Here Be Dragons - 1 Sharon Penman (paper ebook reader .TXT) 📖

the wrong, I know that. I had no proof, should not have . . . but I did, and within the hour, Sugar came back of her own accord, muddy and matted and unhurt. I apologized to Gruffydd, but as you saw, he will not forgive me. Iknew he would not, not the way he cherishes a grudge!""Joanna, you can hardly blame him for being hurt and resentful. How old is he now, not thirteen till the spring, no? Well, you have to""Richard, you do not understand. I should not have said what I did, would toGod I had not. But you do not know what a wretched, hateful boy he is. Believe me, he's quite capable of harming a dog out of spite!""Have you ever talked to Llewelyn about him?""No. At first I thought I should be capable of handling him myself. AsLlewelyn's wife, I owed it to him to make peace with his children; a man should not be burdened with problems of the hearth. And . . an(* it would serve for naught, would only cause Llewelyn hurt. With the girls, I think I've finally managed to gain their trust. Even GwladysI asked her to stand asElen's godmother, and since then she's been slowlyever so slowlywarming toward me. But Gruffydd has give me naught but grief from the moment of my arrival atAber. I de*es him, Richard, I truly do. He's wild and perverse and dangerously u predictable, has none of Llewelyn's strengths and every damned one his failings!"

285Richard glanced up sharply. "Do you want to talk about that about Llewelyn's failings?"Joanna hesitated, and then confessed, "Yes, I think I do. We had a truly dreadful quarrel when he left, by far the worst of our marriage. I was so angry with him, Richard; I still am. He knows how fearful I've been about this baby, he knows, but it was not enough to keep him with me That's hard for me to understand, harder still to forgive.""We heard he was encountering little resistance, found Powys was his for the taking. Is that true?"Joanna nodded. "Llewelyn has few peers on the battlefield," she said, with perverse pride in that which gave her so much anxiety. "Men say he is a brilliant commander."That, Richard thought grimly, was precisely the trouble. "Think you that he'll stop at the borders of Powys?""You have not heard, then? He has crossed into Ceredigion, into the lands ofMaelgwn ap Rhys, has pushed as far south as the River Ystwyth.""Jesii! But how can he hope to hold it? Maelgwn is no man to yield up what is his. I know the man, Joanna, met him often when I served in South Wales withWilliam de Braose's son. His past is a bloody one, includes the murder of a brother and the imprisonment of his own father. He makes a bad enemy.""I know. Ednyved's wife Gwenllian is sister to Maelgwn and Rhys Gryg; they paid a visit to our court last year. After meeting them, I found it easier to understand why Gwenllian is such a bitch! But to answer your question, Llewelyn does not mean to hold Ceredigion for himself. He means to turn most of it over to Maelgwn's nephews. They've been feuding with their uncles for years, are more than willing to acknowledge Llewelyn as their overlord in return for his backing against Maelgwn.""Yes," Richard said slowly, "I expect they would be." Joanna could not have given him a more disquieting answer. Had Llewelyn merely acted to seize what lands he could for himself, it would be much easier to dismiss him as just another of the power-hungry princes and lords of the Welsh Marches, a region that seemed to spawn more than its share°f renegades, outlaws, and rebel barons. They could be troublesome, e de Braoses and Maelgwns and Fulk Fitz Warins, but their aims were understandable, their vision was limited, and sooner or later they over-eached themselves, were undone by their own greed. But a man who°u'd voluntarily yield to others land he had himself won at sword-" mt, such a man had ambitions above and beyond filling his coffers, r ndering his weaker neighbors. Such a man posed a genuine danger n8'and's interests, would have to be dealt with.

286r287"Joanna . . . what does Llewelyn want for himself, for Wales?"She surprised him then, said, "Are you asking for yourself, RJCI ard? Or forPapa?""For myself," he said, and she smiled, reached out to brush the haj back from his temples. But she did not answer his question.Branwen approached with mulled wine, retreated discreetly out Of hearing range. Richard drank, studying his sister. Despite the fact that John's mother'd had one of the best political brains in Christendom, or perhaps because of it, he had never encouraged Joanna to take an interest in statecraft. He'd pampered her and protected her, indulged her and lavished love upon her, but he'd never asked her what she thought, never shown any curiosity in the workings of her brain. Her political education had come from her grandmother, during those months she'd spent with Eleanor in Poitiers.And, it was becoming disturbingly apparent to Richard, from Llewelyn ab lorwerth.Richard drank again, spat out sediment that had not settled to the bottom of the cup. He found himself wishing that Joanna were not becoming so quick to comprehend the subtleties and consequences of power, to grasp that which women need not know. Far better for her if she were like Isabelle, if she cared only for womanly whims and the joys of the moment, if she were not aware of the gathering clouds.Suddenly he felt very dispirited, felt caught up in currents beyond his control. He knew his father had no liking at all for Joanna's husband, that he distrusted the Prince and disliked the man. But Richard did like Llewelyn, for he could not help but see the changes marriage had wrought in Joanna. Neither he nor his father had been able to give Joanna