The falcon cooed a throaty sound. Its wings rustled in the silence.
There was a breath of a moment when she thought Rhys is going to touch me. A tingling raced over her skin from her scalp to her feet, a wild, reckless sense of anticipation. He’s going to touch me. Her heart leapt like a hare charging across an open field. He’s going to kiss me. Her lips throbbed, throbbed, throbbed, throbbed, throbbed.
Kiss me.
Damn it, why didn’t he just do it instead of staring at her mouth so fiercely? Why didn’t he just do it so she didn’t have to think about it, so she didn’t have to listen to that voice screaming in the back of her head to pull away and break this feeling drawing taut between them.
Kiss me—kiss me and let me know the taste of a man’s mouth.
A shout shattered the moment. Rhys glanced up the slope. Dafydd’s mount struck sparks on the stone, then splattered mud as he pulled to a stop. Aileen noticed another rider on top of the hill and the steam rising from its mount.
Rhys shouted, “What is it?”
“There’s been a raid,” Dafydd said. “At old Dunwyd’s place near the salmon stream. They’re heading west. We might be able to cut them off. Aileen, we’ll need you.”
“Me?”
Dafydd’s face was grim. “Our brothers are no longer satisfied with stealing and slaughtering cattle.”
***
A plume of smoke hung over the valley, scenting the breeze with burnt thatch and charred clay. A blackened house tumbled its stones toward the bank of a stream. Aileen noticed the hoof prints of horses and cattle in the mud around the smoking building, prints that wove a path into the woods.
Rhys jerked his horse to a stop. “They’re heading west to Gerwyn’s lands.”
He spoke swift Welsh, but Aileen understood it—just as she understood the darkness in his voice. The Gerwyn of whom he spoke had to be the foster–father who had tried to deny Rhys his daughter. She hadn’t realized that his lands lay so close to Rhys’s.
Rhys’s voice was hollow. “So Gerwyn has taken up my brothers’ cross. The fools think to draw me into another war.”
A boy emerged from behind the building. Sighting Rhys’s colors, he raced barefoot across the field and skidded to a stop. His bony chest heaved beneath his tunic. He sputtered in loose–tongued Welsh, his elbows flying every which way.
His grandparents. She picked up enough of his words to scan the grounds. Cloth fluttered amid the mud. She made out the limbs of two people lying side by side. Tugging her mantle across the horse’s withers, she slid down the beast and splashed into a puddle. One of the men kicked his horse toward her. It was Roderic, the warrior whose shoulder she’d tended after the battle last fall, the husband of the woman Aileen had just helped through a long and difficult labor. He held out her basket of herbs and linens. She seized it from his grip and mumbled a swift prayer of thanks that Marged had had the foresight to give this to Roderic before he rode out to find the source of the smoke.
The boy looked up at her from beneath a shock of dirty brown hair. How big his eyes, and gray as the sky above, and how full of desperation. With a spray of mud he shot off toward his wounded grandparents.
Rhys said, “I’ll send someone back to you by nightfall.”
Rhys’s gaze focused on the craggy line of the western ridge. The singular moment they had shared by the banks of the stream may never have happened. She wondered if Rhys even realized he’d just spoken to her in Welsh.
The boy danced impatiently near his guardians. Neither of the wounded moved as she approached, not even the faintest twitch of a finger or a bare, muddied foot. She dropped her basket and crouched between them. The boy babbled something in Welsh too quick for her to understand. Aileen didn’t look at him. She couldn’t. Aye, both of the wounded were breathing, and the man’s heart throbbed faintly beneath her hand, but with one look at their wounds she knew the chances of dragging either of them back into this world were slim. The essence of them, the life’s–spark she always sensed when she came close to another body, had faded to nothing.
She fingered a lock of peppered hair off the man’s face. Lines carved his features in elderly beauty. Beneath the bloodied tunic swelled a strong chest, round and thick–muscled. How like the leather–skinned fishermen of Inishmaan, whose arms and shoulders bulged from all the years of hefting nets out of the sea. This man wouldn’t be fishing anymore salmon out of the stream gurgling behind them. She ran her fingers over his brow, hoping to ease the last of his pain.
