I frown at Owain. “Where is Niall? Did he not say —?”
“Is that any way to greet your beloved husband?” Owain palms my backside and smacks a noisy kiss on my lips.
“Owain!” I hiss, and he releases me abruptly, moving toward the pack of grinning lackwits who are already withdrawing into the brush they came from.
“What?” he asks, and before I can answer he turns to the lads and makes a whipcrack noise-gesture, and they snicker and jeer like I’ve been somehow made the fool.
I point incredulously at Aoife, who’s the daughter of this house, and her foster brother has been kind enough to try to make Owain feel welcome, and all right, yes, it is a little ridiculous that Niall shrieks when he sees spiders and has an annoying habit of laughing at his own jokes, but he’s no less a king’s son for that.
Aoife repeats her question, her voice high and trembling, but when she mentions Niall, Cormac nudges Owain and mutters something that makes him cackle.
“That’s what,” I say through my teeth. “Niall told you at least three times that he thought it would be fun to —”
“How the hell should I know where that nuttering fool is?”
“Owain,” says Cormac, and the tilt of his voice stretches the familiar sounds into something otherworldly. In choppy Welsh he goes on, “We bait them, townsmen. Good laugh to it.”
Gormlaith looses a flurry of angry words that makes Aoife turn pink. Cormac laughs in her face and jerks a thumb over his shoulder, and the lads troop after him into the brush.
I snare Owain’s sleeve. My spindle still held like a knife. “Where are you going?”
“You heard Cormac. We’re going a-baiting. Mayhap I’ll bring you back a tasty merchant to cook up for my supper.”
“But — wait!”
Einion penteulu snorts. “It’s just some harmless play, miracle girl. You’re not worried something ill will befall us. Are you?”
I can’t say that Owain promised his father he wouldn’t give half a moment of grief to Muirchertach Ua Briain, who is both ally and friend, and this very much has the look of grief to it. I cannot tell him that none of this looks kingly, and I haven’t spent se’ennights building us a place here for him to kick it down with thoughtless foolery.
I open my hand and Owain pulls free.
“Don’t worry, sweeting.” Owain grins over his shoulder as he wades through the brush after Cormac, Einion penteulu and Rhys on his heels. “I’ll be back by the time a husband’s real work begins.”
I watch him go. My face feels hot. Aoife tiptoes over, puts an arm around my shoulders, and says something in a comforting tone. She can’t have followed the conversation in Welsh, so I must look as bad as I feel. Gormlaith makes a show of spitting, then hashes Cormac’s name into a tirade. She takes my spindle, tosses it, then folds my hands into a vulgar gesture and holds them up high. I can’t help but giggle. Then Gormlaith shoulder-bumps me into Aoife, who gives me a firm, fierce hug.
I may not be a wife in Powys, but with these girls for company, right now Isabel de Say ought to be envying me.
I LEARN THAT CORMAC IS THE YOUNGEST SON OF Muirchertach’s court bard. I learn he tricked Gormlaith into sharing his bed last winter by hinting that he would marry her. I learn he does not fight nor labor nor wear clerical cloth nor follow any trade that I can tell.
I learn that if I ever need to find Owain, I must simply find Cormac.
The more I learn of Cormac, the more he feels familiar, like he could be beaten into Owain’s warband on the morrow. We are far from a place Owain has sway, though, and Cormac is neither a brother in arms nor a brother in blood.
It’s not long before Owain takes to sneaking out of bed at cockcrow, leaving me to manage Niall appearing at the chamber door with horses standing saddled behind him. Niall is always earnest, fighting a look of bewildered hurt as he asks where Owain has gone so early and without taking a meal. I can’t bring myself to be truthful. Niall’s good-natured innocence makes him trust too easily, and he is trying very hard to be a good host and befriend Owain. So I tell him I don’t know where Owain has gotten to. I pretend my Irish is worse than it is. I shrug and smile, and Niall goes pink and nods and shuffles off.
