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

Sugar, she walked closer to the water's edge. Yr Afon Fenai, the Welsh called it, the narrow strait that cut off the island of Mon from the mainland. It was, Llewelyn had told her, a deceptively dangerous stretch of water, for the currents ran very swift, forming sudden eddies and undertows; and where the tides came together, a lethal whirlpool, Pwll Ceris, had taken more than a few men to a death by drowning. Llewelyn had palaces on Mon, at Aberffraw andRhosyr. But she'd yet to see them; like so much of his life, that, too, was closed to her.

the tide213. -jece of driftwood lay at her feet. On impulse she knelt, patted nd smooth, and scrawled her name in the path of the incoming ^ Beneath it she wroteLLEWELYN, and then watched as the waves bed their names away. A dim memory stirred, took on substance. *va ^ she passed the time on another birthday, ten years past, lying in heather before Middleham Castle and laboriously tracing CLEMENCE ' d JOANNA in the dirt.Birthdays had never been joyous occasions for her. Beneath the surcelebration lurked a lingering unease, a vague foreboding that she uld neither identify nor yet ignore. She wondered suddenly if her ,ersion might not be rooted in that long-ago Yorkshire birthday. How ivid it still was: her desperate desire to please her mother, her futile 'earning for a dog, the water stains upon her skirt, that closed bedchamber door. Two days later her mother was dead, leaving her with on]y the memory of a tear-splotched, swollen face, ghostly white in the moonlight.Getting to her feet, Joanna tossed the stick out to sea, began to brush the sand from her mantle. Foolish to dwell upon a birthday ten years gone, to prod and prick at old hurts until they bled. Of all she least liked about herself, her weakness for self-pity must, for certes, lead the list. Nor was she going to squander what remained of this, her fifteenth birthday, in feeling sorry for herself. If truth be told, she was to blame, too. Why had she not toldLlewelyn plain out that her birthday fell in mid-September? He would surely have marked the day in some way, might even have taken her with him toCricieth Castle. But no, she'd had to be clever, had to test him, making just one deliberately casual mention over a fortnight ago. Had her words even registered with him? Or was it that he had not thought her birthday important enough to remember?How right she'd been to be afraid, that night at Dolwyddelan Castle. She did not want to love Llewelyn. But she did not know how to stop. He had only to appear, and all others ceased to exist for her. So far she'd managed to cling to the shreds of her pride, but how long ere she well and truly singed her wings? She was so ... so obvious, after all. Peking him out on the slightest pretext, contriving reed-thin excuses to **ep him in her companyonly to freeze as soon as their eyes met, to md herself flustered, hopelessly tongue-tied.Joanna did not know ^ ch she feared more, that he should now think her an utter fool, or a' he had not even noticed her peculiar behavior. She did know that e u have given anything in her power to have him with her this day, at she missed him as she'd never missed anyone in all her life before. Alerted bySugar's barking, Joanna turned, saw her husband's two ngest daughters standing a short distance away, watching her with

214grave, wary eyes. Joanna started to speak, stopped; that road led tv, where.Instead she knelt and, using a shell as a shovel, began to SCOQ up handfuls of damp sand. Within moments she had a castle motte ready to receive the keep.She dug in silence, as if utterly intent up0' her handiwork, not looking up until a small voice said, "Is that a Welsh or an English castle?"Marared and Gwenllian were now close enough to touch. Joanna felt much the same pleasure she would have had a wild bird suddenly alighted upon her hand."I do not know yet," she said thoughtfully "What do you think it should be?""Welsh," Marared said, coming closer still, and when Joanna offered her the clam shell, she took it without hesitation. With four small hands to help, the castle was not long in taking on impressive dimensions: an inner and outer bailey, a thick curtain wall, a lopsided gatehouse that Gwenllian insisted she alone should build. Joanna deferred to their decisions, let them place the towers where they would. Nor did she try to draw them out in conversation, as she had in the past. And within the hour she had her reward.Marared had settled back on her haunches to inspect their creation. She drew so sharp a breath that Joanna at once looked up, saw on the child's face an expression of sudden dismay. Turning, she saw Gruffydd moving toward them. He stopped abruptly, all but stumbled over his dog. Since Adda's reprimand on the day of her arrival, he'd not let his hostility blaze forth again. But it smoldered in his eyes, showed now in the rigidness of his stance, the set of his shoulders.Always before, he had only to appear for his sisters to shun Joanna as if she were a leper. But Gwenllian and Marared so far showed no sign of flight, andJoanna took heart. "If we dig a moat," she suggested, "we can fill it with sea water," and saw at once that she'd said just the right thing.From time to time, Marared cast nervous glances over her shoulder, but she stayed put; Gwenllian seemed to have forgotten Gruffydd altogether, so absorbed was she in deepening the moat. At last it was ready to be filled, and the little girls grabbed their clamshells, ran toward the water, Joanna following. She allowed herself one look back at Gruffydd.