Spindle and Dagger

by J. Anderson Coats

  There’s a cry, a jabbering in French that’s pure panic.

  Men run and shout through the castle yard. There’s no well yet, no water, so they work frantically to pull down buildings near the stable with long hooks. They mean to limit the damage, but sparks leap from the blaze and catch the timbers and fall into cloaks and hair. Horses smell the smoke and start grunting and screaming, fighting to break free and run.

  Rhael said not to be afraid. I am not afraid. I am bloody well angry.

  There’s a clatter at the gate. Owain and the lads have freed themselves, and now they’re nose to nose with the porter, who’s standing before the latch-bar with a spear, but he’s also outnumbered five to one, and his cries for help are lost amid cries of fire. Einion penteulu pretends to grab at the weapon while Rhys kicks out the porter’s legs from behind. Morgan and Llywarch fall on the poor wretch with heels and fists while Owain shoulders open the gate.

  And he is gone.

  All of it is gone. The playact. Saint Elen. Burned, the lot of it, just like the castle works. My eyes sting a little, but mostly I feel light, like the smoke drifting skyward and hazing out the sun.

  None of the Normans pay me a bit of mind as I slip out the gate. They are trying to save something that was never meant to stand.

  I mean to put the sun at my right and walk south, but the day catches up with me and I find an old log deep in the greenwood and sink down.

  Deep breaths in. I burned a half-built Norman castle unlawfully standing on Cadwgan’s territory.

  Long breaths out. Owain will come after me. He will not let this lie.

  In. Dyfed can’t be far if we’re near enough to the border for Clare to risk raising a castle.

  Out. I must find Gerald of Windsor before —

  There’s a riffle of brush so quiet I only hear it because I know to listen. I’m on my feet, and it’s Rhys who emerges first, his whole face anxious. Einion penteulu is a step behind, coughing into his sleeve. They are five, and there are no more columns. They travel in a pack now, like wolves.

  Owain steps toward me, but he’s not carrying a blade. Perhaps he intends to kill me with his bare hands. I draw my meat knife. If I’ve bought my liberty with betrayal, I can’t act in half measures.

  “Clever, sweeting,” Owain says cheerfully, and with two small motions my knife is out of my hand and in his. “Clare believed you completely. Hellfire, even I did for a moment there! I thought I was a dead man, but Saint Elen saw me through yet again.”

  I blink. Not sure I heard true.

  He’s playing with my blade, rolling it down his hand and catching it midfall, balancing it tip-down on his finger. Like a toy I might hand to Margred.

  I snatch it back and grip it tight enough to sting.

  Owain frowns, then reaches an arm toward my waist. I step away from him. His good cheer falters, and he asks, “What is this?”

  Einion penteulu looks up sharp, then draws Rhys aside and mutters in his ear. Rhys shakes his head, but when Einion stabs a finger and makes the perimeter field gesture, Rhys reluctantly slips away, looking over his shoulder every third pace.

  “Saint Elen brought me to a Norman enemy,” Owain goes on warily, “and she gave me victory and kept me from harm like she always has. Did she not?”

  The patter rises to save me. It tells me to put away the dagger. Smile big, spin out the falsehoods, let him slide an arm around my hips and plant a noisy kiss on my cheek. Wear my spoils, put on my show, spread my legs. Be part and parcel of whatever full measure of vengeance he thinks to carry out. Follow after like a good little pet. See to it that I’m doing all the things he’s decided make a place for me with him so no one pays much attention to what he’s doing.

  “No,” I say, quiet but steady. “No, she didn’t.”

  Einion penteulu moves to Owain’s shoulder. Gestures to the other lads to step back and stand ready.

  “I beg your pardon?” Owain asks in a low voice.

  The patter wants to save me, but there’ll be no saving myself that way. Nest will save me. The little ones, their giggles and chatter. A family will save me. One I’ve made myself, with my own hands. I clear my throat and repeat, “No, Saint Elen did nothing.”

  “You — you were lying to Clare.” Owain’s voice takes on an edge I’ve never heard. “So Saint Elen could get us clear enough to burn the castle and escape.”

