She looked up to see Edmund, physician of the keep and old advisor to her husband’s family. It was strange this news should come from him, but when she looked about her she saw others watching her warily. They knew, then, how this mattered to her, and had decided Edmund should be the one to voice it.

Eluned forced herself to inhabit the present fully, to listen to these words that she had known would be spoken. It was almost over. Llewellyn was fallen; his brother Dafydd had carried on but now was captured.

“Then it is done,” she said. “Does he live?”

“He lives and is taken to King Edward, my lady,” replied Edmund. “There is also word of a bloody skirmish near to us here at Ruardean, just west. Even now they fight.”

Now she saw the man next to him – only a boy, really, with a scanty beard on his cheek and so covered in mud and weariness that she wondered he was still upright. She took the cup of wine that one of her ladies held out to her and came forward to thrust it under his nose.

“Drink,” she commanded him, and he obeyed. She drew a long and steady breath, feeling the air trickle slow and heavy into her chest, pressing it all out again before she was ready to speak. “What news do you bring me of this fighting so near to us?”

“Only a half-day’s ride from this keep, my lady. I am sent to you by Rhys ab Owain, who begs you will send whatever aid you are able.”

Rhys ab Owain. Her uncle. He who was more like a father to her than her own father had been. He had danced at her wedding, and pinched her cheek and declared her to possess the keenest wits in the family. She made herself stand still and look at the boy squarely, though all of her wanted to turn her face away.

“Does Rhys know that Dafydd is taken, that the larger host is fallen into English hands?”

The boy nodded. “He has heard rumors of it, but was not certain of their truth.”

Of long habit, her mind immediately set to calculating. Whence the news of Dafydd’s capture, and what was the likelihood it was true? How much time might they have, how many men might be needed, against whom did Rhys fight and with what numbers?

But in less time than it took to think these thoughts, she had already dismissed them. None of it mattered. All had been lost when Llewellyn’s head had been cut from his shoulders, months ago. There was no aid she could send now to change the course of things, and no careful scheming would save them.

Now would come the blood-soaked details that followed decisive victory. She must endure it.