An exhausted truce had finally fallen and dinner was served in a dismal silence. As it was a Friday fast day, their cook had broiled a large pike, taken from the manor’s fish pond. Swimming in a pungent mustard sauce, fresh pike was a delicacy. But now much of it went untouched; only the younger children seemed to have an appetite. Rhodri was pushing his fish around on his trencher with his knife, Rhiannon intent upon feeding Morgan, Celyn crumbling a crust of the bread baked to cater to Ranulf ’s English tastes, and Ranulf slipping surreptitious mouthfuls of pike to Blaidd, his Norwegian dyrehund.
Eleri was the one to crack first, flinging her napkin down with an oath. “For the love of God, Ranulf, look around you! This is your home. For fifteen years, your home. How can you throw it all away like this? If you love my sister as you claim, you must-”
Rhiannon let her get no further. “Eleri, enough! I do not need you to speak for me. We’ve heard you out, each one of you. You’ve had your say. Now let it be. When Ranulf decides what he must do, we will tell you. Till then, this serves for naught.”
Ranulf’s throat tightened; what had he done to deserve this woman? But even as he reached for his wife’s hand, their son sprang to his feet, shoving his chair back so violently that it toppled over. “I’ve not had my say!” Gilbert’s face was flushed, his voice unsteady. “If you answer the English king’s summons, you are betraying Lord Owain!”
“Ah, lad,” Ranulf said softly, “if only it were that simple.”
“I will be fourteen by year’s end, so do not treat me like a child! At fourteen, I will be old enough to fight against our enemies-against the English! And if you fight with them, you’ll be the enemy, too!”
Gilbert’s voice choked and he wheeled, bolting for the door as Ranulf jumped to his feet and Rhiannon cried out his name. The boy reached the door just as it opened and he collided head-on with Hywel, whose arrival out in the bailey had gone unnoticed in all the uproar. Gilbert staggered backward and Hywel caught his arm as if to steady him, effectively blocking his flight.
“Easy, lad,” he said with a smile. “The last time I saw someone move this fast, his tunic was on fire. Is dinner done then?”
Gilbert tried to wrench free and failed; over the youth’s head, Hywel’s eyes sought Ranulf’s in a silent question. Ranulf hesitated, then slowly nodded. Better to give the lad some time to calm down. But he knew that he was deluding himself. An eternity’s worth of time was not likely to bring Gilbert around to his way of thinking.
Hywel’s arrival had defused the tension, at least temporarily. Accepting Enid’s invitation to dine with them, he kept them entertained with the latest court gossip, then shared the more serious news-that the English king had returned from Normandy, doubtless upon learning of Davydd ab Owain’s raid into Tegeingl. Moving with his usual lightning speed, Henry had led a quick expedition to relieve his castles at Rhuddlan and Basingwerk, then withdrew back across the border to organize a full-scale invasion intended for that summer. When Rhodri said glumly that they already knew of the English king’s plans for war, Hywel showed no surprise. His father’s surveillance system rivaled, if not surpassed, those of the English and French kings and the exiled Archbishop of Canterbury, and within a day of Ranulf ’s royal summons, Owain had known about it.
As the evening wore on, a patchy, pale mist drifted in from the Menai Straits, slowly engulfing the river valley and eventually reaching the hillside manor above Trefriw. One by one, the family members retired for the night, and Hywel’s men bedded down in the hall. A fire burned erratically in the hearth as the last of the log was consumed. By midnight, the only ones still awake were Hywel and Ranulf.
Reaching for the flagon, Ranulf emptied it into their cups. “I think there is more mead in the buttery.”
“Then I’d better fetch it, for if you stagger off in search of the buttery, God only knows where you’ll end up.”
“Are you implying that I’ve had too much to drink, Hywel?”
“No… I’d say you have not had enough. If you are going to drown your troubles, you might as well do it right. The aim is to blot out all the voices.”
“What voices?”
“The voice of reason, to start with. Then the voice of conscience. But we’ve only had two flagons… or was it three? Based on my experience, it will take at least four. The conscience, in particular, floats like a cork… devilishly difficult to drown.”
Ranulf laughed, but it had a sad sound to it. “You think I’m a fool, don’t you?”
“No…”
“That was not a very convincing denial,” Ranulf complained and Hywel submerged a grin in his mead cup.
“Indeed, you are no fool. In fact, you are about as far from a fool as a man can get. Is that better?”
“But…?”
“But you do have a few bad habits-one of which is that you invariably hope for the best instead of preparing for the worst. Our people have a saying, Ranulf, that you ought to take to heart: that it is dangerous to run with the hares and hunt with the hounds.”
“When you say ‘our people,’ Hywel, that does still include me?”
Hywel set his cup down in surprise. “Of course. You’re Welsh by choice as well as by blood-your besotted loyalty to the English king notwithstanding!”
Ranulf knew that the other man was joking, but it was difficult for him to find much humor in his plight. “I understand why your father and Rhys ap Gruffydd and the others have rebelled, God’s Truth, I do. How could I blame them for wanting to free Wales from a foreign yoke?”
“But you also understand why Henry feels compelled to crush that rebellion.”
Ranulf nodded miserably. “Yes,” he admitted, “I do. As king, he has no choice.” He snatched up his mead cup and drained it, too fast. “I understand too much for my own damned good.” Shoving the empty cup across the table, he leaned forward, cradling his head on his arms. “But God help me, for I still do not know what I will do…”
Hywel finished his own drink, then reached for a spare blanket on a nearby bench. Draping it over Ranulf’s shoulders, he stood for a moment, gazing down at his sleeping friend. “God help you,” he murmured, “for you do know…”
Hywel departed the next day, as did Eleri and Celyn and their children. Quiet settled over the manor like a tattered, faded quilt, too worn to offer much comfort. On Sunday, Ranulf’s family heard Mass at Llanrhychwyn, a small church nestled in the hills above Trefriw. Ranulf loved this whitewashed stone chapel shadowed by towering yew trees; it was here that he and Rhiannon had been wed on Shrove Tuesday fifteen years ago. As the parishioners filed out into the cool May sunlight, he caught Rhiannon’s hand and led her toward a corner of the churchyard. There were tombstones there, green with moss, and the woodland scents perfumed their every breath. When he described for her a hawk gliding on the air currents high above their heads, Rhiannon smiled and then said, “You are going to answer the English king’s summons.”
He plucked a dandelion from a grave and crushed it into a golden dustfall. “Yes,” he said, “I am. If I am with Harry, mayhap I can convince him to settle for less, a victory that does not leave Wales awash in blood.”
She wondered why Harry would heed him in Wales when he had not at Northampton. But there was nothing to be gained by pointing that out. “Do what you must,” she said wearily, for if there was pain, there was no surprise. She’d known from the first what he would do.
“Rhiannon… I am sorry. I know what I risk. Whatever the outcome of this war, it seems likely that I’ll no longer be welcome in Wales.”