Nest sighs. “Oh, child, of course you do, but you being a wife is a playact, same as me wasting away in the maidens’ quarters. It’s not real.”
“My gown is real. My shoes are real. It’s all real. It’s ordinary.”
“You’re playing house. Owain ap Cadwgan is not. He hasn’t played for a moment while he’s been here, and he definitely won’t play once you’re back in Wales.”
“Let’s not forget which of us told Sadb I was Owain’s wife in the first place,” I reply through my teeth, “and which of us sold him that not-real made-up story before he could think it through so he wouldn’t get us run out of Rathmore in disgrace.”
“Believe me, I haven’t forgotten,” Nest says, quiet and sharp. “This is my fault. I should have told Sadb the truth right away, but you . . . lit up, putting on that gown. You moved differently. Spoke more easily. Smiled like you meant it. Like all at once you were in command of the room. In command of yourself.” She shakes her head and sighs. “I thought for sure that’s what you’d walk away with. How it feels to belong. That this is who you are, and how you got here doesn’t matter. I meant to do you a kindness. Not give you a shovel and stand by as you dug a deep hole.”
I look down at my dress. My shoes. I blink hard.
Nest puts her arm around my shoulders like she did on the sea crossing. “Come with me. By the time he realizes we’re gone, we’ll have put foot on shipboard, and there’s nothing on Heaven or earth that’ll let him catch us. I’ll be back with my husband, you will be nurse to my children, and I will actually pity Owain ap Cadwgan if he happens within a stone’s throw of Gerald of Windsor for the rest of his natural life.”
“You’ve forgotten what I am to Owain,” I reply quietly, “and how he repays betrayal, be it real or in his mind.”
“I thought you’d be pleased. That you’d want to be their nurse.”
“I want a lot of things I can’t have, but there’s one thing I want that I can have. William and David and . . . and the baby, I want them to be safe. If I go with you, none of us will ever be safe.”
Nest takes my hand. “Gerald will protect you. I know he will. In fact, Gerald will welcome you if by sheltering you he can tweak Owain ap Cadwgan’s nose. Or lure him close.”
“No.” I pull away from her. “No, I’ll not be part of anything that puts Owain in harm’s way.”
She groans faintly. “He’s done nothing to earn your loyalty. He does less to keep it.”
“It has nothing to do with loyalty.”
“Not loyalty,” Nest says slowly, puzzling, “and not love, either. Then . . . what?”
The patter rises to save me, but it’s hard to make it hold water when there is Nest and her silver-hungry warbander and the promise of the little ones at the end of the voyage, and before, there was only Owain ap Cadwgan holding out his hand.
“Will you at least think on it?” Nest whispers. “I don’t think I can face them if you’re not with me.”
I nod. I let her slip away toward the maidens’ quarters believing it to be true.
IT’S LATE. THE SLEEPING CHAMBER IS STILL AND dark. I’m alone in bed. If I peek through the curtain, I can see the faint glow beneath the door that leads to the yard. Owain and the lads are still at their fire, where they’ve been all evening and long into the night. It’ll be Saint John’s Day soon, and that means Cormac has escapades from last year to top. Gormlaith has let exactly what those might be sink into the language bog, and Aoife went white to the ears when I even mentioned the Feast of the Baptist.
There’s a faint burst of laughter. I throw the covers back, pull on the bedrobe Aoife gave me, and slide my feet into my shoes. They feel cold and gritty without hose as I tiptoe to the door and look out. Near the palisade wall, Cormac and Owain are holding court, lit orange by firelight, passing wineskins and smaller vessels of the strong stuff that makes them particularly ugly.
Sadb pulled me aside before supper to tell me Órlaith wouldn’t be plaiting my hair or bringing water or even setting foot in the sleeping chamber anymore. The child is frightened, Sadb said. She comes from a decent family. A king’s son should know to keep better company.
It could be months before Cadwgan sends for Owain. Muirchertach Ua Briain may be an ally and a friend, but he’s not a saint or a fool.
