She snatched her mantle off a cask. “Pots, pans, and tempers—I’ve made them fly. But never a broom. At least, not yet.”
She strode past him into the bright day, and then staggered to a stop. She’d never get used to a horizon that began so high that she had to arch her neck to look at it. Dizzying, it was, all those jagged blue peaks, they left her weaving in a state of unbalance that had her thankful for the hand Dafydd curled around her arm.
But only for a moment. As soon as the dizziness eased, she pulled away from him. She let him lead her around the perimeter of the yard. The llys, as he called it, consisted of a circular enclosure of wooden palisades set in a clay–and–earth bank. Wattle–and–daub houses lined the inside edge—storage, Dafydd told her, for grain, hay, wood, weapons. One long shed sheltered the horses, another the butter and cheese. The mead–hall loomed in the center, a large building of slate–thin layers of stone. The roof was thatched with reeds.
She turned her eye to the people. A swarthy folk they were, dusky haired, light eyed, and she felt as if the sun set her bright hair afire amidst them. The blacksmith’s clanging faltered as they passed. The stable boy lifted his head from where he worked polishing a harness. The chatter of the kitchen servants ebbed to a whisper as they moved on. A workman wattling a hole in the palisades wobbled on the ladder as he caught sight of her. Dafydd barked something in Welsh and curled a hand around her arm.
“Forgive us.” He led her across a muddy trench. “Living so far from sea or road, rarely do we have visitors. Even more rarely, visitors from so far afield. The people of Graig are curious about the healer in their midst.”
“Your mother should have birthed you first.” She sidestepped a pile of tinder just outside one of the huts. “Had you been Lord of Graig, there would have been no woman–theft, I’d wager.”
“Ah, but my lady, I am the eldest son of Gruffydd, the eldest of all his sons.”
Nay, it couldn’t be…not older than him. Those hazel eyes gleamed with too much wickedness, that smile came too easily. He looked ten years older, twenty years wearier.
“In Wales,” he explained, “a father does not pass his wealth to the oldest son. He divides it equally among all his sons and dies praying they’ll not kill each other over it. Gavelkind, it’s called. The scourge of Wales.”
“Then why does Rhys hold the title? Doesn’t that go to the eldest son?”
“Sometimes.” He lifted his other arm. Scarlet silk drooped over the knobbed wrist. “But it wasn’t for a man like me to rule.”
By the ease at which he used the stump, she guessed that Dafydd had to have been born without it. That would explain why Dafydd was not the Lord of Graig. A maimed chieftain cannot rule, not in Ireland, either. It was an ancient law, older than even Da knew, rarely spoken but always followed. Many an Irish warrior–chieftain had been unseated from power because of a disfiguring war–wound. A maimed man was thought of as less of a warrior. A sick or disfigured one, bad luck to the health of the land.
Then she remembered Rhys’s mask.
“That arm of yours shouldn’t make a bit of difference,” she said, setting out to finish their circuit of the yard. “Your brother manages to rule with that war–wound of his.”
“War–wound?”
“The one on his face.” She traced on her own features the line of his mask. “How is it that he rules and you cannot, when he is just as disfigured?”
A strange expression flitted across Dafydd’s face. “That’s no war–wound.”
“Isn’t it now?” So, it was just as she suspected. “Then what the devil is it?”
An odd light gleamed in Dafydd’s eyes. Grinding to a halt, he spat something in Welsh, and swung around with a snap of his cloak to stare up at the northern hills.
“My brother needs a knock on the head.” His lips whitened into a grim line. “And if I had two good fists I’d be the first to give it to him. I should have known he would not tell you.”
“Tell me what?”
But Dafydd was gone, striding toward the stables, abandoning her in the bright open courtyard, not far from a cluster of girls feeding chickens from their aprons. Their curious whispers rode to her on the breeze, but she didn’t care.
Now she knew for sure that she hadn’t been summoned to heal the three–legged dog she’d seen amid the hounds, or the falcon with the broken wing she’d glimpsed in the mews, or the young stable boy with the bloody linen upon his arm—the only signs of injury she’d seen among the people and the livestock of Graig.