  I grip my knife. I lift my chin. This will save me. This and nothing else. “No. I wasn’t lying to Clare. I’ve been lying to you. Saint Elen. All of it. I made it up. There’s never been —”

  Owain moves so quick he’s in front of me while I’m still speaking, and he belts me hard across the face and I go down. He’s roaring something, hollering, animal cries, fierce, wordless, hulking above me and primed for murder.

  I brace for it. The first blow. The final one.

  But Owain does not kill me.

  Owain doesn’t kill me because Einion penteulu has him in a choke hold, one forearm across his neck and the other grappling his swinging free fist behind his back, up, up, between his shoulder blades.

  My face hurts. My cheek, my nose leaking — oh Christ, blood.

  “Get the hell out of here!” Einion shouts at me, harsh, over Owain’s bellowing.

  Somehow I’m walking through the greenwood. My feet catch on blurs of stone and branch. I wipe away tears. Blood as well.

  Owain is cursing me now. Words grate through his hollering, threats and oaths that would ordinarily make me shiver because they’d be directed at someone he wants to hurt badly in very full measures.

  Only now that someone is me.

  His noise does not fade for a long while. I don’t stop moving even when it does. Einion penteulu has to let him loose sometime. Even Dyfed and strong walls and Gerald of Windsor might not be enough to keep me safe.

  IT’S DAYS BEFORE MY CHEEK AND JAW STOP throbbing. I’ve been among the lads long enough to know that one side of my face looks like spoiled meat. Little wonder cottagers point me toward landmarks and tell me which streams to follow, and their wives offer me oatcakes and buttermilk and hearths to sleep beside. Little wonder a steely-eyed girl of twelve summers gives me a sturdy cudgel and a blessing.

  There’s a fort called Caeriw where they think Nest might be. At the very least it’s held for Gerald of Windsor. I will stand before him for real this time. I will not take no for an answer.

  But my feet are aching. My shoulders. My heart, because I promised the little ones I’d be back, and they may have forgotten me already. It’s been so many months since last I saw them, and children’s minds flit from pretty butterflies to honey cake to the stable cat’s kittens. David may already be beyond my help, and William may see nothing but betrayal.

  If the children aren’t clamoring for me, Nest may decide there’s no place for me in her family anymore.

  The greenwood is alive with summer. Full of the rustle of wind and the flutter of birds. But there are twig-snaps that seem out of place. Crunching that sounds too much like footsteps.

  Someone is following me.

  Already I’m on edge. There’s a better than likely chance that Owain will hunt me down and gut me, and send someone to do it. I have no doubt the lads would queue up for the privilege. Until I reach Caeriw, I can’t be sure of anything.

  But after a whole day of it, I get fed up. The constant looking over my shoulder. Moving away from the thrash of branches and distant swish of feet. Whoever it is can just get it the hell over with. I pick up a smooth rock the size of a cat’s head, aim true, and fling it hard with my weight behind it into a stand of suspicious brush.

  “Owww, God rot it!” Rhys rises from the undergrowth, clutching his shoulder. “Saints, you’ve got an arm, don’t you?”

  I breathe steady against the racing of my heart. Owain taught me to throw, like he taught me to defend myself with a knife and aim my knuckles at a windpipe. Now he’s sent Rhys after me. Of course it’d be Rhys.

  “Turn back,” I
say quietly. “Tell Owain ap Cadwgan whatever you want. But I’m going to Caeriw. Nest is waiting for me.”

  Rhys rubs a hand over his newly cropped hair. “I know. Only you’ve overshot. You should be going more southward.”

  “Beg pardon. What?”

  “You need to turn. That direction.” He points awkwardly, like he’s embarrassed. “I scouted it.”

  “That racket in the greenwood? That was you? Trying to make me walk a certain way?”

  He nods, and I go limp because perhaps Rhys isn’t here to kill me. I might not have to beat his brains in with my cudgel.

  “Now that you know,” he says, “do you think I could walk with you? It’d go a lot faster.”

  “I can get there myself,” I reply through my teeth, and I grip my weapon in case he doesn’t believe me.

  “All right. But, ah . . . it wouldn’t be for you.”

  “Who’s it for, then? You?” I scowl and mimic, “I’ll take her where she needs to be.”

  Rhys has the good grace to pinken and look away.

  “It’s no secret where your loyalty lies,” I add harshly.

