I can’t breathe. Owain’s coming home. It’s not enough time. I’m not ready.
“You don’t want him to present himself before you?” Rhys asks.
“I’m to have no contact with my errant son. According to the English king, it’s a condition of his gracious recognition that what’s mine is actually mine.” When Cadwgan’s voice goes mocking like that, it’s eerie how much he sounds like Owain.
Rhys nods slowly. “We hadn’t heard you’d come to terms with the English king. Only that Madog was struggling to hold Powys and Ceredigion in a way that satisfied him.”
“Madog promised peaceful governance. There’s no kind of peace in either of those places. That kind of peace takes a king, and Madog is not a king.” Cadwgan smiles faintly. “Henry of the English has lost patience with him and agreed to restore to me my lands — as if they’re his to grant — if I cough up a bribe and hand over a hostage and swear to cut ties with Owain.”
“You’re not really, are you?” Rhys looks alarmed.
Cadwgan scoffs. “Lad, my son can be a blowhard wantwit, but he’s my son, and if I cut him off, it won’t be because the English king demands it of me. So Owain is not returning from Ireland because I bid him. He’s coming back because his feckless cousin plundered a kingdom that will one day be his, and taking it from Madog means he will have a birthright once more. For no reason should Owain come to Ceredigion or so much as send a runner to me there till this all dies down.” He lifts his brows. “Is that clear?”
“It is, my lord.”
I grip the nearest wall. Owain will be in Powys soon. I thought to have more time. Earn some coin. Steal some food. Anything that would help me get to Nest and the little ones.
“Is Nest still with him?” Cadwgan growls.
“No. She’s back with her husband.”
“That’s something, at least,” he says with a sigh. “Not that it’ll help me smooth things over, but at least my blowhard wantwit son isn’t making it worse.”
Inside the hall, a girl starts screaming, then there’s the crash of things falling to the floor. I slide behind the corner of the stable, and Rhys fumbles for a sword long since taken off him, but Cadwgan muffles a groan. Isabel de Say appears at the door. Her veil is slipping and her scowl is murderous. She stalks outside like a beast on the hunt, muttering, “Where is he, where’s the son of a — there you are! I’ll kill you with my bare hands, you filthy excuse for a man!”
She flies at Cadwgan, but he catches her wrists and holds them to her sides firmly yet without violence. Her mouth is free, though, and she pours abuse on him in three languages that would impress even the lads of Owain’s warband. If Isabel is suffering, I’m not exactly sorry for it, but I’ve called Cadwgan those names in my head enough times that someone shouting them makes me smile.
“Sweeting, you knew it was coming,” Cadwgan says. “I thought it would be easier this way.”
“Easier?” Isabel struggles free and stomps away several paces. “You’re a bigger bastard than I reckoned if you thought as much. All that silver wasn’t enough. You gave my little Henry as a hostage to the king and sent him away all thief-in-the-night so I couldn’t even say farewell. That’s easier than what?”
I stop smiling. At least she didn’t have to listen to wailing getting fainter, but she also didn’t get a chance to tell him she’d be back.
“Our little Henry,” Cadwgan replies patiently. “A hostage was part of the terms. It’s why we can return to Ceredigion now.”
“You have other sons. Why Henry?”
“I’m married to you. The English set a lot of store by such things. They’d not consider one of my other sons as valuable.” Cadwgan raises an eyebrow. “Besides, why do you think I didn’t object to naming him Henry?”
Isabel hisses.
“No harm will come to him. Henry’s got his nurse and that whipping top he loves. He’s going to the royal court of England, for Christ’s sake. He’s in more danger here than there! And if all goes well, he could be back by next summer. That’s hardly any time at all.”
“Ugh, I cannot even stand to look at you!”
“Sweeting, be reas —”
But she’s gone, turned on her heel and stomping toward the stable while wrenching her veil over her ears. I crouch farther around the corner as Isabel moves through the doorway, muttering a low stream of bad words in French. At the hall door, Cadwgan hands Rhys a purse, aims him toward the kitchen, then disappears inside.