The lads are comparing spoils as I edge near. Cormac has a girl’s undershift smudged with grass stains. Owain has a long hank of blue-black hair bound with a leather strip. Einion penteulu has what I hope is a pig’s ear. Rhys notices me first. He nudges Owain with the hinged lid of a jewelry box he’s holding, and when Owain spots me he grins in a slow, lazy way. He’s the kind of drunk that only comes from settling into a flagon in midafternoon.
“Sweeting, it’s cold. Go inside.”
“I will, but . . . when are you coming to bed?”
Cormac says something about fillies and riding, and the Irish lads all snicker. For once I’m glad I understand little of what’s said to me, especially when it’s said quickly. Owain smirks at them and makes a helpless, apologetic gesture, then rises and pulls me a pace away.
“What is it?” he asks in a low voice, clear and steady, and all at once I wonder if I was wrong about him being drunk.
“I — I just wondered where you were.”
“Well, now you know. So go back inside.” He glances at the lads, who watch us, slumped and giggle-drunk, like we’re a bear-baiting. Or a hanging.
“I just . . .”
“She just wants to know where you are,” Einion penteulu simpers. “At all times. Like a wife might.”
Owain laughs aloud. I try to swallow the choke in my throat, but I cannot. I can’t even look at him.
Einion shakes his head, slow and disgusted. “I told you this would happen if you didn’t kill that marriage lie outright. Next thing you know, she’ll whisper in your ear that the likes of us are making you grieve our host like your father warned you against. She’ll pull you onto her lap like a good little dog and wind up the leash.”
“It was a misspeaking, not a lie.” Owain lifts his brows. “Right, sweeting?”
I swipe at tears. That misspeaking is the one thing that might make Owain behave himself here. That could repair what’s already been damaged. I stare at my feet and say nothing.
Einion penteulu makes a lordly told you so gesture into the silence.
“Jesus wept.” Owain presses his hands to his forehead. “So that’s what this is. You and everyone else in this whole place would have me dance like a trained bear. The high king, because I’m to be my father’s son. His wife, because apparently any sort of amusement in her household is ruinous. And you, because of one misplaced word from months ago. By Christ, I seem to remember being promised trickery that could only help me.”
I straighten. “It is —”
“It is not!” Owain cuts in. “It’s humiliating, being here. Sitting at another man’s table. Eating his meat. Sleeping in a bed that’s not mine, beneath a roof that’ll never be mine. Nothing helps with that. I hope you’re getting something out of your little ploy, sweeting, for I’m sure as hell not.”
“It might help,” I stammer, “if you’d let it.”
“My lackwit cousin is running my inheritance into ruin. My father crouches like a whipped hound before the English king. Here I am, apparently the only one who sees what must be done and has the stones to do it, expected to fill my days with useless horseshit while my birthright slips away a little more each godforsaken hour. If that’s not enough, you’re out here clutching at my hem before all these men and begrudging me a little harmless play.”
I was ready to withdraw. Smile big, kiss his cheek, let him save face in front of his foster teulu and let them watch me walk away. Instead I bark a harsh laugh. “So it’s hard, is it? Being under someone else’s roof when you’d rather be home? Expectations you don’t know what to do with? Always on tiptoe, never at ease? And never is it far from your mind that your full belly and warm back depend on th
e goodwill of one man?”
Owain frowns, cocks his head.
But Einion penteulu sighs like a bellows. “Christ Jesus, lass. That was years ago. Besides, it’s not like you didn’t come out of it well.”
Cormac makes the whipcrack noise-gesture, slow and taunting, and as the rest of them laugh, Owain lets go of my arm and rejoins the flickerlit circle.
“Go inside.” He puts his back to me. “There’s no place for you here.”
I go inside. There’s little else to do.
I don’t sleep, though. I lie fully clothed beneath the covers, trembling. One misplaced word from months ago and here I am, still playing house. Waiting in bed, like a proper wife.
For three years now I’ve spun falsehoods and told myself they were for Owain ap Cadwgan. I should know lies for what they are. How the most tempting of them glitter and shine. How easy it is to believe when you have every reason to want it so.
The pallet shifts like someone is leaning against it. Nest’s whisper glides through the dark. “Are you awake?”
