The captain approaches and speaks to Rhys in broken Welsh. “Passengers to the stern.”
“Two girls,” Rhys says impatiently. “Are they on board? If they are, you’ll have to turn around. It’s life and death.”
The captain laughs and gestures to Nest and me and the graybeard. Nest squeezes my hand. Her face is stone. The graybeard frowns at the commotion but makes no move.
Rhys squares up. His hair is close-cropped like Einion penteulu’s now, and without it to hide behind, he is nowhere near the boy who worried over Normans or thought to protest minding me. “Turn around. At the word of a king’s son.”
“The tide obeys no man’s son.” The captain folds thick brown arms. He’s broad like a barrel and missing half an ear. “It’s running now, and I’m for Wales. Passengers to the stern. Or overboard. Take your choice.”
Rhys groans low at the wharf growing smaller against Waterford. He glances at the small rowboat overturned near the mast, then at the sailors keeping a wary eye on it and him. At length he curses and sways toward us, stepping around cargo and falling over ropes.
The graybeard drops a hand to his knife-hilt, but Nest says to Rhys in a calm, cheerful voice, “You’re too late, lad. We’ve slipped loose of the tether by fair means. Go take a seat before this man hurts you badly.” Rhys’s face gets redder by the moment, and Nest goes on, still light and friendly. “Do please have a care how you speak to us. This man may not understand what we’re saying, but he’ll gut you like a fish should he think you mean us harm.”
“I’m more than willing to leave you to him.” Rhys matches Nest’s pleasant tone. “She’s the one I was sent to fetch back.” He twitches his fingers at me. Like he might to a reluctant hound.
I link arms with Nest.
“Oh, Christ Jesus. You cannot be here willingly. No.” Rhys’s voice goes faint. “I didn’t believe him. Einion penteulu thinks very little of you. I was sure someone meant Owain harm. Make him vulnerable, then . . .”
I cough a quiet laugh. Right. God forbid I go missing and Owain’s the one to worry about.
“Your loyalty speaks well of you,” Nest says to Rhys, “but you’d best steel your guts to stand before Owain ap Cadwgan with the word that he’ll have to do without a saint now.”
“Oh no, I’ll not.” Rhys replies, but he only speaks to me. “You’re going back to Owain. He will not die because of you. I will not have it.”
Nest folds her arms. “I don’t give half a damn what you’ll have. I do give half a damn what Elen will have. So know this. When we land, my husband will be waiting. Elen and I will go with him. You will cheerfully bid us good health, or I swear before every last one of the saints you will not live to draw your next ten breaths, much less return to Owain ap Cadwgan with this news.”
“We’ll see,” Rhys says quietly, and he nods to the graybeard and takes a seat opposite us. The graybeard grunts and makes a show of toying with his weapon. He’s taking no chances, and I’m glad for it.
Rhys catches my eye and makes the field gesture for betrayed, then stabs a finger toward Ireland growing small and dark in the distance. I look away, not from shame like he’d have it, but to his arm that I healed, and I grit my teeth against tears that make no sense. Betrayed. Rhys has been nearly a year in Owain’s warband. More than enough time to watch and learn, to listen to men he’s desperate to earn a place among. To take in the playact as I spun it out. Of course he thinks I’ve betrayed Owain. It’s that simple to him.
My hands want to make betrayed back at Rhys, but I didn’t heal his wound so he’d owe me something. I hoped for belief and I got it. Expecting anything else from the lads will leave me disappointed every time. Even one so young he has no need of a razor, who’s been given the chance to win his spurs by fetching me back.
Even one who still has the use of both arms because of me.
I hope for fair winds to speed us home. Once we land, I will only ever face forward. If Saint Elen truly has been looking to Owain all these years, she might keep at it for reasons beyond my understanding. If she hasn’t, he’s no worse off than he was the moment ere he kicked in my door.
I gesture stand down, and Rhys snorts and turns away. One of us is going to be left high and dry at the end of this voyage, and I’ve come too far for it to be me.
RHYS STAYS CLOSE. THE SHIP IS THIRTY PACES LONG, and he can hardly sit elsewhere, but it’s clear he does not mean to return to Owain empty-handed. Rhys is broader now, less stringy, but he must know he alone is no match for whatever force Gerald of Windsor will bring to the wharf.
