Rhiannon (31 page)

Although Rhiannon longed for her home and the freedom that
she believed could bring her peace, she knew she could not leave England until
she had at least one more meeting with the king. Somehow she needed to express
clearly the idea for which she hoped she had laid the foundation, that she
loved the king’s appreciation of her music and would sing for him regardless of
any enmity that might exist between her father and him—so long as she was free
to come and go. Then, clearly, she could not even break the betrothal with
Simon.

She was stiff and cold when she finally rose and came toward
Simon, who also stood. “We must come to some terms, Simon.”

In the hour and more that Rhiannon had wrestled with her
fear and her conscience, Simon had done a good deal of thinking also. It had
occurred to him, after he had struggled up out of a morass of hurt and
self-pity, that this whole thing was a small pond stirred by a boy’s stick
rather than a great storm at sea. Rhiannon had been subjected to so many new
and unusual experiences, all piled atop one another and all in a very short
time. She was not used to so many strange people admiring and threatening, to
the strain of an unaccustomed task for which she was unprepared and found
distasteful, to the demands of a large family, all loving but nonetheless all
pulling at her in different directions. Most of all, she was probably totally
disoriented by the constant busyness and noise, which permitted no time for
quiet.

As he had enumerated the pressures on Rhiannon to himself,
Simon grew somewhat more cheerful. Perhaps she was, in her own controlled way,
hysterical. Perhaps the period in London, away from the anxieties of dealing
with his family and the court, would help. But then there would be another bad
period when Henry moved to Westminster. It would be better to put no additional
burden on her, Simon thought, while she had so many to bear already. He could
wait. When she was home in Angharad’s Hall, safe in her own place with her
burdens dropped behind her, perhaps she would no longer fear to love.

Thus, he was better prepared for her appeal for terms than
most lovers would have been. “I will not importune you,” he assured her, “but I
will not release you from your oath to me, either.”

“No, I do not desire that. The betrothal must stand so long
as I must deal with Henry, but you must understand it means nothing for the
future. I will not marry you, Simon, nor do I any longer desire to hold you to
your oath to me. You are free to do as you please with any woman you please.”

“A worthless freedom, and one you
cannot
give me. I
am not bound to you because of my oath. I gave my oath because I was already
bound. But I have said already that I will force nothing on you. What else do
you expect of me?”

“I do not know,” Rhiannon admitted fretfully. “There is
something about you that strokes me and whispers ‘love’ even when you are at
the other end of a room looking elsewhere.”

In spite of his worry, Simon burst out laughing. “My
infamous charm! I swear I do not do it apurpose—at least not to you.”

“Then it would be better, I think, if we were less often in
the same place.”

Simon regarded Rhiannon silently. He subdued a new feeling
of hurt and was able to accept it. “We must live in the same house in London,”
he told her, “at least until the rest of the family arrives, but we can go
separate ways. Before the Court comes, you will be safe enough with a small
escort. I will not need to accompany you to the markets or whatever other
diversions you choose.”

“And what will you do?”

The question pleased Simon. He had been afraid she would try
to forget he was alive. “I will contrive to keep myself busy. I have friends I
have not seen in some time —men friends.”

She nodded acceptance and indicated she wished to mount. As
they rode slowly back to Oxford, Rhiannon found she felt better. The settlement
they had reached and her belief that she could cure herself of her love once
she was home were helpful, but the lightening of Simon’s mood was having a
strong, if unrecognized, influence. Without thinking, Rhiannon asked a question
about the river that wound lazily below them. Simon replied, and by the time
they reached the house they were, outwardly at least, on easy terms.

Alinor sensed something very wrong, but she said nothing.
Rhiannon was essentially beyond her experience. It was as if a wild doe had
suddenly chosen to join a flock of sheep. One watched it with pleasure but did
not try to herd it.

Besides, no one had much time to think about Simon and
Rhiannon. When Geoffrey returned from court, he found more news at home than
what he brought. Richard’s herald had been accompanied by a small party for
safety in traveling through the disturbed countryside, and one of that party
had ridden aside to bring a letter from Walter. All were breathless when Ian
read aloud by how narrow a margin they had averted disaster.

