“There’s no reason for us to be enemies,” he
murmured. “You can be very helpful to me, and as long as you obey
me, I will protect you.”
The bed was so narrow that when he stretched
out beside her he was in fact lying partly on top of her, with his
manhood resting against her inner thigh. His fingers teased at her
nipple, sending a rush of unwanted warmth through her veins. When
she tried to get away from his hand she only succeeded in moving
closer to him. He began to kiss her. She knew instinctively that he
was trying hard to restrain himself, to be gentle, as he had
promised. She was grateful for that much. She closed her eyes tight
and opened her mouth to his thrusting tongue.
His fingers continued working their mischief
on her nipple. Branwen raised her free hand, the one that wasn’t
squeezed between their bodies. She had to get his fingers away from
her breast. But when she reached for his hand it was no longer
there, it was moving across her abdomen and pressing into the dark
hair between her thighs. Branwen whimpered in fear, but instead of
trying to stop his remarkably gentle assault she rested her hand on
his shoulder. She heard him chuckle deep in his throat.
“Open your legs to me, my lady.” His rough
whisper was triumphant. An instant later he fastened his mouth on
her breast.
With a sound that was half sob of despair and
half sigh of resignation Branwen obeyed him. Her hand, which had
been on his shoulder, crept upward to hold his head more securely
against her aching breast and she shifted her legs. His fingers
probed lower.
Tears trickled from beneath her closed lids.
If this man had come to Afoncaer in a peaceful way, if he had sworn
loyalty to her grandfather and then asked for her hand with open
honesty, and if her father and grandfather had approved, she might
well have accepted him without complaint. He was not physically
repulsive, and he was trying hard not to frighten or hurt her.
Under other circumstances his kindness toward her would have
encouraged her to accept his lovemaking with pleasure, and might
have made her love him before long.
But the man now showering kisses upon her
bosom and abdomen and thighs was the same man who was responsible
for the deaths of all her family, the man who had slain her father
in a cowardly act. Even as her awakening body responded to his
caresses she hated him for what he had done, and hated herself
still more for enjoying what he was doing to her. The tears flowed
freely as she lay trembling beneath his hard body.
“Don’t cry,” he said, his voice slightly
slurred. “I’ll kiss your tears away.” Very slowly he sprinkled a
row of kisses across each of her cheeks. The tears kept coming.
He put a hand on each of her thighs and
gently pulled them apart. She tried to resist at first, then gave
up. There was no point in fighting him now. Her plan had not
worked, and if she angered him he would surely be rough with her
and hurt her. She could tell by his slow, careful speech and by his
deliberate, controlled movements that he was having difficulty
restraining his passion. He had been thoughtful of her so far. If
she did not struggle he would have no reason to be violent.
“Only a moment more,” he said, kneeling
between her legs, “and I shall be Lord of Afoncaer in truth.”
She felt his manhood pushing at her, then
felt his full weight on top of her as he took her mouth in a deep,
demanding kiss that would surely stifle any outcry she might make
at his triumphant possession of her. He removed his mouth from hers
to take a long, tortured breath. The weight of his body increased.
He laid his head on her shoulder and Branwen decided he wanted to
hear her cry out. She stiffened, expecting him to drive into her,
fearing that intrusion, yet almost welcoming it.
The pressure between her thighs diminished.
Sir Edouard took another deep breath and lay still on top of
her.
“My lord?” Branwen’s arms had been around his
waist. She moved them upward to his broad shoulders and pushed at
him. He was much too heavy for her slender body to bear his weight
for long. “Sir Edouard, is something wrong? Have you finished? Sir
Edouard?”
The man was fast asleep, lying right on top
of her. The herbed wine had taken effect at last. But had it worked
too late? Being totally inexperienced, she wasn’t certain exactly
what he had done to her.
She had to push and shove and squeeze herself
out from under his limp form. Then she had to roll him over so she
could look at the sheet. She couldn’t not look. She had to
know.
