THE SKY IS ALL BUT DARK WHEN WE REACH THE FORT of Aberaeron. I’m wrung out from tensing at every brush-twitch and trying to seem sorrowful for a man I’d see fed to pigs, but time has come, so I call up my miracle face — wise, unruffled, everlasting confident. The lads have leather armor, and I have Saint Elen.
Someone must have run ahead to alert Owain’s father we’d arrived, for Cadwgan ap Bleddyn is standing in the hall doorway in a finely cut Norman-looking tunic and shiny leather boots.
He’s by himself. Mayhap Owain was wrong about his stepmother finally coming to a family gathering.
No. Isabel must merely be busy elsewhere. Holding a Christmas feast is no small task, not when you’re wed to a king, and this family will make it no easier with their swagger and boasting and eye-blackening. I can offer to help, and then we’ll share a honey cake and she’ll invite me to spin with the wives, and before long I’ll always sit with them, even if Isabel isn’t there to beckon me over.
Cadwgan gestures to the hall door, and Owain heads inside. When I follow, Cadwgan cuts in front of me so I must trail them both like a wolfhound. In the shaft of doorway light, he extends his wrist to Owain before collaring him into a fierce, brief hug. “Christ Jesus, lad. I just heard. Men don’t come better than Llywelyn ap Ifor.”
“He’s been with me since the beginning. When I wasn’t any older than that little pisser.” Owain nods at Rhys helping to carry the body toward the chapel. “I swear I felt Saint Elen knocking that Norman blade away from me. But it . . . it struck Llywelyn instead.”
Cadwgan draws a long, patient breath. “Son, it’s Christmas. You’ve just had a gut-wrench loss. Can we leave it there? I’ve no wish to argue. Especially about something we will never see eye to eye on.”
Something is definitely not the worst thing Cadwgan has ever called me. In fact, it’s a promising sign that he’s trying to avoid a fight about Saint Elen instead of needling Owain into one.
“It was Gerald of Windsor, wasn’t it?” Cadwgan asks quietly.
Owain glares at nothing and murmurs, “He’s a dead man.”
“That Norman whoreson will kill either one of us on sight, given half a chance. He wants my kingdom in the worst way, and he won’t get it by other means.” Cadwgan shifts uncomfortably. “I . . . feared the worst when my runner said there was a body.”
“I will not fall, Da.” Owain holds out an arm dappled with Llywelyn penteulu’s blood. “It will not happen.”
“I’ve no doubt you believe that,” Cadwgan mutters. “She’s made it very easy for you.”
Owain makes a show of clutching his chest, staggering into me, and gasping, “Ooh! Da! That kind of cruelty is what’ll be the end of me!”
Cadwgan groans and shoves Owain, but not in an angry way. Owain pushes his father back, and the two of them stand together for a long moment, likely thinking of their slain friend.
I’m thinking how it’s not like Cadwgan can be rid of me, and how much easier it would be for everyone if he’d simply show a thimbleful of courtesy on occasions like this. He doesn’t even have to mean it. I’m thinking how it will be when Isabel looks forward to seeing me at gatherings like this. When it’s not just Cadwgan’s oldest son who enjoys my company, but his wife as well. Two people even a king must heed.
CADWGAN CALLS A SERVANT TO SHOW OWAIN WHERE he can clean up before the feast. He follows wearily, shrugging off his bloodstained tunic as he goes, and Cadwgan waits, arms folded, till I back out of the hall and into the freezing yard.
Across the way is the maidens’ quarters, but Cadwgan is still watching from the door, and I don’t want to bring trouble on the girl cousins. So I wander the yard until I find a blind alley behind the laundry where women wring out and hang undergarments. It’s private enough, especially as the yard fills up with guests for the feast, and sheltered from the wind, so I borrow a bucket and rag from a harried laundress, strip down, and scrub fast.
My breath comes out in puffs, and I curse December as I slosh the rag through the steaming water. I wash my arms and feet ten thousand times to scour what’s left of Llywelyn penteulu off me and be done with him forever. The water turns murky. Colder with every pass. I grind the rag harder down my legs. Across my belly. My skin starts to hurt, and it’s a long moment before I realize I’m scrubbing where I’m already clean, as if I can scour clear to the bone.
