Stephen de Blois came to London,
and the people received him
and hallowed him to king on midwinter day.
But in this king's time was all dissension, and evil, and rapine;
for against him rose soon the rich men who were traitors.
Then was England very much divided.
Some held with the king and some with the empress;
for when the king was in prison,
the earls and the rich men supposed that he would never more come out,
and they settled with the empress,
and when the king was out,
he heard of this, and took his force,
and beset her in the tower.
By such things, and more than we can say,
we suffered nineteen winters for our sins.
To till the ground was to plough the sea:
the earth bore no corn,
for the land was all laid waste by such deeds;
they said openly that Christ and his saints slept …
–The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
And this time shall be known to history as … the Anarchy.
May 1144
Gwen
“You two keep your ears and eyes open,” Hywel said. “Earl Robert may be courting friendship with Wales, but I want everyone to remain on their guard nonetheless. I don’t trust these Normans.”
Gwen glanced at Gareth, who laughed. “Of course,” they said together.
Gareth’s eyes glinted, and if Gwen hadn’t been married to him for five months already, she would have blushed. It wasn’t the first time they’d spoken in unison.
Hywel mumbled something Gwen didn’t catch—half-laughing too—and led the way into the bailey of the enormous Norman castle at Newcastle-under-Lyme. In its shadow lay a prosperous village which, according to Hywel, had grown in recent years. What had once been a few huts planted in the lower bailey of the original timber castle was now a thriving market town beyond the new castle’s stone walls.
The castle bailey teemed with soldiers, and Gwen knew why: the war between King Stephen and Empress Maud was in its ninth year. The man they had come to see, Robert, Earl of Gloucester, was Maud’s brother and led her armies. Although most men agreed that Robert would have made a better king than either Stephen or Maud, he was a bastard, so he could never claim the English throne for himself.
The steps up to the stone keep, which had replaced the original motte and bailey castle, lay two hundred feet in front of them, on low lying ground to the north of the Lyme Brook. Hywel and his brother, Prince Rhun, urged their horses through the crowd. Gareth and Gwen followed, along with their other companions: Evan, Gareth’s second-in-command; Gruffydd, Rhun’s captain; and Rhys, the prior of St. Kentigern’s monastery in St. Asaph, who had befriended Gareth last winter.
Three Normans waited for them on the flagstone pathway that ran from the gatehouse to the keep. The men stood with their hands behind their backs and bowed at the princes’ approach. Then one stepped forward and spoke in French. “Welcome to Newcastle. Earl Robert sends his greetings. Please dismount, my lords.” He caught sight of Gwen. “Madam.”
Gwen waited for Gareth to get down first so he could help her. He always wanted her to wait for him, even when she didn’t need his help. When he held her a moment longer than was strictly necessary, once she was on the ground, she smiled up at him. She would have kissed him, too, but for the large audience around them.
After a long look, he let her go, and Gwen swished her skirt into place. She was wearing finery today, as were they all. They had dressed well and deliberately that morning in their camp, located less than a mile from Newcastle, in order to present the Welsh cause to Robert in the best light possible.
Hywel, with his deep blue eyes, broad shoulders, and handsome face, would do well wherever he went. Rhun, with his thick shoulders and shock of blond hair, looked more like a Dublin Dane than a Welsh prince. As the Normans were themselves descended from the same Viking ancestors as the Danes, his visage was one the Normans could respect. King Owain of Gwynedd, the princes’ father, knew what he was doing when he sent his sons to foster diplomacy between the two kingdoms.
The stable boys led the horses away, and the companions turned towards the keep. Built into the curtain wall of the castle, it had towers on every corner and loomed above them. “Here comes Earl Ranulf himself,” Hywel said, leaning in to speak to Gareth and Gwen.
“Sir Amaury de Granville walks with him, my lord,” Gareth said. “I told you about him. He is Ranulf’s man at Chester Castle.”
“I remember,” Hywel said.
It was good news that Ranulf had come to greet the Welsh princes. He wasn’t Earl Robert himself, of course, but he was Robert’s son-in-law and the Earl of Chester. Maybe Earl Robert truly had invited the princes to visit Newcastle out of goodwill and a genuine interest in an alliance with Wales, not as a ploy to put the Welsh at a disadvantage and intimidate them with Norman power.
Gwen tried to watch Ranulf without staring at him. He appeared slightly unkempt. The brooch holding his cloak closed at the neck had drifted towards his left shoulder, he had mud on his boots, and a dark stain marred his brown breeches. Then a ray of sunlight shot over the castle wall, forcing Gwen to blink and turn her head away.
She put up one hand to block the light and nudged Gareth. “I can’t see. Let’s move over here.” She tugged him to the right of the steps that flared out from the keep and into the long shadow cast by the castle’s old motte, which rose up on the east side of the bailey.
Several men who’d been milling about in the courtyard pressed forward, eagerly filling the space which Gwen and Gareth had vacated. These onlookers seemed to want to hear the princes’ exchange with Ranulf, or maybe they were Ranulf’s men and had been waiting for him to appear from the keep.
“Thank you.” Gwen squeezed Gareth’s hand, glad she was with him, even if visiting a Norman castle had never been something she’d wanted to do.
A dozen yards away, Rhun and Hywel bowed slightly, as did Ranulf in return. “Welcome,” Ranulf said, in French.
From where she stood with Gareth, Gwen couldn’t hear Hywel’s response, though she could see his lips move. She stepped closer, trying to make out what the men were saying, but then a movement on the tower at the top of the keep distracted her. She glanced up and saw two men, their faces clearly visible in the sunlight.
They looked down on the Welsh party for a heartbeat, one man clutching the other’s shoulders. Then they separated: one to disappear from view, and the other to fall head first over the battlement and land flat on his back at Gwen’s feet.