The sheet was unstained. Nor was there any
blood upon her thighs or anywhere on him. Her body still felt the
pressure of his determined manhood, but she was certain he had
taken nothing from her that would give him any legitimate claim to
Afoncaer.
But he had taken her innocence. Looking at
his strong, mature body sprawled unconscious across Father Conan’s
ascetic bed, she wept – wept for her dead loved ones, for what he
had done to them and to her, and most of all, for the honest
warrior he might have been, who might have taken her as his willing
bride in a union blessed by the father and grandfather he had
killed.
She did not weep for long. She knew she had
to get as far away from Afoncaer as possible before Sir Edouard
awakened. She dressed hastily, then slid back the door bolt. Father
Conan was kneeling in prayer in the outer room.
“My child,” he said, rising, “you’ve been
crying. Are you unharmed? You were in there so long. Sir Edouard
did not … did not …?”
“He has no claim to Afoncaer except by right
of sword,” Branwen said proudly, and all the more fiercely because
she had been tempted to give Sir Edouard what he wanted. “If he had
taken me, I would have killed him with my dagger, and myself
afterward.” She touched the sheath fastened at her belt, knowing
she spoke the truth. Then she went to her knees to ask the priest’s
blessing.
“Thank you for your help, Father Conan. Now
I’d advise you to drink deeply of that wine until you fall asleep
in this room. That way Sir Edouard won’t suspect you when he
discovers I’m gone. He will blame it all on me.”
“Go safely, my child. I will pray for you
every day.”
It had grown dark while she was in the
priest’s house with Sir Edouard. She picked her way cautiously
toward the stable, stumbling over a sleeping Norman who fortunately
did not waken. Someone had carelessly left a torch burning in a
sconce high on one wall of the stable. By its light she easily
found her saddle and then her horse.
It was an unimportant looking animal compared
to the Normans’ larger mounts, but it was, like all Welsh ponies,
fleet of foot, and it knew her. She headed toward it, calling
softly. The horse recognized her voice and lifted its head. Its
long mane rippled at the motion and its sweeping, silky tail
swished as it always did when she was near.
When the horse was saddled and ready Branwen
took it out of the stable and walked it across all the open area in
front of the great hall, past the banquet tables and the ruined
palisade, and finally onto the beginning of the road.
She used a large rock to help her mount. The
heavy skirts of her too-large dress tangled in her legs, nearly
dragging her off the pony’s back until she regained her balance
just as it started to move, and then she was racing down the
moon-silvered road, riding away from Afoncaer, the accursed river
fortress, leaving it and never looking back.
She did not know where to go. Tynant was in
Norman hands; so she would find no refuge there. Branwen knew the
direction in which Rhys ap Daffydd had fled when the Normans
captured his home in Powys. She thought she could find him. She
believed he would welcome her. She considered the idea, then put it
aside. She was certain Sir Edouard would mount a determined
pursuit, and she would not lead him to a kinsman who had been her
teacher and had been kind to her. She would take a different
direction, away from any place where Rhys might be.
Branwen rode as fast as she dared until the
moon had set. Then she slowed to a walk, not wanting to stop lest
she fall asleep and be captured. Shortly after dawn she left the
road, which was little more than a rough track in the wilderness,
to hide behind rocks and bushes while a troop of armed men
thundered past. She was sure they were looking for her.
She had one advantage: she knew the land
better than the foreigners did, and could avoid them by staying off
the road and traveling through the forest, slowly making her way
north and east. She drank water from streams and ate the greens and
berries she found. Her training as an herbalist under Rhys’s
tutelage served her well in her search for food. In this summer
season she need not worry about hunger. Not yet, at any rate.
She knew many of her fellow countrymen lived
in the forests, but she met no one. She thought they must have fled
elsewhere before the conquering Normans.
