by Lisa Jackson
Bryanna knew her punishments could have been far worse. The stable boy had been whipped in front of her, taking lashes upon his bare back without so much as crying out. Bryanna had cried out for the stable master to halt, but he’d simply paused to glare at her while Morwenna tugged her arm and bade her be quiet.
After that Bryanna cringed with each crack of the man’s snakelike whip. Red welts formed on the lad’s muscular back, and, she noted, they were not the first. Other scars told of previous floggings. The miscreant, three years older than she, sent her a triumphant look as he’d been led away, his gray eyes red and shining, but no tears drizzling down a face still devoid of whiskers. He’d been banished from Penbrooke forever, sent away with nothing but the clothes upon his ravaged back.
Bryanna had felt a semblance of gratitude that she was not subjected to such severe punishments, though her mother always lamented that “willful Bryanna” needed to be reared with a strong hand. Already worried because of Bryanna’s invisible friends, Lenore had been mortified at her daughter’s unladylike actions.
Eventually, it was decided that the troublesome child would be relegated to Isa’s care. This suited the old nursemaid well, for she was always telling Bryanna she was special, that someday her gift would be known. That is, if she quit flirting with boys of all stations, for Isa had been concerned that her young charge, soon to bud into a woman, was developing too keen an interest in the opposite sex.
At the time, Bryanna refused to believe her nursemaid. She stewed on the edge of her bed, watching in boredom as Isa’s old hands worked relentlessly, cutting out the twists and pulling at the threads of her wretched and halfhearted attempt at embroidery.
“What’s the great tranquillity?” she’d asked, pulling at the twists of wool appearing through the worn coverlet.
“The calm, ’tis but a ruse of Arawn, a way to set you at ease, make you forget your wariness.” Isa had snapped the embroidery thread with her teeth, then turned away from her work to stare Bryanna straight in the eye. “ ’Tis the time when you should be most vigilant. Trust me.”
Now, with Isa’s words reverberating through her brain, Bryanna felt an icy cold deep as a winter snow seep into her soul. She walked to the stream and washed the grease from her hands. There in the darkness, with the water rippling beneath her fingers, she heard Isa’s voice.
“He comes for you.”
Bryanna looked up at the night sky. “Who, Isa? Who comes for me?”
“The father of your child.”
“My child? But, Isa, I have borne no babe,” Bryanna said, shaking her head. Why was Isa talking in such strange riddles? “You are mistaken.”
“Be ever watchful,” Isa said as clearly as if she were standing next to Bryanna.
“Of whom? Why?”
But Isa’s voice said no more, and Bryanna felt as if ghostly fingers had played upon the back of her neck. She turned quickly, peering into the shadowy thickets where she sensed unseen eyes watching her, waiting in the dark.
’Tis nothing, she tried to tell herself. And yet, the dead woman’s words had shaken her. Whether it was truly a voice or her own madness, from this point forward Bryanna would be looking over her shoulder.
Gavyn could continue the ruse no longer.
Too many times the woman, Vala, had nearly caught him watching her, watching and waiting for his moment to escape. And then there was the difficulty of lying so still his muscles ached and cramped all the more.
Nay, he had to escape this night, after the man and woman had finished with their mating and were fast asleep. He could no longer chance that the couple would decide to cart him to his father’s castle.
Escape would be difficult, as the woman was forever nearby. She never went far without leaving her husband in the hut as, Gavyn decided, some kind of guard. His ribs still ached as if a mule had kicked him hard in the side, but he felt the welts and bruises upon his body healing, just as the woman had said.
He heard the door of the hut open and close swiftly, with a thud that shook the rafters. The smell of rainwater and fresh earth mingled with the scents of burning wood and cow dung. Gavyn allowed his eyes to open the merest of slits to see what was happening.
Dougal was unwinding a scarf from his neck and walking across the packed dirt floor to the fire pit, where he warmed his hands. “’Tis time to get rid of him,” he said without warning.
