Spindle and Dagger

by J. Anderson Coats

  I stop where I stand and turn openmouthed to Owain as he swings down from his horse. He grabs me at the waist and kisses me firm and fierce. He’s cold from the wind, and his leather armor jabs me shoulder to hips.

  Owain is talking, big and grinning and boastful. Normans running like frightened dogs. How they fell like ripe barley beneath his warband’s blades. How everything burned so beautifully.

  I can hardly draw breath. I can’t look away from the girl.

  “Gerald of bloody Windsor never saw us coming.” Owain cranes his neck to peer into her face as she stares hard at the ground. “Did he, Nest?”

  The girl, Nest, lifts her chin. “That’s because I helped him escape the moment I heard your noise. All you’ve done is mark yourself. So don’t ever stop looking over your shoulder, for my husband will not rest until your lifeless corpse is hanging from a tree for the ravens to feed on.”

  Husband. This is Nest ferch Rhys ap Tewdwr. Daughter of the king of a realm several years fallen. Wife of Gerald of Windsor. Standing in the courtyard of Llyssun, barefoot and in her nightgown.

  “Oh yes,” Owain taunts, “I’m terribly frightened of a coward whoreson who slid down the shit shaft to avoid facing me like a man.”

  They’ll have rattled through her yard. Kicked in her door. Flooded through like blood from a wound. They’ll have smashed the crockery and rifled through linens for hidden coins. Shoved anything valuable into purse or tunic.

  Hard to the floor. Cold everywhere.

  Nest grits her teeth as she tries to keep the younger boy on his feet. Then a baby begins to fuss, a low weh-weh-weh like the sound that used to wake me in the dim hours of the morning. Nest wearily shifts enough to heave a baby out of a sling beneath her arm and dark thatchy hair Miv I have to push the cradle against the wall I have to save Myfanwy —

  But this baby is not Miv. It’s not Miv because I left her behind to burn.

  Owain is ordering Nest to take the children inside, but it’s a slurry of sound because Rhael’s shoulder presses against mine but it isn’t, it can’t be, it’s years ago and it’s yesterday and I’m up against the steading wall and already the room is filling with smoke.

  “SWEETING? HEY.” A HAND ON MY SHOULDER. NOT rough, but insistent. Owain frowns at me.

  “You . . .” I stay standing. Somehow.

  “I said, help Nest with Gerald’s brats.” Owain glances with distaste at her as she wriggles the baby — Not Miv — into the older boy’s arms.

  Touch them. Warm and squirmy, smelling of porridge and soap. Not Miv. I left my sister behind.

  Nest bends over the littler boy, who is curled like a dead grub at her feet, but the older boy is struggling to keep hold of Not Miv as she strains toward their mother. Nest scrabbles to catch the baby mid-tumble.

  The littler boy blinks slow, his thumb wedged firmly in his mouth. In one fist is a ratty square of faded red cloth that he clutches against his chest. Miv would be this big. She’s not, though. I left her to burn. To save my own skin.

  I kneel and collect the smaller boy out of the mud. He’s dead weight like a sack of barley when I heft him onto my hip. He drops his head on my shoulder and rubs the cloth against his cheek.

  The older boy glares up at me. “Put my brother down or I’ll hurt you.”

  “William, hssst!” Nest raps him upside the ear. “Not even this girl, do you hear? Not a word to any of these filthy brutes.”

  “Mama —”

  “I said hssst. Mama needs to think.” Nest presses a fist to her mouth, blinking, blinking.

  “I’ll not harm your brother,” I reply quietly to William, “nor you. Nor your mam nor your . . . the baby.”

  William scowls and gestures at Owain. “He will.”

  I begin to tell the boy that he’s a hostage, and hostages are kept comfortably and not harmed. They’re held to guarantee the good behavior of an enemy, or traded for something valuable. There’s no profit in doing violence to a hostage.

  But hostages are not marched barefoot and taunted with a tale of their capture. They’re not made to stand half-dressed and shivering in the midst of a warband.

  So mayhap William ap Gerald and his siblings and his mother are not hostages. Mayhap that’s not what Owain has in mind at all.

