Spindle and Dagger

by J. Anderson Coats

  There is no single way to pronounce things in Welsh. The language has developed along regional lines over hundreds of years. This guide is intended to help English-speaking readers enjoy Spindle and Dagger.

  In general, consonant sounds in Welsh are the same as those in English (for example, d as in dog). Vowels can be long or short, and y and w often function as vowels. Welsh has some letters composed of two characters together. It’s important to distinguish them from the individual characters.

  In terms of pronunciation, a good rule of thumb is that the stress generally falls on the second-to-last syllable. Welsh is more or less a phonetic language; you pronounce all the letters as they appear, and none are silent.

  c

  always a hard sound, as in cat (never a soft s sound, as in cent)

  dd

  a hard th sound, as in the (note that Welsh also has a letter th, which is softer, as in thin)

  f

  a v sound, as in very

  ff

  an f sound, as in fish

  g

  always a hard sound, as in great (never a soft g sound, as in gentle)

  ll

  does not have a direct English equivalent, but sounds a bit like the tl sound in little

  w

  in words with more than one syllable, an uh sound, as in pull; in words with a single syllable, an oo sound, as in loom

  y

  in the last syllable of a word, a short i sound, as in it; in any other syllable, a short u sound, as in fun

  Welsh-speaking readers will note that I use only one form of penteulu. I hope I might be forgiven this small concession to an English-speaking audience.

  December 1109

  January 1110

  February 1110

  March 1110

  April 1110

  May 1110

  June 1110

  July 1110

  Historical Note

  Acknowledgments

  ORDINARY FAMILIES LOOK TO HOLY DAYS TO GATHER and share a big meal and get rosy with ale and dance caroles and hear the news.

  I like to think I’d know ordinary if I saw it.

  At last year’s Christmas feast, there were three drunken fistfights, several black eyes, and an “accidental” lapse in courtesy that involved a plate of turnips in sauce. We left three days early, before Owain’s father could throw us out.

  Owain promised he’d behave himself this year, which I strongly suspect means drinking his weight in claret and leading the late-night singing of vulgar ballads. If you can call that noise singing.

  At the very least, fewer broken noses would be nice.

  I’m packing my rucksack by the curtained bed in the corner of the hall. Gowns, hose, warm woolen undergarments, and my ball. Owain’s little cousin will want a rematch after our game at Michaelmas. I also find the toy mouse I made for her from nubby scraps of linen.

  Llywelyn penteulu is barking orders to speed our departure feastward, and the lads are tripping over one another to carry them out. None of them wants trouble from Owain’s warband chief, especially not when he’s harried. Llywelyn penteulu could be standing anywhere in the hall, but he’s standing near me because it amuses him that I stutter whenever I must speak to him.

  “Ah . . . you packed yet?”

  One of the men of Owain’s teulu, come to fetch me. I say men. It’s the newest one — Rhys, I think — a lad who doesn’t look a day over four and ten summers, the one the others still mock mercilessly for being sick all over himself during his first raid.

  “Soon.” The toy mouse’s paws are coming unstitched where they attach to the body. Margred’s at that age when well-meaning mothers and aunts start pushing rosewater behind the ears and milkwashes for the complexion, so I’m of the opinion she needs toys more than ever.

  “Ah . . .” Rhys was beaten in only months ago and struggles with how to address me. The warbanders avoid me if they can and call me nothing at all, and they’ve likely told him to do the same. “It’s just that the sun’s almost up, and I’ve still got my own —”

  “What was that, pisser?” Llywelyn penteulu rounds on Rhys, and both of us flinch. “You afraid of girls? Because by now I sorely hope you know enough to step to it when given a task.”

  Rhys swallows. Chances are he’s not afraid of most girls, but he might be a little afraid of me. One of the lads has doubtless told him I once stabbed a man through the neck with a fire iron, and it’s no secret where I sleep at night.

  “It’s all right. I’m ready now.” I smile an apology at Rhys as I stuff the toy into my rucksack along with my sewing kit so I can fix it later. “Come, you can —”

  “You’re burning daylight, lad.” Owain appears behind Llywelyn penteulu’s boar-solid shoulders and tilts a pointed glance at the open hall door. “It’s like you want to be set upon by Normans.”