She was here to heal Rhys.
And Rhys was too proud to admit it.
***
Aileen and Dafydd approached the mound from the south, skirting the stretches of ground too boggy to cross. Despite the chill filtering through Aileen’s cloak, the morning mist had long dissipated in the valley. She saw a solitary figure standing upon the barrow, wheeling a falcon through its paces within a circle of ancient standing stones.
She watched with scorn and more than a bit of horror. Wasn’t it like this arrogant lord to play at falconry within the confines of a faery–ring, as if he were the master of it? She’d mark it as stark ignorance if Dafydd hadn’t informed her that the place was called King Arthur’s grave, the resting place of a great warrior of ancient legend. Even ignorance couldn’t be used as an excuse, for in Ireland, such a circle of standing stones bubbled with invisible music, so much so that even those who were deaf to the ancient voices still veered away from the place, sensing what they could not understand.
Yet there he stood, wheeling the bloodied lure over his head to tempt the falcon back down to the ground.
When she reached the foot of the mound, she tilted her head, listening for the distant strains of faery music. She cast her gaze to the ground in search of footmarks in the mud. There should be some whisper of the Otherworld here…. She struggled with the odd sensation of entering a familiar place and finding something gone, and not knowing for sure what the thing was.
Dafydd unwound the reins from his handless wrist, eased off the horse, and then helped her dismount from her donkey. “I’ll wait here for you.”
She said, “You’re not coming?”
“There are times, Aileen, when a man doesn’t want a witness.”
She tugged her tunic off the back of the donkey and made her way up the muddy slope. She gathered her cloak in her arms so as not to drag it through the grass and mud, warning herself that she must watch her tongue. If she let it loose and told him exactly what was on her mind, he’d likely buttress himself behind that shield of pride and she’d be no better off than before. Better that she set to the matter straightaway, as if there was nothing wrong with his foolish silence.
Oh, what lengths a woman must go to tiptoe around a man’s pride.
She let her skirts fall as she reached the first of the standing stones. Such a cold, forlorn place, with the wind howling and the sky leaden above. That strange sensation gripped her again. Surely, the wind of her island blew just as frigid over the bare rock. Yet even on the rawest day, there had always been a whisper of laughter in the air or a patter of feet in the faery–place. Here, the ground did not pulse, the air did not sing—the pitch of the wind, the scent of the earth, everything lay so different, so silent, as if she’d stepped through time to return to a familiar place, now age–worn and abandoned.
Perhaps it was because Samhain was less than a week hence—the beginning of the time of darkness.
Or perhaps Rhys himself had driven all life away.
She leaned against a lichen–covered stone and paused. He wore nothing but a sweat–stained shirt, a loose–fitting pair of braies, and the mask. Wasn’t he rich enough to wear a good pair of hose? And didn’t he have any shame at all, standing out here near naked and acting as if he wore a king’s robes? She forced her gaze away from him to watch a goshawk descend from the sky and stretch its talons toward Rhys’s gloved arm. Rhys swung around in one swift motion while the goshawk landed. Th
e bells of the bird’s jesses fell silent.
Rhys murmured to the bird and stroked its golden breast with a strip of feathered leather. He stroked and murmured, stroked and murmured, dangerously close to that lethal beak, meeting the bird of prey’s golden eyes with the same steady, unyielding, unemotional stare. Suddenly he flashed the leather over the bird’s head and with his teeth pulled two strips of leather tight on either side, and it was as if he were kissing the bird once on either cheek, only now the bird was as masked as he.
“I see,” Rhys said suddenly, without turning, “that you, too, are free of your jesses.”
Da had always warned her to handle a wild thing with great and patient care. A pity she didn’t always have the patience to mind Da’s words. “Pardon my interruption, my lord, though I’m thinking it’s you who should be asking pardon of me.” There was not even a flicker of remorse on his face. “I’ve come here out of the goodness of my Christian heart to tell you this. I’ll give you the help you need.”
His fingers paused on the goshawk’s tawny chest. His gaze skimmed down the slope, to where Dafydd put his gelding through its paces in the valley.