In a way, though, saying I don’t know is as true as I can make it. Owain is vague as to where he and Cormac and the rest spend their days, regardless of how I ask. Besides, after Cormac and his wolves barricaded Niall in the yard privy and bellowed with laughter as he banged on the door and all but wept for help, I’m not sure Niall truly wants to know where they are.
One morning, I step into the yard and Niall is not by the door. When I get to the hall, he’s coaxing his magpie to lift its little feet to the tune a boy plays on a pipe whistle while an admiring crowd of youths oohs and aahs. Aoife cuts off my attempt at an apology by dropping the cat on my lap and insisting there’s nothing to beg pardon for. Or mayhap she’s saying the apology isn’t mine to make.
Aoife doesn’t say it coldly, but I spend the rest of the day with a tight ball of worry in my belly. Later, after Owain has rolled in long past dark and fallen into bed and pressed up close, I say, “Niall has been nothing but kind to you, and all you do is slight him. People have noticed.”
“Slight him?” Owain scoffs. “He should be glad I’m a guest here or he’d know what I really think. Hell, what kind of man takes so many baths and carries a psalter?”
One who doesn’t smell like sweaty horse and prefers not to linger in purgatory. But I bite my lip and say, “It’s not just Niall. Had you been here today, you’d know Muirchertach went to parley with the men of Waterford again because they are weary of certain bastards sowing their cargos with live mice and waving bare buttocks at their wives.”
Owain snort-cackles, like he’s remembering it fondly. “If the men of Waterford return the favor, you’ll be tempted to choose a pointy rock, but you’ll do better with a nice round one. Aim true and put your weight behind it.”
I sigh in disgust and shift away from him.
“What? No wife of mine is going to pass up a chance like that, is she?”
He’s lucky there are no rocks at hand now. “Look, tomorrow there’s to be a horse race. That could be fun, yes?”
“At Rathmore?” Owain’s good cheer is gone in a moment. “No. I can’t be here.”
“But —”
“But nothing.” He rolls over and puts his back to me. “Believe me, sweeting, it’s best for all of us if I’m anywhere else as much as possible.”
Anywhere else would be one thing, but not when it means out with Cormac stirring up hell in the Irish countryside. It would be different if they were a proper warband. Raiding has a purpose. Whatever this is will lead only to bad blood and bad ends.
After the room has gone quiet and there are no sounds but the mice in the walls, I close my eyes and whisper my old prayer to Saint Elen.
Thank you for understanding.
Thank you for everything you’ve done for me.
Please make Owain see how dangerous this foolishness is so he’ll stop —
“What was that?”
I startle and nearly fall out of bed. Owain has risen on one elbow and now he’s squinting at me in the slivers of moonlight from the half-closed window.
“N-nothing,” I stammer. “I thought you were asleep.”
“You said something about Saint Elen.” Owain’s voice is curiously level and wide-awake. “What she should do. I heard you.”
My heart is hammering. I haven’t said her name since the start of my prayer. Which means he’s been listening to me, silent as a cat on the hunt, as I whispered all kinds of things in the dark. Carefully I reply, “I’m praying to her. She’s my name saint.”
I wait. Holding my breath. Owain beside me drawn tight like a bowstring.
At length he mutters, “I’m losing patience with exile. Not understanding what the hell anyone is saying. Having to ask for everything. People expecting things of me. All I want is to go home and take back wh
at’s mine. I’d listen to the Adversary himself if he’d give me a way to do it.”
I shudder. It’s too close to true.
“But I’d rather listen to a saint,” Owain adds quietly.
I don’t wait for the patter. I need him off this idea that he can have any sort of guidance from Saint Elen. I need him off it right now. “I wouldn’t trust Madog ap Rhirid to govern a byre. Who does he think he is, trying to run a province like Powys?”
It lands where I mean it to, and soon Owain lies growling at the ceiling and the Almighty and whoever else is listening, which is me, because it’s always me.
But now he’s talking about what he plans to do. Recall the lads of his warband. End his cousin in a variety of gruesome ways. Things he means to do himself alone, without any help from Saint Elen.