I could say nothing. Pretend to sleep. Heaven knows Nest did enough of that in the last few months. Only I am alone, and nothing will ever be ordinary. “Yes.”
“Can I stay a while? They’ve gone . . . out.”
I throw the bedclothes back, and she slides in beside me. She presses her shoulder against mine as if we really were cousins and sharing space in the maidens’ quarters. Like Margred and I sometimes did for hours at a stretch on lazy afternoons, just like sisters, she’d say, with the cozy delight of someone who had none by birth. She’d whisper what to a child passed for secrets, and my whole heart would hurt at how innocent some girls get to be.
At last I whisper, “You were right. It is just a playact. A misspeaking. I’m a fool for thinking it anything more. It should have worked, though. With the right idea in his ear . . . but he’s no different than he is at home. If anything, he’s worse.”
“He’s no different,” Nest replies. “You are.”
Drunk or sober, Owain speaks of little now but going home. How it’ll be. His warband recalled. His cousin slain. His father shown up and proved wrong. His birthright secured and everything just as it was. Just as it should be.
Which means every holiday will look like Christmas at Aberaeron. Isabel’s cruel smile and Cadwgan’s sidelong disdain. Easter and Michaelmas, Whitsuntide and Candlemas. Every fort like the one before, only Margred will never be there. She’ll refuse to come near the man who killed her brother, even for me. She will grow up and take her place among the wives who ignore me, and in fort after fort I’ll spin quietly in some dim corner and wait alone for Owain to come back, grinning and blood-spattered and loaded down with plunder while men like Gerald of Windsor wait for him deep in the greenwood. If I’m lucky, if my playact holds, back will come Owain ap Cadwgan to wherever he’s decided there is a place for me. He’ll slip some shiny thing over my wrist, still warm from the girl it was taken from, and he’ll grin like a wolf and pass the meat and take me to bed and bloody well praise himself for what a good man he is.
“I’m leaving on the morrow.” Nest speaks low. “I’d still have you come with me. My children love you, and that makes you part of my family. Just like you were blood.”
I told them to stay together. I told them I’d be back, that I’d always come back. David clung to my cloak-end and William pulled it from his grip, clear and confident and steady, and told him not to be afraid.
“All right,” I whisper, and under the covers Nest takes my hand and holds it tight.
It’s not like you didn’t come out of it well.
A clatter in the dooryard. Rhael and me shoulder to shoulder, her breath fast and shallow.
After Nest returns to the maidens’ quarters, I reach between the pallet and the wall and pull out Owain’s rucksack. I paw through his tunics and underclothes till I find his dagger with the hammered bronze sheath. I take it, as well as the silver torc that Owain was to give to Cadwgan upon his return, a gift from his old brother in arms. Then I pull out the heavy gold ring that was Owain’s grandfather’s and the plain leather purse that’s heavy with coin.
Four-and-ten-year-old me slowly unwinding the last bandage from Owain’s healed wound. Wrung out from nightmares. Perched stiff on the edge of the bed and reminding herself that this is what she asked for. This is a thing she can somehow do.
It’s not like you didn’t come out of it well.
Once I asked Saint Elen for my life and she gave it to me, but when someone gives you something, it does not really become yours. The giver still decides when and why and how. And a gift can always be taken back.
I bundle the knife, the ring, the torc, and the purse into my own rucksack, tight so they don’t clank and betray themselves valuable. Then I drink a whole wineskin of thrice-brewed ale, undress, and crawl under the bedclothes.
When you take something with your own hands, that’s when it becomes yours.
It’s the darkest part of night when I wake up needing a piss. Owain beside me lies asleep. Naked, sprawled, taking up most of the bed and all the bedclothes. Snoring like an elderly hound. Smelling faintly of spirits.
I think of the dagger. For many long moments.
I slip out of bed and dress, then sling my kitful of plunder over one shoulder. I leave my spindle, though. I’ve spun enough falsehoods to last all my life.
