Page 59 of Wolfehound
Tyrus nodded. “Good enough,” he said. “Return to your duties.”
As the young woman fled, Mother Cecelia resumed her seat and extended her hand once more.
“May I have my missive now?” she asked.
He handed it over. “You must understand that I had to make certain,” he said. “I meant no disrespect.”
She grunted, a doubtful expression, as she broke the seal. Knowing what the missive contained, Tyrus simply sat there peacefully until she’d read it twice. Slowly, in fact. It took thewoman at least ten minutes to read it twice, and by the time she was finished, she simply set the missive down and nodded her head.
“You have already met her,” she said. “Wentliane is that woman. The one you asked to verify my identity.”
Brown hair, brown eyes, fair-faced. That wasn’t the description Canterbury had given him about Llywelyn’s daughter. That was the very first thing he was to look for—her physical description—and the woman he’d seen certainly didn’t fit it. That brought him to a bit of a quandary.
“Mother Cecelia, may I ask you a question about her?” he said.
The prioress nodded. “Proceed.”
“Were you here when she arrived?”
“I was.”
“Did you see who brought her?”
“I did.”
“Was it Berwick?”
The woman nodded her head. “He identified himself as Patrick de Wolfe,” she said. “I may live at the ends of the earth, my lord, but I do know a de Wolfe banner. I had seen it before.”
“How?”
She shrugged. “We’ve had armies move through here before,” she said. “I have seen de Wolfe and de Winter and du Reims and others. There is also the fact that I did not become a nun until I was a grown woman. Before that, I lived at home, in Derbyshire. My father was a warlord. I knew the men he associated with.”
“Who is your father?”
“He is a de Lohr.”
That came as a distinct shock to Tyrus, a man who was, by nature, unshockable. The House of de Lohr was in charge of the Executioner Knights, and there were many family membersspread out on the Welsh marches as well as Kent and Yorkshire. Clearly, she came from one of those extended branches. Tyrus was on a first-name basis with the Hereford and Worcester de Lohrs but not necessarily on good terms, so he didn’t acknowledge that he knew anything about the House of de Lohr.
He wasn’t here about that, anyway.
“So the man who brought her was a de Wolfe,” he said. “Patrick de Wolfe?”
She nodded. “Aye,” she said. “His brother was with him, but he did not introduce himself. It was I who took young Wentliane from them, on the king’s order. The child was in distress, cold and hungry, and I took her straight away and fed her. She has been here ever since.”
“Do you know who she is?”
Again, the woman nodded. “I do,” she said quietly. “She is the daughter of Llywelyn ap Gruffudd. She is a prisoner of war.”
“She is a princess,” Tyrus muttered. “Does she know who she is?”
“She does. She has been told.”
“Then why does she call herself Wentliane? Her name is Gwenllian.”
Mother Cecelia shrugged. “Because she has always called herself Wentliane,” she said. “When she was first brought here, she could speak a little and called herself Wentliane. However, she is aware of her real name. She simply does not use it. I do not know why.”
It all seemed quite odd to Tyrus. He’d been told that Gwenllian had been brought as an infant to the priory. There was no mention of her being able to speak.