  ONCE WE’RE IN THE HALL, I LEAD NEST AND THE little ones toward the warm hearth and the cushioned benches there. It’s easily the most comfortable place in the hunting lodge, but Nest veers toward a dark corner away from all the doors. As I follow, the smaller boy lies heavy on my shoulder, his fingers digging like talons.

  In the corner, Nest drops to her knees, then collapses against the wall and slides into a heap. The baby lands in her lap, squealing joyfully like it’s a game of horsey. Nest closes her eyes and breathes out long and shuddery. When William burrows against her, she hugs him close and holds on. Owain wouldn’t have made Nest walk the whole way, but one look at her cold-reddened feet and I know she walked enough. Without a word, I lower the younger boy next to her, and she chokes on a sob as she holds him tight.

  “Will you ask them to kill me first?” William whispers to his mother. “I don’t want to watch you die.”

  “Shh, lambie. No one’s going to die. Not you. Not David. Not Angharad.” Nest pets his hair with one shaking hand. “Don’t be afraid.”

  William scrubs his eyes with his wrist. David sucks his thumb while Not Miv squirms and fusses. Nest squints up at me, taking my measure. In a cool, courteous voice she says, “Thank you.”

  I nod. I look everywhere but her face. Owain ap Cadwgan did not kill the wife of Gerald of Windsor in the burning shadow of her home.

  Instead he seized her. And her beasts.

  I’m pressed into a corner of the chapel. Holding a fire iron in both hands and making myself breathe.

  Killing Gerald of Windsor would have been one thing. Most of the Welsh kings and dozens of Norman border barons would have drunk Owain’s health till the smallest hours, and even Gerald’s so-called allies would have taken horse without delay to seize his lands and castles.

  But Owain did not kill Gerald of Windsor. Instead he did something far worse.

  Owain will feast his warband tonight and divide the plunder into shares. It will get loud and it will go late. By morning my hands must be empty. By morning I must be firmly here, at Llyssun. Nowhere else.

  A shadow slants across the floor. Rhys shifts in the doorway, holding his wounded arm in a way he wishes looked healthy. I should ask about his injury to keep him in the habit of touching that healing scar. I can’t, though. I can’t think beyond the cold metal in my hand.

  “Ah . . . it’s coming on suppertime.”

  “Already? Well. Doesn’t matter. I’m not hungry.”

  “My lord says to bring you.” Rhys clears his throat. “Now.”

  I tighten my grip and cut a glance at him, but his cheeks are pink and he’s toeing the floor.

  Loud and late it is, then. At least they’ll be in good humor. Safely returned, the lot of them, with treasure for every man. As if Saint Elen herself saw to it.

  The first place we go is the kitchen, where Rhys watches as I hand over the fire iron. He stays a generous armslength from me all the while. Once it’s done, I lace my hands together to keep them from feeling too empty.

  In the hall, the steward is in heated conversation with Owain, who’s lazily sipping from a mug. The steward stabs a finger at the corner where David lies wide-eyed and unmoving across Nest’s lap and Not Miv is fighting William as he tries to keep her close. It’s plain what the steward is saying — a king’s son has no business shaming hostages with such callous treatment, and Owain should know better.

  Owain glances at Nest where she sits like a toadstool, hunched and unmoving, still in her nightgown with her hair straggling loose from its braid, and he grins. The steward’s face is growing red, but he bows curtly and strides away before one of the fists clenched at his sides gets the better of him.

  Rhys nudges me. I’ve
stopped walking, and I’m near enough to the corner that William looks up at me, lost and floundering: Please just make it better. I stumble forward. Away from them. Toward Owain, who takes my hand, puts it on his arm, then calls out to the hall, “Nest will play at kitchen maid.”

  Nest’s jaw drops, her mouth moving soundlessly. At length she shifts David onto the floor and claws her way to her feet. She squares up like a warbander and says, quiet but clear, “Not even you would dare treat a hostage this way, Owain ap Cadwgan.”

  Owain lifts a brow. “Who said you were a hostage?”

  “I’m a slave, then?”