Then she turned to the lady. The woman reminded Aileen of old Widdy Peggeen. The set of her jaw was strong, as if in defiance of her frail–boned body. But lying here bloody in the mud, the woman had the look of a sparrow that’d been caught in a gale. The woman clutched something in her hand, a frothy bit of cloth, the ties of which siphoned up with the breeze. Aileen fingered one of the charred ties. It was a baby’s bonnet, the sort of fine linen cap an infant wore at a christening.
These two people lying in the mud before her were cattle–herders like Niall, like her Da, like old Seamus. They knew of babes born, of children dying, of keening over graves and of dancing at the Beltane fires. They knew the smell of the newly turned earth and the warmth of May–milk on their tongues. Aileen knew these things, too. She understood more of their lives than she would ever understand of the chain–mailed warriors she now lived among.
She squeezed her eyes closed and flattened her hand upon the woman’s head.
Then Aileen’s eyes flew open.
There was still some life.
“Bring water,” Aileen said to the boy hovering behind her, mustering the Welsh word to her tongue. “Dwfr.”
Aileen cleaned the woman’s wounds with a strip of linen. She stroked all of her burns and lacerations and the bruises. She murmured nonsense–words, comfort–words, and sensed the course of the healing flow through her hands as thick as honey. She sent the boy off to search for firewood. She willed the woman back to the living, to the grandson who hovered over Aileen’s shoulder between tasks.
By the time Dafydd and three men galloped down from the western ridge, dusk cast a haze over the valley. Dafydd wrapped the boy’s grandfather in his own cloak of silken embroidery and eased the old man’s body over his horse, to bring him to the church where he could be buried in consecrated ground. Dafydd argued for fashioning a litter to carry the older woman to the shelter of the llys, but Aileen refused. The frail woman would never survive the trip. So Dafydd left provisions and blankets along with the three men as guards, for they’d not yet caught the murderers.
The men cleared some rubble and made a fire in one corner of the house, where two walls still stood strong against the winter wind. For two days Aileen stood vigil over the elderly woman, fussing with poultices and laying her open palm upon the woman’s chest for the sake of healing. Determination fed her strength. The flow of life rushed through Aileen like the current of a river in spring flood. Yet it was as if it flowed into a great gaping hole that would not fill. The woman still lived, still lived. At the end of two nights, Aileen finally left the woman’s side and settled down to replenish her own strength with sleep.
She woke to a valley dusted with snow and sparkling pure in the first rays of the sun. She sifted the powder off her blanket and trudged past the three sleeping guards. She kneeled down by the stream and splashed her face with the frigid water. Only then did she hear the sobbing.
The boy sat by the stream on the tumbled stones of his home. His spine ridged the thin wool of his tunic. It shook with grief. She jerked to her feet whilst water still dripped off her chin and stumbled her way back to the fire. A dusting of snow had blown its way under the makeshift roof of reeds and lay like the breath of faeries upon the grandmother’s pale face.
It was over, then. Aileen hugged her body. It had been nothing but arrogance to think she could keep the poor woman here. She had done nothing but hold the woman to earth by the wisp of breath. For as soon as Aileen had loosened t
hat hold upon her, the elderly woman had drifted away to join her husband in Tír na nÓg, the land of peace and pleasure, the Welsh Annwn.
The boy returned to help wrap his grandmother in a horse’s blanket. The guards stood in silence while the boy heaved the body across a saddle. Then they all mounted and rode for the llys. All along the way, the boy stared sightlessly ahead of him. He should be marveling at the strength of the war–horse beneath him. He should be gazing about in curiosity at lands he’d undoubtedly never crossed. But the light that burned in those gray eyes was one she’d seen before. The light of a blind, furious vengeance.
Could she blame the lad for wanting to strike a blow against the men who had done this to his family? Was bloodshed to breed more bloodshed, and still more bloodshed? She buried her face in her cloak.
Dafydd met them just inside the gates. A scruff of a brown beard stained his cheeks. His cloak was rumpled as if he’d slept in it for days. He glanced at the boy and at the bulky blanket held across the other mount as he helped Aileen dismount.
