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Day One
Catrin
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As Catrin headed down the corridor, making for the kitchen, she could hear the laughter still arising from the hall. The queen had dismissed Catrin from her presence, but she required a morsel of food beside her bed in case she woke in the night. Thus, her highest-ranking lady-in-waiting, Eleanor’s cousin, Margaret, had set Catrin the task of retrieving it.
The kitchen was located on the northern wall in the western half of the castle. At the moment, it was hardly more than a makeshift shack, though the bread oven had been built in stone, as it had to have been, and even at this late hour was wafting the delicious smell of baking bread across the bailey. The cooks and their assistants slept in shifts because food had to be produced day and night for the residents of the castle until the king and queen and all their people—including Catrin—left.
All of the castle workers had to be fed too, but those that couldn’t afford a place in the town ate and slept outside the castle walls within an encompassing wooden palisade. It had been thrown up as a temporary measure, creating what amounted to an additional bailey outside the castle walls on the southeastern side along the River Seiont. Tents and makeshift huts lined the road leading east from the Queen’s Gate, keeping the residents close enough to the castle to retreat inside its stone walls if the Welsh attacked in the night and overcame the outer defenses. Ultimately, water would be diverted from the river, and the castle would be surrounded by a moat, but it would be dug only towards the end of construction, once the castle and town walls had been fully raised.
Caernarfon castle was being constructed over the top of the old motte built on the edge of the Irish Sea by a Norman who’d conquered Gwynedd, for a time, two hundred years earlier. He eventually lost his life, so the tales said, when the Welsh fought back. The story of Robert of Rhuddlan and his ill-fated castle was one Catrin had known from birth, used as an object lesson as to what happened to foreigners who had the audacity to attempt to conquer so far west. Catrin also knew, sadly, that the comparisons to Edward were misguided. Caernarfon was no wooden keep on a hastily raised motte, and Edward was no Robert, dozing away a lazy Sunday afternoon to be awoken by the battle cries of the Welsh and tricked into a hasty counter-attack.
He was the King of England and the conqueror of all Wales. There was no coming back from that.
A dark shape separated itself from the wall near the King’s Gate and came towards her. Though the torchlight wasn’t bright enough to make out the man’s face, she knew by his walk—even after all these years—that it was her brother Hywel. Only two years older than she, it was he, of all her siblings, whom she’d missed the most when she’d married at sixteen and been sent to live in England. They’d been natural allies growing up in a large family.
As when she’d ridden through Gwynedd on her way to Caernarfon, a joy she couldn’t suppress rose within her. It must have showed on her face, because, once Hywel came close enough to be seen properly within the torchlight under which she stood, he scooped her up into a hug, even going so far as to lift her off her feet. She wrapped her arms around his neck, finding tears pricking at the corners of her eyes, and she pressed her face into the soft wool of his cloak. It was a real greeting, and a far cry from the stone-faced nods they’d given each other earlier in the hall.
After a moment, he set her gently down again. “I missed you.”
“And I you.”
“When you were so cold to me, I thought you had grown to hate me.”
Catrin shook her head vehemently. “I would never hate you. How could I?”
“Because you had to leave, and I didn’t. And look what’s become of us now.” He bent forward and spoke in a low voice that was no more than a whisper, and in Welsh. It was a sensible precaution, though nobody else was about, even in a castle as busy and crowded as this one. Everyone had work to do tomorrow and needed sleep.
Her expression softened. “The marriage was hardly your fault. Everyone thought it made sense at the time, which it did. I was sixteen and believed myself to be in love. What did I know? How many girls have felt and done the same?”
”But while you were gone, we lost our country. Twice our brother forsook Llywelyn’s cause and bowed to England. This last time, after Llywelyn’s death, he didn’t delay for even a day.”
“I already know from Tudur that he did what Llywelyn and he had agreed he would do.”
Hywel practically sagged against the wall behind them. “You believed him? I feared you wouldn’t.”
“Seven years ago, after Llywelyn lost the first war and had to submit to Edward at Rhuddlan, Tudur wrote to me and told me he’d pledged himself to the king and asked me not to hate him. I did hate him for a time.” She canted her head. “I never hated you.”
Hywel’s jaw was tight. “I did as I was told. As always.”
She looked at him a bit harder. “As did Tudur. He obeyed his prince. He survived. Our family survived. I do believe that’s what Llywelyn intended.” But then her jaw clenched. “I just wish I had that kind of consolation for myself.”
Now it was Hywel’s turn to shake his head. “We all understand why you are here serving the queen, Catrin. We know the position you’re in because we’re in it too. Even Tudur.” He grimaced. “Especially Tudur.”
Catrin bent her head, nodding as she did so, but then it came up again as Hywel added, “So if that’s true, you don’t actually hate Rhys either? He tried to speak to you tonight, and you rebuffed him. He was hurt, I think.”
“He was hurt?” Catrin laughed mockingly. “He is serving as a quaestor again—and assisting Guy fitz Lacy of all people!”
“He does so at Tudur’s bidding.”
“If Rhys were still the same person I knew him once to be, they would never allow him in the castle, much less to serve as an officer of the king. He was in Llywelyn’s teulu, his personal guard! The only way they could know that and still trust him was if he was working for them the whole time!”
Her voice had risen in her agitation, prompting Hywel to put his finger to her lips. “Shush, Catrin. We don’t speak of such things here.”
But Catrin was too angry to be silent. “You are blind to the truth because he was your friend, but you must see that he isn’t that man anymore. He was at Cilmeri, and he lived. Surely you realize the only way he could have survived the attack was if he was the one who ensured Llywelyn was found in the open in the first place!”
Surprise filled Hywel’s face, and he opened his mouth to reply, but at that moment a host of guardsmen came out of the barracks, passing within a few feet of them. The men nodded their respect to Hywel and then passed on.
Catrin watched them disappear into the great hall before returning to a fierce whisper. “On top of which, Rhys let me think he was dead for the last year and a half. Why would he do that if he wasn’t guilty?”
“For Rhys’s safety, Tudur agreed it was best—as you correctly pointed out—if nobody from the old days knew he was alive and in Caernarfon.”
“You knew. I imagine his sister knows.”
“By necessity.”
She laughed scornfully.
Hywel pressed his lips together, studying her face. She glared back until, after a moment, he shook his head. “It is not my place to convince you, and I really must go. Tudur has me overseeing the estate at Penrhyn, and I have things to attend to on the morrow. Take care of yourself. Hopefully I will see you again before you leave Gwynedd.” He hugged her to him, but before he released her, he whispered in her ear. “You know Rhys. He has suffered, as we all have. Hear his story before you condemn the man.”
Catrin had carried the pain of Rhys’s death in her heart every day for the last year and a half, ever since she’d heard about the circumstances of Llywelyn’s death. When she’d seen Rhys in the hall tonight, she’d initially been overjoyed to learn he was alive, but by the time he’d bowed to the king with the rest of the nobles and then threaded his way through them to her, that pain had turned to anger.
If Rhys was working for the coroner only because Tudur had made him, why hadn’t he been able to look into her eyes at first? And then, when their eyes did meet, why did she not see joy or love in them, but shame?