  He flicks his fingers at the hall door, offhand, careless, like the half command is all that’s needed. Nest takes a slow measure of the room. The lads cackling and tipsy, clustered, watching her over mug rims. The steward long gone and hobbled besides. Me — her eye glides over me like I’m a mongrel dog Owain holds on a tether. At last she hauls David and William each to his feet, then shoulders Not Miv.

  “And where might you be taking your sons, Nest, wife of Gerald the Coward? Into the kitchen?” Owain tsks. “However do the Normans produce fighting men?”

  “I’ll not leave them here alone,” Nest replies through her teeth. “If you want to kill them, you’ll do it looking into my eyes.”

  William makes a tiny animal sound and pulls his cloak over his head.

  Owain puts on a look of great hurt. “They’re just little babies, Nest. What kind of beast do you take me for?”

  Nest wisely presses her lips together, though it’s clear she’d sorely like to tell him just what kind of beast she takes him for.

  “I’m really just a lamb,” Owain goes on in a voice of butter. “Elen will tell you. Won’t you, sweeting?”

  Owain pulls me onto the bench at his right hand, harsh and sudden, and grins at Nest, all teeth. She blinks rapidly. I know exactly what she sees. What he’d have her see. His hand on my arm and me all but on his lap. I dare not shake him off or shift away, but I cannot look at her, either.

  Nest takes her time hefting David onto one hip while settling Not Miv on the other, and she herds a whimpering, limping William in front of her toward the hall door.

  There are hostages at royal residences all the time, sons and brothers of men Cadwgan can’t quite bring himself to trust. They’re given the best lodging the place affords, and they sit at table and go to mass with the rest of us. All that’s denied them is freedom to come and go. Anything less, and Cadwgan’s sons and brothers, and those of his allies, will get the same at someone else’s hands.

  The lads take their places at the trestle table, crowding the benches and elbowing one another. They’re recounting the raid on Gerald of Windsor’s home. How they went over the wall in the darkest part of night. How you could see the burning wreckage from leagues away till dawn and then some. What each of them took. Who each of them killed. Just like any ordinary raid. Only it’s not.

  At length — at long length — Nest shuffles into the hall with an earthenware bowl of something steaming. The lads chortle and laugh and hoot, and color swarms up her neck as she brings the bowl toward the king’s chair and Owain, who’s leaning his chin on one fist and regarding her with a faint taunting smirk.

  Somewhere outside, Not Miv is wailing.

  Nest places the bowl before Owain. Her eyes are steady but absolutely violent, and her hand trembles as if she’d like nothing better than to dump it in his lap. But she steps away. Bows her head.

  “And the lads?” Owain asks in a loud voice.

  Nest makes an incredulous gesture at them all, arrayed like a small army along the benches.

  “It’s a great honor, Gerald’s wife, to serve such company at table.” Owain smiles again, and I think of the knife, how there have been times I could have killed him in two simple moves. How he shouldn’t even be alive, but he’s alive because of me.

  “I’ll help her,” I say quietly, and Nest is suddenly hopeful, all the way pleading even though I know what it must cost her to plead in this place, before them, even with me. I move to rise, but Owain grabs my arm hard enough to hurt and yanks me down with a rump-bruising thud.

  “You will not.”

  Nest waits, pausing heartbeat after heartbeat, but I cannot pull free and swear that Saint Elen will turn her back on him for such deeds. That there will be no miracles if this is what he does with her blessing.

  I have not hated Owain ap Cadwgan for a long time, but I hate him now.

  Nest snorts and shakes her head slow like I’m a bag of flour weighted false with stones. She turns on her heel and trudges out of the hall.

  “Your coward husband ran a lot faster than that!” Owain calls after her, and the lads laugh like madmen.

  After a while Nest reappears, bringing more portions. The proper servants crowd the doorway for a peek at a highborn lady being made to do their work. The steward is among them, stiff and frowning, apparently convinced that silent fatherly disapproval will mean something to Owain. The lads snicker and jeer as Nest moves among them. More than one has himself been a hostage, yet they pull her hair and slap her backside and step on her hem to trip her up. Hot stew slops over her wrists, leaving angry red welts and spattering her cloak and nightgown. The lads knew from the moment this meal began that something was different.

