by Myers, Karen
“And then the trade routes…” she said. “It’s a tremendous amount of work, even for the scribes, let alone the folk doing it. We can’t just order everyone around, of course—they’ll set their own plans in the end—but the Kuzul has defined the initial routes for the beginning which gives us some defense against complete chaos.”
“He did it!” Tegwen shouted, rising from her seat with rather less dignity than Angharad usually associated with her. Leo was the winner of the dog hound whelps, and was sent to wait with the rest of George’s puppy pack until the bitch pack had been judged.
Iona sighed theatrically, hoping for better luck with the bitch pups.
Angharad watched Rhian and George trade off their puppy packs, until he held just the bitches and Leo. She caught him trying to find her, and she moved on her seat to catch his eye. The smile that blossomed on his face when he noticed her drew an answering one of her own across the space between them.
He pointed at his own flat stomach and raised an eyebrow, and she spread her hands and shrugged. He then looked at her mock-sternly, put his two hands together under his cheek to mime taking a nap, and pointed at her.
She gently shook her head, and he pulled out her arrow pendant and let it swing toward her, then raised himself on tiptoe as if to stalk after her.
By now this byplay had caught several eyes, and she could see George’s sudden embarrassment as he remembered he was in public, making a spectacle of himself. He stopped short, waved at her, and put himself back on duty for the next round of judging.
Angharad smiled to herself, and then froze, focusing inward at the sharp contraction deep within.
Her sudden stillness caught Tegwen’s attention. “I’ve seen that look before,” she said. “Is it time?”
Bedo took her arm as she nodded and helped her rise. Tegwen’s arm was firm on her other side.
“Don’t let George see,” Angharad said, “It’ll distract him. There’ll be plenty of time.”
They oozed carefully out of the crowd around the enclosure and began the long slow walk up the slope to the laying-in bed in Ceridwen’s infirmary.
CHAPTER 36
George took over control of the main pack of hounds from Rhian and gave her the last of the puppies.
“Who won, George?” she asked.
“Leo,” he called, “and Maëlys won the reserve with Gafael.” He smiled to himself recalling Eurig’s delight with Leo’s victory, though he was surprised Tegwen hadn’t been there to share in it. She’d been seated along the enclosure with Angharad earlier.
Not enough time to worry about it now—he better concentrate on keeping these forty hounds polite. Gwyn would want him to make a good impression.
“Come join me,” he told Rhian, “as soon as the pups are put away, so that you can finish the parade with Dyfnallt.”
“I’ll be there, huntsman,” she said, “quick as I can.”
He lingered on the slope below the curtain wall for a moment while Benitoe and Brynach took up whipper-in positions on either side. He searched for Angharad but couldn’t spot her.
Well, it’s a big crowd, he thought. Maybe she’s sitting down in the shade somewhere. He mopped his forehead and resettled his tricorn.
“Ready?” he asked, looking back at his helpers.
They nodded, and he led the pack forward along the edge of the slope over to the wide steps that fronted the manor house and presented a broad view of the grounds enclosed by the living palisade. On the stone flags he gathered the pack together. Directly before him was an open space, and then the booths began. A large walkway divided the booths leading down from the outer edge.
The people were turned in a thousand directions, chatting with the vendors, chasing their children, gossiping and blocking the aisles. He spotted the formal robes of some of the visiting nobles, gathered in knots in several locations. At the end of the walkway leading down, where the enclosure was, he spied Dyfnallt beginning to make his way up to join him, having finished up with the judges and the puppy walkers.
He pulled his short conical horn out from between the buttons of his hunt coat and blew the call for “moving off.” He sounded it a second time, and noted with satisfaction that the nearest heads were beginning to turn.
“Pack up,” he called, and led the hounds down the steps.
It was too hot to run, but he trotted the pack across the sward below the manor house, stopped them with precision, then turned and trotted them back to the beginning of the center walkway.
He waited with the pack gathered behind him, until the people at the upper end of the aisle began to suspect his intentions and made way for him. They parted, and he walked the pack between them down to the central crossing of the temporary lanes between the booths and held them there, lightly.