  “S-so it’s true, then. There are Normans out there. Waiting.” Rhys has been among the lads long enough to know that most of what they tell him is horse manure, but still he draws a shaky breath and says, “I’ve heard that Normans are butchers. That they’re the scum of England who’ve come to the kingdoms of Wales because they take joy in killing, and here they can be as brutal as they want.”

  “Hell yes, it’s true,” Owain replies, bluff and cheerful, “but there’s no shame standing in dread of terrible things. Or terrible men.”

  Rhys hesitates. “But you’re not afraid.”

  “No reason to be.” Owain shrugs with a simple, carefree confidence that never fails to send a chill down my back. “Saint Elen protects me.”

  “Owain ap Cadwgan can’t be killed, not by blade nor blow nor poison.” I say it calm and sure, the way I imagine Saint Elen would if she were here, because these lads cannot hear it enough times.

  “And here’s what I must do for that protection.” Owain grins and pulls me against him with one hand sprawled over my backside. “Here she is, my Elen, good and close. Who am I to ignore the will of a saint?”

  Rhys glances at me again through long, tangly curls. He is deliberately keeping his eyes off Owain’s hand on my haunch. There are no secrets in a warband. Rhys is not asking because any of this is new to him. He’s been told that Saint Elen keeps Owain safe in and out of the field, and he certainly believes a saint is capable of such things. He’s just not sure why. It’s not every day that Almighty God sees fit to lay a special blessing on the likes of Owain ap Cadwgan through the intercession of one of His saints.

  “So you’ll see her packed and ready, then? Good.” Owain claps Rhys on the shoulder and turns to leave.

  “This little pisser thinks he’s above the task,” Llywelyn penteulu says. “He has better things to do. He thinks that little of your safety.”

  Owain stops midstride. “Beg pardon. What was that?”

  I fight down the urge to speak for Rhys. It’s hard to begrudge him uncertainty, but it’s too dangerous for him to keep it.

  Rhys shuffles. “My lord . . . it’s not . . .”

  “Not what?” Owain leans close to Rhys, eyes in slits. “You think this is rubbish? You don’t believe a saint protects me?”

  Llywelyn penteulu steps to Owain’s shoulder, and together they’re a shield wall as they glower down at Rhys. I edge backward, slow, slow, till I’m clear.

  “Draw your blade, then,” Owain says to Rhys in a low, dangerous voice, “and let’s see if it’s true.”

  “My lord, I never said — no, of course it’s true.” Rhys tries to square up. “It’s just that Einion ap Tewdwr told me so, and anything he says is usually worth its weight in shit.”

  I can’t help but smirk. At least Rhys has learned that lesson well.

  “All those bastard Normans out there, every last one would g
ive his right nut to cut me to pieces, and none of them can. Saint Elen will not let that happen. No man in all the kingdoms of Wales can say the same.” Owain drops his fighting stance and bares his teeth into a smile. “Likely no little pisser, either, for that matter.”

  Llywelyn penteulu pulls Rhys close with a fistful of cloak. “Are we clear, boy?”

  Rhys nods without looking up. His breath comes unsteady. Teulu means both warband and family. A warband is like a family. More than a family. Brothers in arms over brothers in blood.

  “Good. Then look to Elen.” Owain adjusts his sword-belt. “We’d best be off soon. It won’t do to be late to the feast. Not when my stepmother will supposedly grace us with her presence.”

  He says it mocking, but I stop where I stand. Owain has told me exactly three things about his stepmother: she’s the daughter of a Norman knight, she’d tempt a saint to sin, and she’s younger than he is. Isabel de Say has been two years wed to Owain’s father, and finding her place in her new husband’s kingdom can’t have been easy. Strange tongue, strange customs, sharing a bed with someone who’s spent his entire adult life and a good portion of his youth killing Normans like her who were trying to seize his lands. If there was ever another girl in search of ordinary, it has to be her.

  Isabel and I have never been properly introduced, not even at their wedding, but she’s sure to look at me and see herself. A girl out of place and in need of allies and sympathy.