  Mayhap they knew from the moment Owain kicked in her door.

  I push a spoon through my stew. Spoons are not sharp, but I could make one so. At my elbow, Owain takes his supper and drinks his ale and presides over the goings-on with a smug, triumphant smile.

  It’s well past supper. The trestle planks have been stacked against the wall, and the lads have grown bored and tired, departing one by one out to their lodgings and bedrolls. Nest hasn’t returned from the kitchen.

  Owain catches Rhys on his way out. “Go fetch her.”

  At supper Rhys carried on with the rest, but now he drags out the hall door like he’s made of lead.

  It’s a freezing walk across the yard to the king’s chamber. I’m pulling up my hood and wrapping my hands, hoping someone remembered to leave a hot brick to warm the bedclothes, when I realize Owain’s not doing the same. He’s leaning against the wall, arms folded, patient.

  I have no liking for this.

  Rhys swings the door open and Nest all but falls inside, Not Miv tucked in the sling at her middle. William stumps behind his mother, bent over from carrying David on his back. Nest heads right for the corner but freezes when she spots Owain waiting there. Then she backs to the nearest wall, pulling her sons with her.

  “Will I want to post a guard?” Owain asks her.

  Nest shakes her head once, curtly. “I’m no fool. I’m not going anywhere.”

  I tried it once. Not a threemonth after being marched away. I didn’t pack anything. I didn’t make a plan. I waited until the lot of them were asleep, then I got dressed and fled. I hadn’t made it five arrowshots when Einion ap Tewdwr found me, and it wasn’t even full dawn.

  Owain dismisses Rhys with a single gesture. Rhys is out the door before Owain’s hand falls still, and the latch snicks closed like a stone in a washtub. Then Owain rocks away from the wall. I move to his elbow, but he does not look at me.

  “Your every act against me will come back to you.” Nest lowers Not Miv to the floor and steps in front of her. “You’ll pay a steep enough price for all you did at my home. Mercy serves you better now.”

  “I do not show mercy to Normans,” Owain replies, “nor do I expect it from them.”

  “I am not Norman!” She flings a hand. An empty hand. “My father was once king of Deheubarth. My mother was kin to the king of Gwynedd. Two of the kingdoms of Wales. Two! I am one of your own. I am not your enemy!”

  “No,” Owain agrees quietly. “You are not my enemy.”

  I put a hand on Owain’s arm. He shakes me off like a wet dog and reaches for Nest’s wrist, and I am shoulder-to-shoulder with Rhael and my sister is about to die.

  William plows toward
Owain, a little blur of fists and cursing in two languages. Owain swivels and snares him by the hood, hoisting him off the ground so he dangles like a cat by the scruff. A dark stain spreads down the boy’s hose. Nest is between them in an instant, throwing her weight on Owain’s outstretched arm, worming both hands into Owain’s grip on William’s hood.

  “Don’t you dare hurt my children,” she growls, but her voice breaks and she rasps, “Please, oh God, please, if there’s any mercy in you!”

  Owain looses William not quite gently and the boy staggers away several paces. He’s choking on big quiet sobs, his hands over his head like the sky is falling. Nest moves toward her son, but Owain leans close to her ear and mutters something. I only catch in front of your children.

  Nest blinks and blinks, presses a hand to her forehead. “All right, you bastard. If that’s how it’s going to be. All right.”

  When Owain gestures toward the hall door, toward the king’s chamber beyond, she walks ahead of him without a word.

  And then they are gone.

  I’m on the floor. The whole room is blurry. A boy crouches nearby, curled up tiny. He reeks of piss. He’s crying.

  William. William ap Gerald, who even now pays for the sins of his father.

  I crawl near. Hold out an arm to hug him. He’ll push me away. Bid me leave him be. I can’t help it, though, and I gently put a hand on his back. With a sob, William snakes his arms around my waist and grips tight like he might fall. I pull him close and pet his hair like I saw Nest do, like I once did with Miv, like I still sometimes do with Margred, and after a while his sobs wear down to heavy, snuffly breathing.

  “Is . . .” William swallows. “Is he going to kill my mama?”

  I shake my head. My throat feels full of wet sand.