IT’S SUPPERTIME. IT’S JUST LIKE ANY OF THE MEALS at any of the halls in the kingdoms of Wales, only I’m at a proper place before a dish of hammered copper piled with meat and savories. Only I’m wearing glorious shoes and undergarments without a single tatter. Only the lord of this place has welcomed me in and sat me at this very table.
The sole thing that’s the same is that everyone is looking at me and speculating.
I smile. I keep my head high. I bring food to my mouth bite by bite like nothing is wrong. Like Owain didn’t bloody well promise he’d be at supper. Like I didn’t bloody well believe him.
At the high table, Sadb and Muirchertach sit closer than they need to and share a cup of wine. Niall feeds tidbits to the magpie perched on his shoulder, and Aoife catches my gaze and rolls her eyes at him just the smallest bit like I’m sharing her joke at her elbow and not across the room. There’s a place for Nest at my right, but it’s empty because she’s still only picking at the trays they send her in the maidens’ quarters.
I’m merely tired. Please, just let me rest.
There’s a massive thud, then a scuffle. Then singing. Loud, tomcat singing in Irish.
Sadb’s color is rising. She leans into Muirchertach and asks if that’s who she thinks it is, and he nods grimly.
There are another few thuds and some lackwit snickering, then Cormac and Owain stumble into the hall. They look like they’ve been digging turf all morning and fighting to keep it all afternoon. The other lads crowd the doorway, jostling and whisper-chortling but not daring to cross the threshold. Muirchertach rises, slow and ominous, hands in fists like ox hooves. He asks them with very brittle courtesy what in the name of every saint they mean by coming into his hall in such a state and thinking to take a meal.
Cormac makes a flourishing gesture and pulls Owain abreast of him, and they both kneel, still giggling like fools.
I put down my meat knife. Fold my hands in my lap.
Muirchertach makes an impatient gesture and they rise. They head for the guest table, but the high king growls that Cormac should get the hell out of his sight right bleeding now if he knows what’s good for him. Cormac veers toward the door where the others are gathered, still giggling, and the lot of them wisely disappear. Muirchertach stabs a finger at Owain, then at the empty place next to me.
Aoife traces her meat knife in slow, winding loops across her mutton. Her cheeks are red. Niall regards me with open pity. Owain climbs over the bench with a swagger and runs a hand up my thigh under the trestle board. He smells like wind and heather and something else, something sharp and thin and vaguely grainy.
There’s space at the end of the bench at the high table next to Aoife. I can’t get up, cross the hall, and sit shoulder to shoulder with her, even though we could laugh about the cat singeing his tail on a stray hearth coal and share a big wedge of honey cake while her brother spoils a magpie and her parents trade kisses when they think no one is watching. I can’t get up with bread in both hands and share it with Nest in the quiet of the maidens’ quarters.
Instead I sit next to Owain ap Cadwgan in a pretty gown that did not come to me through violence, embroidery at my neck and calfskin on my feet, while knives snick through meat and ale is sipped and bread is torn in a newly uncomfortable hall.
I do it in silence, like a proper wife.
ON MY WAY TO THE PRIVY, I SPOT NEST BY THE GATE. She’s hooded and half in shadow, speaking intently with a graybeard who favors his right side and has a deep gash down his jaw. I rush toward her. She’s on her feet for the first time since April. Perhaps she’s ready to talk. To tell me in words what both of us know is happening.
Nest startles when I grab her hands and hold on. I want to beg her pardon. I want to cry. Instead I whisper, “You have no idea how glad I am to see you up and about.”
The graybeard grunts and holds out a weathered palm. Nest slips one hand out of mine, reaches into her apron, and presses something round and shiny against the graybeard’s fingers. He flips it, squints at it, then bites it. A coin.
Nest just gave silver to a fighting man.
“Yes. About that.” There’s no wavery choke in her voice now. No weak sighing. Her skin is fresh and ruddy. Not sickbed pale. “It’s time you knew.”
“Wait. Wait. You were ill. All these se’ennights. You were . . .” I hold my arms out over my belly, and Nest makes a face like I pissed in her porridge.
“Guh. I know. I’m sorry. I had to let you think it, though. If you didn’t believe, none of the others would.”