Not everyone had lost their fear of the hounds used in the great hunt, but many of these people had seen these hounds up close before, since George arrived almost a year ago, and they took the opportunity to approach them, and pet them, bringing their families with them.
This encouraged the strangers, and soon the pack was surrounded by excited people and grasping hands. The hounds were well-mannered, but George concentrated on monitoring them and keeping them calm just in case. This was part of Gwyn’s show, he knew, and he couldn’t risk even one incident. He could hear the high voices of the few children, but they were cries of delight, not fear, and he relaxed a little.
Dyfnallt walked up to him. “Everything well, huntsman?”
“They’re fine,” he said. “Good as gold.”
He could see Rhian making her way down the slope toward him, but where was Angharad? He should have seen her by now.
He pulled the arrow pendant out and let it swing. It settled on a line directly up to the manor house, and a bit to the left. That didn’t make any sense. She wasn’t there—he could see all the way up to the steps.
And then he realized, if she wasn’t in front of the manor house, she must be behind it. That was the direction of the infirmary.
He drew a sharp breath and called out to Rhian, not far from him now. “Hurry up and take them. I think Angharad…”
Rhian interrupted. “Yes, she’s with Ceridwen and Tegwen. They sent a message.”
She paused in front of him to catch her breath, and George wanted to shake her to get the rest of it.
“Everything’s fine,” she said. “They say it’s early yet.”
He was frantic. “I’ve got to go,” he told Dyfnallt.
“You go on, George,” Dyfnallt said, clapping him on the shoulder. “We’ll take it from here.”
Without a look back, George walked as quickly as he could, prevented from running only by his sense that he needed to keep to a pace consonant with the dignity of Gwyn’s huntsman. He went straight to the manor house and through it, as the shortest route out the back onto the lane to the infirmary. He stumbled past Eurig, who was coming out of Gwyn’s council room off the great hall.
“Good luck, huntsman,” Eurig called, as he hastened past. “Remember, just do whatever she tells you to.”
George could hear the grin in his voice. What does that mean, he wondered. His imagination failed to supply him with any answers.
Things were relatively quiet in the birthing chamber when George found his way in, flushed and worried. All three women turned their heads to him—Angharad, reclining on her bed, and Ceridwen and Tegwen, chatting quietly.
“Sorry, ladies, didn’t mean to just burst in like that, but when I couldn’t find you…” He broke off, searching Angharad’s face, which had just grimaced again from another contraction.
He idly noted that Imp had somehow made it into the room and was sitting on a chair in the corner, unconcerned.
“Are you sure you want me here?” he asked uncertainly.
Tegwen rolled her eyes but Ceridwen pointed to Angharad’s bedside and told him, “Sit right there, George, and take her hand. Give her your strength.”
“Yes, ma’a
m,” he said, relieved to have an assignment. I can do that.
He pulled up a chair and sat down at her side, facing her head. He looked down at her face, sweating faintly, and found a cloth on the bedside table to use for patting it dry. She smiled at him, and then concentrated on another contraction, and he put his elbow on the bed and grabbed her hand and held it while she clung to it with all her strength.
“Wow, what a grip,” he teased her.
She panted. “You try this sometime,” she said grimly, and hung on until the contraction eased.
“Well, I’ll admit, that would be only fair,” he said. “After all, this is my fault.”
Angharad smiled in her pain. “Oh, I had something to do with it, too. It’s not like I didn’t know what I was in for.”
She relaxed again as the pain eased. “You know, this could take all day, and then some.”
“I know,” George said, gently. “Can’t think of any place I’d rather be.”
He kissed her forehead and supported her next ferocious grip.
“You can come back in now, George.”
Tegwen beckoned him from the open doorway. They’d shooed him away once he’d seen the baby born and heard the healthy wail. “Not for you,” they’d said, while they bustled around cleaning up and making Angharad more comfortable, and he’d fled willingly, though not without a backward glance at both his weary wife and the baby.
