At the Welshman’s bidding, a boy outside the mews ran in to call his master. The man who emerged was handsome, with rugged features and deep brown skin, and dressed so well he might easily be a lord. Nan suppressed her urge to bend her knee in courtesy and offer to fetch him ale.

He did not even see her. He only saw the Welshman and stopped dead, staring at him.

“Gryff?” He said it like it was an unthinkable word. He looked the Welshman up and down, and his eyes filled. “Do I dream?”

The Welshman stepped forward and put a hand to his shoulder, then embraced him like a brother.

“Hal,” he said, his voice choked with happy tears.

He kissed the falconer’s cheek as they gripped each other, crying and laughing, rejoicing to find one another.

It was such a sight that Nan felt her own eyes prick with tears, overwhelmed by too much beauty in one afternoon.

1283

He stood, dazed and despairing, in a corner of the hawk-house with Hal’s father. Moris Hartwin had become like a true father to him over the years, and seemed perfectly pleased to treat Gryff like his own son. It was he who had heard the ominous whispers between lords as they hunted that morning and repeated them now to Gryff.

“It can only bode ill.” Gryff had said it at least a dozen times now. Every debate and every imagining – every path came back to this. “To hope it is for my safekeeping is senseless.”

Prince Llewellyn was dead. Gryff had learned it two weeks ago and was still surprised at how it grieved him. The prince had been such a large and looming figure in his life, and now he was no more. But the uprising did not end with Llewellyn’s death. The fight against England continued and, predictably, some of the Welsh nobles began to turn on each other now that hope was fading. They traded their loyalty away to the king for English titles and promises of continued wealth.

Those few Welsh who stayed true to the fight followed Llewellyn’s brother Dafydd now. Gryff had sent yet another message to his father and brothers, warning them that the king’s wrath would be unlike any they had yet known if they dared to follow Dafydd. He had begged them to see the sense in making peace now while the king might still reward them for it. If they waited too long and fought to the bitter end, they would hang.

His only reply was the news yesterday that his father led a fresh attack on the king’s army.

And today Gryff learned through whispers that he was to be taken from Lancaster’s household at last, to be carried for reasons unknown to an unnamed place. It filled his mind with dark portents.