I can’t. I’ve already tried.
I’m as clean as I’m going to get and halfway to frostbite besides, so I struggle into my new gown, the red one Owain brought me just for Christmas. I adjust the cuffs and notice the dried smear of blood.
I wonder what she looked like, where she lived. I wonder how Owain came upon her and in what state he left her. Mayhap she gave the gown up willingly, just trembled a hand toward a coffer or garment rod while she cowered in a corner. Or perhaps she stood her ground and clenched her fists.
Picked up a fire iron.
I plunge the cuff into new water and scrub. I scrub so hard that fibers come loose and my fingernails ache. Then it’s clean. No traces of what came before this moment. No echoes.
After I’m dressed, I’m not ready to face the hall. Not yet. The windows are bright in the maidens’ quarters and Margred answers my knock, bouncing on her toes and swinging embroidery that’s trailing threads. She’s grown at least a handswidth, and she’s rounder through the hips, even though she’s still wearing a child’s straight-waist shift dress. Her face lights up, and she squeals and pulls me inside, even as her nurse sternly reminds her that she shouldn’t just throw open the door to any strange knocking. That nurse is not wrong, but Margred is already hugging me and rattling on about how much she missed me and did I bring my ball and mayhap there’ll be honey cake at supper, and oh saints, her carefree chatter is like a warm drink of cider. I hold up the toy mouse and she snatches it playfully, holds it to her face, and spins like a child half her age.
“You want to see my new gown?” Margred kneels by a coffer and perches the mouse on her head while she swings open the lid. “Papa says perhaps next Christmas I can sit with him and Mama in the hall!”
I meet the nurse’s eyes over Margred’s head. Dresses are the last thing I want to talk about. Next year sometime, when she has twelve summers, Margred will start eating in the hall so the nobility can see what her father has on offer, and that’s when I will start to lose her.
I let her show me, though. The gown is blue and grown-up. She and her mother put in every stitch.
My cuff is still damp. Clammy against my wrist. I bump Margred’s shoulder cheerfully and say, “I did bring my ball. Want to play tomorrow after mass? We’ll tread goal lines in the snow in the courtyard.”
Margred grins and tells me all the girl cousins are spoiling for a match. She closes the coffer lid, the gown forgotten, and dances her toy mouse on her knees. We talk of her horse and the garden she’s planning for spring until serving boys turn up with trays of food. It’s cozy here, and quiet, but Isabel would never come to the maidens’ quarters, so I wish Margred and her nurse a good meal and head across the courtyard toward the hall’s glowing door.
Inside, noblemen are crowded at long tables, laughing and drinking mead and talking over one another while Aberaeron’s priest looks on like a proud grandfather. There are women, too, wives and sisters and mothers, glittering in finery, gathered in tight, impenetrable knots. Owain is sitting at the high table, dressed in a gray tunic and holding out a mug to a cupbearer. I move to join him, dodging hips and elbows, but I’m not five steps inside when Cadwgan blocks my way.
“Kitchen’s across the yard by the wall,” he says. “They’ll give you a tray. I imagine the sleeping chamber will be more to your liking.”
I know better than to take the bait. “Owain would have me near him. It’s Christmas.”
“Which is why you will not sit at my son’s right hand in my hall.” Cadwgan doesn’t add like a wife, but he might as well.
I square up and say, “I saved his life.”
>
“After you stabbed him!”
No. That was Rhael. She picked up the butcher knife and pressed the fire iron into my hands, and we pushed Miv’s cradle into the darkest corner of the steading and stood shoulder to shoulder while the clatter in the dooryard grew ever louder.
I try to dodge around Cadwgan, but he seizes my arm and roughly turns me so I’m facing the hall door and the cold night — only we come face-to-face with Isabel. She’s wearing a green silk gown that must have cost a small fortune, and her veil is crisp and tidy and perfect. Her cheeks are pink, like Margred’s.
This isn’t how I planned our meeting. I pictured somewhere quiet. Private. Somewhere I could be of help. I’m not good in a crowd. But now’s my chance, and I’ve been practicing since I learned I’d have this moment.
