Chapter 24

 

29 August 1288

Aber Castle

 

Anna

 

Anna didn’t know when she’d last been this tired. She felt as if grains of sand had caught under her eyelids. But she kept her eyes open. With the spectacle before her, she was in no danger of falling asleep just yet.

The Irish Sea was nothing but chop, the white crests evident on every wave. Below and behind them, the men who’d remained at Aber to defend it cleaned up the English mess, working through what was left of the night and into the morning. She’d doctored those she could save and looked away when Bevyn had hung the single Welsh traitor who’d helped the English into Aber. She had been glad that she couldn’t see the gallows, built in the marsh to the northeast, from where she stood. Bevyn had made everyone but her march out to see the death. Summary and swift justice in medieval Wales.

The watchers on the coast, whom Goronwy’s rider had warned, had done their duty. They’d lit the beacons on the Great Orme, and by so doing, sent a signal along the coastline between Aber and Conwy, long before they’d sighted the English ships. Exactly as David had planned, the beacons had raised the countryside to arms. David had hoped that because of the warning, the defenders would have enough time to counter whatever threat the English were bringing to bear. The beacons themselves were an old idea—not invented by fantasy authors—but had never been used in Gwynedd until today.

Only twenty minutes earlier, a fleet of English vessels had hove into view, coming around the Great Orme and heading towards Anglesey. They had only a few miles left to go, but the boats were fighting the wind, tacking back and forth in their attempt to progress. One third of the thirty craft had the shape of Viking longboats and had reefed their sails. Anna’s eyes weren’t as good as David’s—she certainly couldn’t see the oarsmen rowing low in the water—but someone with far worse eyesight than she had couldn’t miss what was before her.

“Look at them, Bevyn!” Anna said.

The old soldier stood on the battlements beside Anna. He raised a hand to the men below them. “Come here, my lads. When you dangle your grandchildren on your knee, you’ll be able to tell the story of this day.”

Anna kept glancing to the west, and then back to the boats, and then to the west again, unable to contain her horrified fascination.

“They have to know what’s coming,” she said.

“Do they?” Bevyn said. “Though if they were smart, they would have hired Welshmen to sail them there—traitors that such men might be.”

“Plenty of English sail out of Chester,” Anna said. “Even they have to know the size of this storm.”

“Maybe they did before they sailed,” Bevyn said. “Maybe the English captain was arrogant enough to override any naysayers.”

And that sounded like a viable maybe to Anna. The confidence that the Normans had shown in this last week was stunning. It reminded her so much of King Edward’s tactics that a shiver passed through her. Could he have somehow survived Lancaster?

But no—enough people had seen his body—and seen it buried, for him not to be haunting them from the dead. This was someone else. But who? Not Edmund, obviously. Was Edmund’s brother, Roger, that clever? Bigod or Clare? It looked to Anna as if the man, whoever he was, had mortgaged his future on the chance of victory. The expense of all these men and materials had to be as enormous as the amount her father was spending to defend against them.

But perhaps as Math had said, back at Valle Crucis Abbey, it didn’t matter who it was. They had to defeat him, regardless.

The sky drew darker to the west until the storm covered all but the eastern tip of Anglesey. Aber itself was due south of Puffin Island, the closest land the English could reach, if they were going to reach land. It seemed as if the tip of the island reached out a finger to the English boats. All it had to do was crook it to bring them to safety.

The lead boat seemed to reach out too. Anna’s heart was in her throat. Would it make it safely? But no. The lead ship foundered and swung sideways, in the face of the wind. Then as one, the ships turned tail. They pointed their bows east, flying before the wind, their hulls surfing over the surface of the water as fast as their masters could ride them. There was a danger in that too, but it looked like most of the ships had turned away in time.

Bevyn nodded. “Safer to head south and beach themselves on the Great Orme. That’s where ships always wreck.”

“I was hoping they’d try to beat the storm to Anglesey.” The first drops of rain spat on Anna’s head.

“No such luck,” Bevyn said. “Let’s move under the gatehouse.”