“Don’t be setting your ire on your brother,” she said. “I’m quick witted enough to have figured it out myself.”
“Why now?”
“Why not now?” she countered. “It’s a mystery to me why you didn’t tell me on the shores of Inishmaan. I would have healed you then, if I had the things I needed. If not, I’d have brought you to my house and seen to it. As it was, you left me guessing as to what you wanted—too puffed up with pride to ask me, even when you had me caught as surely as that bird—and then had me thinking you needed sorcery.”
“It’s the sorcery I need, woman.”
“Cock’s feathers you do. Why a man insists on calling a woman’s healing ‘sorcery,’ and a man’s healing ‘skill,’ I’ll never know.” She crossed her arms and muttered, “All this trouble, for a man’s vanity.”
The falcon flapped its wings and screeched as Rhys stiffened.
“Aye, vanity,” she repeated, forcing herself not to quiver. “I’d hope it was shame that kept you silent, shame at what you did. But I know now it is vanity—vanity and pride. Just take off that wretched mask and let me see the thing. I’ll concoct some sort of salve to be rid of the affliction, then you and I shall be done with one another—and I can be home to Inishmaan.”
Chapter Four
Vanity.
Anger swelled from that ugly place deep inside him, seething a fury so thick that a haze of blood fogged his vision.
So she thought it was vanity that had driven him to the physicians of Myddfai and the charlatans of Troyes. So she thought it was vanity that made him suffer having his skin slopped with salves that burned, with unguents that all but froze his face. For vanity’s sake he’d lain strapped to tables while men worked their knives and leeches upon him, for vanity’s sake he’d allowed himself to be bled almost to the last drop of his life. He’d genuflected at every shrine from St. Dafydd’s to Compostela, washed his skin raw in innumerable sacred wells, bowed his head to every saint who’d listen, felt the sting of utter humiliation.
All for vanity’s sake.
He’d laugh, if he could drag the sound up through the gall clogging his throat.
“Don’t speak to me of medicines.” The goshawk tightened its claws deep into the leather glove. “Do you think I stole you here for that?”
The word snapped like a whip between them. The girl started while those maddening all–knowing eyes widened. Setting his jaw, Rhys stepped away and swept the bird onto a perch he’d driven deep into the ground.
“My father,” she insisted, “is the greatest healer that lives. And there is more medicine in the world than can be found in Wales—”
“There are none unknown to me.” No, none at all, not a single one. Five years was a long time for a man to be educated in indignity. “It’s your sorcery I need.” He flung off his glove and threw it to the ground. “It’s these I want.”
He strode to her and seized her hands. She tried to yank them free. He dug his thumbs over her palms to feel the rough surface of her skin, to ripple over the islands of calluses. He squeezed those hands as if he could milk them of the sorcery that visitor had spoken of. Ragged nails, hardened from work. A peasant’s hands, as common as heather and just as tough.
“You’re hurting me.”
“Healing hands.” He spread apart her long fingers with his own. “Like to be a saint, he said.”
Some part of him realized that he’d not touched a woman’s hands since…since a thousand years ago, in that vaguely remembered life before the affliction. Now he felt the knobs of each knuckle and squeezed harder, searching for something, for anything, for some frisson of magic, a spark, a tingling, to show that these were more than just another peasant woman’s hands, better fit for wielding a scythe than conjuring demons.
He hated himself even as he yanked her closer, close enough for the wind to sweep the wiry ends of her hair against his cheek. Close enough to hear her breath soughing in her throat. Close enough to count the freckles splattering her nose and cheeks. She smelled of mist, but more than mist. A salt–sea fragrance steamed off her skin, mingled with the perfume of something else, something elusive, and it came to him on a filet of memory. It was the smell of woman, the fragrance he’d denied himself for so long, that potent feminine scent that even now caused his cock to thicken.
His grip tightened on her hands. His nostrils flared as he drank in more of that forbidden scent, hating himself even as he sucked it in like a man starved. Look at her, a broomstick of a woman, all snarled hair and flatness. He’d felt this way the first day he’d seen her, when she’d looked as untamed as the goshawk that now spread its wings behind him. He told himself that she was a witch, for no one but a witch would tempt death so fearlessly with her defiance. No one but a witch could have him thinking nonsense. No one but a witch could dig up these dead yearnings of a youth long passed.
