‘You are not St Peter?’
The man tilted his face to the ceiling and laughed like a madman. When he was quiet, wiping the tears from his eyes, he said, ‘I have been called many things, Sir Robert, but never a saint.’
‘Who are you?’ Sir Robert asked.
‘Dafydd ap Gwilym Gam ap Gwilym ab Einion Fawr, Chief of Song and Master of the Flowing Verse.’
And a delightful braggart, Sir Robert thought. ‘It was you who took Rhys off to sanctuary?’
‘It was. But I came to honour you, not boast of my goodness. It is said that God granted you a vision at St Non’s Well. I pray you, tell me all.’
Sir Robert talked of Amélie until he was exhausted. The bard was a most attentive audience. As was Geoffrey Chaucer, who joined them halfway through the tale.
When Brother Michaelo discovered Sir Robert hoarse from talking, he asked the two poets to leave. Geoffrey and Dafydd departed the chamber together.
‘A God-fearing, gentle knight,’ said Geoffrey.
‘God-fearing? Gentle? He was a soldier,’ said Dafydd. ‘I lost many a sweet mistress to a soldier’s arms. And each time I mourned them, knowing how ungentle their new lover would be. You heard his tale. By the Trinity, how I would have loved the fair Amélie.’
‘But Sir Robert did love her. I wept to hear his tale. What he lost! It is no wonder he spent so much of his life thereafter on pilgrimage.’
Dafydd considered the short-legged man walking beside him. His eyes did show traces of tears. He had a heart then, but had he the soul of a poet? ‘Are you married, Master Chaucer?’
‘I am. To one of our late Queen’s ladies of the chamber.’
Death to a poet, marriage. The match had helped the man’s career, no doubt. ‘What does she think of your poetry?’
‘She despairs of the ink stains.’
In the late afternoon, Owen returned from his audience with Bishop Houghton, just arrived in the city for the remainder of Passiontide, to find Brother Michaelo kneeling at the foot of Sir Robert’s bed, praying the rosary. The maid Rhonwen knelt there, hands folded, head bowed.
Dear God, was Sir Robert already gone? Owen hurried to the side of the bed, said a prayer of thanks as he heard the dying man’s uneven breaths.
Noticing Owen standing there, Michaelo and Rhonwen rose.
‘God prepares to take him,’ Michaelo said. His eyes were red with weeping. ‘He has not complained, not once in all-’ The monk’s voice broke. He ducked his head and turned away to blot his eyes.
‘Does he know we are here?’ Owen asked.
‘I do not think so.’ Tucking his beads and his cloth up a sleeve, Michaelo turned back to Owen. ‘You must have some time alone with him.’ He made the sign of the cross over Sir Robert, then withdrew.
Rhonwen had already slipped away.
Owen knelt down, took Sir Robert’s cool, dry hands in his, and bowed his head over them. He thought of his daughter Gwenllian, who was so fond of her grandfather, so captivated by his tales of soldiering. He must tell her how even in his last illness Sir Robert had courageously spied for the Duke of Lancaster.
Suddenly Sir Robert moved his hands in Owen’s. Lifting his head, Owen caught a faint smile on the old soldier’s face. Sir Robert opened his eyes wide, parted his lips as if about to speak. But no sound escaped, not even the laboured breaths that had marked his last moments. His hands went limp.
Owen felt for a pulse. When he found none, he took a silvered glass, held it to Sir Robert’s lips. No breath fogged it.
‘May Amélie be waiting for you with open arms,’ Owen whispered.
He placed coins on Sir Robert’s eyes, then bowed his head to pray.
But first he wept.
EPILOGUE
April’s rains relented for a day and Dafydd, Brother Dyfrig, Cadwal and Madog at last prepared to depart St David’s.
In the courtyard of the bishop’s palace, Father Edern blessed their journey and Tangwystl held a stirrup cup to Dafydd.
‘My husband’s saviour. You shall ever be in my prayers, Master Dafydd.’ Her smile lit the heavens.
‘Be joyous in your lovemaking, my lady,’ Dafydd said, wishing she might nestle in his bed. But alas, he must be satisfied with the kiss with which she had thanked him for Rhys’s life. And was that not sufficient to give him happy dreams for many a night?
‘You look far too gladsome,’ Brother Dyfrig noted as they led their horses through Bonning’s Gate. ‘I grant you suffered only singed hair. But what of my arm? And poor Brother Samson — will he ever be clear in his wits?’
‘Was he ever?’ Dafydd laughed. ‘It was worth all the suffering, my friend. I feel alive, refreshed, blessed and fulfilled.’
‘Rhys might have found his way to St David’s had you left him on the sands.’
‘He would have been dragged to Cydweli by those barbarians. I do not doubt I saved his life.’
‘Tangwystl speaks true, I think. She will keep you in her prayers.’
‘And I shall keep the memory of her sweet lips, her wondrous scent.’
‘Will you write a poem about her?’
‘I wrote one long ago, though I did not know it.’
And as they rode off, Dafydd sang: