The prince was fully a head higher than his friend, but Gwirion was cleverer; Maelgwyn won all their fistfights and Gwirion all their arguments.
They were a contrast in temperament as well: Maelgwyn already had unnerving poise for one so young while Gwirion was an unruly imp. Some council members had fretted to Cadwallon that the dark-haired foundling needed reining in, that he was old enough now to realize his constant playmate was also his future sovereign and needed to be treated with some deference. The king doubted Gwirion was capable of grasping that sentiment—and anyway, he almost envied his son for having such an unself-conscious friendship. He had a soft spot for Gwirion, in part for the youngster’s musical gifts (he had leave to practice on the king’s own harp), and in part for the unfettered playfulness that made him disregard the tense sobriety of court. He was at the moment, for example, trying to practice equestrian acrobatics: He perched behind the prince’s saddle, clutching Maelgwyn’s blond hair for balance as they rode. Maelgwyn as always calmly ignored the mild indignity.
The riding party was returning home from King Henry’s court in Gloucester, and this foggy afternoon found them on a road rising over a valley of harvested farmland. They were ten in all: King Cadwallon, Prince Maelgwyn, Gwirion, and some of the king’s personal warband, the teulu. It was both boys’ first time in England and they were delighted by it, especially Gwirion, who loved exploring and had announced that he would chart the length and breadth of all Britain as soon as he was old enough to travel without a chaperone.
“If these are Mortimer’s lands, won’t he try to kill us?” Maelgwyn asked his father hopefully, a cocky nine-year-old’s reaction to romanticized danger. He knew all about the Mortimer clan, powerful English barons whose properties served as a buffer between Wales and England. He knew, for example, that they had murdered most of his family, that they had tried for a century to conquer his small Welsh kingdom of Maelienydd. He knew that they had on occasion been successful, that the very castle he lived in had been built years ago by Hugh Mortimer during an Occupation. But he also knew that his father, with the help of their cousin Lord Rhys, had always driven Mortimer away again.
Gwirion looked alarmed by Maelgwyn’s question, and Cadwallon smiled reassuringly. “It is Mortimer’s land, but there’s no danger to us. We’re traveling under Henry’s writ of safe passage. Hugh Mortimer is Henry’s subject and that means he must let us pass through without harm.” As if that were the cue for a macabre joke, an arrow flew past his arm and struck one of his teulu in the shoulder. Both boys screamed.
The second arrow hit the king in the chest. He slumped in the saddle with a grunt, groped toward the shrieking children on the palfrey beside him; ignoring his son, he grabbed Gwirion from his precarious perch to haul him closer. They slid to the ground between the two mounts and landed in a heap on the hard dirt road as shouts and horses’ screams broke out around them. For one moment in the midst of panic and confusion, Gwirion thought he was being singled out to help the wounded monarch. Then he realized he was a decoy.
The furious stamping of hooves around their heads made him wince even as he shrieked, but Cadwallon’s unridered stallion galloped off and they were left exposed to their attackers, which was worse. An arrow passed so close before Gwirion’s face he could nearly have bitten it. Terrified, he looked back up toward the palfrey but Maelgwyn was already gone, spirited away by one of the teulu. Four more of the soldiers leapt from their horses and ringed their fallen sovereign, shields facing out, from the boy’s perspective towering yards over them; the attackers, who seemed to come from all directions at once, shot at the soldiers’ shins, barely above the level of Gwirion’s head, and when the men tried to avoid the arrows, a second spate was already on the fly toward the breaks in their defense. All four were pierced through their leather armor and staggered out of Gwirion’s view. The horses were fleeing; the indifferent grey sky above seemed full of arrows and the air was shredded by the sound of their flight. Out of the corner of his eye Gwirion saw two more of Cadwallon’s men fall near the bracken. Then he heard the triumphant attackers riding toward them, whooping.
“Sire,” Gwirion begged, near hysteria, turning to the large man beside him. His mantle was trapped beneath Cadwallon’s heavy arm. “Sire, what shall I do?”
Cadwallon’s face was ashen. He just managed to turn his head toward Gwirion and breathed, “Protect your king.”
Gwirion desperately tugged the cloak out from under Cadwallon’s arm, and tried to climb onto his body to cover it with his own. He gagged when he realized that the warm dampness his fingers sank into was the king’s bloody tunic. “Not me,” Cadwallon coughed, lacking the strength to push him away. “Protect Maelgwyn, or we fall to Mortimer.”
