“Actually, it has been quite an uneventful day.”
“Good.”
“It’s your own household you must see to.”
“You are the keeper of my household.” Rhys yanked another spear out of the ground, dislodging a stone the size of a hen. “Spare me the reports of cows which have stopped giving milk, or fires which refuse to be lit, or oatcakes burning in a cold pan—”
“Come to think of it, there was an odd fire in the stables this morning.”
“Then carry a twig of mountain ash.” He shrugged the weight upon his shoulders as her words came back to haunt him. “Or hang a horseshoe above your door.”
“Too much burnt crust in the oatcakes this morning, brother?”
They reached the target end of the field. Rhys seized the last spear and clattered it on his shoulder with the others, then turned around to head back. His ears stung with sudden heat.
He confessed, “She’s a harridan.”
“She refused to heal you?” Dafydd reared back in mock surprise. “How ungrateful of the wench. After all you’ve done for her.”
“I must have been crazed,” Rhys said, “to let you talk me into going to Ireland.”
“Only a fool would scorn the words of a man of Annwn.”
“That visitor wasn’t from any pagan heaven, Dafydd. He was a demon sent from hell, and we’ve brought back his witch.”
“You’d best hope she isn’t a witch, else with the way you’ve been treating her you’ll find yourself croaking in the mud and eating flies.” Dafydd stepped up close enough for Rhys to smell the orange–oil his brother used to dress his hair. “And remember: It was your idea to kidnap her and drag her here. Yours alone.”
At the end of the field, Rhys shrugged the spears off his shoulder and let them clatter to the ground. Sweeping one up, he whirled to heft the shaft upon his shoulder and squint down at the target, seeing nothing but the blood–red haze of his own foolishness.
He should have done exactly what he’d gone to Inishmaan to do. He should have tossed a bag of gold at the witch’s feet in exchange for her sorcery. He should have bared his face upon that shore with only Dafydd and the witch as witnesses to the humiliation. All the roads to Hell were paved with such good intentions.
He couldn’t do it. Not after he’d seen her striding through the mists with the sea wind buffeting that wild hair. She looked like some nymph that had slipped between the veils that legend said separated this world from Annwn. One look at her, with her eyes the color of the Welsh winter sky, and all he could think was that such a young woman would cringe at the sight of him. Her revulsion would cut him to the bone.
For a flash of a moment, he had been of a mind to step back into that boat and leave that wretched island without a word. But his feet had stuck in the mud. In all the years of pilgrimages, at all the saint’s shrines, in the stinking huts of women–charlatans, and under the bleeding–knives of too many physicians, he’d never once felt so gripped by the presence of the unworldly.
What difference would one more sin weigh upon his soul?
“Rhys,” Dafydd said, “you must treat her kindly.”
“You always were overburdened with conscience.”
Rhys sighted down the level field to the target swaying in the wind. He envisioned that stuffed linen with a wild mane of hair, with stormy gray eyes and a mouth full of venom. That was a witch, indeed, who could strike so close to the heart of the problem without even knowing its name. Rhys heaved the spear back and hurled it toward the target. The lance fell wide of the mark.
Rhys said, “I won’t take her off bread and water.”
“At least stop calling her a witch.” Dafydd ignored, as usual, what he didn’t want to hear. “At least not aloud, in Welsh. The bondswomen would have her burnt to a crisp before Sunday if they thought you harbored a witch under your roof.”
“Who else but a witch would a demon send me across the seas to fetch?”
“No one but us knows about our Midsummer’s Night visitor. Marged has been uncharacteristically silent.” Dafydd twisted one end of his mustache between two fingers. “So I’ve spread the truth instead: Aileen the Red is a healer.”
Rhys swiveled on one foot and bundled a fistful of his brother’s silk tunic in his hand. “I warned you to stay silent.”
“There hasn’t been a woman–healer in this house since old Gwenffrewi died three years ago.” Dafydd’s steady gaze glittered over Rhys’s knuckles. “Now you’ve brought one back for us. Better they think that, than think their great lord makes a habit of stealing women from their homes.”
