately king’s wife to grimed, distraught woman.
‘Mother. Sit down,’ I said slowly, trying to give my numbed mind time to catch up with the evidence of my eyes, realising my legs were jellied and I needed to sit myself. We stumbled toward a mounting block and sat together, her hands roaming over me, searching for injuries. Two bodies hung from the metalwork above the well, which had been turned into a makeshift gibbet. Their faces were contorted and their tongues lolled, but I recognised my father’s bard and my playfellow, the cook’s boy, and turned my face away. I had been staring blindly into space with my mouth open for a long moment when my mother asked, close to my ear, ‘Did they find your brother?’ I nodded miserably, and she fell against me, wailing.
A man in Norman dress spoke to me harshly in Welsh, snapping me out of the shocked trance I had entered. ‘Girl! Keep the woman quiet! The lord won’t stand for no more screeching. He’s getting a headache.’ He laughed, showing teeth that were brown and jagged.
‘Mother, calm,’ I soothed her, trying to also soothe myself. She shook against me as I stroked her hair, sobbing in a low, moaning voice like an animal, rolling and rocking. I tightened my grip protectively around her, hearing hooves skitter to a stop beside us, and looked up into the face of a warrior staring down at me. He looked peculiarly pig-like, with dark eyes peering around the nose-guard of his helmet and his long, brown moustaches bristling on either side of it. His horse and armour were splendid, so I guessed he was the leader of the attack. My eyes travelled over the fine red and gold silk of his saddle cloth, the rich red of the tabard he wore over chain mail, and final
He called out, ‘FitzWalter!’ Another man rode up beside us in answer to the red silk man’s command. I understood a few words of their language since my father at one time had Norman hostages in our household. I gathered the leader was giving orders about us, my mother and me, to the second man, FitzWalter. ‘Take the girl to Cardiff and …’ I missed some words, drowned out by the racket of distress all around us. ‘We have most of the forts now, but I must get to Pembroke before Cadwgan.’ FitzWalter acknowledged the commands. The llys, I thought, my father’s forts that our household moved between: Dinefwr, Pembroke, Narberth, Whitland, Carmarthen and here, my favourite place, my poor Llansteffan, aflame and running with blood, its elegant pillars splintered and blackened, its gold and silvery tapestries turned to smouldering ash.
My mother was gripped, pulled from me, and loaded into a cart that clattered out of the castle under escort, while the soldier named FitzWalter, leapt down from his horse, picked me up with ease and placed me on a small palfrey, tying my hands carefully so that I could move them enough to hold on to the reins and guide the horse but not do much else. ‘I hope you can ride well, little princess,’ he said, grinning. This one had a row of even white teeth and a full red mouth beneath the nose-guard of his helmet. His eyes were a washed-out blue colour and he seemed young. His Welsh was terrible, but I got the rough idea of what he was saying.
‘I ride better than you ever will,’ I told him.
A laugh burst from him in response and he shouted to his lord, ‘She has spirit, this little Welsh girl!’ The lord twisted in his red and gold saddle to stare at me and when FitzWalter told him what I had said, they laughed at me together. The young soldier remounted, signalling to six other soldiers to follow us, and he led my palfrey out through the gateway and palisade and onto the road. Through eyes smarting with smoke and grief, I looked around as we passed the blazing wrecks of the villagers’ thatched houses and the hay wains of the royal estate, the maerdref. The fields and garden strips that provisioned my father’s court were blackened and trampled and more corpses, surprised in the midst of feeding the chickens or darning a sock, sprawled in the embrace of the land they had tilled and cared for.
Before long, we overtook the cart carrying my mother and the small escort of soldiers with her. ‘Mother!’ She looked at me, her face ashen, her mouth trembling terribly, forcing the remnant of a smile for me as we passed her.
For the first hour, I shook in the saddle like an old woman with palsy and fought to quell nausea and shock. Every fibre in my body thrummed and thrashed, but slowly I calmed myself until eventually I could shout in Welsh at FitzWalter: ‘Where are we going?’
FitzWalter spoke over his shoulder to me. ‘Cardiff Castle. We’ll be five days on the road, so save your energy for riding, not talking, little princess.’
‘How is it you speak Welsh, though so badly?’ I called out.
He turned his horse to look at me, laughing at my insult. ‘We have Welsh scouts and translators in our service,’ he said. ‘I learned.’