“Hugh Mortimer?” Gwirion cried. “But you—”
He stopped as Cadwallon’s glance moved past him. Safely beyond the skirmish and watching it with satisfaction, a young man dressed in blue and gold was reining in a large grey destrier. Gwirion recognized him: It was not Hugh Mortimer, but Roger his son, whom they had met at Henry’s court just two days before, a youth already known for his rash ambition. The king whispered something weakly but his words were inaudible under a chilling new sound: The attackers were plunging their swords into the wounded riders’ guts. Cadwallon took a final breath. “I go to God,” he murmured with angry resignation, then closed his eyes and did not move again.
Gwirion tensed and waited for him to go to God, but nothing happened. The soul was not material, but he was sure there must be some evidence of its departure or else how would Father Idnerth know to speak of it? Hywel the bard said even an oat stalk had a soul, although he never spoke of it going to God. Gwirion waited without moving for a long time, fearfully breathing in the odor of sweat, blood, and earth, his focus desperately and entirely on the corpse beside him. Nothing changed. The king’s body was unnaturally still.
Shouts had dulled to weak moans, and even these were fading. He raised his head carefully and looked around, suddenly shivering with cold. The dirt road was trampled nearly to mud all around him, and every one of the soldiers who had been riding with them was dead or dying. The horses had all fled, he hoped back home to Castell Cymaron where their presence would summon an alarm. The six attackers had dismounted and were gathering less than a dozen paces away from where he lay, giving each other congratulatory slaps on the shoulder in greeting. He couldn’t believe there were only six, for all the arrows and all the damage done. He didn’t dare look at their faces, but their strange foreign gibberish sounded rougher, harsher, than the foreign gibberish in the English king’s court. Two of them stopped at a fallen guard close to Gwirion and he held his breath as they leaned over the inert body, frisking it. They found nothing of worth, and spat on the corpse in annoyance. Then one of them saw a sealed parchment rolled up in the dead man’s belt, and pulled it out. He unrolled it, glanced at it, and held it out to his companion, who laughed. Gwirion recognized it: King Henry’s writ of safe passage. The man tore off the seal as a keepsake, crumpled the rest of the writ, and ground it under his heel.
They noticed Gwirion at the same moment and he didn’t know if he had shut his eyes fast enough to fool them. One of his legs was twisted uncomfortably under him; he was afraid it would begin to shake and they would notice. But they gave him only a cursory look, assuming from the blood and the awkward posture of his body that his soul was wherever Cadwallon’s might be.
Roger Mortimer had dismounted and joined the huddle. Gwirion lacked the French to understand what they were saying, but Mortimer was displeased about something and kept repeating a word Gwirion thought he recognized, from eavesdropping on the prince’s language lessons, as “boy.” He rested his head against Cadwallon’s stiffened arm and watched Roger through lowered lashes.
They were obviously looking for the prince. The bracken on these hills was high enough to hide a child, but three of the marauders had tracked some broken fronds and were heading into the dying, waist-high greenery with purpose. There was nowhere else Maelgwyn could have been; if he’d fled, they would have seen him on the un-sheltered hillside. Panicking, Gwirion glanced at the dead man beside him. Protect the king. He tried to think clearly: If he leapt up they would know it was a deliberate distraction and they might ignore him, so he would have to get their attention but make it seem accidental. That was as far as his foresight went. He never considered what would happen if he succeeded.
He rolled his head back onto the ground and moaned slightly, moved one arm limply, then was still again. It worked: The men all turned at once away from the bracken and ran toward him, shouting with excitement. Looking dazed, he pulled his twisted leg from under him and struggled shakily to rise. From the corner of his practiced eye, he saw a few fronds rustle slightly and knew Maelgwyn was moving out of danger. Gwirion was not yet to his knees when a violently strong hand grabbed the front of his tunic and hoisted him roughly. He found himself staring at the blue-and-gold tunic, and as he was released and felt his feet touch the ground, he looked up into the enemy’s face.
Roger Mortimer was giving him an eerie, almost dreamy smile. With a monotone accent like King Henry’s, he announced in Welsh, “You are not the prince.” Gwirion said nothing. “But I remember you—you’re his bosom friend. Almost as valuable.”
The king was valuable and the king was dead. He didn’t want to be valuable. “I’m just a peasant, sir.”
“A peasant? Dressed like that?” He poked the shoulder of Gwirion’s worn but finely woven tunic—like all his clothes, a castoff of Maelgwyn’s.