“It’s done then,” he said.
Her throat was too full to manage words.
“Come.” He turned and headed across the yard. “We have another patient.”
She stumbled her way through the horses snorting and pawing in the yard, as eager for their dinner and some warm straw as she was for the same. Dafydd led her to the storage shed where she’d been imprisoned the first few days after her arrival. A guard stepped aside as they approached.
“We found him this morning herding two stolen cows. He was wounded fighting and couldn’t get away from us.”
She paused as he swung open the door, realizing she was about to meet the murderer.
“His name is Edwen,” Dafydd said. “Edwen ap Gruffydd.”
She froze.
“Yes,” he said to her silent query. “He’s our half–brother.”
Chapter Eleven
A hot rush of emotion assaulted her, an anger like she’d never known. She saw amid the shadows a body unfold and stumble to a stand. So this was one of the warriors who had beaten an elderly man and his frail wife to death and left an orphaned boy to nurse a blood–debt in his eleven–year–old heart. Was she to heal his wounds while the blood of his victims still clung to her clothes?
The bark of her basket–handle dug into her palm as she stepped into the musty shed. He stood as tall as all the sons of Gruffydd, but thinner, more lanky, and the jerkin of skins which hung from his big–boned frame bore witness to the difficulty of the capture. Blood stained one sleeve and trailed onto his hose. Mud matted his fair hair. He watched her as she approached, then cocked his good elbow on a cask and smiled a contemptuous smile.
He said something to Dafydd in Welsh. She understood only one word. Dewines.
Witch.
“Tell the prisoner,” she said in Irish, “that if I were a witch, he’d be sitting in a bog somewhere catching flies with his tongue.”
Dafydd repeated her words while she swallowed the bile thickening in her throat. All she understood was meddyg. Healer.
“This woman—” Edwen nodded at her “—temper.”
“You tell the prisoner,” she continued, “that if he chooses not to be healed, it will be my pleasure to let his wound fester.”
Edwen raised a brow as Dafydd translated. Edwen’s response was nearly incomprehensible, but the sarcasm wasn’t.
“I … not scorn Rhys’s … gift.”
Dafydd bridled behind her. His voice dropped dangerously soft and she could only pick out some of the words. “Rhys … like father … gifts … horses … sword . . clothes ….” Dafydd gestured to the fine boots Edwen wore, a rich contrast against the tattered linen shirt the prisoner now tore off his back to reveal a young, well–formed chest and a bloodied arm.
“You … fool,” Dafydd said. “You … black heart.”
Edwen shrugged and retorted in a string of lazy Welsh. She stopped listening. She approached, tossed her basket on the rushes by his feet, and yanked his arm straight. She ignored his wince of pain. Along his elbow lay a deep gash. She prodded the ragged flesh.
Living in a house full of brothers, she’d heard enough angry arguments in her day. She’d even seen her brothers come to blows. But always when the noise ended there was easy laughter and bravado and slaps on the back and other such things that she never understood. She’d long attributed this to the strange ways of men, incomprehensible to all but themselves.
But this was no churchyard argument, and she knew there’d be no easy laughter when it was done. Dafydd’s voice quivered with fury while Edwen spoke with more and more sarcasm. She understood enough of the rapid Welsh to know Dafydd rained upon his half–brother all kinds of accusations. More than once she heard the word gavelkind fall from Edwen’s lips. It was his birthright, Edwen claimed, to have part of this land. My land. My land. He repeated the words like a jaded monk repeating his paternosters. As if it were something he’d memorized and now spoke so easily that he no longer heard the meaning.
Then the door slammed open and Rhys shouldered Dafydd aside, scraping out the length of his sword and lodging the point in the hollow of his half–brother’s throat.
She stumbled back. Her breath snagged in her lungs. The men were of the same height, a distorted mirror of one another. Though steel pricked his neck, Edwen still wore that arrogant grin, his eyes dancing over the length of the sword that with one push would mean his death. There was something wild in his eye, something not quite right.
