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

the other woman had the power to make her remember what it was like to be fifteen, awkward and innocent and so desperate to please.Cristyn was looking up intently into Llewelyn's face, her hand on his arm.Saying all the things I cannot, Joanna thought. Llewelyn put his arrn aroundCristyn; they stood for a moment in a quiet embrace. It was, Joanna knew, just what it looked to be, but she felt a pang nonetheless, found herself resentingCristyn for being able to offer the comfort she could not.Llewelyn had begun walking toward the great hall. He stopped when Joanna said his name, waited for her to reach him. She started to speak, but her words caught in her throat. His eyes were hollowed, his skin grey with fatigue;there was a bleak, bitter desolation in his face that went beyond grieving, that Joanna could not bear to look upon.For a long moment, Llewelyn studied her face, searching for something he could not find. "You still do not believe me, do you?""Llewelyn, I... I cannot!""No," he said slowly, "I do not suppose you can. But to tell you the truth, Joanna, I do not know where that leaves us.""Do not say that," she whispered. "You cannot mean that. Jesii, Llewelyn, we have to talk!""What would we say? I've just come from telling a man and his wife that their eleven-year-old son has been hanged, the son I took from them as a hostage. Do you truly think this is the time to defend John to me?""I'm not defending him, I'm not!" But he was no longer listening; he'd turned away.Joanna stood as if rooted. She could feel eyes upon her, curious, gloating, pitying; they no longer mattered. At last she followed Llewelyn into the great hall, not knowing what else to do.She paused uncertainly in the doorway. And then she saw the selfappointed courier, the Shrewsbury blacksmith."Why are you still here?"He was flustered by her tone, and stammered, "The priest ... he said your lord husband might have additional questions for me, said I should wait for him'Wait for payment, you mean, wait for your blood money! Tell me, °w much do you think my husband should give you? You've seen the §n« you've brought upon us; what price do you put upon it?"Joanna heard her voice rising, shrill, accusatory. Llewelyn was sudnly at her side, saying, "Joanna, that is enough."No, it is not! This man goes into a tavern, hears a drunken stranger

390babbling in his cups, and suddenly he becomes a man with a mission, suddenly he cannot rest until he's made sure that we've heard the latest alehouse gossip. Well, you've delivered your poisonous offering, you've had your moment of acclaim. But look around you and then tell me if it was worth it!""You're not being fair! It was more than gossip. I know the man spoke the truth.""How could you possibly know that?" Joanna said, so scathingly that the man's face flushed a resentful shade of red.He raised his chin, said defiantly, "The day the courier reached Shrewsbury, Robert de Vieuxpont hanged Prince Maelgwn's younger son. He was just a lad, not yet seven, and he died at the King's cornmand. Why would I doubt, then, that the other hostages, too, were dead?"The emotional upheavals of the past two days had left Llewelyn without the capacity to feel shock, outrage, to feel anything at all... or so he'd believed. "Are you saying John had a seven-year-old boy hanged?" he demanded incredulously, and the blacksmith nodded."I saw the boy's body with my own eyes, my lord."Their voices were echoing strangely in Joanna's ears, growing faint and indistinct. The people, too, seemed to be receding, faces blurring, slightly out of focus. The scene before her had lost reality; she was in it but somehow no longer part of it. She turned, without haste, began to walk toward the door."Joanna!" Llewelyn caught up with her in two strides, but she did not stop until he put his hand on her arm. She looked up at him, her face so still and remote that he felt an inexplicable throb of fear. "Are you all right?" he said, very low."Yes." He'd shifted his hands to her shoulders; she had to resist the urge to pull away, not wanting to be held, to be touched. "I want to be by myself, Llewelyn. I just want to be alone for a while."He hesitated, and then stepped back. "We'll talk later.""Yes," Joanna agreed politely. "Later."JOANNA slid the bolt into place. Only then, with the world shut out, di she begin to tremble. Moving to the bed, hers and Llewelyn's, she wj back against the pillows. It came upon her without warning. Sudden*, sweat broke out on her forehead, her face began to burn, and she w overcome by nausea. When it did not abate, she stumbled into the p11 "

391chamber. After some wretched moments, she vomited weakly into the privy hole.She heard knocking on the door; Catherine called her name. Then it grew quiet again. After a time she was able to return to the bedchamber, vvhere she washed her face, rinsed her mouth out with wine. But the [iiore she tried to make sense of what she'd been told, the more agitated she became. Her thoughts took flight, too swiftly for coherence, ricocheting wildly off the outer parameters of belief. She sought desperately to seize upon fragments of fact, to patch them into an intelligible pattern, one that would enable her to understand. But the raw, graphic horror of the images filling her brain blotted out all else. A bewildered child being led up onto a gallows. A woman screaming alone in the dark.A kaleidoscope of faces seemed to spin before her eyes. The florid, heavy face of the Shrewsbury blacksmith. Llewelyn's, lean and dark and terrifyingly aloof. John's, mouth quirking as if at some secret and very private joke. When she was little, their eyes would meet across a chamber, he'd wink, and she'd be flooded