“You can come in, too, Maelgwn,” Tegwen said.
Maelgwn had been waiting for hours when George finally came out to join him. He told George that others had popped their heads in to see how things were coming along, but wouldn’t stay. This part was for the family, they told him.
“That’s about the hardest wait I’ve ever had,” Maelgwn said, “until I heard her cry.”
George draped an arm around his shoulder. “Let’s go see them.”
The room was tidy and clean, with the air of a job well done. Tegwen and Ceridwen were a bit rumpled, but Angharad lay propped upright on the bed, lightly covered. Her hair was damp from sweat, but she had a pleased smile on her face. Imp had made it to the foot of the bed, curled up and sleeping.
George walked quietly over to her. “How can you look so serene when you must be exhausted?”
Tegwen told him, “It always feels good when it’s over with.”
Angharad nodded slightly in agreement. She gestured at Ceridwen who picked up the bundle that lay along her side. Ceridwen looked pleased, but no more so than the tiny red face, with milk on its lips, fast asleep.
“I’d like to introduce your daughter to you, husband,” Angharad said, softly.
A frisson seized George at those words. He felt the world pause and change for him forever, and he shivered.
Ceridwen tucked the well-wrapped bundle into one arm and showed him how to cradle it. The hands were so tiny. He touched one with his big, clumsy finger, and it opened and grabbed it, only reaching partway around. He sniffed her cheek. She smelled unique to him, like her own self, soft and real.
His mouth fell open, but he was speechless.
Tegwen laughed at him. “Sit down, George, before you fall over.” He fumbled a chair over with one hand and took her advice.
“And you, Maelgwn, come meet your baby sister,” she said.
George bent over her again, and Maelgwn with him. She opened her eyes blankly, and George lost himself in their depths. This is my daughter, he thought. I’m responsible for her. No one else, just me and her mother. We’re all she has.
The weight of it shook him. Heart of oak, he thought. This is what my tree is for. A task worth bearing.
I can do this.
He glanced up at Angharad who had been watching them approvingly. She looked ready for sleep herself.
“Not a fawn,” she teased. “I hope you’re not disappointed.”
He grinned at her, and then spent a moment just watching his wife’s face.
“What shall we name her?” he asked, hesitantly.
“For a grandmother,” she said, “like the old custom. I thought ‘Léonie.’ ‘Léonie Rose.’”
George was stunned. It hadn’t occurred to him that she might want that.
Imp sat up on the foot of the bed and stared intently at the infant for a moment, then hopped down and walked casually over to the door, waiting for someone to open it.
George followed the cat with his eyes, and then looked back at Angharad, puzzled. “I thought Imp would be all over you, now that he could be.” He reached out with his beast-sense to him, but couldn’t feel the presence of Senua.
Angharad sleepily continued her earlier thought. “No more having roses remind us of unpleasant things, like Gwyn’s father. Hmm?”
He leaned down, careful of the baby tucked in one arm, and smoothed the hair off her face. “Anything you want, sweetheart.”
He couldn’t see for a moment for the blur in his eyes.
Seething Magma waited patiently with the others gathered outside the infirmary in the early evening. Alun had brought a few chairs over from the huntsman’s house across the lane to supplement the benches that had been removed from the infirmary’s front rooms after a tart Ceridwen had scolded them outside with their noise and disturbance.
Rhodri kept her company and helped ward off the incautious people who wandered over too close to her. Eurig was there, waiting for his wife. Rhian came as soon as her foster-father released her from her responsibilities for their guests, and chatted quietly with Brynach, side by side on one of the benches. Bedo and Dyfnallt kept each other company, and Maëlys plotted with Benitoe and Ives about the work going on in Edgewood, at Karnag.
Alun brought with him a woman whom he introduced to everyone as Eiddun. Seething Magma had been pleased that she was not afraid when Rhodri explained who she was.
“I’ve heard about you, my lady,” she said, as she dropped a curtsy, “From the folks in Edgewood. I wondered what you would be like.”