Vala, who’d spent part of the morning milking the cow and separating the cream while humming off-key, lost what remained of her good mood. Her voice was tight. “As I’ve been sayin’ to ye, it won’t be long now. . . . See how he’s healing?” Vala went on, and he assumed she was pointing at him lying upon the straw. “Even with his beard, ye can see his face again, finally recognize him if ye know what ye’re looking for. Aye, he be the baron’s bastard. I supposed he looked jest like the old man before his face was mashed, and now that he’s healing you can see a bit of resemblance. No wonder the baron lifted many a skirt in his youth. Look at him. He’s ugly as sin now, but if ye imagine him healed, his nose straight, his cheek full, the scars running down his face and the bruising gone, he would be a handsome one.”
“Handsome? Bah! Is that why ye keep him here, eh, Vala? Ye like the looks of him?” Dougal was standing at the fire, picking at his teeth with the tip of a knife. Across from him, Vala sat on a stool with the butter churn between her legs.
“Not the way he looks now.” She laughed, a wicked chortle. “But aye, if he looked like I think he did, I wouldn’t mind him warmin’ my bed. Eyes as gray as the king’s silver, hair as black as a raven’s wing . . . aye, he could slide between my sheets any time.”
“ ’Tis vulgar, ye are.”
“Am I now? Well, if ye want to know the truth, I keep him because he’s more valuable as the days wear on, now, isn’t he? The baron, his men, have been looking for the body, scouring the weeds and thickets and creek beds. Over a week and they blame the canyon for swallowing him. Berth, she told me at the well just this morning that there’s a price upon his head now, and that the soldiers who’ve been looking for the body not only think him dead, they believe that a pack of wolves or a wild boar or bear dragged off the carcass to gnaw on it. But Baron Deverill is not convinced. He keeps sending hunters and soldiers out there to search.”
The paddles in the butter churn clacked loudly as the cow stirred behind him, breathing loudly. Gavyn had to strain to hear the conversation, but he recognized the smile in Vala’s voice. She was proud of herself, thinking she had outwitted the Lord of Agendor.
Gavyn doubted she knew how ruthless his father could be. Having him here, hiding him, was not only dangerous but foolhardy.
“Then we should take him to the baron,” Dougal said.
“Not until the price is higher. Just a wee bit higher.” Vala chuckled again, already counting her silver.
“And what if the lord finds out we’ve been hiding him, eh? What then? What good will all the silver in Wales be when we’re accused of treason? Hanging from the hangman’s noose? Locked in the pillory? What then, Vala?”
“Shh . . . We just say that we did not recognize him. That a traveler dropped him on our door, claiming that the man was his wounded brother, then stole off into the night. We had naught to do but care for him, never thinking him to be the wanted man. We be but simple peasants, Dougal, remember that. And ye were never in Agendor’s woods, do ye hear me? You were never hunting a stag or boar on the lord’s property!”
“Ach! ’Tis bothering me.”
“Oh, fer the love of God. Hold yer tongue a few more days. ’Tis all I ask, and don’t ye be confessin’ to Father Peter. I do not trust the man.”
“He’s a priest, for the love of God.”
“And that be the problem. Methinks he loves himself more than the Holy Father.”
There was a long silence when even the butter churn had stopped its clacking. “Do not tell me that you have already confessed your sins to him, Dougal. I know that he passed by here
yesterday morn on his return to Agendor Castle.”
More silence, and Gavyn imagined the husband worrying the edge of his cap.
“Oh, by the saints, Dougal, what have ye done?” Her harsh whisper was rising in pitch. “We’ll be locked away in chains surely and—”
“Not if we turn him in to the guards at Agendor on the morrow. We could leave in the morn and be there by nightfall,” Dougal said desperately. “I promised Father that we would turn in the man we thought might be Gavyn. Because ’tis true, Vala, we know not who he really is. And just now, as ye said, as his wounds have healed, we suspect that we’ve been lied to by a man who left him here.” He was talking rapidly, his plan forming as he spoke, as if in so doing he could make things right with his wife.