The moment Cadwgan is gone, Isabel storms out of the stable, towing a horse by the bridle. She bellows a name, and a burly warbander rises wearily from an upturned bucket. Still cursing, Isabel flings the reins at the warbander and tries to haul herself onto the horse’s back without the mounting block.
“We’re leaving?” the warbander asks. “What about your things, my lady?”
“I have everything I need at Worthen,” Isabel snaps. “Hurry up. Let’s see how that filthy wretch likes someone leaving without the benefit of a farewell.”
I haven’t had a decent meal since Ireland. My last mouthful of travel bread was yesterday night, and my feet haven’t blister-keened this much since fleeing ahead of Madog ap Rhirid’s warband all those months ago. Now that Rhys has passage money, we’ll be on our way to the coast this very day. I’ll be standing before Owain, who I robbed and left saintless, before a fortnight is out.
Isabel is growling away from Cadwgan instead of feasting in the hall at his right hand. If Nest could bring herself to trust me, I must take a chance on Isabel de Say. I step into the yard and call, “My lady, wait!”
A flicker of disgust passes over her face, but it’s fleeting, like she doesn’t even have the will to hate me. “What? What do you want?”
Isabel looks hagridden, cheeks flushed and plaits tatty beneath her hood. She is nowhere near the girl with the jewel-blue eyes and cold hands who dislodged Cadwgan’s grip from my arm at Aberaeron.
“I heard,” I reply quietly. “About Henry. I’m sorry. It was a right bastard thing for Cadwgan to do. You must be wrecked.”
“What do you know of it?”
I cough a bitter laugh. “If you’re looking for a way to get back at him, I’ve got one.”
In an instant she’s attentive, like a dog when you show it meat.
“You’re going to your hunting lodge, are you not? Worthen? Let me come with you as your guest. Once Cadwgan learns of it, he’ll be wroth as ten baited bears, but there’ll be nothing he can do. Not when you’re at Worthen.”
Isabel squints at me. I hold my breath. Sway on my feet.
Then she smiles, hard and catlike. “Yes. He wants you nowhere near me. He’d hate it. So by all means yes. You are most welcome.”
Worthen this time of year will be filling up with new onions and leeks from the garden and big round cheeses and likely some mutton. Isabel can’t watch my every move. I’ll pass a day there. Perhaps two. When she no longer finds it amusing to have me around, I will be rested and healthy. I’ll raid her larder and head straight for Dyfed where Nest and the little ones are waiting.
“May I say farewell?” I gesture at Rhys standing in the shadow of the hall door, poking through a shine of silver in his palm.
Isabel nods absently as she fusses with a bulky parcel that a servant is strapping behind her saddle. As I near, Rhys is miserably dragging a finger through the coins.
“It’s not enough for us both,” he murmurs.
Betimes Rhys is a warbander, lean and fierce and capable. Other times he’s a wide-eyed boy of four and ten. “Cadwgan means for you to go alone. I’m to go to Worthen with Isabel. I’ll be safer there. Away from all those sailors.”
Rhys shudders. He glances at Isabel and her burly warbander. He bites his lip.
“Saint Elen looks to Owain,” I go on softly. “Why else would Isabel of all people invite me into her home?”
“Very well.” Rhys closes a fist around the silver and tight-wraps it into the purse. “Please be careful.
Owain can’t lose you.”
I nod. Rhys hovers a hand to clap me on the back warband-style, but ducks his head and follows the steward who’s been standing by. The steward speaks of ale and bread as he leads Rhys inside.
Isabel is waiting by the gate, glancing impatiently at the hall door every other moment. We’re soon into a greenwood full of birdsong and wind-rustle and fresh dewy undergrowth. I’m not fooled, though. Terms or not, chances are good there are still warbands on the prowl who’d love to put their hands on anything worth something to Owain ap Cadwgan.
I’ll ask at steadings till I fumble my way to Dyfed. From there, finding Nest should be as simple as pleading an audience at the first thing with a high, sturdy wall. I’ll beg what I can and steal what I have to. By the time Owain’s in Wales once more, I’ll be in a place he’ll want to think twice and thrice about raiding to get me back.
Besides, he’ll have a kingdom to retake.
I close my eyes and think to pray to Saint Elen, but instead I’m whispering my promise aloud to the birds and sunshine, to the little ones wherever they are.