‘Scouts? Traitors you mean.’
He ignored that. ‘I’ve been in Wales most of my life, first sent as squire to Lord Arnulf de Montgomery when I was seven, and lately as captain of his guard. I’ve picked up Welsh over the years. Now I am in such exalted company as yours, I will of course try to bring more polish to my language. Perhaps you will teach me?’
I turned my face away from him. So the man in red silk who led the attack was Arnulf de Montgomery. I knew his father was the Norman earl of Shrewsbury, with lands on the English border.
The men all called me ‘petite princesse,’ with mockery in their voices, as they gave me water and biscuits and tied me tight at night when we slept on the ground wrapped in cloaks. Waking in the morning, I immediately longed for the oblivion of sleep to return, when I did not hear the scrape of swords extracted from scabbards as the riders surrounded my brother on the beach, did not feel overwhelming fear and grief, and remember the misery on my mother’s face.
We rode through mud and rain, skirting bogs and swamps, through dense forest lined with great oaks, and cruelly carpeted with gay primroses and bluebells, and more truly with gorse and brambles.
‘What has happened to my father?’ I ventured to the captain when we stopped on the second night and were eating the lean supplies. He had removed his helmet to reveal a sweaty head of dark blond hair. He shook his head impatiently, too tired to mangle Welsh any more, beckoning at the scout, a turncoat Welshman who came and answered my questions.
‘Dead,’ he told me. ‘King Rhys is dead, lady, and his son Cynan.’
I knew it already, but speaking it seemed to make it so. My mouth trembled, but I blinked away tears that I did not want these men to see. ‘How did they die?’ I demanded.
‘Rhys died in the battle at Aberhonddu, killed by the Norman lord of Brecknock, Bernard de Neufmarché, and Cynan was drowned in a lake. Afterwards.’ He looked shiftily at the captain when he said that. I forced the image of my valiant brother spluttering in filthy water from my mind’s eye.
‘And what of my other brother, Idwal, who was at the battle?’ I did not want to ask and hear that he was also dead, but I needed to know.
‘He was captured and imprisoned.’
FitzWalter said something swiftly and irritably in French, and I could not understand him. ‘Sir Gerald says enough talking,’ the scout said. ‘Sleep now, lady.’
I looked at my caretaker, Gerald FitzWalter. The sweat had dried in his fair hair and it curled softly at his ears like a girl’s. He was young – perhaps only seventeen. I saw in his posture and the dullness of his eyes that his fatigue was bone deep.
I lay awake, thinking about the words I overheard from Arnulf de Montgomery at Llansteffan: ‘We have all the forts, but I must get to Pembroke before Cadwgan.’ My father held peace in Deheubarth for many years and had been the only Welsh ruler to come to terms with the first Norman invader, William the Conqueror. The bards sang of that old Norman king riding into our lands and honouring King Rhys with his friendship. Father also defended our lands from the aggressions of neighbouring rulers, including Cadwgan, king in Powys, and promised me as bride-price to Cadwgan’s son Owain to keep the peace. I had been betrothed to Owain by proxy and never seen him.
Did the words of Arnulf de Montgomery mean Cadwgan had invaded Deheubarth again, in treacherous alliance with these enemies? My father always said Cadwgan was ‘tricky’ and I understood this was meant as humorous understatement. The men of my father’s warband, his teulu, spoke of Cadwgan’s frequent changes of allegiance: first to a neighbouring Welsh king, then to the Norman earls on the border. Arnulf de Montgomery said he was making for Pembroke, the greatest of Deheubarth’s strongholds. If Cadwgan had betrayed my father, did that annul my betrothal? I could not be sure from the few words I had understood. In any case, I was a captive and the future was a gaping, jagged hole before me. My uncle Rhydderch was my only hope since he was not at the battle in Aberhonddu. Perhaps he would rescue me on this journey, or treat a ransom for me.
I lay on the cold, hard ground thinking of my father, how he would never cup his big hand gently on the top of my head and call me ‘my blue-eyed, dimpled beauty’ or yell across the compound, looking for me: ‘Where is that miniature queen?’ He would never again squash me to his hip when he returned weary from battle with the gladness to be home brimming in his eyes. I determined I would be no vanquished hostage. For my father, my mother and brothers, I would be that queen in my heart no matter what came next.