“Ye’re a fool, Dougal, and I don’t know why I ever married ye in the first place.” She began churning butter again, but the silence between husband and wife was deafening.
Gavyn worried that neither would sleep a wink.
It mattered not.
The dream had come to him again last night, the woman upon the white mare racing through the clouds. The darkness at her heels was closer to her now and gaining fast. He knew not what the dream meant, perhaps nothing more than the results of the bitter concoction Vala forced down his throat each evening, but he considered the dream an omen.
Tonight, no matter what the risk, he would attempt his escape.
“What is it that makes a marriage strong?” the Baron of Calon asked his wife as she was unclasping her tunic.
They were alone in the chamber, the fire hissing, sleet pounding at the battlements and shuttered windows. Cold air caressed Morwenna’s skin as she stepped out of her clothes, hung them upon a peg, and slid into the bed next to the man she loved.
“Love?” she replied around a yawn.
“Then what is it that makes love strong?”
She turned to him, propping her body upon one elbow, her hair falling over one shoulder to brush his chest. “What is this? Some kind of riddle? A word game?”
Playfully, she ran a finger down his breastbone, through the mat of dark hair covering his chest. Her fingertip encountered scars, wounds that had healed not long ago when he’d been here, in her keep, while he’d battled for his life. She hadn’t expected him to live, much less that she would fall in love with him or marry him. Yet she was his bride. And now, all the questions about love and marriage? ’Twas not like him.
“No game, Morwenna,” he said, and she saw that he was troubled, his blue eyes dark with concern. “I think that marriage is based on trust.”
“Except when one is betrothed by one’s parents,” she said, still trying to jolly him out of his foul mood.
“But that was not the case in our union,” he said flatly, without a trace of his usual affection.
“Of course.”
“And so there would be no room for lies, would there?”
The first hint of anxiety slithered into her brain. “Of course not.”
“No need to sneak off behind each other’s backs.”
She realized then that he knew. Somehow he’d found out about her clandestine meeting behind the chapel. Should she lie her way out of it? Even try to turn the tables and belittle him for doubting her? ’Twas not her way. But then, neither had been the deception.
The air between them seemed suddenly cold, as if they existed on opposite sides of a frigid river. “It would be best if there were never lies, even the smallest untruth between a man and woman,” she said carefully. “But sometimes, so as not to worry the other, a man, or a woman, might be inclined to . . . protect the other.”
“Protect?” He sneered the word and she cringed. Oh, this was not going well.
“I saw you the other night, Morwenna. With him.”
She closed her eyes. “’Twas not what it seemed,” she admitted, flopping down on the bed to stare upward at the canopy. Her fingers clenched into fists and she mentally kicked herself to hell and back again.
“It seemed as if you were meeting your lover.”
“Nay! You, husband, are my true love.”
“Then why lie, Morwenna? Why steal from the treasury? Why meet a man deep in the night and sneak back into our bed with hands and feet as cold as adultery.”
“I would never betray you.”
“You already have.”
“I didn’t lie to you.”
“Avoiding the truth is the same.”
His voice was hard, without emotion. There would be no talking her way out of it. “’Twas not about me,” she admitted, “but Bryanna.”
When the silence still stretched between them, she added, “I’m worried about her. She’s alone. I—I wanted someone to look after her, to find her, to see that she is all right.” Sighing, she took his hands and linked her fingers through his. “’Tis true, I paid him to look for her, but I’ve also sent a messenger to Kelan, at Penbrooke, to ask for my brother’s help. I thought he, or Tadd, or someone there might search for her.”
“You couldn’t ask me?”
“I did ask,” she reminded him gently. “And you said that it was Bryanna’s choice to go alone, to find her way, to follow her destiny.”
“Because that is what she told us she wanted.”
“ ’Twas not what I wanted.”
“You are not your sister’s keeper,” he said, and she felt the anger radiating from him.
“But you are mine?”
“Nay, Morwenna, but I am your husband and I expect you to be truthful with me.”