I’ll come back. I’ll always come back.
ORDINARY LADIES WOULD SIT THEMSELVES ON THE hearth bench when they got home, or ask for a mug of ale, or change into clean clothes, or hug a favorite servant or pet a joyful dog.
Isabel orders the linens stripped off the bed and burned.
She stands before the gathered servants with her boots still muddy from the journey, two steps past Worthen’s threshold and stabbing her finger at them like a firebrand. The servants trade wide-eyed looks. As two of them edge toward the bed, Isabel demands that every last thing Cadwgan might have touched be scrubbed with lye, from the armrests of the big chair at the high table down to the supper spoons. She hollers at the steward when he refuses to burn the linens, and she’s only barely swayed by the argument that it’s the only set in the house.
Worthen is Isabel’s, part of her dower share. Owain explained the Norman custom to me once while telling me he didn’t want his hellcat stepmother’s patch of border dirt anyway. When Cadwgan dies, Worthen will not pass with the rest of his lands to his sons. It will always belong to Isabel. It was her father’s, and now it’s hers and only hers.
“Very well. Fine. But scrub those linens with lye like the rest.” Isabel drags a wrist over her eyes. “I don’t care if they won’t be dry by sundown! I’d rather sleep on the floor! And I want to know if he dares set foot in the courtyard.”
The steward looks pained, but mumbles, “Yes, m’lady,” and departs.
“I’ll burn something of his,” Isabel mutters. “Come.”
She drags me across the hall to a curtained alcove. Servants are carrying away the linens and piling the bedclothes on a rack for airing. Isabel marches to a coffer and swears when she can’t pry the lock. She kicks it and staggers back clutching her toe, cursing like a dockside ganger. Then she slumps on her heels, wiping her eyes, trembling.
That first year, I was never far from vengeance. I thought of the knife nearly every day. I could do it. It wasn’t like I’d never killed a man.
“What else does he love?” I ask. “That’s not locked up?”
Isabel shields her face with her elbow. “Don’t look at me.”
“I’m not.” Seeing Isabel weeping and thwarted should make me smile, but she’s alone here in this place that’s only hers. “I’m asking what Cadwgan loves that you can get to. So you can ruin that instead.”
She snorts. “His warband. His dogs. His sword.”
In Ireland I spent months playacting as Owain’s wife. I wore undergarments and shoes and spun with the daughter of the house and sat at Owain’s right hand and delighted in how ordinary it felt. Before me is Isabel de Say, the wife of Cadwgan ap Bleddyn, who is king of Powys and lord of Ceredigion. Her place secure, for all the good it does her. She is not just any wife, and even her child isn’t safe. There are locked chests in this house that should be hers alone.
It would be no different for any proper wife of Owain ap Cadwgan.
“His wine.” Isabel’s head bobs up. “There was a cask of claret left over from when His Grace King Henry was here. The good wine that costs a fortune. You-know-who says he’s saving it for the next time he has to eat crow before an enemy. It’s hidden in the kitchen.”
I nod. It’ll gush like a bleeding wound and make purple mud in the courtyard.
“We’re going to roll that barrel into the hall.” Isabel sits up straighter and grins. It’s the same smile she aimed at me at Aberaeron, but this time it seems cozy and sly, like Margred planning a birthday surprise. “We’ll drink every drop.”
The steward protests, then forbids. Isabel elbows past him with two mugs and taps the cask herself with a meat knife. She fills them, then stations a big kettle beneath the burbling leak. One mug she shoves at me. The other she takes a big drink from while the steward goes twitchy and his color rises.
“I’ve got witnesses,” he mutters, and all but flies away. Isabel giggles and takes another drink, and she gives me such a look that I cautiously do the same. The wine is undiluted, and I nearly sputter. I’ve just drunk the cost of a whole summer’s worth of some poor man’s labor in one swallow.
Isabel pulls me toward the big bed in the corner, now stripped down to the fat straw-stuffed pallet that perches upon zigs and zags of tightly strung hemp. She climbs up and looks at me expectantly.
I hesitate. I’m here to steal, not comb Isabel’s hair and gossip.