They stood together and watched the storm overtake the English ships. First came the waves that pulled the boats apart from one another; then the gale winds that they’d been fighting the whole time, but that now threatened to upend them if they didn’t pull down their sails.

As the clouds loomed over them and the rain began to fall, a few of the boats seemed to lose their bearings and founder—perhaps taking on water. The rest, however, had the look of reaching shore.

And then the weather boxed Aber in. Anna could see nothing but black clouds and driving rain. It poured down on them, as if someone had turned a fire hose on their heads. It gave a hint of what the English were experiencing in their open craft. They would find little shelter on the beach, and even less when the men of the garrison at Caerhun, along with volunteers from the villages that lined the Irish Sea, penned them onto the beach and slaughtered them.

If that was indeed what Bevyn had planned. Anna didn’t really want to know.

Anna eyed her old friend. He hadn’t said, and she hadn’t asked what was in store for the English. It wasn’t that Anna didn’t care about their fate, but she understood this world she lived in a little more clearly every day.

Anna stood under the gatehouse roof with Bevyn for another minute, feeling the thunder of rain on the wooden planking above their heads. “I know you received Goronwy’s warning,” she said. “But you had to think that he’d warned Aber too. Why did you come? Why didn’t you stay to defend the Anglesey shore?”

Bevyn turned his head to look at her, and when she met his gaze and smiled at him, he guffawed a laugh. “Not much gets past you, does it, girl?”

“I like to think not,” she said. “Though you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to. I’m only guessing.”

“Guesses can be worse than the truth.” Bevyn laughed again. “It was luck, is all. Luck brought me here.”

“What do you mean?”

Bevyn’s eyes lit. “I have a son, did you know?”

“I knew your wife was expecting a child,” Anna said. “I didn’t know that he’d been born. How old is he?”

“Three weeks.” Bevyn didn’t temper the joy in his voice.

“And—?”

“My wife’s mother came to visit.”

Anna laughed. The sudden surprise and amusement burst from her and felt good. “You don’t like your mother-in-law? That’s what brought you to Aber?”

Bevyn managed a sheepish expression, despite his enormous mustache, which to Anna’s eyes made him look more like a revolutionary than a contrite husband. “My wife suggested I patrol for a few days with my ‘lads’, as she called them. She even pointed me here.” He paused. “She has a touch of the sight sometimes.”

Anna canted her head as she looked at him. “In addition to knowing you very well, she loves you.”

“I hope so,” Bevyn said. “I love her.”

Anna didn’t press him beyond that remarkable admission. “So you came to Aber.”

“And found it held against us. Luck, as I said.”

“But not luck that we could enter through the tunnel,” Anna said. “This eventuality has been long planned, I gather? You expected the boy to do as he did.”

“From the days of King Llywelyn’s grandfather, at least,” Bevyn said, “and maybe since the time of Arthur, those tunnels have made us vulnerable. They are a weak point in our defenses. At the same time, they have long been a comfort to the residents of the castle. Sometimes it’s better to flee in the night in order to live to fight another day.”

“Have the Normans ever attacked Aber before today?”

“Not that I know of,” Bevyn said. “Perhaps not since the time of Arthur.”

Anna knew that in her old world, after Papa’s death at Cilmeri, the Normans had taken the infant Gwenllian from Aber. They’d locked her in a convent for the rest of her life, so that she couldn’t produce an heir to threaten England. By then, all but a handful of castles had already fallen to the Normans, and she’d had nobody to protect her. Gwenllian was six years old now, safe with Mom and Papa at Caerphilly. But still, Anna shivered at the thought.

“How’s Dafydd?” Bevyn hadn’t asked that yet, and in retrospect, it showed how careful Bevyn was to have put the life he’d led before behind him.

“In the south, I hope,” Anna said, not really answering his question. She didn’t actually know if her brother was well or not. “The English may be crossing the Severn Estuary even now.”

“I was going to say that I wish I was with him,” Bevyn said. “But I don’t. My place is here.”

“David misses you,” Anna said. “He’s said so. But I agree. You were needed here.”