to send Isabella and Dafydd to Dolbadarn or Dolwyddelan and allow Eleyne to stay at Aber. The servants and household gossiped about his youngest daughter endlessly; as for Rhonwen, if there were magic and evil in this palace, Rhonwen was the centre of it.
Still Eleyne had not looked up; she gave no sign that she knew he was there. He scowled. Her eyes, clear as the silver-green dawn light on the sea, stared unblinkingly at the embers. She seemed to be a thousand miles away in her dreams.
‘Eleyne!’ His voice was sharp. ‘Eleyne, by the Holy Virgin, listen to me!’ He stepped towards her and, putting his hand on her shoulder, pulled her to face him.
Her eyes were blank.
A superstitious shudder of horror swept over him. She had gone, his little daughter, his Eleyne, his seventh child, and the beautiful face looking up at him blankly was that of a stranger – a stranger who had stepped out of those glowing ashes to speak to him from another world. ‘Eleyne, wake up!’ His voice was sharp with fear.
Abruptly she was jerked to her feet. The picture in the fire vanished and she found herself staring into her father’s furious green eyes.
‘What’s the matter? Can’t you hear me?’ The fear in his voice was raw.
‘I’m sorry.’ She tried to pull herself together, but her mind was far away, through the fire, seeking the man who had called her, the man to whom her soul clung.
‘Are your wits addled, girl? Have I been talking to you all this time and you have heard not a word?’ His moment of fear had made him doubly angry.
‘I didn’t hear you come in, papa. Forgive me – ’
‘Then listen now.’ He didn’t ask what she had been thinking about, where she had been. He thrust her away, ignoring his urge to take her into his arms as he used to do when she was little. ‘I said you have to go. And go now. Today. You are not wanted beneath this roof. Your place is with your husband.’
‘But, papa – ’
This was the first time he had spoken to her alone since his return, and the first time he had really spoken to her at all. She felt a strange chill; once more she was the frightened child whom her father had sent away three years before.
‘Why? Why must I go? What have I done? I don’t understand.’ She tried to read the bleak, shuttered face. ‘I can’t go, papa. The weather …’ She looked over to the narrow window behind him, the only one which was still unshuttered, where the snowflakes whirled crazily. Some had drifted on to the exposed sill and sat there unmelted in the cold. ‘No one could ride in this; please let me stay at least until the storm clears.’ She heard her voice rise unsteadily. ‘Please, papa?’
He stared at her coldly. ‘Dafydd will ride with you. There is no danger; the snow is not settling. You will leave as soon as you are packed. I am sorry, Eleyne. But you have to go. And take your woman with you.’
‘My woman?’ she echoed as the door crashed shut behind him.
Rhonwen.
II
They sheltered that night in the guesthouse of the abbey at Conwy and rode on at first light, their faces muffled against the cold, their gloves rigid with caked ice on the reins of their horses. The snow whirled around them, settling in deep drifts in the sheltered gullies, torn and blown on the screaming west wind which as yet held no hard edge of ice. Dafydd had made no attempt to talk to her, to explain, but Rhonwen had known.
‘It’s the English bitch Dafydd took to wife,’ she whispered as she threw Eleyne’s clothes into her coffers. ‘She spreads lies, like poison, round the llys; she screams and shouts and refuses to sleep until you’ve gone. She claims the child was lost because of you and that she won’t conceive again while you’re under the same roof.’ She glanced sideways at Eleyne. ‘Did you tell her what you told me? Did you tell her that there would be no other child, cariad?’
Eleyne frowned. ‘Of course not! I have told her nothing. I haven’t been near her. She wouldn’t see me.’
‘That’s as well then. If you’d told her, she would have screamed sorcery and had you locked away for a thousand years.’ Rhonwen closed the lid of the chest and began to fill the next. ‘You’re best back with your husband, cariad, and that’s the truth.’ She looked at Eleyne’s bleak face, and knew without being told what Eleyne was thinking: What if he won’t have me back? What if he doesn’t want me as his wife …?
III
CHESTER CASTLE
The Earl of Chester’s face was uncompromisingly stern. ‘I did not send for you,’ he said.
Eleyne raised her chin a fraction. ‘I wanted to return.’ She had forgotten how handsome he was, this husband of hers. She felt excitement beneath her apprehension.
Above her head the carved vaulted roof of the great hall of Chester Castle was lost in the shadows; after the comparatively small palace at Aber, it was a shock to remember the power of this great castle which was now her home.
She was intensely aware that the crowds of men and women, ostensibly busy about their affairs or gathered around one or other of the fires at either end of the hall, were watching and, if they were close enough, listening to the conversation between husband and wife.
Dafydd had exchanged only the briefest greetings with Lord Chester and then turned back into the storm, anxious to return to Wales before the snow closed the passes and locked the roads. He had offered no explanation for his sister’s unheralded return. Rhonwen had slipped away into the depths of the castle without a word, terrified that the earl would send her back with Dafydd. Eleyne was left to greet her husband alone and unattended.
He looked stronger than she remembered him. Tall and good-looking, he was in the great hall surrounded by his friends and advisers when she was announced. They formed a laughing animated group which stood back in silence as she walked the length of the hall to the dais and stepped up to greet him. In the long weeks at Aber she had grown again; this time she was nearly as tall as he, and her eyes met his steadily for a moment before she dropped a deep curtsey before him, her heart thumping.
‘What made you decide to return?’ He dropped his voice so they could not be overheard.
‘My place is at your side, my lord.’
‘Did your lover reject you?’
Her steady gaze belied the tightening of her throat, the quickness of her breath. She clenched her fists. ‘I told you before, my lord. I have no lover. You are the only husband I want.’
‘Because, no doubt, you have now obtained the assurance from your uncle the king that you may marry whom you will when I die.’ His eyes were watchful, his voice harsh.
‘I have not seen the king; nor have I written to him, my lord.’ It was becoming an effort to keep her eyes steady on his, but somehow she managed it, willing him to believe her.
He folded his arms thoughtfully. ‘Your brother was in a great