  “That was before. When I believed. When we all believed.” Rhys toys with his cuff. “Now you need to be far away from him.”

  “Oh, and I’m to trust you?” I make the field gesture for betrayed, showy and mocking, and shake my head in disgust.

  But Rhys runs a thumb down his forearm and murmurs, “Twice now. Once with irons. The other on the sea. Twice. Nothing in it for you either time.”

  I go quiet. There was no playact in mending his wound. Definitely none in facing down a ship’s captain. “Even if Owain didn’t send you to kill me, you must be angry about Saint Elen.”

  “We look like fools. Owain looks like a fool.”

  “Right. Right.” I snort and fold my arms. “Once again, this is all about Owain.”

  Rhys frowns, and I look up at him, up and up. The lads have all but made a warbander of him, and expecting anything else makes me the fool.

  “Nest is a highborn lady. She was . . . not treated well.” His cheeks are pinker. “You were. You always were.”

  I cough a laugh. Kick a rock. I want him to be wrong, but he is not wrong.

  “I thought a lot about it out here. What exactly you did. What happened to you. And I . . . I don’t think I have any right to be angry.” Rhys speaks to his feet. “Not when I know well what we do. The warband. What Owain does.”

  I trail to a stop. Sun dapples the path and puts a chestnut shine on Rhys’s cropped hair. He’s scanning the greenwood like he’s been taught, marking threats, always alert. He is well on his way to becoming a warbander, and he will be a good one, but if the saints are merciful, something of this boy will always remain. Rhys may be penteulu one day. Owain will listen to him. Owain will hear him.

  One day, when the echoes of this fade, Owain may come to understand.

  “Which way to Caeriw?” I ask, and when Rhys gestures, I fall into step behind him, but he drops back so we walk at elbows.

  It’s been quiet for a while when Rhys says, “I liked knowing you were around. Something about having a girl nearby . . . it’s nice. I’m going to miss you.”

  There’s a sweetness in it, an innocence, that makes me think right away of Margred. How she was all the time making promises that she had no idea would cost her someday.

  “He’s coming, isn’t he?” I ask quietly. “You may not be here to kill me, but you’ll have led Owain straight here.”

  Rhys scoffs. “Do you really think I can’t travel light enough to cover my trail?”

  “Owain can’t let me reach Nest. That would mean Gerald of Windsor gets the better of him. It means Gerald wins this little pissing contest of theirs, and Owain ap Cadwgan will cut my throat himself before he’ll let that happen.”

  “He’s not coming. Owain doesn’t even know I’m here.”

  “You — left the warband?” I swivel to face him. “You just walked away?”

  “For this? Yes.” There’s no stumble in his voice. No worry or doubt. “Einion sent me to mind the perimeter, but I heard everything. He kept saying you deserved to die, but Owain would regret it if his blade did the work. Owain was having none of it, though. He kept swearing he’d . . .” Rhys clears his throat uncomfortably. “I’ll go back once you’re safely arrived.”

  “Owain will be furious,” I reply faintly. “Einion penteulu, too.”

  Rhys nods. He starts to speak, then shrugs.

  It’s midafternoon when we step out of the greenwood and onto a well-kept dirt road that winds toward a timber castle tucked into the bend of a river. There’s a cheerful busyness about this place — children at play, geese in clusters, carts rumbling — and the height of that wall is reassuring. I step onto the path, but I haven’t gone far when I realize Rhys isn’t beside me.

  He’s back at the tree line. One hand up to shade his eyes, watching. Now I know for sure this is Caeriw. There’s no way a man of Owain’s teulu would willingly go near anything belonging to Gerald of Windsor. I retrace my steps toward Rhys and toss my cudgel as I go.

  He backs away. “I won’t take a penny, so don’t —”

  I throw my arms around Rhys and hug him fierce and sure and long, like I should have hugged Rhael instead of aiming that fire iron at the clatter in the dooryard. Then I clap him on the back warband-style and head boldly toward what I hope is a welcome.

  THEY’RE BUTCHERS. THEY’RE THE SCUM OF ENGLAND who’ve come here, to the kingdoms of Wales, because they take joy in killing, and here they can be as brutal as they want.