“We dress our peasants well in Maelienydd,” he said in a voice of utter innocence. The situation now lacked all sense of reality, and therefore danger. “Especially our royal servants.”
“A real servant would not have phrased it like that. I saw you at the court, boy, you never left the prince’s side. You’re much more than a servant.”
Gwirion’s nimble imagination failed him. “The prince is blind, sir,” he said, trying to sound earnest. “I’m his guide, I can’t stray more than a few inches away or he might hurt himself. I’m not his friend, he never even says my name right.”
Mortimer laughed briefly. “The lie is feeble, but I commend your excellent delivery.”
“It’s not a lie,” Gwirion insisted. “Didn’t you see me standing on the horse when you attacked? I had to steer, but Cadwallon doesn’t want—”
“Cadwallon didn’t want. Cadwallon is past tense.” He grabbed Gwirion’s collar and pivoted him around to face the corpse. “He’s dead. Your king is dead.” He was annoyed that this failed to break the boy, although he felt him shudder. “They are all dead except you and the prince, and you’ll be dead too if you don’t cooperate. Are you truly nothing but a Welsh peasant?”
“I’d sooner be a Welsh peasant than a filthy English lord.”
Mortimer ignored the comment, bored by the finer points of ethnicity. He calmly pulled a large knife from his belt and pressed the tip into Gwirion’s throat near his ear. The boy blanched and almost pissed himself. “Where is your prince?” Gwirion pursed his lips closed and Mortimer pressed harder. “You know where he’s hiding,” he said in a soft, almost hypnotic voice. “And this blade is hurting you. All you have to do is tell me where he is and I’ll stop hurting you. It’s a very simple game.”
“I don’t know where he is. You were the one interested in him, not I.”
“You’re not being very helpful,” Roger Mortimer observed quietly, and whisked the blade up to Gwirion’s head, nicking the skin at the temple. The boy cried out in startled pain and clamped his hand over the cut. “There’ll be more of that if you don’t tell me where your prince is. I don’t want to kill him, I want to speak with him.”
“Attend his coronation, then,” Gwirion suggested through clenched teeth, both hands now pressed to the wound. “He’s sure to give you a seat of honor, since you’ve helped get him there so early.”
Mortimer looked grudgingly impressed by the boy’s pluck. He lowered the knife but did not return it to his belt, and spoke in French to his men, who exchanged looks that made the bottom of Gwirion’s stomach drop out. Mortimer addressed him again in Welsh. “As entertaining as you are to chat with, I have better things to do with my time,” he explained in the same false dulcet tone. “I’d kill you for your cheek, but you’re the prince’s friend. So you will be our bait.”
The first blow, across his face, sent him spinning into the damp roadway spitting blood. He heard loud, hooting laughter that seemed to come from all sides at once as Mortimer reached down and hoisted him to his feet again. “That won’t work,” Gwirion managed to protest thickly, trying to feel his tongue. “Told you…just a servant…I’m nothing to him.”
“I’m a betting man, and I bet that’s a lie,” Mortimer replied and added, pleasantly, “But if we kill you and he does nothing, you’ve won the bet.”
HE knew his father was dead and he knew he would soon be distraught, but he wasn’t now. Now he thought of nothing but survival, horribly aware of how immensely more important his existence had just become, furious that such awareness required him to stay hidden in the damp bracken. He had a dagger, a recent gift from his father, and he had fantasized about having cause to use it; it was grotesquely ironic that the best way to preserve himself now was to refrain from action.
He’d seen Gwirion distract the men and could tell it was deliberate. He wanted both to throw his arms around his friend in gratitude and to scream at him for his idiotic and misplaced selflessness: I could have taken care of myself, he thought. Usually it was he who looked out for Gwirion, whose size and heedlessness made him the victim of harassment from the teulu and other castle youths. The prince had often needed to go to his defense.
Mortimer did not actually think Maelgwyn would come leaping out of the bushes like an avenging devil, but he was certain he could get the prince to give himself away. He assigned three of the men to study the bracken for movement, especially where the likeliest trail began. There was no wind. Maelgwyn did not allow himself to move, tried not even to breathe too hard. Hard eyes scoured the bracken fronds near him—and one pair locked onto his and stayed there. He tensed, and tightened his hand around the dagger hilt, ready to spring. But the eyes did not actually see him, they moved on and after a moment he made himself relax his grip. He would have given anything for a bow and arrow—he knew he could hit Mortimer and was sure the others would flee if he did. He was ashamed to realize he was trembling.
