LITMIR.BIZ

       CHAPTER ONE

      I

       HAY-ON-WYE April 1228

      ‘Don’t look down!’ Balanced precariously on the wooden walkway at the top of the scaffolding which nestled against the high wall, the child turned and peered into the darkness. ‘Tuck your skirts up in your girdle,’ she called imperiously. ‘No one’s going to see your bottom in the dark!’ Her giggle was lost in the wail of the wind. ‘We’re nearly there. Come on!’

      Far below the dangerous perch the courtyard of Hay Castle lay in darkness. A fine mist of rain had driven in across the Black Mountains and slicked the wooden scaffold poles and the newly dressed stone. Beneath their leather slippers the planks grew slippery.

      Isabella de Braose let out a whimper of fear. ‘I want to go back.’

      ‘No, look! Three more paces and we’re there.’ Eleyne, the youngest daughter of Llywelyn, Prince of Aberffraw, and his wife, the Princess Joan, was ten, a year her friend’s junior. By a strange quirk of marriage and remarriage she was also Isabella’s step-great-aunt, a fact which caused the girls renewed giggles whenever they thought about it.

      Eleyne gripped Isabella firmly by the wrist and coaxed her forward step by step. They were aiming for the gaping window of the gutted tower to which the new wall abutted. In another week or so the masons would be starting work on renovating it so that it could once again become the focal point of the castle, but as yet it was a deserted, mysterious place, the doors at the bottom boarded up to stop anyone going in amongst the tumbled masonry and charred beams.

      ‘Why do you want to see it?’ Isabella wailed. She was clinging to the flimsy handrail, her fingers cold and slippery with rain.

      ‘Because they don’t want us to see what is in there,’ Eleyne replied. ‘Besides, I think there’s a raven’s nest inside the walls.’ Letting go of the other girl’s wrist, she ran along the last few feet of planking and reached the wall of the old tower. Exhilarated by the wind and by the sting of the cold rain on her face, she could hardly contain her excitement. She felt no fear of heights. It had not crossed her mind that she might fall.

      ‘Come on, it’s easy.’ Peering over her shoulder she narrowed her eyes against the rain. Below, the roofs of Hay huddled around the castle, with here and there a wisp of rain-flattened blue smoke swirling in the darkness. She was very conscious suddenly of the brooding silence beyond the town where the great mass of black mountains stretched on either side of the broad Wye Valley into the heartland of Wales.

      ‘I can’t do it.’

      ‘Of course you can. Here.’ Forgetting the mountains, Eleyne ran back to her. ‘I’ll help you. Hold my hand. See. It’s easy.’

      When they were at last perched side by side in the broad stone window embrasure, both girls were silent for a moment, catching their breath. They peered into the black interior of the tower. The ground, four storeys below, was lost in the dark.

      ‘It must have been an incredible fire,’ Eleyne murmured, awed, her eyes picking out, cat-like, the blackened stumps of beam ends in the wall. ‘Were you here when it happened?’

      Isabella swallowed and shook her head. ‘It was before I was born. Let’s go back, Elly. I don’t like it.’

      ‘There was a fire when I was born,’ Eleyne went on dreamily. ‘Rhonwen told me. It destroyed the hall at Llanfaes. There was nothing but ash by morning when my father came.’

      ‘This was burned by King John.’ Isabella glanced down into the darkness, closed her eyes hastily and shuddered. ‘There’s no nest here, Elly. Please, let’s go.’

      Eleyne was silent. She frowned: King John. Her mother’s father, descendant, so it was claimed, of Satan himself. In her mind she chalked up another black mark against her mother’s hated family. Hastily she put the unpleasant thought aside and turned back to the problem in hand. ‘The nest must be on a ledge somewhere on the walls inside. I’ve watched them flying in and out.’ She stretched her hands out into the darkness as far as she dared. ‘I’ll have to come back in daylight. Rhonwen says the raven is a sacred bird and I want a feather for luck.’

      ‘The masons will never let you in.’

      ‘We could come at dawn, before they start work.’

      ‘No.’ Determinedly, Isabella started edging back on the sill, feeling with her foot for the wooden planks. ‘I’m going back. If you don’t want to come, you can stay here alone.’

      ‘Please. Wait.’ Eleyne was reluctant to move. She loved the cold rush of the wind, the darkness, the loneliness of their eyrie. And she was very wide awake. She had no desire to return to the room where they shared a bed, or to face the questions of Isabella’s three sisters as to where they had been. They had left Eleanor, Matilda and Eva in the nursery – supposedly asleep but in reality agog to know where the other two were going. ‘If you stay, I’ll tell you what it’s like to be married.’

      ‘You’re not really married,’ Isabella retorted scornfully. ‘You’ve never even met your husband.’ Nevertheless she settled back into her corner of the window arch, tucking her cold feet up under her wet skirt.

      ‘I have.’ Eleyne was indignant. ‘He was at the wedding.’ She laughed. ‘Rhonwen told me. My father carried me, and he handed me to my husband and he went all pink and nearly dropped me!’

      ‘Men don’t like babies,’ Isabella commented with dogmatic certainty.

      Eleyne nodded gloomily. ‘Of course, John was only a boy then. He was sixteen.’ She paused. ‘Shall you like being married to my brother, do you think?’

      Isabella was to be married to Dafydd ap Llywelyn once all the formalities had been arranged between the two families.

      Isabella shrugged. ‘Is he like you?’

      Eleyne thought for a moment, then shook her head. ‘I don’t think I’m like either of my brothers; and certainly I’m not like my sisters. Think of Gwladus!’ Both girls giggled. Eleyne’s eldest sister,

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