  Owain’s kin look through me and past me, but Isabel’s someone who might meet my eye across the room and nod, like she sees me and doesn’t care who knows. Someone who might be able to carve me out a place in this turbulent family and leave me to occupy it in peace. I won’t come with empty hands, either. There must be things she still struggles with. Words she can’t say right. Or mayhap no one has invited her to play at ball.

  At this year’s Christmas feast, I may not dance caroles or get rosy with ale, but I will steer Owain away from trouble and find a way to make his stepmother a friend, for Owain ap Cadwgan is the closest thing I have to a family.

  Not by blood. Not by marriage.

  Because of Saint Elen.

  THE LADS TRAVEL PRECISE AND DELIBERATE IN TWO columns of nine with a spear-length between men, Owain heading one column and Llywelyn penteulu the other. I follow at the end at elbows with Rhys. Every now and then he’ll smile sidelong to prove he’s not bothered minding me.

  There’s a soft snick of brush, and in the next heartbeat men are on us with short swords, a dozen men who rush like ghosts through the still, snow-lined trees. The lads draw steel and fall hard on the attackers. There’s a burst of shouting in harsh French, the solid sound of bodies colliding, the clatterclunk of metal on metal. The hiss of a name — Gerald of Windsor.

  Normans. Butchers invading the kingdoms of Wales, but not just for killing. They’ve come to take what they can, and they’d have the kingdom of Powys from Owain’s father. His province of Ceredigion as well.

  Owain is amid it. If he dies, no saint can help me. If he dies, I’m done for.

  The fight is sharp and grim and over quickly. Three Normans lie slain, and the rest are pelting through the greenwood toward wherever they came from. The lads stand panting, their eyes wild and their sword-arms fidgety. Owain is whole and unharmed, and I thank every saint who ever lived even as I struggle to keep my breakfast down.

  “Oh, Christ. Dear God Almighty, no.”

  Owain’s voice is raw and desperate, both hands shoved through his hair. The man crumpled at his feet isn’t Norman. It’s Llywelyn penteulu, and Owain is pushing away the lads who have gathered and dropping to his knees at the side of his warband chief and oldest friend.

  “Die,” I whisper, and the greenwood falls away and I’m up against the steading wall held fast, cold everywhere can’t struggle, and Miv is wailing but there are other cries too, panicked, angry, and faint amid that noise is a haphazard shuddery weeping that turns my stomach.

  Oh saints, no. Not the echoes again. They’d all but faded to shadows.

  “We’ve got to do something.” Owain’s wild gaze rakes the lads, all standing like pallbearers, red-eyed, shuffling, looking to the branches above and the torn-up mud and everywhere and nowhere.

  “What of her?” Einion ap Tewdwr steps forward, hopeful and urgent. “The miracle girl?”

  I freeze. I would have to touch him. Skin to skin. The blood. The smell of him.

  But every last one of the lads is looking to me. Owain, too, even as his color drains and cold mud climbs the hem of his tunic.

  I’ve never once used the word miracle, though if I’m honest, I have let it hang there.

  So I make myself go, but when I get to Llywelyn penteulu’s side, it’s plain there’s no doing for him. Not by me. Not by anyone. The Norman blade caught him across the neck and took a wedge of wet red flesh with it. His stare is already going blank.

  I should beg Saint Elen to intercede with the Almighty the way she did for Owain, but I don’t. Instead I look Owain in the eye and say as steady as I can, “Saint Elen kept you safe. Did you see how she knocked that blade aside? Every man of those Normans wanted you dead. Are you dead?”

  Einion’s mouth falls open and he chokes on a few broken curses. Owain stifles a shuddering breath that’s suspiciously like a sob. Then he presses his forehead against Llywelyn penteulu’s and grips his friend’s hand and chokes out some odd garble of the paternoster and last rites.

  In less time than it takes to piss, Llywelyn penteulu is dead.

  At my elbow, Owain sits back on his heels, panting sharp and shallow. He scrubs a wrist over wet cheeks as he regards the body. Then he reaches out a shaking hand and closes his warband chief’s dull staring eyes. At length he whispers, “Saint Elen kept me.”