That means he has a different plan.
We awaken one morning to find the ship riding the wind toward a smudge of town, pushed by the morning tide. The cog anchors when it’s still a ways offshore, and sailors ready the rowboat. Nest starts toward it, but the graybeard tells her to wait. She fidgets and stands at the rail as sailors lower the boat and the oarsman rows it toward town.
Nest shades her eyes with one hand, but nothing’s out of the ordinary on the wharves. Just seabirds and masts and gangers at their labor.
Then a crowd beings to gather. Men and horses. Enough to make a warband.
After a long while, the rowboat pulls back across the harbor. The sailor hauls himself on board, tells the captain that everything is in order, and hands the graybeard a heavy leather purse. The graybeard peers inside, then throws three handfuls of silver pennies into a strongbox held out by the captain’s penteulu.
Gerald’s coin is real. He’s on the wharf. Soon I’ll be with them again. Warm and squirmy, smelling of porridge and soap.
The graybeard points at Nest, then the rowboat. She all but dances toward it, but when I move to follow, a redheaded sailor puts himself in my path and speaks to me too fast. His tone is mild, friendly even, but Nest whirls to face the graybeard with huge, startled eyes.
“H-he’s wrong,” she stammers, but in her panic she speaks in Welsh. “My husband will pay for us both.”
The graybeard grabs her arm and marches her toward the rope ladder. Nest struggles, arguing in haphazard Norse-Irish, but he pays no mind. She swivels and cries, “Elen. Elen!”
I try to rush toward her, but the sailor blocks me — this way, that way — and his friendly smile takes on an edge of warning. Her protests turn plea as her windblown golden head disappears over the side, hand over hand down the ladder. The last thing I hear before the crush of water drowns her voice is I’m sorry.
Gerald of Windsor must have refused to pay my passage. After all I did for his children, for him to serve me this way. He deserves the vengeance Owain will visit on him, and that day cannot come soon enough.
Given half a chance, I might end him myself.
There’s a scuffle and a splash. The rowboat glides across the harbor toward shore with a sailor at the oars and the graybeard and Nest at the bow. She’s hooded now, her hands pressed to her face.
Rhys smiles, the bastard, smiles like he’s won. He even lifts a cheerful hand to wave Nest on her way.
“Passage,” the captain says to Rhys in his clunky Welsh, and the penteulu sailor appears with the open strongbox.
Rhys reaches beneath his cloak, then begins frantically patting his midsection. “My purse. It’s gone. One of you stole my purse!”
“I’ve no idea what you’re speaking of,” the captain replies in a voice of honey. “You must have forgotten it. Why else would you demand I turn around?”
Rhys goes ashen. His hands fall still. “God rot you.”
“What, no silver?” The captain smiles. “Then we’ll get our price on the Dublin slave docks.”
Rhys darts a glance toward the side of the ship, and that’s when they seize him. He struggles and bawls, “God damn every last man of you thieves!”
A heavy presence appears at my elbow. It’s the captain, and he leans tree-bough arms against the rail and squints at the harbor. It takes all my will, but I keep from shrinking from him, even though big Norse-Irish sailors are binding
Rhys’s wrists and I am very, very afraid.
“Now then,” the captain says, “about your passage.”
“G-Gerald of Windsor should have paid you.”
“He did not know you. He had not even heard your name.”
I lick my lips. “His wife. She arranged it.”
“The Englishman barely had the silver to pay her way,” the captain replies. “Once the price went up.”
Once the price went up. Gerald of Windsor didn’t betray me.
“So now you owe me for your passage.” The captain speaks to the harbor, his posture easy. He has no need to corner me. This is a ship thirty paces long. I’ve nowhere to go. “Or it’ll be the slave docks for you as well.”
“I can pay.” I pull Owain’s purse from where it hangs beneath my armpit. I grip it hard so there’s no trembling. “Part now, and part when I’m on shore.”
The captain holds out a weathered brown hand, and I fill it with silver. As I pour, I sneak glances at the wharves. A number of horses cluster nearby, spilling down the rickety waterside lane. That’s them. Gerald of Windsor is collecting Nest right now. She’ll be telling him there’s been a mistake. That somehow he must put together coin enough to get me off this ship.