Maelgwyn saw Mortimer strike Gwirion once, then he closed his eyes and cupped his hands over his ears, his heartbeat amplified and filling his head, his throat a knot of tears. He could hear the Norman’s hollered offer that they would release Gwirion if the prince revealed himself—not to surrender, simply to talk. He knew it was a trap and prayed Gwirion knew that too, so he would understand why Maelgwyn couldn’t act on it. He dimly heard his friend’s voice crying out in fear and pain and outrage, and the offers gradually turned more sinister: The boy would be taken hostage and subjected to continual torture if the prince did not come out; he would be killed; he would be skinned alive; he would be skinned alive right now, in front of the prince’s eyes. Gwirion’s cries grew louder and Maelgwyn wondered, with the dispassion that comes from shock, if either of them would survive the afternoon. Three times, unbidden, his eyes flickered open and then shut again—and then he kept them shut to keep from shrieking.
After a very long time, there was quiet and the prince hesitantly lowered his hands from his ears, fearing the worst. He heard voices and opened his eyes to look.
They had released Gwirion, literally dropped him onto the road, three of the disheveled thugs breathing hard and grinning at their handiwork. Mortimer, who had stepped back to watch the scene with dispassion, was leaning over Gwirion and speaking to him loudly. He was asking Gwirion to help them find the prince, in exchange for a reprieve. Gwirion stubbornly said nothing.
After a long beat of silence, Mortimer stepped back and gestured for one of the men to resume, when Gwirion stammered, in a thin voice of defeat that Maelgwyn could hardly make out, “All right, then, I’ll tell you where the prince is.” Maelgwyn tightened his hand on the hilt of the dagger, his pulse racing.
Mortimer signaled his man to retreat and leaned over Gwirion again. “Yes?” he said.
For a moment, Gwirion stared at him, glassy-eyed, his face pressed against the road and his mouth half full of dirt. He spat the dirt out weakly. “I shoved him up my arse,” he muttered. “I dare you to look for him—he’s waiting for you with a naked blade.”
After an astonished pause, Mortimer burst out laughing. “I don’t know if I should kill you or adopt you,” he declared admiringly, and drew his sword. “I’ve never been so sorry to reduce the Welsh population.” Before Gwirion could answer, a distant cacophony of hunting horns sounded over the valley floor, a celebratory stutter of notes, and church bells began chiming far down the valley. Mortimer looked delighted by the interruption. “Alors, good news of some sort,” he announced to his men. “Anna’s time was upon her when I rode out this morning—I want to get back to Wigmore to hear if I’m become an uncle.” He sheathed the sword and made a dismissive gesture toward the battered child lying at their feet. “That’s enough. The little whoreson’s gone. You accomplished a fair amount today; I’ll call it a good day’s work.” In Welsh he said very clearly to the boy, “Your friend left you here for us to torture you. The friend you risked your life for doesn’t care a whit for you. You Welsh are all alike.” Gwirion did not rouse himself for a response. He lay limp on the cold earth; his fevered mind wondered randomly if Cadwallon’s soul had finally gone to God. Mortimer crossed to him and stood directly over him, his feet in front of Gwirion’s bruised and muddied face. With a final smile of satisfaction at the royal corpse, and a passing glance at the other dead surrounding it, he mounted, gestured to his men to mount as well, and led them away down the valley.
When he knew for certain they were gone, Maelgwyn crept out of the bracken and ran on stiffened legs to his friend, sobbing angrily. Gwirion lay like a doll tossed aside by a truculent child. Maelgwyn ripped off his cloak and wrapped it around Gwirion’s trembling body. The two boys looked at each other. Each almost began to speak and then each stopped abruptly.
“I’ll carry you, I’ll take you back to Gloucester,” the prince finally ventured hoarsely.
Gwirion’s eyes widened in fear. “No!” he whispered. “Take me out of here! I’m going straight home to the castle.”
“We’re much closer to Henry’s court than we are to Cymaron—”
“I don’t care,” Gwirion interrupted. “Take me out of England.” Wincing, he picked up a corner of the cloak and brought it to his lips, then pressed it ceremoniously to his friend’s chest and added, with pained reverence, “Please, Your Majesty.”
HONORING tradition, Cadwallon’s murder was at once added to every Welsh bard’s repertoire of lamentation. Gwirion’s ordeal was not. They both knew they were forever marked by this, and for nearly twenty years they never spoke about the horrors of that day.