  “Yes, she did,” I reply to my knees as they gouge the bloody, mud-slick ground, “because she looks to you always.”

  We stay pressed together for a long moment. Then all at once, Owain rocks to his feet and stomps a handful of paces away. He tips his head to the sky and roars, “Gerald of Windsor! You miserable Norman bastard! You’re a dead man! You hear me? I will find you and kill you!”

  I scrape blood from my hands with my handkerchief. He’s dead. Llywelyn penteulu is actually dead. I will never again catch his eye by mischance. I will never again shiver outside a door waiting on his departure. Every echo of him will soon be gone.

  The lads drift toward Owain, gathering, murmuring Saint Elen and hairsbreadth and blessed. They stand together like a flock of crows, shoulder to shoulder, solid as a fist. Now and then one of them glances at me, crossing himself, slow and reverent like he just walked out of mass.

  “We mustn’t linger here.” Einion ap Tewdwr seizes Owain’s sleeve. “Gerald and his bastard Normans know where we are now.”

  Owain nods without looking at him. He’s still trembling. Einion pulls several of the lads aside. They dig through their rucksacks and one produces a length of canvas. Owain crouches alone beneath a nearby oak while the lads wrap the body. He looks young of a sudden. Not like a man with almost twenty summers who’s been in the field since four and ten. Not like a king’s son who’s been training with arms since he could hold a sword, always with an eye to borders that would one day be his to defend.

  I should go to Owain, kneel beside him, offer something comforting. Not moments ago, there was a death in his family. His most trusted advisor. His brother in everything but blood.

  I don’t trust my knees to work properly, though.

  It’s one thing to know how Owain and his warband spend their days. Another thing entirely to see how easily something as simple as a journey can go wrong. Another thing besides to swear to him up and down that he has a saint’s protection when every word of it is a lie.

  He can die by blade. He can die in a drunken brawl or a fall from his horse or by choking on a chicken bone. He nearly died today, right in front of me, because Saint Elen has made no promises to Owain ap Cadwgan.

&nbs
p; None of what I tell him is true.

  Three summers ago, I spun this playact out of some choice falsehoods on the thin hope that Owain might believe it worth his while to safeguard me if I had something he wanted. I should not be surprised he took to the idea like a bull to rutting. Not when he’s convinced he can do what he likes, say what he likes, rough up who he likes, take any chances he likes — all because a saint stands over his shoulder and keeps him from harm. Whether he deserves harm or not.

  Mayhap Saint Elen is keeping Owain safe in spite of me, or possibly just to spite me. Or it might be that she’s merely watching, amused, to see how my playact turns out. God Almighty sent the saints to listen to us and help us, but why they do anything is a mystery. I can’t command Saint Elen or persuade her, but I can talk to her.

  So I do. Head down, knees muddy, throat choked. I pray silently to Saint Elen of the Hosts who built roads throughout the kingdoms of Wales long ago to help armies march to war. The saint whose name I share, who’s listened to me patiently since I was so small that I asked for sweets and ribbons. This prayer is one she knows chapter and verse.

  Thank you for everything you’ve done for me.

  Thank you for understanding.

  If you did save Owain’s life today, thank you most especially for that.

  This can’t be the first time Owain’s nearly met his end out here. He’s not wrong when he says that every Norman in Wales would dearly love to cut him to pieces. And more than one Welshman would hold him down. Women, too. The life of someone like Owain ap Cadwgan is a flimsy thing to hang a playact on, but in three years, he has only cuts and bruises to show from hundreds of raids and skirmishes and fights and brawls.

  This is the first time I’ve seen it, though. The first time I’ve watched Normans go after him, brutal and single-minded. The first time in a very long while that I thought my playact might fall apart and I’d die at the hands of Owain’s grieving, deceived, and furious warband.

  So there must be something to it. Even the smallest word from a saint would be enough to keep Owain safe should the Almighty will it so. At the very least I know Saint Elen is watching. I can’t see her, but there can be no other reason I can climb to my feet right now. No other reason I can move to where Owain is standing alone and take his trembling, blood-smeared hand.