When darkness came again Branwen decided to
rest. She spent a lonely night huddled beneath a tree, starting
into fearful wakefulness at every sound and trying not to think
what Sir Edouard would do to her if he found her. She was afraid to
think about Sir Edouard at all. The memory of what had happened in
Father Conan’s bedchamber made her feel dirty – and guilty, because
a part of her had accepted his lovemaking. She was every bit as
much a traitor to her family as Griffin was. She deserved her
exile.
On the second day her horse cast a shoe.
Branwen dismounted and led the pony through thinning trees to a
clearing. She removed the saddle and bit, and turned the animal
loose. It was a dear friend by now and she hated to leave it, but
there was nothing else to do. She hoped some good Welshman would
find it and have it shod and treat it kindly. There would be enough
forage here for it to feed on indefinitely.
There was a tumbledown cottage, no more than
a hut, in the clearing. She hid her horse’s trappings in a clump of
bushes and went to the cottage door. It hung dejectedly on broken
hinges. Normans again, most likely. They destroyed everything they
did not carry away. Within the dwelling were signs of violence.
Little had been left except part of a stale loaf of bread on a
crude table and a ragged, dirty brown dress, crumpled into a
corner. Branwen turned up her nose at the rancid smell of it, but
it would be infinitely safer for her to wear such a garment than
the too-conspicuous blue and gold robe she now had on. She changed
clothes, fastened her belt and knife over the brown wool, and then,
not wanting to leave any trace of her presence to lead pursuers in
her direction, she took the blue dress back to the woods and buried
it under a rock. She ate part of the stale bread she had found,
quenched her thirst in a nearby stream, and continued eastward on
foot.
She stayed out of sight, sleeping wherever
she could find the scanty protection of rocks or low-hanging tree
branches, existing on the food she scavenged from the forest. She
thought she must have left Wales long ago. The open spaces she
found, once farmland, were now barren and unpeopled, as though a
marauding army had marched through. Probably Normans, Branwen
thought in bitter disgust, and kept to the shelter of the
forests.
It was midday when she stumbled out of thick
trees onto cultivated fields and saw before her a village. It was
scarcely more than a few dilapidated hovels, scattered along a dirt
track that divided the fields and led to a mound in the distance.
On top of the mound rose a rude motte-and-bailey-fortress. Branwen
could see men working in the fields.
The nearest house was a bit larger than the
others, and was set a little apart from them. Branwen heard an
anguished cry from within. Someone was in pain or some deep
distress.
She ought to have slipped back into the woods
and gone on. It would have been safer. But she was exhausted from
walking for so many days and she had no destination, no goal,
except to keep away from the Normans who pursued her.
The cry came again, and Branwen followed it.
She could not help herself. Rhys had taught her to be a healer and
he had taught her well. If she could help someone in need she would
not pass by. She pushed open the cottage door and entered.
A girl a year or two younger than herself lay
on a straw pallet in one corner, her belly swollen in the last
stages of pregnancy. There was no one else in the house.
Branwen had never assisted at a birth, but
she had listened, with the curiosity youth has for such matters, to
everything the women at Tÿnant had said on the subject. She did
what she could to help the girl, which was not much, since the poor
creature was terrified and Branwen had no herbal medicines with
her. Before evening had come, a baby girl lay wrapped in a dirty
rag, and its too-young mother slept beside it on the straw.
Branwen cleaned up the evidence of birth and
swept out the cottage, then washed her face and hands in the stream
behind the house. She was searching for food to prepare for the new
mother and herself when a bulky figure filled the door. The man
shuffled into the cottage, looking at Branwen in dumb surprise,
then at the sleeping girl. He gave a grunt and squatted down,
poking at the baby with a thick, mud-encrusted finger. He glanced
up at Branwen for a moment, his square, bland face filled with
wonder and joy, before he turned back to the pair on the
pallet.
His wife, Branwen thought, wondering where
the other village women had been when the girl had needed them. It
was only later that she learned the new mother was not the man’s
wife at all but his sister, and the villagers, out of resentment
against their Norman lord, would have done nothing to help the girl
who unwillingly bore that lord’s child.