The bed whispers promises. Every muscle in my body keens. Ireland feels years away, and I can barely remember the last time I slept well. Passing one night in some kind of comfort will not undo my plan. Besides, it will be easier to pilfer if Isabel trusts me and does not suspect till it’s too late.
I climb up after her. Isabel pulls the curtains closed, and we’re plunged into a gauzy darkness. It would be like the maidens’ quarters if I trusted her at all. She slides till her back is against the wall, holding her mug aloft to keep from sloshing. I fold my legs and take a small drink. It’s like the high king’s wine. Strong and rich, so good there’s no grit on your teeth.
“Do you think you-know-who has worked it out by now?” Isabel takes a hearty swig. “That you left with me? That you’re my guest?”
I shrug. I don’t tell her that Cadwgan likely had no idea I’d come with Rhys. Cadwgan has been looking for a way to be rid of me since the first time Owain put an arm around my waist and explained why I was holding his elbow and would be needing a place at table. Had Cadwgan seen me in the courtyard, Owain far away in Ireland, I doubt I’d have left that border fort alive.
“Likely he’s more worried about Powys and Owain returning and what Madog will do once he learns of the English king’s terms.” At her scowl, I hurry to add, “But don’t worry. Your husband will be good and angry when he does finally learn of it.”
“Owain ap Cadwgan.” Isabel spits it like a curse and takes another long drink. “I’d like to slap him senseless. Had he just gone to war, none of this would have happened and Henry would still be with me.”
She peers at me like I’ll defend him. Like she wants me to so she can go on at length what a bastard he is. But I know something of vengeance, and if you let it move through you and keep it from settling in your quietest places, over time it will trickle away. There is nothing to defend here. Owain did not have to abduct Nest, much less the little ones. He could have sent them back when his father bid him. He definitely did not have to humiliate her again and again and make them all suffer at every chance. Another man might have made vengeance a weapon, sharp and hungry, and gathered a warband about him, but Owain ap Cadwgan was not content with ordinary vengeance. His was a vengeance to preside over. One that would make allies and enemies alike as wary of crossing him as they were his father.
I drain half the mug and let it burn all the way down.
“I wager a whole shilling that Owain did all this on purpose,” Isabel says. “He’d have my s
on stay a hostage forever.”
Llywelyn penteulu, his neck open to the sky. His harsh, shallow gasping. Owain biting his knuckles, touching the scar beneath his arm like it burned.
“It’s got nothing to do with your baby.” I upend my mug again.
The world is beginning to blur at the edges, and my whole body feels full of honeybees calmly lulling with warm flowers and gentle buzzing. It’s getting easier not to think about Owain. To let the bees drown him out.
Isabel’s lip trembles. “Henry still smells like milk. He can say Mama now. He has such tiny little feet, and you should see the way he rushes over squealing when he sees me . . .”
Her voice gets quiet and sweet and loses those sharp Norman angles and her hair gets darker and she becomes Rhael. Rhael who once snuggled next to me on our pallet in the steading, where we’d whisper about whether lambs could be taught to count and whose hair was shinier and if there’d be ginger cake for May Eve again this year.
“Owain saw an opportunity.” I won’t think how Nest limped into the courtyard that first day barefoot and in her nightgown. “The rest of it? Madog ap Rhirid invading Powys because he was lured by Gerald’s bounty? All those kinsmen who backed him? That was a gut-punch.”
Rhael snickers and she becomes Isabel again, and I down another fierce swallow of wine because mayhap it’ll bring my sister back, even for a moment.
“My fool husband got those men to help Madog,” Isabel says over the rim of her mug. “It’s not like that came cheap, either.”
I choke on my wine. “It’s true? Cadwgan ap Bleddyn paid his own kinsmen to support Madog’s invasion? But Madog holds Powys now while Cadwgan is holed up on your lands!”
“Yes. But no. Madog held Powys and Ceredigion because he was permitted to. You-know-who let it happen and convinced his kinsmen to keep Madog from making too big a mess of it. Now Madog is a breath from losing both. He promised His Grace the king that there would be peace and law. Instead every vale is crawling with warbands.” Isabel giggles and pokes me with her toe. “Can’t imagine who might be behind such disorder. Can you?”
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