Uneasy Lies the Crown by N. Gemini Sasson

notice of her momentary reluctance and pushed inside her until he found the wave that had built up within him. It was at the very moment that his ecstasy arrived that she ripped herself from him.
    He was half in shock, half beyond command of his own body, before he realized she was curled in a tight ball on her side away from him, clutching at her belly and shaking with violent sobs.
    “Marged?” He bolted up on his elbow, looking her over. Between her legs, she crammed one hand, trying to dam the blood that was trickling over her fingers and seeping onto the white sheets.
    “It hurts, Owain. It hurts,” she forced, gritting her teeth. Her face was jammed into the pillow, her fine mouth twisting with a soundless cry as she pulled tighter into herself, her knees almost touching her face.
    “Oh God.” He pulled the sheets up over her and grabbed the blanket that had fallen to the floor during their lovemaking. With it wrapped about his waist, he shoved the chamber door open. “Someone! Help her! Hurry, hurry. Please! At once.” He darted down the corridor, almost smashing into Iolo as he came around the corner. “Oh please, Iolo. Oh God, Margaret needs help. She’s bleeding.”
    Iolo placed a hand on his shoulder, motioning to a wide-eyed boy servant behind him. “Fetch Abraham, posthaste. Waste not a moment. Lady Margaret is very ill.” Then he led Owain back to the chamber.
    “Shhh.” Iolo comforted her, wiping at her tears with a corner of the sheet and arranging the blanket around her that Owain had handed him.
    Still bare-chested, Owain hovered close as he pulled on his braes and hose. “I don’t understand. All was well and she... then...” His voice cracked and he bent down at her bedside. He laid a hand on her arm, stroking it, willing her pain to vanish. “Have you been ill, Marged? Having pains?”
    “Ill?” Iolo’s jaw tightened as he looked away. He turned his back to watch the door. “She wasn’t ill, m’lord. She was with child. You weren’t aware?”
    With child? No, she would not have told me anyway. She always kept it a secret until the child had quickened.
    Owain’s heart clenched. The blood was now spilling into a bright pool that had spread from her knees to her ribs on the sheets beneath her. With so much lost, the child could not possibly —
    He embraced her, but in her tides of agony she could realize nothing of his compassion—or his guilt.
    When the physician Abraham came, it took him little time to diagnose her affliction. She had lost the child she was carrying. He told Owain in a blameless manner as she lay sleeping. A strong tea of willow bark and chamomile had eased her cramps and brought on needed slumber.
    After the difficult birth of their youngest twins, Owain and Margaret had avoided intimacy for awhile, both aware of the danger that another birth could impose upon her life. But in time, their deep love for one another had stirred old passions. They had both forgotten. They would not again.
     

15
     
    Mid Wales — July, 1400
     
    In the very heart of Wales, two cloaked men rode into a deeply cut valley. As the sun bowed behind an abrupt ridge line, a dark shadow crept with cold certainty across the land. Uneasy, the men halted to gather their bearings. Their horses snorted and flicked their ears at every sound.
    “You had best discover it soon, Tom...” the one said, his dark eyes flitting from hilltop to hollow, “or it will be both our heads on Ruthin’s wall.”
    Tom, the younger of the two, sneered. “No one finds Gethin’s hiding place. It’s never the same. He’ll find us.”
    Further south, a huddle of cottages smoked with the lure of cooking fires, light beckoning ghostly from the cracks around their shutters.
    “Will we be aware of that fact before or after they knock us senseless from these two stolen horses?” The older man pulled his hood up. His name was Griffith ap David and, just like Owain Glyndwr, he had found himself the object of Lord