If he were another man, oh, another man, he’d have knocked Dafydd onto the muddy ground in all his silks and all his oils. Instead he bit his fingernails into his palm hard enough to draw blood through the calluses and dirt. There’d be no satisfaction in beating a man who spoke only the truth.
He thrust his brother away. I am such a fool. Rhys would mock himself if the whole world wasn’t already laughing into their beards.
“The bondsmen are beginning to wonder,” Dafydd added, as he smoothed the wrinkles in his tunic, “why you’re treating her so badly.”
“Think of some lie.” Rhys’s sword flashed as he scraped it off the rock.
“There are other ways to bring a woman around.”
You would know them, wouldn’t you, my brother? You with your bright silks and easy smile, you with a list of conquests so long as to rival that of the Prince of Wales’s best bull, in spite of that handless arm—perhaps because of it.
Rhys thumbed the edge of his sword. “You think the tricks you use on the she–vipers of Llywelyn’s court will soften the will of a witch?”
“I think,” he said, as a few drops of rain splattered in the mud around them, “you might try a gentler persuasion.”
Gentleness? He remembered the word, vaguely, a sense of soft woolen blankets on a woman’s bed.
“Some good food, a bath, a soft place to sleep,” Dafydd continued, “they can work wonders on any woman’s disposition.”
Dafydd was wrong. There would be no making a kitten of that lioness, Rhys knew that. He’d felt the sink of her claws. She knew nothing at all, yet when she stared at him so full of loathing, he thought surely hellhounds couldn’t muster so much scorn. It was as if she knew already what he was and all that he had done.
Rhys clasped the hilt of the sword in both hands. “I don’t give a damn what you do to her.”
“Yes, you do.” Dafydd headed back to his horse. “You just don’t want to hope.”
***
“By all the blessed saints, look at that hair!”
As the door swung open, Aileen startled where she sat in the wide barrel, sending a spray of water over the wooden edge. A tiny woman stopped in the doorway.
“They warned me in the kitchens that you had hair like a pelt of a fox,” the woman said, “but I wasn’t after believing them. Those girls talk and talk until it’s nothing but nonsense coming out of their mouths.” The woman slammed the door shut. “I’ll be sending someone else to see to your needs when the sun rises, my lady. It’s bad luck to meet a woman with red hair first thing in the morning. No offense meant, of course.”
Aileen lay in the tub with a bar of lye squeezed in her hand, blinking at the blur of woman as she tossed bright bolts of silk and linen over the jumble of casks. All morning a parade of servants had passed through her room, dragging in the wooden tub, then lugging pails of steaming hot water, then serving her a tray of some flat bread and watered–down ale. But this was the first one who babbled in a language she could understand.
“Course, that’s only on the days I’m off on a journey, I suppose. It’s no matter on any other day. It’d be worse luck to meet a cat or a dog first thing in the morning, though a hard thing that is to avoid in this place, with all the hounds wandering about the yard because of that lazy dog–keeper the master took in—”
“You speak the Irish.”
“Aye, tha
t I do, and a fine thing it is to be speaking it in the full again. It’s like I’ve finally spit the rocks out of my mouth.” Wayward edges of the woman’s turban flapped as she darted about. “It’s true my lords use it now and again, when they’re of a mind to tell me something they don’t want to tell the world. But most times I’m forced to twist my tongue around the Welsh. A fine hard thing that is, don’t you know, though I’ve lived here over thirty years now. My name is Marged, my lady.” She smiled as she approached. “Let me see to that hair of yours.”
“There’s no need for you—”
Aileen sputtered as Marged hefted a pail of water over her head.
“Thick, it is, blessed be, but it could be using a lavender rinse, if you don’t mind me saying so.” Marged plunged another stick of lye deep into Aileen’s hair and tugged and pulled it into lather while Aileen gripped the edge of the tub to keep from being yanked about. “I was thinking, looking at your hair, that it’d be as hard and springy as the wire the armorer uses to make his chain mail—no offense meant to you, my lady, it’s just the look of it, all curled up so tight and wild. Mayhap the trials of your long journey did not leave it at its best—but despite its looks it has softness in it.”
