Chapter 21

 

28 August 1288

Dolwyddelan Castle

 

Anna

 

The destruction at Dolwyddelan would take weeks to clean up. Goronwy left Marc in charge of it. He confessed in an aside to Anna that the burning of the castle, coming hard on the news of a danger to Anglesey, had lit a fire under him he hadn’t felt in years. He was the same age as Papa and had entered semi-retirement, but all of a sudden, he wasn’t quite ready to hang up his sword.

It was shortly after noon on the day of the fire that they arrived at Caerhun, the fort that guarded the passage across the Conwy River. The garrison captain, a man named Alun, came out to greet them, his face grave. He’d been prepared for their coming by a second rider in the last twenty-four hours, who warned him of what had happened to Dolwyddelan Castle.

One look at Goronwy’s face had Alun grabbing Goronwy’s arm while the older man dismounted. “My lord, let me help you.”

Anna had ridden beside Goronwy the entire ten mile journey from the castle. Any movement of his horse or a shift in the saddle had sent a pain through him that Goronwy couldn’t entirely disguise. By the time they reached the Conwy River and turned north to ride along the west bank, his face had turned as gray as his hair.

Goronwy shook his head. “I don’t need your help. I’m not bedridden yet.”

He dismounted and glared at Anna, who dismounted too and set Cadell on his feet, still clutching his new puppy, who’d fallen asleep in his arms during the ride. Anna stepped close to Goronwy, lowering her voice to protect his pride. “You can’t ride another yard, Goronwy.”

His jaw bulged with denial. “You can’t talk me out of going with you—”

“Maud, Hugh, and Cadell should not ride to Aber,” Anna said. “You can keep an eye on Maud while I watch Edmund.”

Anna didn’t think that ploy would work, and it didn’t.

“You should stay here,” Goronwy said. “Edmund and I will ride to Aber.”

“Cadell will be more comfortable staying at Caerhun if you do.” Anna didn’t feel guilty for one second about playing the grandfather card. She glanced over her shoulder at the two boys, who naturally had glommed together again. Hugh was as bright and cheerful as Cadell—he’d even gotten one of the other puppies so as to match his new friend—but Maud wove in the saddle, and her dismounting was matter of falling off the horse into Edmund’s arms.

Anna turned back to Goronwy. “We’ve been over this. I am perfectly well. It’s a skip and a hop to Aber—another ten miles. With all that I’ve been through since I left Dinas Bran, that’s nothing. Your men will ensure my safety on the way there, we’ll sleep at Aber tonight, and return in the morning. What could be simpler?”

Goronwy still hesitated. He looked west, in the direction of Aber, though he couldn’t see it from where they stood. The road to her father’s seat followed a path over the high hills, through the pass at Bwlch y Ddeufaen and its ancient standing stones, and then curved north to the Irish Sea. After a moment, Goronwy nodded his grudging admission and turned to Alun. “How many men can you send with her?”

“Twenty, prepared to mount immediately and ride to wherever you wish,” Alun said. He was a wiry man, though firmly muscled, without an ounce of fat on him. “As soon as your messenger arrived yesterday afternoon, another twenty rode north to defend the coast and rouse the countryside.”

“Good,” Goronwy said.

Alun lowered his voice. “The rider I sent to Aber has not returned with word of the status of the garrison there. That fact doesn’t surprise me, necessarily, and he could be on the road even now, but you should know before you send her that all may not be well to the west.”

Goronwy grunted his acknowledgement and eyed Anna. “I wish I could go with you.”

“I’ll be fine,” Anna said. “Alun and his men will take care of me. With Alun riding with me, you’ll have more than enough to do here at Caerhun.”

An hour later, after a bite to eat and a lullaby to settle Cadell for a nap (at which point Anna had almost fallen asleep herself), Anna mounted a fresh horse. She was the only woman in the company, which wasn’t unusual for her. The men kept her boxed in the middle of their mass, riding three abreast across the high hills to Aber.

