Castle of Dreams Read online

  Swallowing hard against the sensations he had unexpectedly created in her body, Branwen closed her eyes. If the herbed wine did not stop him soon, there would be no way to prevent what he was going to do. Hope of escape had kept her from panic, but now she had to consider the possibility that Sir Edouard would take possession of her within a matter of moments. She felt his hands on her hips, pulling her closer so he could push his male hardness against her.

  “Yes,” he said, his harsh voice now a rough murmur, “Ah, yes, Branwen, I shall take great pleasure in making you my own.”

  He lowered his head, clamping his mouth over hers in a forceful kiss. He pushed her lips apart and slipped his tongue into her mouth. Branwen shivered, then stood perfectly still, refusing to let herself feel anything. She did not want to provoke him to either violence or a passionate rush of activity that would end with her stretched beneath him on Father Conan’s bed. When the kiss ended she put her hands on his shoulders and tried to push him away.

  “Please, my lord, may I have another cup of wine?” she asked breathlessly.

  “Am I so repulsive that you need to be drunk to accept me?” he growled.

  “No, my lord, I am so nervous. I am so unskilled,” she added, sounding almost as desperate as she now felt.

  “You are supposed to be unskilled,” he retorted, chuckling. “One cup only, and then no more delays. My men will be wondering why I am taking so long about this.”

  He swallowed the cup she gave him. She only sipped at hers.

  “You don’t want that,” he said, taking the cup from her. “You are only delaying matters. Take off your shift and get into bed.”

  He began to remove his clothing. His long-sleeved woolen tunic landed on the earth floor. Stripped to the waist, his fingers at the laces of his hose, he paused, watching her. She thought she saw him suppress a yawn and wished she could make him drink another cup of wine.

  “I said, take off your shift. I warn you, I will tear it from you if you do not obey me at once.”

  Branwen pulled the shift over her head, kicked off her shoes, and climbed onto the narrow bed. With her legs drawn up beneath her she sat watching him undress.

  Some might have called Sir Edouard a handsome man. Certainly he was well made, his chest and shoulders rippling with hard muscles. Branwen had seen naked boys often enough when she had cared for her youngest cousins, and she had romped in the stream of Tynant with the older children during warm summer days. But nothing about any young boy had prepared her for the sight of the tall Norman who now approached her. Her eyes traveled from his appallingly masculine body to his mocking face.

  “Do I frighten you?” he asked, sitting beside her. “All wives must learn to endure their husbands’ embraces, Branwen. I will be gentle. It will only be painful for you this first time. After that, you may find you enjoy it.”

  Branwen was trembling violently. Sir Edouard put one arm around her shoulders, slipped the other arm around her bent knees and laid her back upon the bed, straightening her legs out with a long caress down the length of her thighs and calves. Then his hand glided upward on top of her leg to her hip and waist, until he stopped at her breast.

  “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.

  Chapter 3

  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.

  The churl stood up and spoke to her. She could not understand him. By gestures he asked if she had delivered the child, and by gestures Branwen declared that she had.

  He smiled at her. He had a pleasant face and there was a warmth about him, a sense of dumb, undemanding goodness that Branwen, her heart still tormented by what had happened at Afoncaer, found oddly comforting. This man was no Sir Edouard. This man could be trusted. She smiled back at him. She hoped he would let her stay in his house for a day or two. It would be good to sleep under a roof again, however poor that roof might be. She was too tired to go any further.

  The excitement of helping to bring new life into the world was fading, and as it did, a weariness so heavy she could not fight it came seeping through Branwen’s body, taking away what little strength she had left. She staggered, her head reeling, and the man caught her shoulders to steady her. He frowned when his large hands felt the thinness of her shoulders and gave an exclamation of dismay as his hands moved down to feel the bones of her upper arms. His concerned expression gave Branwen the answer she so desperately needed. She was welcome here.

  “Alfric,” the man said to her, one hand on his chest.

  “Branwen.” She touched her own bosom.

  “Bran-wen, Branwen.” He said it several times to be sure he was doing it right, and then he began to speak again in his own tongue.

  Branwen spoke Welsh, a fair amount of Latin, and knew a half-dozen or so words of French, but she spoke not one word of English. She could see she would have to learn.