“You’re pulling it straight out of my head.” Aileen seized the lathered length of her hair and twisted to look up. “And I’m no lady, I’ll have you know. I have two hands strong enough to wash my own hair.”
“Will you be denying me the pleasure? It’s been near twenty years since I’ve set my hands into a lady’s hair. I came over from Ulster as a lady’s maid, with my master’s sainted mother—may she rest in peace. She was Irish, too, like myself, and when the time came for her to go to God I stayed on, by the grace of the late master. He made me the keeper of this house in a lady’s absence. But I’ll have you know, it’s no easy task seeing to a llys—that’s what the Welsh call this homestead—with all the servants and the master’s men to be fed and their clothes woven and sewn and mended and laundered and the livestock to be seen to. Lass, don’t be getting out, the water’s still warm.”
“My mother didn’t raise me to loll about in a bath until the water grows cold.” Aileen stood up in the wide–mouthed half–cask and squeezed her hair. Water sluiced down her body and cooled in the autumn drafts sifting in between the ill–mudded walls. “You and the others can get in, now. You all worked so hard filling it up.”
“Oh, the bath was for you alone. Faith, look at you.” Marged thrust a linen at her and looked unabashedly up and down Aileen’s figure. “Like the leanest of the master’s hounds, all bones and muscle, true, but a woman nonetheless.”
Heat rushed over Aileen. For all the baths she, her sisters, and her mother shared, never had she stood naked before an outsider. She seized the linen from the woman’s hands only to pause as she felt the fine weave, as soft as butter.
“This is not for drying.” The words came out with a chatter of her teeth. “Would you get me a fitting piece of cloth? I’m near frozen to death here.”
“Aren’t you a strange one. Dry yourself, now.” The woman swept the linen around her. “It wouldn’t do for a healer to be catching the ague the moment she steps foot in Wales. I’ll get another linen for your hair, now, just a moment.”
Aileen wrapped herself in the linen and stepped out of the cask as Marged bustled about, blathering on without taking a breath and rifling through the things she had carried in. Aileen rubbed the fine weave against her skin, thinking all the while what a waste it was to dirty such exquisite linen drying a body that hadn’t been properly washed in all the weeks of the sea voyage. Wasn’t that the way of the wealthy and the powerful, to put all the hard work of some expert spinner and squinty–eyed weaver to waste like this?
She pressed the soft linen against her face. She wasn’t so weak from a few days’ diet of bread and water not to know something was up and about. Life wasn’t always easy on Inishmaan, and there had been more than one season in her lifetime when she’d felt the pang of hunger. Rhys had much to learn if he thought by sending her a bite of food, a bath, fine linens, and someone who spoke a civilized tongue, that she would then do sorcery for his whims.
She had a suspicion she knew what those whims were.
“Here’s another.” Marged snapped out another linen. “Faith, you are a tall one, I’d have to clamber on a cask to get to your hair. You’ll have to do this yourself, unless you’re of a mind to squat in the rushes.”
“Five–and–twenty years I’ve done well enough without a servant.” She twisted her hair into the cloth and cast her gaze around the room, searching amid the scatter of silks for her wheat–colored tunic. “Will you tell me where my clothes are?”
“They’re in the washing, of course. My lord brought you something else to wear. Now let me see if I can put my hands upon it, fine stuff, it is.” Marged walked like a cat in a hurry. “A waste it was lying in that chest for so many years. It’s good it’ll see some use. Here it is.”
Aileen stared at the fine stuff in Marged’s hands, cloth that smelled vaguely of heather. “You’re mocking me.”
“Now why would I be doing that? Fine clothes, these are, though a bit musty, I’ll admit, for they’ve been in a chest in the master’s room for more years than I care to count, but they should fit you fine enough.”
“Would you be wearing them?”
“Faith, I’m too old to be wearing such things. Besides, such richness is not for the likes of me.”
“Nor me, either. If this is your lord’s idea of kindness, I’m of no mind to accept it.”
Balancing one linen atop her head and gripping the other over a breast, she tiptoed through the rushes, plopped down on a sack, and curled her legs beneath her.