“There’s nothing here, is there, Aileen the Red?” he said. “There’s nothing here but a peasant’s hands—no magic, no sorcery.”
No hope. A man should know better—a man should learn.
Dafydd had insisted that there must be a reason for that Midsummer Night’s visit. Dafydd said that only a fool would ignore it. This was Rhys’s chance, Dafydd had said, mayhap Rhys’s last. Now Rhys understood. Who else but a demon could trick Rhys into seeking out this witch woman, full of spirit, full of contempt and mockery? Surely, this was the demon’s most potent weapon. A girl just unworldly enough to give him hope that she could change everything back to the way it once was.
“You’re part of it, aren’t you?” he heard himself say. “You’re part of the curse.”
“Listen to you,” she said softly, as if to an unbroken colt. “You’re babbling on about nothing.”
“Madness is a fine language, I’ve learned it well.”
“Let me go and have done with this.”
He released her so abruptly that she stumbled back.
“Be off, Aileen the Red. Go. Go back to that rock whence you came, and take your secrets with you.” Blinded, he strode back to his falcon. “As long as I live, I won’t listen to the false voice of hope again.”
He’d said too much. He nudged the falcon upon his arm, marched out into an open space, under an open sky. There, with his teeth, he tore the mask off the falcon and spit it to the ground.
Then he launched the bird skyward to glide high and free.
***
The morning mist had dissipated by the time the procession of horses lumbered its way down from the llys. A flaxen stubble gleamed in the valley below, the golden remains of the harvest. The lowing of cattle echoed off the hills as bondsmen nudged the beasts down the slopes to the winter grazing grounds. Aileen swayed on the back of a donkey, huddled deep in her cloak. By the end of the day she would shake her nostrils free of the stench of earth and wood–sm
oke, she thought. By the end of the day she would smell the brine of the sea again.
She took a deep breath and buried her nose in the wool. Aye, it would be the sea again, and then the sea–voyage, and then … Inishmaan. Her gaze passed over a cluster of peasants threshing some hay just beyond a rock–pile fence. Ma and the girls would have long finished the threshing by now. They would be hand–grinding the rye into flour and brewing it into the fresh ale Da liked so much. The boys would be off to the mainland, filling their skin–covered boats with small wild apples for Ma and Cairenn to press into cider. That was where she should be, she told herself, home helping Ma and Da through the harvest. That was where she belonged, she thought, even as her gaze strayed, for the hundredth time, to the straight–backed figure leading the procession.
She tore her gaze away and fixed it on the narrow path that wandered toward the next mountain pass. Dafydd rode on a fine horse just in front of her, his purple cloak flapping free as if the wind’s chill couldn’t pierce the chain mail draping his body. She saw the resemblance between Dafydd and Rhys much more starkly now. Since yesterday, when Rhys had ordered her back to Inishmaan, Dafydd had been as sullen and heavy–browed as his brother.
Good riddance to both of them. And good riddance to this barren, lifeless place, too. She wanted to feel the faery–breath on her face and the thrum of magic beneath her feet. Yes, cattle aplenty grazed on these softer slopes, and aye, there were homesteads here and there scattered about, smoke curling from their chimneys and chickens pecking in their gardens, and aye, there were deer enough, she supposed, hiding in these woods. But for all the life around her, she couldn’t shake the sensation that she was riding across graves.
Once home, she could pretend that a man had never grasped her hands in a fury of passion, speaking to her in a voice as anguished as any she’d ever heard. Yes, she admitted, he’d looked for one moment like a man in torment. What reason did she have to take pity on a warrior–chieftain who’d caused her nothing but grief? It was not as if the man was in physical pain. He was healthy enough, she’d seen that whilst he flexed his bare arms upon the burial–mound, wearing nothing but a bit of cloth around his loins.
The Faery Bride (The Celtic Legends Series Book 2) Page 5