Then Rhys spoke. Sharp, biting words in a voice that sounded like gravel grinding over rock. This was not Rhys talking—not the controlled, cynical Rhys she knew. These words roared up from that tightly locked coffer of anguish in his heart. She heard Why? Why? Why? which put her in mind of the banshees who raged in warning at the coming of a death.
Edwen’s skin had paled to the color of tallow, but he did not bend a hair to the man he’d wronged. Nor did he lower his chin against the steel.
Rhys, don’t do it, you’ll never forget the flow of your brother’s blood over your own hands.
Dafydd clamped a hand on Rhys’s shoulder and said something swift and low. After a moment, Rhys scraped his sword back into the scabbard. His cloak snapped as he turned and strode out the door.
Dafydd followed. Aileen stood motionless, shaking, glaring at Edwen with venom enough to kill, if one could kill with one’s mind. As she rounded to give him a piece of her own heart, he sagged down against the cask, laying out one of his legs and folding the other under him. She paused. The pallor she’d seen moments ago had intensified. She had assumed that the blood staining his hose had dripped from his arm, but by the awkward angle in which he held his leg she wondered if he bore more than one wound.
Damn her heart. She crouched and yanked a lock of his hair away from his face and noticed another gash, just above his ear. Against her knuckle his cheek was as smooth, sprayed with the first down of a beard. With his eyes closed, lying against the cask, without the cocky stance he’d taken so proudly, he had the look of a young boy in the first flush of manhood.
Then he looked straight at her with dead, hollow eyes and she knew the truth. Boys killed squirrels and rabbits with slingshots. A boy was no longer a boy once he set out to kill a weaker soul, and all in cold blood.
She tended to him because that is what she did. When she was done, she went in search of another man who was more deeply wounded. She found him on his palfrey near the open gate. Dafydd stood in front of him, his fist in the bit, arguing. Rhys yanked the horse free to gallop around Dafydd and shoot out the gate. The last thing she saw was the flick of a horse’s black tail.
She joined Dafydd as he stared out at the empty path whence Rhys had disappeared. “Where is he going?”
“It’s no matter. He’ll be back. Edwen guaranteed that by being foolish enough to get himself caught.”
She looked up at Dafydd’s stony face. Snow melted in his hair, dulling its usual sheen, and shadow
s dug caverns under his eyes.
“Do you know how we caught him?” he said. “Edwen had his eye on a bull. He galloped right past our camp to try to steal it instead of having the sense to stay with his brothers.” A muscle flexed in Dafydd’s cheek. “That idiot half–brother of mine is no better than a child seeing a pretty toy and having no sense to leave it be.”
“His folly is your triumph.”
“Is it?” He bit the words. “If we release Edwen, we invite the whole pack of them to raid and kill again. We lose the faith of every man living under Rhys’s protection. If we imprison him, we show weakness, for there is only one punishment for treason.”
A hound skittered by, its head lowered against the snow. Her thoughts stumbled where they didn’t want to go. “But Rhys wouldn’t—”
“Have you learned nothing here, woman? For all the years we’ve been chasing those brothers of ours, Rhys made damn sure we never caught them. He knew what he would have to do if he did.”
Snow sluiced across her cheek. A hound bayed within the kennels. She followed Dafydd’s gaze across the yard to where some men hammered at a structure rising near the gate.
Her blood ran cold.
The spindles of the scaffolding creaked in the wind.
***
Rhys shaved a sliver of oak off the end of the javelin. It tumbled off the blade into a bed of chaff piled around his feet. Against the stone walls of the hut bristled a line of other spears, the wood browning from exposure to the cold. More branches lay in a pile before him, waiting their turn to be transformed into weapons of war.
He heard hoofbeats and his blood rose.
Come, Aileen. Yes, come. Find your way here through a mist as thick as milk. Pass the grass–covered mound on the hill, the grave of a giant serpent that had once lived on this mountain, a fabled snake with the power to paralyze, a serpent that devoured human flesh for supper. Then come and find me sitting before this summer hut, the fable made flesh and blood, a beast capable of frightening women into suicide and hanging young boys.
The Faery Bride (The Celtic Legends Series Book 2) Page 14