  Now I’m walking toward a handful of them, big Normans in coats of mail with their two-handed broadswords, who stand outside the soaring wooden gate between me and Nest and the little ones.

  They could be the same men who killed Llywelyn penteulu all those months ago in the greenwood of Powys.

  They’ll turn me away. They’ll see some tattery Welsh girl who asks to speak with the lady of the house — the wife of the castellan, the daughter of a king — and they’ll laugh in my face. But I’m not leaving till I speak to Nest. If need be, I will scream her name outside this gate till she comes out and hugs me.

  Or bids me gone.

  There are four gatemen, and I approach the one who looks the sort of man who’d sneak sweets to his grandchildren. One who might forgive my haphazard French. “Ah. Good day to you. I am come to see Nest. She is here?”

  The gatemen trade looks. I go cold all over. A beardless one is shoved toward the castle, and he goes at a run, dodging carts and water troughs. The grandda grins big enough to split his face and gestures for me to come inside. Into this Norman castle that could very well be held by that blackguard Gilbert fitz Richard de Clare for all that I understand what the gatemen are saying.

  But Rhys brought me here. He scouted it. I follow the barrel-shaped grandda inside.

  Nest stands in the doorway of what must be the hall, the young gateman at her side pointing toward me. She’s holding the baby on her hip, but her free hand is pressed over her mouth. Then she’s flying across the yard, getting her pink gown all muddy, and she flings one arm around me and holds on tight. She is sobbing things into my shoulder — forgive me couldn’t help it never meant to — and I hug her back and the baby too and she might not be Rhael but she is my sister and I forgive her.

  “I told the gatemen to keep watch for you,” Nest says through the choke in her voice. “I knew you’d find a way to get yourself clear. Thank every saint there is.”

  I can’t help but turn my eyes Heavenward and thank one saint in particular.

  Nest pulls away, and her whole face goes hard as she puts a hand to my tender eye and cheek. “That bastard,” she murmurs.

  “I told him everything.” I say it like an explanation. The only thing that could make Owain ap Cadwgan raise a hand to me.

  But she asks, “Told him what?”

  A spare handful of people know the truth. If Owain is careful or brutal, h
e might yet still control the story of Saint Elen, especially if he can kill Gilbert fitz Richard de Clare. Gerald of Windsor may or may not have ever believed that a saint looks to the safety of Owain ap Cadwgan, but if he learns it’s not true, it won’t be from me.

  “Can I hold the . . . can I hold Angharad?” I ask. “And the boys, are they here too? I . . . I hope they still want to see me.”

  Nest drops Angharad into my arms, warm and whole and safe. “Oh, child. William asks at least twice a day when you’re coming.”

  William wants to show me everything. The stables. The kitchens. The horse trough that’s best for jumping off. He really wants me to meet his father, but Gerald of Windsor is elsewhere and won’t be back till God knows when.

  “He’ll have nothing but a welcome for you.” Nest says it firmly, like this matter is more than settled. “He owes you. We both do.”

  Nest shines like the sun. Her color is back, her cheeks are no longer hollow, and her smile could bring birds from the trees. There are sticky handprints on her sleeves, and her apron is full of shiny rocks and bread ends and feathers. When William runs ahead, eager to show me something new, Nest’s fingers twitch as if to grab his sleeve and hold him close. Instead she pulls Angharad tight against her, or she pets David’s hair as he perches on my hip.

  “Alice,” he murmurs, and grips my shoulder.

  At last William wants to show me the nursery. It’s a little alcove in the hall set off by curtains and warm from the nearby hearth. The pallets are plump and neatly made up, and there’s a bench and a coffer for sitting. It’s simple, but snug and comfortable. Like the steading I grew up in.

  After supper, William begs to be allowed outside to play border raids with the other boys. Nest hesitates, then nods. As he goes whooping out of the nursery corner, Nest quietly tucks Angharad into the cradle she’s nearly outgrown and gestures for me to put David to bed in the pallet nearest the wall.

  The hall beyond the nursery curtain is cheerful and lively, but instead of slipping out and sitting at the hearth with everyone, Nest takes a seat next to me. “I like to sit here in the evenings. I hope you don’t mind. I find it hard to be apart from them. Even when they’re sleeping.”