A greeting, friendly but not too familiar.
A gracious thanks for her hospitality.
A witty, lighthearted observation about the lunacy of this family that’ll make her grin and take my hands and say something like I feel the exact same way.
Isabel glances at Cadwgan, then me, then at his hand still gripping my elbow hard enough to sting. Then me again, without looking away. Her face is blank like a pond on a still morning.
This is the first time I’m standing before Owain’s stepmother, and I’m trading harsh words with her husband, who’s holding me suspiciously close, and I cannot muster the sense God gave a goat to explain myself.
My throat chokes up. I can’t even babble. But then Isabel silently peels Cadwgan’s hand off my arm and leads him toward some guests by the hearth. Neither of them looks back.
Cadwgan was ready to throw me out of the hall. All she had to do was move aside and let him, but instead she stepped in. She did it with grace and tact, in a way no one else could, so Cadwgan could save face and I could walk away.
Isabel just helped me.
By the time this feast is over, she and I could be chatting every day, sharing a hearth bench and giggling over wine. By summer, we could be friends. By this time next year, the idea that anyone in Owain’s family might think to show me the smallest discourtesy might be a distant, unpleasant memory.
I KEEP SNEAKING GLANCES AT ISABEL NEAR THE hearth, hoping she’s sneaking glances at me. If she is, I can’t tell, since Cadwgan’s back is blocking my view. The feast will last till Epiphany, and that’s se’ennights from now. Plenty of time to invent a reason to pass the hours together, and I’ll be damn sure it won’t be when I need something from her.
For now, what I need is somewhere to stand so I don’t look like a child banished to the naughty corner. Cadwgan expressly forbade me to sit with Owain at the high table, and I’d just as soon avoid his temper. Margred’s still safely in the maidens’ quarters. If Isabel was anywhere but next to Cadwgan, I could —
Owain catches my eye with a smile I know very well, then makes a showy gesture to the empty place at his elbow. So he’s decided to start stirring the pot early this year and make his father the first target.
Well. I can still hope for fewer black eyes, I reckon.
When I reach Owain’s side, there’s nowhere for me to sit. The place at his right is clearly Cadwgan’s even though it’s empty, and Owain’s cousin Madog has taken the spot at his left. I try hard to think well of Madog because he’s Margred’s brother, but tonight he makes that extra difficult as he glances me up and down, fold and drape, slow and deep and hungry.
“You some kind of warbander, honey? You gonna cut me?” Madog’s mug is half full, but it can’t be his first, for he’s thisclose to being out of turn.
Owain catches my hand, kisses my palm, then lifts his brows at his cousin. “When was the last time you looked twice at a woman in the shadows, whether she hid a blade in her skirts? Shove down.”
Madog grumbles but moves enough to make a place for me at Owain’s left. I sit, then reach for an oatcake and break it into crumbs that I line up in neat rows. Everyone watched Owain beckon to me. The nobles, their wives, every servant down to the cupbearers. They watched Owain bid Madog move. They’re all watching me and muttering behind their hands and speculating.
Owain loves it when they speculate. He says the more they’re guessing about me, the less they’re watching what he’s doing.
“You ought to take me on as penteulu when we ravage south into Dyfed.” Madog reaches across me to poke Owain’s shoulder with the butt end of his meat knife. “I’ve never been in a warband that had its own whore.”
I keep crumbling. As speculations go, that one is definitely not new, and anyone who spends even trifling moments near Owain’s warband does well to realize how untrue it is.
But Owain sets down his mug and turns, slow and deliberate, to face his cousin. In a brittle-calm voice he says, “Tell me that you did not just have the stones to suggest in the public of my father’s hall that you of all men should even be considered to replace the likes of Llywelyn ap Ifor as the chief of my warband.”
“Come now, Owain, no disrespect intended, but it’s plain obvious you need a penteulu, and I’m the best choice.”
“He was a brother to me,” Owain says in small, sharp words, “and his body is barely cold and bleeding all over the floor of my father’s chapel and we are at a Christmas feast and I am a guest here or so help me God I would make your mother weep to look upon you.”