The rowboat is back, and the sailor appears on deck. The captain tilts my coins, nods, and gestures to the ladder.
Rhys writhes and curses while sailors tether him to the mast. One slams a meaty fist into his jaw, and he slumps against the ropes. His warband hardness is gone, and he’s all boy now, bone-scared and greensick.
Mayhap this is what Einion ap Tewdwr saw when he shoved them clear of me one by one. All hardness gone. Empty hands.
“Him too.” I drag my eyes away from the wharves and point at Rhys. “I’ll cover his passage. Let him go.”
The captain laughs. “Your silver pays for you. Now get in the boat before I change my mind.”
“I’ll give you a ring for him.”
“Let’s see it.”
I fling my rucksack off my shoulder, reach down to the bottom, and pull out Owain’s heavy gold ring. I’m cold, down to my vitals, and I can’t stop shaking.
The captain takes the ring with one hand, and with the other jerks my rucksack out of my grip and scatters the contents across the deck. Owain’s dagger and the silver torc for Cadwgan and the bracelets and necklets Owain’s given me over the years and every stitch of clothing not this moment on my back — all of it flies over the planks for God and man to see.
“The lot will satisfy me, honeycomb,” the captain says as the penteulu sailor collects the valuables into the strongbox. “Hope he’s worth it.”
The sailors cut the ropes and shove Rhys toward me. He comes rubbing both wrists, pulling in deep shuddery breaths, and tries to shake hair over his eyes that isn’t there anymore, so all he can do is shove past me toward the ladder. I’m right behind him. I don’t even pick up my clothes. I fumble blindly down slippery hempen rungs as fast as I dare and try not to think on the view I must be giving the oarsman as my skirts bell out in the sharp breeze.
The moment my backside hits the makeshift seat, I cry, “Go! Hurry!”
The oarsman glances at Rhys crouching sullenly in the bow, then up at his captain, who waves us clear. He grins at me, up and down and winky, then pushes off the cog with one dripping oar, turns us, and rows through the choppy harbor.
Up on deck I could see the wharves and horses fine, but down here it’s just a wash of color, even if I half rise from my seat and peer hard across the glittering bay. Someone is sure to know where they’ve taken lodging. Perhaps Gerald left a man on the wharf to meet me in case I worked out a way to get off the ship myself.
I’m still trembling. Still cold.
The rowboat pulls up to a wharf chockablock with sailors calling to one another in a dozen languages. There are men with skin that’s brown like rich mahogany, and men whose pale faces have burned a peeling red. Nest is nowhere in sight. Neither is Gerald of Windsor. Not a single horse or waiting retainer. Just a chaos of torn mud and manure.
Rhys is first out of the rowboat and halfway up the wharf before it’s even tethered. I climb onto the planks after him, hand the second half of the passage money to the oarsman, then ask, “The other girl. This wharf?”
“Her man had horses waiting in the road.” The sailor holds his hands like reins galloping, then points away at the distant hills.
Of course Gerald of Windsor would not want to spend one moment outside of sturdy walls once he got his wife back. He might have even suspected treachery after being fleeced by the graybeard, or the captain, or both. I blink back tears as I thank the oarsman. He nods, waves, and rows back toward the cog while I lean against a damp post and shiver.
Rhys is pacing. Talking to himself in a low mutter. “This is bad. It’ll be se’ennights till she’s back with Owain. No passage money. Nothing to trade.”
Not moments ago, we both nearly landed on the Dublin slave docks. Now Rhys is on about hauling me back to Owain as if nothing happened. He could at least thank me for what I did. Knowing what it cost. Knowing what would have happened had I done nothing.
“My lord Cadwgan. I’ll beg some coin of him. There’s nothing else to do, and he may not like it. It has to work, though. Please let it work.”
One side of Rhys’s face is screaming red, and his eye will be purple by morning. His cloak is firmly cinched, and not just against the wind.
Oh. I know what this is. These are echoes talking. This is Rhys fighting ghosts of the unspeakable, trying to make things ordinary. He stood alone. No armed brothers with him who would have stepped up with drawn steel, odds be damned. Just a girl who had every reason to stand by and let the sailors finish their work.