Just before the road jagged north, heading past Aber Falls to Aber Castle, the two men that Alun had sent ahead to scout their route came galloping back, in the company of a third man whom Anna would have recognized from a hundred yards away, if only by his mustachios.

Bevyn.

Alun spurred his horse to greet him and Anna followed. They reined in twenty yards ahead of the rest of the company.

“My lord!” The lead rider’s horse skittered sideways as he tried to control the headlong rush. “Aber has been taken!”

Alun’s face blanched. “By whom?”

“Normans.” Bevyn’s eyes tracked to Edmund, who’d trotted up after Anna, and they narrowed. “What is he doing here?”

Anna urged her horse closer. “Edmund was made captive in his own castle, by his own brother. He is here because I was captured too, and the men, who’d ridden at my side, killed. He helped me to escape from Montgomery Castle.” When Bevyn continued to glare at Edmund, Anna added, “Goronwy allowed him to ride with me.”

Bevyn subsided, though his face remained set in grim lines. “Does your husband know where you are?”

“No,” Anna said.

Bevyn’s nostrils flared, but what else could she say? It was the truth.

“Did the rider that Math sent reach you?” Anna didn’t want to argue with Bevyn. She put out a hand to him, and he lowered the volume on his glower enough to clasp it. Despite Bevyn’s gruffness and the tenseness of the moment, Anna’s heart had lightened at the sight of him.

“No,” Bevyn said. “But Goronwy’s pigeon did. I rode for Aber as soon as I got it. At worst, I would waste a day. At best …”

“David has long trusted your instincts, Bevyn,” Anna said, “and since they’ve proved prescient yet again, I’m grateful for them. Please tell us what you know.”

“Not here,” Bevyn said. “We’ve set up camp at the foot of Aber Falls.”

Bevyn led the company from the high road they’d been traveling on, down into a cleft in the hills that came out among trees that grew below Aber Falls. Anna couldn’t see Aber Castle from here, which comforted her, since whoever had taken it couldn’t see them either.

“Aren’t we too close?” Anna said. “Surely the English have sent out scouts.”

“Not that we’ve seen,” Bevyn said. “They wouldn’t have wanted to, especially if they are wary of the local populace.”

“As they should be,” Alun said. “Do they fly a flag?”

“No,” Bevyn said. “But they are mistaken if they thought they could take the castle unnoticed. The village is all abuzz with the news.”

“Many villagers work in the castle, of course,” Alun said.

“Those that went to work today haven’t been allowed out,” Bevyn said.

“They must be frightened.” Anna had spent many months at Aber and knew most of the inhabitants of the little village, which lay just across the Aber River from the castle. “What are they saying?”

“That the garrison was lax,” Bevyn said. “A few Englishmen disguised themselves as peasants and entered the castle. When night came, they overcame the few guards on watch and let the rest of their companions in.”

Anna took in a deep breath. “At least we have no word of traitors among my father’s men.”

“How many men do you hav—” Alun cut off the sentence. They’d entered the camp. Bevyn had only six men with him.

“I could have brought twenty, but I thought the English threat to Anglesey was greater,” Bevyn said.

“How did you get here without being seen?” Anna said. “Not over the sands?”

The Lavan Sands stretched across the Menai Strait between Anglesey and the beach at Aber. For millennia, travelers had crossed them at low tide. They were easily visible from Aber’s towers.

Bevyn shook his head. “We came across the Strait at Bangor.”

Edmund had been listening closely to their conversation. “We have nearly thirty men. That’s enough to encircle the castle. Unfortunately, it’s not enough to lay siege to it.”

“We don’t need to lay siege to it,” Anna said, “provided we can get inside undetected.”

Edmund eyes grew wary. “And how are we going to do that?”

Bevyn didn’t balk at the we, even if the expression on his face indicated he wanted to. Instead, he pointed to a cluster of trees to the east, in which a barnlike building stood, bearing a striking resemblance to the shepherd’s hut Anna had rejected as a stopping point on their journey north. The barn was so rickety it looked like the next wind storm would bring it down.

“We’ll enter through the tunnel,” Bevyn said.