Madog scowls. “Christ. Just trying to lift your spirits. I thought it would ease your mind to have a good penteulu when we sack Dyfed.”
“I have not yet decided who will follow my friend as penteulu. I’m eating my meat and enjoying the company — some of it, anyway. There’ll be time enough for such things later.”
If Madog is at Owain’s right hand, organizing drills in the yard of whatever fort we’re staying in and imposing marching orders and offering counsel and sorting out disputes, I’ll see so much more of Margred. Not just on holy days and at weddings and burials, but at informal gatherings, too. We’ll be all but kin. I’ll be the voice in her ear as she’s eating with the grown-ups in the hall, handing her toys instead of rosewater and keeping her running up and down a ball court for as long as I can, and one day years and years from now, she’ll be one of the wives who’ll let me stay and sit and spin and simply be.
Madog is not my favorite of Owain’s kin, but he’s right about one thing. He is the best choice for penteulu. None of Owain’s brothers by blood are old enough, and no other male relations are ready or trustworthy. He’s got to be wrong about the other, though. They can’t be raiding Dyfed. That province is armed to the teeth and bristling with castles and crawling with Normans who’ve come from England for no other reason than to take land from men like Cadwgan ap Bleddyn. Even a ruthless warband would soon be run to ground.
“You’d best not take too much time.” Madog’s face is scarlet, and he hunches over his mug of mead. Owain doesn’t hear him, though. Cadwgan has taken his seat, and the two of them are discussing something in growls. Me sitting here, like as not, and I brace for the argument that will doubtless get mean in a hurry.
But I hear only names of people who aren’t me and places to be won or lost. It’s nothing I haven’t heard a thousand times, but with different names and different places. Cadwgan’s enemies and allies turn their cloaks one way or another depending on the day or the se’ennight or the month, depending on who ambushes whose fort and who castrates who, and he does the same to them. Someone may be an enemy now, but by Easter he may be attacking someone else on Cadwgan’s behalf. Or the other way around. Or Cadwgan may set them both on a third enemy he hasn’t even made yet.
I’ve never been happier to be overlooked. It’ll give me a chance to approach Isabel once more, since she’s taken her seat on Cadwgan’s other side. She’s chattering cheerfully to the woman next to her, pointing to her guest’s necklet and running an admiring hand down her gown sleeve. When Isabel pauses to take a sip of wine, I catch her eye and smile. I’m trying to thank her for what she did earlier, and with Owain and Cadwga
n between us discussing raids, it’s the perfect chance to point out something we share. You know men — ignoring us to speak of bloodshed.
But Isabel does not return my smile. She lifts one brow and deliberately turns back to her guest, cups her hand over the woman’s ear, and begins to whisper. The nasty sow grins and darts her eyes to me before snickering like I just stepped in something.
Oh saints. I’ve misjudged all this. Badly.
Isabel is not an outsider. She never has been. She’s the wife of the king of Powys. She’s well on her way to charming this disreputable lot into good behavior. She’s wearing a gown that never had blood on the cuffs.
She is nothing like me.
I can’t do this myself. I can’t just decide there’s a place for me here and stand in it. If I could, I’d have done it by now. If I don’t have someone like Isabel on my side, I will always stand apart.
THE MEAL GOES WELL PAST SUNDOWN. VENISON AND savories and mug after mug of wine and mead. I don’t so much as look Isabel’s way again. She was not helping me. She was removing her husband from my presence. I didn’t see it. I should have seen it.
Down the table, there’s a burst of cackling muffled by hands.
This is the nest of vipers Margred will put her foot into next year. Sweet, kindhearted Margred, who has promised we’ll be friends forever, come what may. She’s still young enough to make those kinds of promises. She’s that sure of her place in this difficult family and that innocent of what her promise might cost.
It’s full winter dark when I follow Owain across the snow-skiffed yard to the sleeping chamber. He leads me near the banked fire and pulls his blanket over us both, and we lie together in the dying emberlight. Afterward, he holds me close and I rest my head against his shoulder. His arm across my back is comforting and solid, and his sun-browned hand over my hip looks like armor.
Spindle and Dagger Page 2