So now it’s come to silks, she thought. What would Rhys ap Gruffydd want, seeing her dressed in silks like some fine lady?
“Are you refusing our hospitality, lass?”
She avoided Marged’s eye and arranged the edges of the linen around her legs. Yes, it was rude to refuse a gift so fine. “I’ve had a bellyful of Welsh hospitality, truth be told. I’ll wait for my own clothes, thank you very much.”
Aye, her fine serviceable tunic, the fibers spun with her own hands from her family’s own sheep, woven into cloth by her mother’s hands, sewn into a tunic by her sister’s quick fingers, and dyed along the edges with blue from woad. Aye, aye, she wanted her tunic, with its deep shoulders and comforting warmth and the lingering smell of salt–sea, with the tear in the hem where she’d torn it looking for bird’s eggs on the western cliffs.
“I’ll see to it, but I don’t know what the master will be saying about this.”
A short time later, dressed in her own wool which had been brushed to a fine clean nap, Aileen plaited her hair and fixed it with a bit of string that had unraveled from one of the sacks of grain. The door opened again, pouring the cold white light of day through the room, but this time a tall, broad–shouldered silhouette filled the portal.
With a quiver in her stomach she turned to him, only to find herself face–to–face with the man who had come to her home that fateful day, the one–handed Welshman who had aided Rhys in capturing her.
“I think,” he began, dipping his head to step into the food shed, “that if a gaze were an arrow, I’d be standing here shot clear through.”
“I’ve met the devil. Now I meet the devil’s right hand.”
“The devil’s right hand has a name. It’s Dafydd.”
“I see you’ve no problem getting your tongue around the Irish now.”
“My mother taught both me and Rhys.” He shrugged a broad shoulder under silk the color of summer grass. “Our mother and Marged, that is, who rarely allowed us to get a word in.”
Our mother … She narrowed her eyes. She saw the resemblance now. They were of the same height. This man’s hair was a lighter black, the jaw not as sharp, the eyes not so piercing. As she stared, a smile lit those features.
Of the same blood, s
he thought. But not of the same temperament.
“So,” he continued, swiftly, casting his gaze over her tunic, “what of the silks I sent you? Did they not fit?”
“You sent the silks?”
“And the bath and the food and Marged.” He shrugged again. “We’ve no woman in the house, so I hope you’ll forgive the belated hospitality.”
“You’ve an odd way of showing it.” She turned away and wondered at her vague sense of disappointment. Why had she expected any kindness, even kindness with a purpose, from the man who’d stolen her away? “And I’m no Lady O’Brian of Connacht, to be painted in rich colors.”
“The green would have done you justice.”
“Rich gifts from guilty hands.”
“Ah.” His brows shot up, and she swore she saw him suppress a smile. “I’d heard this about the Irish. My mother was stubborn too.”
“Was she stolen from Ireland? Do the sons follow the follies of their father?”
“I hope not, indeed.” His smile hardened. “My father sired nine sons, most on the wrong side of the blanket.”
“If you’re looking for redemption, David,” she interrupted, the name tripping on her lips, “don’t be doing it with silks. Get me on a ship back to Inishmaan, and then mayhap your soul will find peace.”
For a moment, looking at him, she thought she saw a shadow pass over his face. Could that be shame? Before she could be sure, he shifted his gaze to the horizon outside the door.
“Three days in a musty place like this will strain the disposition of even the most gracious of ladies.” He reached up and tugged his mustache with his fingers. “Come and take a turn with me around the yard. The air is brisk, but—”
“Aren’t you afraid I’ll try to escape?”
“With mountains between here and the ocean, and an ocean between Wales and Ireland? No, lass. There is no escape … unless you can make a broom fly.”
The hesitant grin on his face took the threat out of his words and did even more than that: It disarmed her. She didn’t want to fight, anyway. She needed to get out, even if it meant putting up with the curious looks of outsiders. She needed to take stock of her surroundings, find out how well she was guarded, and get an idea of how difficult it would be to slip out under the cover of night.
The Faery Bride (The Celtic Legends Series Book 2) Page 4