By God’s Grace
, Walter wrote,
I chose the road to
Woodstock rather than to Burford on my way to Wales. Not a half-mile west of
the town did I find Pembroke coming most innocently with only ten men and his
two squires. By so slight a chance, the going on one road rather than another
for only a few miles, was this enterprise saved.

“I cannot believe it only chance,” Gilliane breathed.
“Surely God was our help in this matter.”

“God helped those who helped themselves by sending Walter
out in the first place,” Adam said cynically.

The whole family laughed. That God helped those who helped
themselves was Alinor’s favorite maxim and had been driven deep into her
family’s heads by repeated usage.

“Most certainly,” Ian agreed. “Listen to this. Walter says
that Richard did not wish to believe him.
So fixed was the earl’s belief in
the honor of those with whom he swore truce that had I not carried Lord
Geoffrey’s letter under his own seal, he would have clung to the conviction
that I spoke wild rumor only and would have come to Oxford that very night to
do courtesy by riding under the king’s protection to Westminster
. I
wonder…” Ian looked up. “I wonder if that might have been better? The king
would have been touched by such faith.”

Adam snorted. “Yes, until the snake hissed in his ear
again.”

Ian made no reply to that, returning to the letter to read
how Richard persisted in clinging to the hope that at the last minute Henry
would not be able to break his word. “
He agreed so far as to return to Usk
,
the letter continues,
and send a herald to the king, vowing he would not
move until the king’s own denial was delivered to him. There was a great anger
held in check, however. I think when the truce is broken the earl will no
longer hold himself back but will unleash his power and his fury.”

“I think so, too,” Adam said with grim satisfaction. “I am
sorry his lands are so far from mine that I cannot offer the assistance of
victualing or even of providing men, but I fear there will be many who will use
the ill feeling against the king to raid here and there for their own profit.”

“So I think also,” Geoffrey agreed. “It will behoove us to
keep our lands and—if we can—our neighbors quiet.”

“But what if the king prevails?” Joanna asked.

“He will. He must.” Geoffrey smiled wryly at the
exclamations of horror that followed his statement, and added, “But I think
Winchester will not. I do not think Winchester or Henry can lead any force
effectively enough to hurt Pembroke. There are skilled captains among the
mercenaries, but none strong enough to lead the whole group. I know. I have
dealt with them. The king will be shamed worse than he was at Usk. At first he
will be bitterer than ever against Pembroke, but when loss heaps on loss and he
sees there is no path but reconciliation, he will abandon Winchester.”

“Yes. Then Richard will gladly make submission, and all will
be well,” Ian said.

“After the blood and the death and the ravaging and the
famine—oh, yes, then all will be well,” Alinor remarked bitterly. “This nation
is accursed, I swear it. First there was King Richard, who did not care. Then
there was King John, who cared but had a wrongness in him that turned all to
evil. And now we have King Henry, who—”

“Hush, my love.” Ian kissed her silent. “He is young yet. He
will learn.”

Whether she would have remained quiet was doubtful, but just
then Simon and Rhiannon came in, and the whole matter needed to be explained to
them.

“Thank God Walter found him,” Simon said. “Well, now what? I
mean, do we go to London as planned, or back to Wales to bring this news to
Prince Llewelyn?”

Geoffrey pulled the lobe of his ear in thought and then
said, “To London. It is your belief that Llewelyn will join Pembroke against
the king if Pembroke is firm to fight this time?” He accepted Simon’s nod and
went on, “I think so, too. Then all the more will there be a need for Rhiannon
to serve as an unguent between Henry’s too-sensitive feelings and Llewelyn’s
harsh acts.”

A general murmur of approval from all preceded the decision
that Simon and Rhiannon had better leave as soon as dinner was eaten. They were
safe until then, but afterward there was the possibility that Henry would
decide he needed Rhiannon’s singing to calm his spirit after all his vexation.
It would serve all purposes best if she were gone. This, too, found ready
agreement, but going to Alinor’s house in London was not as simple as packing
one’s clothing and leaving.