I know something of that. I may not be in Owain’s teulu, but I have looked unspeakable right in the eye.
Rhys is rubbing his thumbnail. The same motion as praying with a paternoster had it not been taken off him by the sailors. “Saint Elen is looking to Owain. She must be. Nothing less would keep the Normans from taking her. For making it so I could bring her back to him.”
I close my eyes.
“You never said it.” Rhys has fallen still. Arms crossed over his belly. Blocking the road.
He’s not looking at me, but I know he wants an answer, so I reply, “Never said what?”
“That you left of your own choosing. She said you did.” Rhys peers at me hopefully, head tilted as if he still had stringy curls to hide behind. “Did you?”
I cannot outrun Rhys. I can’t overpower him. I definitely can’t convince him to help me find Nest.
At a royal residence, I’ll be safe while I catch my breath. Owain is forbidden to come home till Cadwgan sends for him. That could be tomorrow. It could be two years from now. The last we heard, Madog ap Rhirid held all of what was once Cadwgan’s with the blessing of the English king, and Cadwgan was in the wind pulling strings and calling in favors. Owain still has a price on his head that the English king would very much like to redeem. Owain coming back, reminding everyone why this happened at all, would only make things worse.
“Can we just walk? Away from here?” I gesture at the path leading out of the village. “Please?”
“You must stay close. I promised I’d find you. Keep you safe.” Rhys keeps rubbing his thumbnail. “Owain needs you with him. He’s got enough to worry about. He heard that his kinsmen who backed Madog ap Rhirid’s invasion did it because Cadwgan paid them to. That Cadwgan wanted to teach Owain a lesson, to force him to give Nest back and make him cool his heels in exile. Make him more obedient. Humble him.”
That story has the sound of someone stirring the pot. It can’t be true. Cadwgan ap Bleddyn would never take such a risk with his kingdom. But whether it’s true won’t matter if it’s what Owain believes.
“I’ll not run away.” I’m not sure I can. Not shivering like I am.
“Good. We must hurry.”
It hadn’t been quite a threemonth the first time I
thought to flee Owain ap Cadwgan. I wasn’t running anywhere, though. Just away. So when Einion ap Tewdwr broke me with that single line and brought me back, at least I was going somewhere.
This time, I will think it through. This time, I will have a plan.
SOMETHING IS STRANGE ABOUT THE FORT RHYS leads me toward. It seems ordinary enough — sturdy wooden wall, set on a hill — but it’s completely unspoiled. There are no piles of burned timber. No scaffolding holding up new buildings. Then sentries call to us in French, and of a sudden I realize why I don’t recognize this fort and where we must be. Powys is in the hands of Madog ap Rhirid, who chased Owain over the sea, and Heaven only knows what’s befallen Ceredigion. This must be the land on the border with England that Isabel brought Cadwgan in marriage.
Quite possibly the only land still held by the house of Bleddyn. Little wonder Rhys made his way directly here.
Rhys speaks French surprisingly well, and we’re soon through the gate. He plows straight toward the hall, but a happy baby squeal brings my head around like a string toy. A matronly woman is holding little Henry ap Cadwgan on her hip near the rain barrel. She’s dressed for traveling and has a rucksack over her shoulder. For the longest moment, I’m taken by how big Henry has gotten. I’m still looking for the unsteady little boy clinging to his nurse’s forefingers at Aberaeron. He’s leaner and taller, and someone trimmed away the baby curls that once trailed down his neck. Two warbanders pause to speak with Henry’s nurse, then they fall into step beside her, and the four of them leave the fort.
“. . . from Ireland,” Cadwgan is saying as he steps out of the hall, Rhys at his heels like a puppy. “Madog took the bait. I don’t think he even realized his allies were keeping him on a leash. He had his fun playing king, but time has come for boys to go home and men to step into the field.”
“Your son will be glad to hear it, my lord.” Rhys can’t hide his grin. “He’s been champing at the bit to come home since he set foot there.”
“Take a meal and collect yourself, then be on board whatever next sails with the tide,” Cadwgan says. “Tell Owain to go directly to Powys. My steward at Llyssun will be expecting him.”
Spindle and Dagger Page 14