Spindle and Dagger - J. Anderson Coats Page 0,83

and not knowing from moment to moment whether they are alive or dead or something worse may kill me. So I’m going to need a friend. Someone who always knows what to say. Even when things are bad.”

“Well.” I slide closer to her so our shoulders are touching, like we’ll always be together in the maidens’ quarters. “As long as there’s spiced wine.”

She laughs aloud. “I’m glad you’re here.”

“There’s just one thing I want.”

“Saints, that you even have to ask.” Nest shifts enough to glare at me jokingly. “What is it?”

“I want you to meet someone dear to me. Margred. She could very much do with a friend like you.”

Wales in the early twelfth century was a vibrant and dynamic place, but not a peaceful one. Unlike its neighbor, England, Wales had no single king, but was made up of smaller kingdoms whose rulers fought constantly with one another over borders and resources. Welsh kings exercised their authority through the warband, a group of men who engaged in raiding, pillage, and targeted violence as a form of domestic and foreign policy. A warband was flexible, mobile, and self-sustaining, allowing a king to control his borders, punish his enemies, and make sure his neighbors understood their obligations.

By the end of the eleventh century, these neighbors included Normans whose families had come with King William I during the 1066 conquest of England and found themselves on the border with Wales. Over several generations, the Welsh kings and Norman lords fell into familiar patterns of raiding, reprisals, and shifting alliances. They would have been well known to one another, often related by blood or marriage, probably bilingual and possibly trilingual, and while they shared similar ambitions and outlooks, their goals were at odds. The Welsh kings sought to maintain their sovereignty, while the Normans were out to take and hold what they could at the expense of their Welsh neighbors.

One of the most influential of the Welsh kings during this time was Cadwgan ap Bleddyn, king of Powys. He was at the forefront of efforts to halt the Norman military advance and send English kings with territorial ambitions home disappointed. However, Henry I of England was not entirely empty-handed; many of the southern parts of Wales, including the old kingdoms of Morgannwg and Deheubarth, were held by Norman lords. This foothold was never far from anyone’s mind, particularly for kings like Cadwgan whose territory shared a border with it.

Welsh kings in this era were constantly maneuvering. Their complex multicultural environment required razor-edge diplomacy, military strength, and the political savvy to know which was needed when. Something unplanned and unexpected could easily upset this hard-won balance, which seems to have been the case when Cadwgan’s oldest son, Owain, engaged in his most famous act.

Historians agree that the abduction of Nest probably happened, although the way in which the story made it down to the modern era has complications. It appears in only one chronicle, the Brut y Tywysogion (“Chronicle of the Princes”), and the account was not written at the time of the events described. One prominent scholar, Dr. Kari Maund, has suggested that this section of the manuscript was rewritten decades later, and in such a way as to glamorize the house of Powys at a time when another region, Gwynedd, was on the rise. The amount of description of this event is different from that in other chronicles, and other sections of the same chronicle, and the use of dialogue is a significant indicator that this account, while likely relating the bones of an actual event, has almost certainly been embellished.

In the Brut y Tywysogion, Owain learned that his kinswoman, Nest, was lodged at a nearby castle with her husband, and he thought to pay her a visit. After this visit, he and his men sneaked over the wall in the middle of the night and burned the castle, forcing Gerald of Windsor to escape by sliding down the privy shaft. According to the chronicle, Owain was infatuated with Nest and took her and her children away with him, along with another of Gerald’s children from a previous relationship. This act started a war, and Nest supposedly persuaded Owain that if he cared about her, he would return the children to their father, which he did “from excess of love.”

Many interpretations of Owain’s abduction of Nest present this romantic gloss uncritically, and while there are various reasons for this, it’s also clear from the chronicle that sexual violence occurred. Warband diplomacy had specific aims, and rape as a weapon of war has been in use since ancient times and continues into the modern day. In Owain’s world, an abduction such as this one would have little to do with Nest and everything to do with her husband.

Women in the Middle Ages are often characterized as powerless, and in many ways they were, but in the chronicle’s account Nest helps her husband escape, taunts Owain, and later convinces him to release the children. Despite the problems with the evidence, it’s not unreasonable to assume she had brains, courage, and grit. Living in a complex and dangerous world such as hers meant that everyone, women and men, would do well to develop these qualities. Girls like Elen who found themselves in the path of a warband could hope to live through the experience — after all, the purpose of raiding was not necessarily to produce a body count — but their chances were a lot better with a quick wit and a willingness to leverage anything at hand, whatever the cost.

At first glance, Elen’s relationship with Owain might seem unusual or even scandalous, but it was not uncommon for highborn men in the kingdoms of Wales to “keep” women they were not married to. Any children born to them would be treated the same as children born in wedlock, as long as their father claimed them. Medieval people’s belief in the power of saints could be deep-seated and sometimes irrational, but even today, it’s very easy to believe something when you’d benefit if it were true.

Nest disappears from the story in the Brut y Tywysogion after Owain returns the children. Owain is the one we follow, and we follow him to war. Since Nest and Gerald had at least one more child together, it’s safe to assume that she made her way back to him at some point, but the chronicle is no longer interested in her. Instead we follow Owain, Cadwgan, and their allies and enemies into a complex tangle of events — seizure of lands, burning of forts, flights into exile, blinding of rivals. Nest fades into history only to reemerge in years to come as the remote and faceless mother and grandmother of prominent figures in Wales and Ireland. Our first instinct may be to feel sorry for her, for the limits placed on women in the past, but the chronicle tells us Nest used whatever influence she had with Owain to secure her children’s release. Their success and well-being had to be deeply meaningful to her.

For his part, Owain did not experience any consequences from the abduction of Nest — at least, depending on who you ask. After his father’s death in 1111, Owain sought and received peace terms from the English king that confirmed his possession of Powys, but in 1116 he died in a skirmish in a contested province. One chronicle says that Flemish settlers killed him, but the Brut y Tywysogion gives a different story. This chronicle says it was Gerald of Windsor who encountered Owain, and that Owain “was wounded until he was slain.”

In the early twelfth century, it’s equally likely that what happened to Owain was one day’s bad luck after a lifetime of raiding, or a revenge-fueled torture killing at the hands of a patient, longstanding enemy. One of the problems with chronicle evidence is also one of its blessings — we can see glimpses of personalities between the lines, and in those gaps are where stories like this one lie.