The house was only a shell. To make it livable, furniture,
linen, pots and pans, and everything else must be carried. But Alinor’s
servants were accustomed to the procedure. While Rhiannon and Simon ate, maids
and men scurried about dismantling and packing a selection of what had been
brought to Oxford. Before the ladies and gentlemen had risen from the table,
one cart was on its way with two maids, two men, and five of Simon’s
men-at-arms as a guard.

Although Simon and Rhiannon could easily have ridden the
full distance to London, they went only as far as Wallingford to avoid
outdistancing the baggage cart. Richard and Isabella made them very welcome,
and the visit served a double purpose. It permitted the story of Rhiannon’s
fear of Winchester to be spread from another source. More important, in a
personal way, was the other result of the visit. Isabella assumed without
asking that Rhiannon would sleep in the women’s quarters and Simon in a chamber
off the hall. This provided an easy solution to the problem of whether or not
they would make love if they slept together.

Alinor had sent to the London house only the one large bed
Simon and Rhiannon had shared, but this posed no problem. Simon’s traveling
gear had been sent, since he expected to take Rhiannon directly back to Wales
from London. Although his camp cot was not nearly as comfortable as the bed, he
went to it with a sense of relief as well as of deprivation. Rhiannon was not
the least shy. If she wanted him, she would tell him. Simon wished he was as
sure of what the right response should be as he was that Rhiannon would not
mind making the advances.

However, the question did not arise. Simon’s relief
diminished as his sense of deprivation increased, but he still did nothing.
Rhiannon was growing more natural in her manner to him each day, and that
seemed more important than reestablishing the sexual relationship. Every so
often Simon wondered whether she still thought of that ugly challenge she had
made the night they quarreled. But he did not dare dwell on it, and he did not
need to.

He found plenty of occupation for himself with various young
men to whom he had sent word that Simon de Vipont was in London and was seeking
sparring and jousting partners. A group of young men rode in and made a merry
company in the house. They fought each other singly, in pairs, and in various
combinations that took into account the varying strengths of the combatants.
Simon was very good, but he was sufficiently bruised and battered when pitted
against two or three lesser opponents that he was quite content to seek his cot
for sleep without thinking of love—at least, not too often.

Rhiannon was far less unhappy than she expected to be. She
was no lover of cities, with their dirt and stench and disease and unnatural
crowding together of people and houses until there seemed scarce room for a
blade of grass to grow. Nonetheless, the places she knew were
nothing—flyspecks—compared with the town of London. Protected by Simon’s
men-at-arms, she rode where she liked, alternately horrified and fascinated.

So, in spite of her distaste, in spite of the chills of
horror that crawled over her when she thought of living in such a place,
Rhiannon was aware that she might never see its like again. She wandered and
poked and pried, bought seeds of strange herbs, bought silks as thin and as
light as a mist. She had no money, but when she named Alinor’s house, the
merchants brought the goods with eager swiftness—and Simon paid. Rhiannon did
not give the matter any thought. Kicva or Llewelyn would settle the debt, she
supposed.

These pleasant few days ended on September twenty-ninth
when, as dark fell, a tired messenger rode in with a brief note from Ian to
inform Simon that Hubert de Burgh had escaped from his prison in Devizes and
had taken refuge in a church. Since Rhiannon had heard de Burgh’s name often
enough but knew virtually nothing about him, she and Simon were up half the
night while he explained de Burgh’s long and tumultuous career.

“Is he truly still dangerous?” she asked in the end.

Simon shrugged. “Impossible to say. He did many favors, but
has virtually no blood kin, and you know how seldom favors make men grateful.
But it also depends on the man himself. If he burns with hatred and resentment
and cries aloud of his injuries demanding help from those he helped in their
need, it is possible—considering the ill feeling against the king—that he could
raise supporters. Then, too, he knows Henry. His advice might be of value to
Henry’s enemies.”