Here Be Dragons - 1, Sharon Penman [e novels to read online txt] 📗

HERE BE DRAGONS

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ALSO BY SHARON KAY PENMANThe Sunne in SplendourFalls the ShadowThe Reckoning

HERE BESHARON KAY PENMANBallantine Books New York

Sale of this book without a front cover may be unauthorized If this book is coverless, it may have been reported to the publisher as "unsold or destroyed"and neither the author nor the publisher may have received payment for itCopyright © 1985 by Sharon Kay PenmanAll rights reserved under International and Pan-AmericanCopyright Conventions. Published in the United States byBallantine Books, a division of Random House, Inc., NewYork, and distributed in Canada by Random House ofCanada Limited, Toronto.This edition published by arrangement with Henry Holt and Company.Maps by Anita Karl and Jim KempLibrary of Congress Catalog Card Number: 93-90026ISBN: 0-345-38284-6Cover design by Georgia MorrisseyCover art by Ambrogio Lorenzetti: The Effects of Good Government, fragment.Fresco, 1337-1340/The Granger CollectionManufactured in the United States of America First Ballantine Books Edition:June 199320 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12

To my parents

ACKNOWLEDGMENTSI1. WOULD like to thank the following people for their support and encouragement and understanding: My parents. Julie McCaskey Wolff. My agent, Molly Friedrich of the Aaron M. Priest Literary Agency. My dear friend CrisArnott, who helped me to track down the elusive Richard Fitz Roy. Betty Rowles and Jean and Basil Hill, who showed me so many kindnesses during my research trips to Wales. Olwen Caradoc Evans and Helen Ramage, who shared with me their knowledge and love of Welsh history. Above all, my editor at Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Marian Wood. And lastly, the staffs of the National Library ofWales, the British Library, the Caernarfon Archives, the University College ofNorth Wales Library, the research libraries of Cardiff, Llangefni, andShrewsbury, the Brecknock Borough Library, the County Archives Office in Mold, and in the United States, the University of Pennsylvania Library.

PROLOGUETHEIRS was a land of awesome grandeur, a land of mountains and moorlands and cherished myths. They called it Cymru and believed themselves to be the descendants of Brutus and the citizens of ancient Troy. They were a passionate, generous, and turbulent people, with but one fatal flaw. They proclaimed themselves to be Cymry"fellow countrymen"but they fought one another as fiercely as they did their English neighbors, and had carved three separate kingdoms out of their native soil. To the north was the alpine citadel of Gwynedd, bordered by Powys, and to the south lay the realm of Deheubarth. To the English kings, this constant discord was a blessing and they did what they could to sow seeds of dissension and strife amongst the Welsh.During the reigns of the Norman Conqueror, William the Bastard, and his sons, the English crown continued to gain influence in Wales; Norman castles rose up on Welsh soil, and Norman towns began to take root in the valleys of SouthWales. As the Normans had subdued the native-born Saxons, so, too, it began to seem that they would subdue the Welsh.HENRY Plantagenet, King of England, Lord of Ireland and Wales, Duke ofNormandy, Count of Anjou, ordered a wall fresco to be painted in his chamber at Winchester Castle. It depicted a fierce, proud eagle being attacked by four eaglets; as the great bird struggled, the eaglets tore at its flesh with talons and beaks. When asked what this portended, Henry said that he was the eagle and the eaglets were his sons.And as the King's sons grew to manhood, it came to pass just as er|ry had foretold. Four sons had he. Young Henry, his namesake and

Xll heir, was crowned with his sire in his sixteenth year. Richard, the second son, was invested with the duchy of Aquitaine, ruling jointly with Eleanor, his lady mother. Geoffrey became Duke of Brittany. The youngest son was John;men called him John Lackland for he was the last-born and the Angevin empire had already been divided amongst his elder brothers.But John alone held with his father. The other sons turned upon Henry, seeking to rend him as the eaglets had raked and clawed at the bleeding eagle on the wall of Winchester Castle. In the year of Christ1183, the House of Plantagenet was at war against itself.

BOOK ONE

SHROPSHIRE, ENGLANDJM/H nSj ftJL J.E was ten years old and an alien in an unfriendly land, made an unwilling exile by his mother's marriage to a Marcher border lord. His new stepfather seemed a kindly man, but he was not of Llewelyn's blood, not one of the Cymry, and each dawning day in Shropshire only intensified Llewelyn's heartsick longing for his homeland.For his mother's sake, he did his best to adapt to the strangeness of English ways. He even tried to forget the atrocity stories that were so much a part of his heritage, tales of English conquest and cruelties. His was a secret sorrow he shared with no one, for he was too young to know that misery repressed is misery all the more likely to fester.IT was on a Saturday morning a fortnight after his arrival at Caus Castle thatLlewelyn mounted his gelding and rode north, toward the little village ofWestbury. He had not intended to go any farther, but he was bored and lonely and the road beckoned him on. Ten miles to the east lay the town ofShrewsbury, and Llewelyn had never seen a town. He hesitated, but not for long. His stepfather had told him there were five villages between Westbury and Shrewsbury, and he recited them under his breath as he rode: Whitton, Stony Stretton, Yokethul, Newnham, and Cruckton. If he kept careful count as he passed through each one, there'd be no chance of getting lost, and with luck, he'd be back before his mother even realized he was gone.Accustomed to forest trails and deer tracks, he found it strange to be traveling along a road wide enough for several horsemen to ride abreast.tranger still to him were the villages, each with its green and market°ss, its surprisingly substantial stone church surrounded by a cluster

of thatched cottages and an occasional fishpond. They were in truth little more than hamlets, these Shropshire villages