He nodded. ‘I am sure they will. I was just remembering that there is a brace of hares in one of the bags. My father did some hunting while we were crossing the high moors yesterday. He is a crack shot with his bow. In this warm weather they will be ready for eating.’
I smiled happily, for this meant the chickens were reprieved and our egg supply preserved. ‘We will roast them this evening,’ I said. ‘I will see to it. You go on in and meet your hostess.’
‘I feel as if I have already met her,’ he said, gazing at me earnestly and making me blush again, ‘and I look forward to the rest of my stay, however long or short it may be.’
I went off to search for the hares with a spring in my step.
* * *
We ate outside in the soft evening light, eleven of us around the long board used for harvest feasting. Even Bethan managed to clamber down the stair and sit with us, smiling happily and saying little but looking bonny in her best blue gown, laced at its loosest. My youngest brother Evan, a cheeky dark imp of eight, had been sent to the neighbouring farm across the valley to bring Bethan’s parents, Emrys and Gwyladus, to meet the three Tudors and we all squeezed onto benches and stools, with the big wooden armchair brought down from the hall and packed with cushions for Bethan. Beyond the farmyard wall the ground sloped towards the west, giving us a fine view over the vast sweep of Tremadog Bay and, in the far distance, the dark humps of the Lleyn Peninsula, Gwynedd’s westernmost arm. As the sun dipped below the hills the sky turned from pink to ochre, gold and red, reflecting off the sea and turning the bay to a fiery crucible. Such long, stunning sunsets were infrequent here and we made the most of it, the men draining a cask of father’s treasured malmsey and talking on well after the last of the pottage had been scraped from the cauldron and the bones of the hares tossed to the dogs.
‘It is a pity that Gwyneth is no longer here with us,’ Hywel said to Owen as I brought baskets of dried fruit and bowls of cream to dip it in – a rare treat, because most of our cream was made into cheese for winter. ‘Perhaps you remember her as an infant, Owen? She was our firstborn and lived with us at Hadham when Queen Catherine was still alive. She married two years ago to a man from Ynys Môn – or do you call it Anglesey now that you are an English gentleman?’
Owen smiled, his teeth showing impressively few gaps. ‘It depends who I am with, Hywel. Did she marry a relative, another descendant of the great Ednyfed Fychan, Steward to the Prince of all Wales?’
My father’s teeth did not make such a fair showing. ‘It would be hard not to in that part of Wales, would it not? She is living in the Tudur family heartland now, taking us back where we would be still, had our fathers not supported Glyn Dŵr.’
‘Oh you are not going to start telling tales about the good old days before the great rebellion are you, my father?’ cried Maredudd, well lubricated by the wine. We were all speaking English, although some were more fluent than others in the language of our conquerors. ‘And give our guests a chance to crow about the Lancastrian victory at Shrewsbury!’
I cringed inwardly. Maredudd was the salt of the earth and as solid as a doorpost but tact was not his strong point. Fifty years ago there had been a battle at Shrewsbury in the Welsh March when the present king’s father had slain the famous knight Hotspur and put an end to a rebellion led by my father’s ancestor Owain Glyn Dŵr, who had subsequently fled to the wilderness of Yr Wyddfa.
Owen’s brow creased alarmingly. ‘Why would my sons crow about a disaster that befell their father’s godfather?’ he cried, flushed and perhaps also a little excited by the rich malmsey. ‘Glyn Dŵr was a great man and a learned one. Not a man to be denigrated in my hearing.’
Edmund selected a dried plum, unperturbed. ‘I fear I know nothing of all that,’ he told Maredudd, dipping the fruit in cream as he spoke. ‘Our tutors taught us only ancient history.’
‘And poetry,’ added Jasper in an apologetic tone. ‘Now if you were to ask us to recite some Virgil one of us might oblige.’ He looked pointedly at Edmund but his brother ignored him, chewing contentedly on his plum, perceiving no need for a tactful change of subject. Jasper clearly did and turned to me to provide it. ‘What were you telling me, cousin Jane, about walking the sheep to the high pasture?’
Before I could answer Maredudd spoke up from the fire, on which he was heaping more windfall branches gathered from the nearby woods. ‘We were hoping to start out tomorrow but perhaps you have changed your mind now, Father?’
Hywel glanced across at him and frowned. ‘No, I have not. We need to start tomorrow to be back in time for Bethan’s baby. We cannot leave any later.’
‘Surely Bethan is not going with you!’ exclaimed Edmund, clearly alarmed at the thought.
I hid a smile behind my hand and my father roared with laughter, while Edmund reddened with chagrin. ‘No, no!’ Hywel exclaimed. ‘Of course not! Do you think we are Irish gypsies to birth our cubs in the bracken? Gwyladus and Emrys will stay here with Bethan and we will not be away more than two or three days. The babe is not due for a sennight yet.’
I glanced at Bethan then, realized she was drooping in her chair and decided I should take her in before she fell asleep. When I stood up I was surprised to see Jasper follow suit.
‘I will light your way, Jane,’ he said, reaching for a lantern.
In the end we had to half carry Bethan between us, so sleepy had she become, and I decided it would be best to move one of the pallets from the byre and lay her down on the floor of the dairy, thinking that if she needed to relieve herself in the night, as she often did in her present condition, she could simply wander outside to the latrine. When I had finished making her comfortable and she had fallen into a deep sleep I found Jasper waiting for me on one of the stone benches built against the front wall of the house, the lantern at his feet casting his honest, open face into mysterious shade. The moon had risen, spreading its pale light across the open expanse of the yard and turning the shadows inky black.
He patted the bench beside him. ‘Please sit with me a while, Jane. Our fathers talk too much of times gone by. I would like to learn about your life here and now. I think Bethan cannot be much help in the house. She seems a little – simple, or am I being unkind?’
I bit my lip. We did not like to discuss Bethan’s condition with strangers but although he had no Welsh and clearly knew nothing of our ways, I discerned a warm heart in Jasper, which gave me confidence in his discretion. After all, however many times removed, we were cousins – family.
I sat down, careful to leave a respectable distance between us. In the moonlight he looked younger, more like one of my brothers than an esquire of the king’s household, which I now knew him to be. ‘No, you are not unkind, sir; you are perceptive. Bethan is simple but she loves my father and shares his bed willingly. It is not her fault that she has no great domestic skills. She cannot cook or make bread or cheese, although she can churn butter if you stop her at the right moment. She cannot recognize one herb from another or remember their properties and she cannot tell a mark from a groat. But when she is not great with child she can weed the vegetable garden, milk the cows and goats, feed the poultry and collect the eggs; she loves to tend the orphaned lambs and calves and if I set it up for her she can turn a spindle for hours.’ I gave him a cheerful smile. ‘So you see she is far from helpless, and there is also Mair who is our dairymaid, who lives in the village by the shore and fetches and carries and makes the pottage.’
The sound of the stream that ran fast-flowing through the wooded vale beside the house filled the silence between us agreeably. The vale and the stone-walled fields surrounding the policies were all bathed in milky moonlight. ‘Our grandfather chose well when he built here,’ I told him. ‘The stream gives us milling-power and clean water, we have wool for weaving, grain to make bread and ale, and fat for lamps and soap. The sheep give us fleeces to sell to the monks, we have fish in the sea, meat on the hoof and crops in the fields. Between us we make most