She could taste Alun’s interest in her, and then when she widened her sense, she tasted something similar in both Bedo and Dyfnallt. Was that normal, for these folk with two genders? Did they share? How did that get resolved?
She dismissed the thought when the door to the infirmary opened. Everyone quieted and looked up. First a small black cat bounded out, and Eurig chuckled. Then George walked out into the soft evening air with the baby tucked carefully in his arms, and his finger to his lips urging silence. Maelgwn followed, and Tegwen, too, walking over to greet her husband with satisfaction evident in her every step.
Eurig called out, quietly, “New puppy, huntsman?”
Tegwen swatted his upper arm lightly and he recoiled in comic alarm.
Rhian tiptoed up. “What’s her name, cousin?”
“Léonie Rose,” he told her. “Léonie Rose Traherne, I guess.”
“Look at her pretty little mouth,” Rhian murmured.
Seething Magma watched as they clustered around the father and his new child. George felt to her as if he were bursting with joy, as if it were an endless reservoir. Angharad tasted the same, as she faded into sleep indoors. Even the sleepy infant radiated a glow. These people were so odd to her, still. Two genders with different flavors, but a single purpose. Looking at the unformed newborn, she marveled. How much growing this being will have to do before it becomes like her parents. How strange that one of these should grow into one of those.
She directed her attention to the cat and greeted Senua, sending her an invitation to come speak with her, as before, but there was no response. She looked more closely—where had Senua gone? This is just an animal now.
She tasted the mind glow of the infant again, and wondered.
GUIDE TO NAMES AND PRONUNCIATIONS
MODERN WELSH ALPHABET
A¹, B, C, CH², D, DD², E¹, F², FF², G, NG², H, I¹, J, L, LL², M, N, O¹, P, PH², R, RH², S, T, TH², U¹, W¹ ², Y¹
¹ These letters are vowels. The letter ‘W’ can be used either as a vowel (when it is said
‘oo’ like in the Welsh word ‘cwm’ (coom) meaning ‘valley’) or as a consonant (when it is said like it is in English, for example in the Welsh word ‘gwyn’ (gwin) meaning ‘white’). This is the same with letter ‘I’ which can also be used as a consonant (when it is said like an English Y like in ‘iogwrt’ (yog-oort) meaning yoghurt).
² Letters that are not in the English alphabet, or have different sounds. CH sounds like the ‘KH’ in Ayatollah KHoumeini. DD is said like the TH in ‘THere’. F is said like the English ‘V’. FF is said like the English ‘F’. NG sounds like it would in English but it is tricky because it comes at the beginnings of words (for example ‘fy ngardd’ - my garden). One trick is to blend it in with the word before it. LL sounds like a cat hissing. PH sounds like the English ‘F’, too, but it is only used in mutations. RH sounds like an ‘R’ said very quickly before a ‘H’. TH sounds like the ‘TH’ in ‘THin’. W has been explained in the sentences before about vowels.
It helps to remember how Welsh is pronounced in order to translate the unfamiliar orthography into familiar English sounds. The language has changed over time and so has the spelling. People with very long lives tend to be conservative in how they spell their names.
Some nicknames are descriptive, occupational, or locational, as they are in English (e.g., Tom Baker, Susan Brown, John Carpenter, Meg Underwood)
Bongam - Bandy-legged
Goch - The red(-haired) one
Owen the Leash
Scilti - The thin one
PRINCIPAL CHARACTERS & PLACE NAMES
HUMANS
Conrad (Corniad) Traherne
Father of George Talbot Traherne, husband of Léonie Annan Talbot.
George Talbot Traherne
Huntsman from Virginia. His parents are Conrad Traherne and Léonie Annan Talbot.
Georgia Rice Annan
Mother of Léonie Annan Talbot, wife of Gilbert Payne Talbot, daughter of Gwyn ap Nudd (Gwyn Annan).
Gilbert Payne Talbot
Father of Léonie Annan Talbot, husband of Georgia Rice Annan.
Léonie Annan Talbot