IT’S NOT MORNING YET FOR ANYONE BUT THE POOR scullions kindling the day’s first fires — and a single scarred graybeard pretending to fish leaves out of the common trough. Nest emerges from the maidens’ quarters, hooded like a leper, and heads toward the graybeard like she’s got nothing to hide. I pull up my own hood and fall into step beside her. Our feet pad in steady unison like a team of horses.
The graybeard squints at me, then Nest. He says something to her, measured, something about silver, and Nest pours out a string of syllables that ends in Gerald of Windsor. The graybeard sighs, low and long-suffering, but nods us toward the gate and mutters for us to keep our faces in shadow. As the sentries slide the heavy bar out of the notches, Einion penteulu stumbles out of the yard privy, staggers, and leans hard against the building like someone poured him there.
I face away. Too fast. Too sudden. I’ve drawn his attention. I can feel it.
There’s no way I can go back. No way to replace all the things I took exactly where I found them. Owain will notice. He’ll want to know why. He will come to conclusions that will be absolutely and unmistakably correct.
“What is it?” Nest’s voice is a calming murmur. A mother’s voice. I will not think of my mother.
“Einion ap Tewdwr. He saw us. He’ll tell Owain.”
“Shh. He saw nothing. It’s early. He’s tired and probably drunk.” Nest looks over her shoulder, though.
The gate creaks open enough to step through, and we’re outside and moving toward Waterford at a walk too fast to be seemly.
Barely a threemonth. I was still counting the days. At not-quite-dawn, I slid past a dozing sentry and fled in no direction. Just away. I stumbled through the dark until I fell over something and my ankle twisted wrong and I couldn’t stand up true for anything. Einion ap Tewdwr came upon me where I lay curled among the roots of a massive oak. I braced for the grab, hard to the ground can’t struggle, but he merely leaned down and whispered in my ear.
We killed them both and seized all the beasts.
It was enough. The bulk of him, the creak of leather armor and the faint whiff of sweat on sweat. It was enough to break me, and I followed him back without a word, hobbling hard because I would not take his arm.
Einion had not made the brutes let me up for my own sake while Owain lay bleeding, but a fighting man should have realized how saving someone’s life binds you together in a way that goes deeper than blood.
Mayhap he did not think. Mayhap he only acted.
The sky is almost pink when we arrive at the Waterford wharves. The graybeard brings Nest and me to a ship, and the t
hree of us board and move to the rear. All that’s left is to wait for the tide.
Around us, the sailors prepare for the voyage. Slowly it occurs to me that this is really happening. We are getting clear. Soon I’ll see the little ones again. They will be safe and whole. There’ll be games of border raids. Whole afternoons to play at ball. Cozy evenings perfect for my mother’s stories. William and David and Not Miv were never supposed to love me, but they do.
This is how you make a place. This and no other way.
We’ve just cast off when there’s a clamor on the wharves and the sailors stop their sail hauling and oar wrangling to shout at the gangers who are flagging them down. After a scuffle with ropes and a scrape and a thud, another passenger climbs aboard, appearing over the side of the ship hand over hand.
Oh, Jesus wept. It’s Rhys.
I pull my hood sharp across my face and watch him sidelong as he scans the deck. He’s come to bring us back. Einion penteulu wasn’t as drunk as Nest thought. Owain must know everything, including the fact that his rucksack has been emptied of valuables and there can be but one culprit.
Nest nudges me and mutters in a gruff boyish voice, “Eyes down.”
The ship takes on that drop-sway feeling that only comes from being on water with nothing below but a few planks of wood and the breath of the saints. The wharf creeps past in slow, maddening handswidths.
Hurry. For God’s sake.
A sailor approaches Rhys and gestures to the back of the ship. Rhys shakes his head and steps around the sailor toward some piled cargo. The sailor shoves him toward the rear, and Rhys staggers, then falls into a fighting crouch and garbles something in bad Norse-Irish about a king’s son and missing girls.
The oars plash beneath us.
Faster. Please.
Two more sailors appear. I will Rhys to stand down. To rethink what he means to do. He’s here at Owain’s bidding, but that doesn’t mean I want to watch this crew beat the stuffing out of him, even if it takes long enough for wind and tide and oars to put some water between the ship and the wharf.
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