My mouth is slowly falling open. She’s been planning this. All those picked-at trays of food. Keeping the bedcovers over her face. Her one complaint — so tired — something no one could challenge her on. Little wonder the court physician could find nothing wrong. Because there is nothing wrong. There never has been.
Now Nest has given money to a man who’s clearly fought in more than one warband, and there’s but one reason she’d do it.
She means to have Owain killed.
There’s nothing to stop her now. Her children are safe. She’s far from anyone who might rescue her. If she hires an assassin, chances are good she’ll be successful. She can kill him and he’ll be dead.
I glance at the hall where Aoife and Gormlaith are likely wondering what’s keeping me, then I gesture for Nest to come behind the kitchen into a patch of ill-smelling shade. I’m too relieved to be angry she lied. I’m more worried about that graybeard and the big knife at his side, how he’s on his home ground and Owain is far from his teulu.
When Nest hesitates, I grab her arm again. My hand closes around something metal. I shove her sleeve up, and there’s the bracelet Owain gave me. The one that was Nest’s, from her father.
“You stole that from me!” I never wanted the bracelet at all, but she went through my things. The few things that are mine.
“I only borrowed it. I was going to give it back.”
“How?” I square up like one of the lads. “That’s not how these things work, you know. Once you pay a man to do a job, he tends to keep what you give him.”
“Lower your voice!” she hisses. “It’s not what you think.”
“Look. Surely we’ll be back in Wales soon.” I’m fighting for calm. “Cadwgan is sure to send for Owain any day, either to move against Madog or because this whole thing has been settled. Then Cadwgan will see to it that you’re back with your little ones like he promised. They’ve got to be missing you to bits.”
Nest’s face goes hard. “Owain ap Cadwgan is never going to let me go. You know that, don’t you?”
There was no reason to bring Nest with us into exile. No reason but one: Cadwgan demanded that Owain release her to Gerald. In public. In front of everyone. That moment alone would have been enough, but Owain still has one eye to vengeance that can’t be had without her. I nod miserably.
“God knows my husband can do little for me while I’m in Ireland. He might not even know where I am, or if I’m alive.” Nest sighs, long and shuddery. “That means I must look to myself if I want to get clear of Owain ap Cadwgan.”
“Get clear of — you’re not planning to have him killed?”
Nest crack
s a grim smile. “Tempting. But no. Too risky, and it won’t get me what I want.”
“Your babies,” I whisper, and she chokes on a buried sob.
“That graybeard with the scar? He fought for my father in one of his hired armies. He agreed to see me home out of respect for my father’s memory and for a big reward of silver that my husband will trip over himself to provide. That’s why I had need of your bracelet. As proof of my blood. But here.”
Nest fumbles it off her wrist, and I will not think of my father, who never in his whole life had two coins to rub together, as I push it back into her hands. “Just don’t let Owain see it.”
She drops it into her apron and holds a hand against it. “I’d get you clear, too. I’d have you come with me. Mayhap you can’t have back what Owain ap Cadwgan and his lot took from you, but you can have a family — mine. It can be ours.”
I fall against the kitchen wall and let it hold me up.
“William’s already claimed you.” Nest smiles halfway, sheepish. “Do you know he slept with the bladder ball you gave him tucked under his arm every night? I suspect he still does. I don’t even want to think what’ll become of David should Alice never come back. You always knew what to say to them, even when things were . . . bad.” She swipes at tears, then flutters an awkward smile. “You’ll live in our house. You’ll be their nurse. When they’re grown, you will be my companion. Unless you choose to marry. Even then you won’t be rid of me. I will expect spiced wine when I visit.”
A cozy chamber. Playthings scattered around. Not Miv’s tiny fingers winding through my hair. William bouncing his ball to David, who catches it with both hands because his comfort rag is stowed somewhere for safekeeping. A place where Margred can visit all the time because it won’t matter whose sister she is.
“. . . before the se’ennight is out,” Nest is saying. “Will you come?”
“I . . .” I look over my shoulder at the hall, then down at my lovely, well-stitched shoes. “I like it here.”
Spindle and Dagger Page 12