Child of the Phoenix. Barbara Erskine

‘Who knows and who cares? It’s his steward who pays me.’ Reaching into his scrip he produced a silver penny and flicked it into the air. From the chink of coins between his fingers when he replaced it in the leather purse, there were plenty more.

      ‘And where is he? Are they back at Fotheringhay?’ Rhonwen asked.

      He nodded. ‘So. What about helping me spend some money while I’m waiting –’ He stopped short. In a swirl of skirts, she had vanished into the crowds.

      XVIII

       FOTHERINGHAY

      John’s illness terrified Eleyne. It had begun without warning and she was devastated to see him so weak and helpless. Watching over him made her realise how fond she had grown of him, and she was very afraid that he would die. It had been her idea to send for the king’s physician while he was at Northampton.

      She was sitting at John’s bedside, stroking his forehead, when Rhonwen found her. For a moment she stared incredulously at the woman, unable to move, then she hurled herself into Rhonwen’s arms. But if Rhonwen had hoped to sit with Eleyne and watch John of Chester die, she was disappointed. It was obvious that Eleyne would do anything to save her husband’s life; she wept and begged Rhonwen to help, and Rhonwen, unable to deny her beloved child, found herself setting aside her antagonism and resentment and, working harder than she had ever worked, she strove to keep him alive.

      It was Rhonwen who made the decoctions of herbs which brought down John’s fever; Rhonwen who spent hours in the stillroom making up soothing syrups for his cough. The physician was away, the messenger reported when at last he returned to Fotheringhay, but as soon as he returned to Northampton would be brought to Lord Huntingdon’s bedside.

      Eleyne was nervous John would find out Rhonwen was back. After that first visit to his sickroom when he was too delirious to recognise her, she was kept well away in the stillroom and in Eleyne’s rooms in the tower on the far side of the courtyard. Eleyne brought the medicines in her own hands and watched with fearful eager hope as, slowly, he seemed to grow better.

      When at last the king’s physician arrived Rhonwen’s medicines were swept scornfully away. The stout, white-haired man, with his huge bushy eyebrows and long black gown, bent over the earl and reached for his pulse, but the earl was already on the mend.

      XIX

       August 1231

      The bedchamber was shady in the dusk. In the distance there was a rumble of thunder. Eleyne raised her hand and Luned stopped brushing her hair. There was no fire in the hearth and Eleyne had given orders for the lamps to be doused. Dearly though she loved her, it was a relief to be away from Rhonwen, who followed her everywhere when she was not with John. Rhonwen was with Marared, sitting in the bower where a travelling minstrel from Aquitaine was entertaining the ladies with songs and roundelays redolent of the hot fragrant south. Pleading a headache, Eleyne had left with Luned, seeking the cooler silence of her rooms overlooking the river. For once, Rhonwen had not followed her.

      On the far side of the courtyard, above the gatehouse, John was tossing in his bed, still tended by the physician. Eleyne had visited him before supper, putting her hand a little shyly in his and feeling the dry papery skin like fire against her own, then the doctor had peremptorily sent her away.

      She frowned at the recollection: there had to be some other way of helping John. She was sure that under Rhonwen’s care he had improved. For a long time that morning she had watched the physician carefully applying leeches to her husband’s frail body, attaching the creatures with meticulous care to his chest and arms and waiting until they dropped, gorged with his blood, into the silver dish waiting for them. John had smiled at her calmly and asked her to read to him for a while. She had done it gladly, but every now and then her eyes left the crabbed black manuscript of the vellum pages and strayed to his face. He was too pale. He did not have enough red blood. Surely it must be wrong to drain even more. She found herself longing again for her father’s court, with the wise men of the hills who attended it. Men like Einion, who might be a heretic and evil and wrong, as John so often told her, but it was he, so Rhonwen had said, who had taught her all she knew of healing, and that was much.

      ‘That’s enough,’ she said sharply as Luned resumed her brushing. She stood up restlessly and walked over to the window, stepping into the embrasure so she could see out of the deep recess towards the west. Over there, beneath the moonlight, many miles away, lay the giant sleeping peaks of Yr Wyddfa.

      ‘Go to bed, Luned.’ Her mind was made up. ‘Go to bed, I’m going down to the stables.’

      It was months since she had done it; months since she had visited the horses in the dark. John had been adamant. The Countess of Huntingdon did not curl up in the straw like a stable boy – not now that she was a woman. She slept between silken sheets every night. The Countess of Huntingdon was not expected to seek out the shadows or explore the castle alone or gallop at the head of her men or disappear into the heaths when out hawking with her pretty merlin on her fist. She must be demure and ladylike and behave with propriety at all times.

      ‘My lady.’ The soft voice at her elbow stopped her as she reached the door into the courtyard.

      ‘Cenydd?’ She suspected he slept across her threshold once the castle was quiet at night.

      ‘Shall I call for torches, my lady?’ The big man was smiling down at her, his shoulders broad in his heavy leather jerkin. She became conscious of her hair, hanging loose down her back, free of the neat cap or head-dress she should be wearing.

      ‘No, no torches.’ She stepped out on to the wooden staircase which led down from the only door in the keep to the courtyard below.

      ‘You should not go out alone, lady.’ The gentle voice was persistent.

      ‘I am not alone if you are there!’ she retorted. Swishing her skirts in irritation, she ran down the staircase. At the bottom she stopped and turned. ‘You may come with me if you wish. If not, you may return to the great hall and pretend you haven’t seen me. I intend to ride Invictus.’

      ‘In the dark, princess?’

      ‘There is enough light. I do not want my husband to know about this, Cenydd. I do not wish to worry him. If you betray me I shall have you sent back to Gwynedd.’ Her imperious tone left him in no doubt that she meant it.

      ‘Very well, princess.’

      She gave him a quick smile. ‘Just this once, Cenydd, before I die of suffocation.’ The charm had returned, and the small wheedling smile he could never resist – nor, he guessed, could any man. ‘Please.’

      If the grooms were surprised at being asked to bridle the great stallion for their small mistress, they hid the fact. He was led out and Cenydd lifted Eleyne on to the high back of the horse. He hastily mounted his own fast gelding, afraid she would gallop off into the dusk, but she walked the stallion demurely towards the gatehouse, beneath the portcullis, and reined in, waiting for the postern in the main doors to be opened, before urging the animal on to the track outside. The storm was drifting closer, imperceptibly, a deeper blackness in the sky to the south-west, sliced now and then by zigzags of lightning. Invictus sidled uneasily and snapped bad-temperedly at the horse beside him.

      ‘If we take the road across the heath, we can gallop,’ Eleyne said at last. The huge flat distances, mysterious in the moonlight, depressed her, as did the vast unbroken canopy of the sky, this infinite eastern sky which rendered the land so insignificant and featureless.

      ‘What of the storm?’ Cenydd could smell the rain, sweet and cold, in the distance. Like the horses, he was ill at ease.

      ‘I want to ride in the storm.’

      ‘No, lady, think of your position. Think of your safety. Please come back.’ He knew she should not be there. If anything happened to her, he would be blamed. He sighed, loosening his sword in its sheath for the umpteenth time. Her wilfulness was Rhonwen’s fault.