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

was like blaming her for having bt°" eyes. But if anyone should have foreseen this, it was she. For who ^ better than she how stubborn Elen could be, how passionate and, her bravado, how easily hurt?

572And what was she to do now for her daughter? What could she do? , eariing over the fountain, Joanna splashed water upon her face, and a memory surfaced. StWinifred's WellGwenfrewi in Welshwas a holy shrine in North Wales, close byBasingwerk Abbey. It was celebrated for its cures, and the ailing and infirm made painful pilgrimages to avail themselves of its restorative waters.Joanna felt the faintest stirring of hope. There was something she could do.She and Elen would make a pilgrimage to St Winifred's Well, implore the saint to heed their prayers, to give Elen a child.8CRICIETH, NORTH WALESAugust 1228~/F all the diseases that ravaged the countries of Christendom, none was so feared as leprosy. The Church sought to ease the suffering of those afflicted by proclaiming it a sacred malady, an admittedly agonizing means of achieving salvation. But Scriptures said otherwise. According to Leviticus, the leper was unclean and defiled, to w shunned by his fellow men, and people were only too willing to obey that harsh dictum, to banish the leper from their midst, stifling the voice °f conscience with the comforting belief that the leper's fate was deserved, God's punishment for sins of the flesh, for lust and lechery and unholy pride.In England, lepers fared better than in other countries; the EnglishWe generally more tolerant, more sympathetic toward the leper's readful plight. An English leper was not taken to the cemetery and r°ed to stand in an open grave while a priest declared, "Be thou dead he World, but alive again unto God," as was often done in France., tne English leper was still subject to banishment, was escorted to the th 3S ^ ne were a dead man, where he knelt under a black cloth as c°ngregation chanted, "Libera me, Domine."°r the leper, there would be no release but death. No longer could

572he enter churches, markets, inns. He must wear his distinctive leper garb, a dark hooded cloak, and carry clappers or bell in order to warn others of his approach. He must shun the company of all but his fellow lepers, and when he died, he would be buried as he'd lived, alone.What befell him once he'd been stigmatized depended upon his own resources and the loyalty of family and friends. If he was wealthy and well loved, he could sequester himself in his own home. Or he could seek to enter a leper hospital, a lazar house. Life in a lazar house was not easy; the leper was compelled to bequeath his possessions to the hospital, to forswear such worldly amusements as chess and dicing, to take an oath of chastity, poverty, and obedience. But few balked, for the alternative was to be cast out upon one's own, to survive by begging, to face the hostility of people who shrank from the disfigurement and the ulcerated sores, and, as the disease took its gruesome toll, eventually to starve.There was deep mourning, therefore, at Llewelyn's court when lorwerth, one ofEdnyved's sons, was diagnosed as having the disease of Lazarus. For lorwerth, of course, there would be no hut by the roadside, with alms-dish nailed to a pole. He had a manor at Abermarlais, had a father wealthy enough to provide for his needs, influential enough to soften the strictures of his exile. He would not want for food or comfort or medical care. Ednyved could provide him with ointments, juniper oil, viper potions, even so exotic a remedy as the blood of a turtle from the faraway Cape Verde Islands. He could aid lorwerth in making pilgrimages to the shrine of St Davydd's and the holy well atHarbledown, near Canterbury. He could even coerce lorwerth's reluctant wife into keeping faith with her marriage vows, for while the Church did not recognize leprosy as grounds for divorce, Welsh law did. But what Ednyved could not do was to command a miracle, and nothing less would save his son.Knowing that, he could only grieve for his doomed child. And his friends could only grieve with him.They could not even offer the meagre comfort of forced cheer, could not seek to console Ednyved with false optimism, fabricated tales of wondrous cures, for he would not speak of his son. Even with Gwenllian he refused to share his grief, for lorwerth was not hers, but was a son of Tangwystl, the mother who'd died giving him birth. And so the bleak Lenten season dragged on under the heavy burden of Ednyved s frozen silence, and when it was spring, fate dealt another blow, no less cruel.It was Easter, and Davydd Benfras, son of Llewelyn's court bar , Llywarch, was entertaining the court at Aber. He was reciting a ^e' account of a long-ago battle, when Rhys suddenly stumbled to his te Rhys looked quizzical, surprised rather than alarmed, but then he ree

573backward, his clutching hands seeking support and finding only the edge of the tablecloth. He dragged it down with him, sent platters and jishes and tureens of soup clattering to the floor. Llewelyn was the first to reach him, cradled his head as Rhys fought for breath. But he was dead by the time Llewelyn's physician could be summoned.Catherine was so bereft that they feared for her very sanity. Nothing could comfort her, not her children or her Church or her friends. At Joanna's insistence, she stayed for several weeks at Llewelyn's court, but then she went back to the manor house she'd shared for so many years with Rhys. In the months that followed, she withdrew into the past, into her memories and her regrets, until even to those who loved her, she seemed no more than a pale wraith, a wan, frail shadow trapped in a time no longer hers.Llewelyn and Ednyved were stunned by Rhys's sudden death, for