“And to obey you?” she asked, and just saying the word rankled.
“To trust me,” he said.
Grabbing the edge of the coverlet, she rolled over and turned her back to him. “That works two ways, husband. Trust must come from two like hearts.” She seethed and closed her eyes, wanting to be angry and fight with him, but they both knew that she had, in fact, betrayed him by turning to his brother, Carrick. Morwenna had turned to the one man who shared a dark past with both of them. Carrick had been Morwenna’s first lover, the first man she’d given herself to. He’d left her with nothing but anger and regret . . . and a babe she’d lost before its time. Aye, those were the sorrowful days of her youth.
And yet Carrick was her husband’s brother. Could her husband not trust his own kin?
Granted, Carrick was the bad seed of his family. Until recently, many had believed him responsible for starting the fire that had killed his own family as they lay asleep within the walls of Castle Wybren. During their recent troubles here at Calon, Carrick had been somewhat vindicated. At least he was not guilty of setting his own family afire. And yet the black-hearted Carrick had committed a long list of transgressions: stealing his brother’s own wife, leaving Morwenna pregnant, beating his own brother and abandoning him at death’s door. Aye, Carrick was guilty of many a crime, though in this instance Morwenna suspected his intentions were more noble. Had she not sensed a new light in his blue eyes . . . a longing to be redeemed? Had she imagined it?
And what of Carrick’s well-honed skills as a huntsman? Could her husband not see that there was no better man to track and protect her sister? In his ruthlessness, Carrick was strong and able; he would not abandon his mission until he had won.
And that was the sort of steely determination Morwenna needed to ensure her sister’s well-being. Despite her husband’s fury, Morwenna held fast to her conviction that she had done the right thing in hiring Carrick.
Clenching her fists beneath the coverlet, she stared into the darkness and imagined her sister’s pale face and fiery red hair. “Godspeed, Bryanna,” she whispered. “Godspeed.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Bryanna had tried. Oh, by the gods, she’d tried. She had kept at her work, practicing her runes and spells at night, wondering if they worked, for she saw no evidence of magick at her hand. Each day she rode ever northward toward the mountains, looking for some landmark, for anything she would recognize on the bit of deer hide.
And all the while she’d felt that she was being followed.
As surely as if she’d seen a dark presence, she’d sensed someone watching her. She told herself that she was being silly, falling victim to her own worries of riding alone. And yet, she couldn’t stop the hairs from rising on the back of her neck when she’d caught a glimpse of shadow on sunlight.
She’d come upon polecats, even surprised a fox chasing a hare through the bracken, but this was more than a simple forest creature on the hunt. Whatever it was that followed her was deeply malevolent, intrinsically evil; she felt the vibrations of sin deep in her heart when she sensed his presence.
’Tis Arawn, riding upon his pale horse with his white hounds accompanying him, she told herself. He is coming for you, for your soul. Be wary.
Now, as she sat at the fire, holding her cloak tight around herself, she felt not only hunger but despair. Her ears and eyes strained as she stared into the gloom, searching for a glimpse of the beast of darkness.
But she saw nothing.
“Think not on it,” she whispered, trying to bolster her wavering confidence. Shivering, she rubbed her arms, then unsheathed the dagger. ’Twas not much of a weapon, but it would have to do.
She trained her eyes on the fire, where golden flames licked a mossy log and smoke rose to the heavens. Where was the enlightenment? The knowledge that would elevate her consciousness so that she could heal the sick, predict the future, or cast and lift curses?
She was torn, her faith stretched and thin. As a child she had been raised to believe in the Christ, the son of God. She’d spent hours upon her knees on the cold stones of the chapel. She’d learned to fear Satan, ready to tempt the most pious of souls.
But also Isa had taught her of another way, one that did not dismiss the Christ child, but did stray from the teachings of the church. Isa’s faith was a wonderful blend of magick and spells, visions and healing. Her faith had room for all the gods and goddesses of the old ones. Morrigu, the Supreme Goddess of all, was always at Isa’s side and she prayed to her.