Highland Dragon Rebel

by Isabel Cooper

  “The two of you come with me,” the man went on. “It’s but a short way to my house, and my wife will set us right soon enough.”

  “Thank you,” Madoc said, and those were the last words he managed until they were under a roof.

  * * *

  Foul weather had a silver lining. Once Moiread was out of it, she was too relieved for brooding. Life shrank to the simple things. A fire crackled on the hearth. A heavy cauldron of potage bubbled above it. Beside it, three pairs of wet boots steamed, while Moiread curled her bare toes against the dry floor. John’s wife had provided rags to dry her hair and hung up her cloak. For the rest of her clothing, she stood near the fire and waited.

  Contentment of this sort was a purely animal pleasure, the passive side of the almost-mindless joy of the hunt and the kill. Moiread would take that and be glad.

  John and Matilda hadn’t spoken about themselves, being too busy getting dry in the first case and seeing to guests in the second. Their house was big, with two rooms on the first floor and a second story beneath the thatch. A byre stood on one side. “Your horses can go in with our mule,” John had said offhandedly. “Be good company for the old bugger, I shouldn’t wonder.” Judging by that, the sides of meat hanging above the fire where they’d catch the smoke, and the rich smell of the potage, Moiread thought the couple was likely prosperous and probably free, not serfs, from what little she knew about such things among the English.

  In their persons, they were healthy but middle-aged, bordering on old. Both had silver streaks in their dark hair and wrinkles around the eyes. They dressed plainly, talked amiably, and watched their visitors with no lack of curiosity.

  “Are you soldiers, then?” Matilda asked, settling down by the fire with a spindle and yarn. She’d stared at Madoc and Moiread when they’d removed their cloaks, revealing their swords and armor, though she’d remembered herself soon enough and looked away.

  “Simply travelers, mistress,” said Madoc. His voice sounded close to theirs, but his accent was a shade deeper, more musical. “But there’s plenty of danger on the roads, I fear, and our journey is a long one.”

  Moiread saw the couple exchange glances. A sword was a rich man’s weapon—or a brigand’s, perhaps. Her and Madoc’s horses were of no particular quality. Their clothes had been good, once, but rain made many men equal.

  “Blades are cumbersome things in a hospitable house such as this, I will say,” Madoc went on, “and I’d not want them in your way. Is there a place we can lay them?”

  “Stand ’em by the door,” said John after a brief silence and another marital glance, this one more relaxed. “Thank you.”

  “It’s you we have to thank, good sir.” Madoc smiled and, once Moiread had taken his sword, reached for his purse. “And I’d be glad to do as much materially.”

  “No need.”

  “The need of my conscience, not to drip on a man’s floor without recompense. Nor to partake of his wife’s excellent food and not show my appreciation.”

  “Thank you, then,” said Matilda, taking the offered coins. “For the praise as well.”

  She got to work setting out the food: bread with butter, the potage in dark clay bowls, and a jug of a similar clay, full of rich ale. Moiread ate heartily and quickly, letting Madoc do the lion’s share of the talking. The dog curled in front of the fire, snoring steadily.

  “We had soldiers coming through for a while,” Matilda said when the subject of roads and visitors came up. Dinner was half done then, and the patter of rain on thatch had slowed. Moiread hadn’t heard thunder for a good quarter hour. “When there was that revolt against the old king, two years back or so. The year the great tree fell down in the churchyard.” She shook her head. “A shame, that.”

  “The revolt, or the tree?”

  Matilda shrugged. “The tree. Took three men to shift it, and they had to rebuild the chapel after. The other’s a matter for great lords, not us. God will guide them as He wishes.”

  “We can but hope they listen,” Madoc said, a touch of dryness in his voice.

  “Well, and if they don’t, we’ll live on, most like,” said John, reaching for the jug of ale. “So far, the cow gives as much milk under the son as she did the father, and the oats come in as well. I’ll not trouble myself about such matters until they come to my doorstep.”

  The knock on the door couldn’t have come at a better moment—or a worse one.

  * * *

  If Madoc had been inclined to think the timing of the new arrival any sort of omen, the voice that called through the door would have convinced him otherwise. It was young, male, and as rural as those of their hosts. “Da? Mum? Are y’well?”

  “We are,” John shouted back, and started to get up, but Moiread was closest to the door and knew the duties of a good guest.

  Finding her on the other side of the door, the young man on the threshold peered suspiciously at her from under thick black brows. “Sir?”

  “Michael,” said John, “and Madoc. They’re travelers. Have yourself a seat, Adam, as you’re here. Gwen and the babe well?”

  “They are,” Adam said and came in slowly, shutting the door behind him. He seated himself on the bench between his mother and Madoc. “I was worried the storm had caught you out or knocked a branch down on the house.”

  “Kind of you to be worried, but we’re well. Though it did catch me out, and our guests too, as you see.” John waved a hand toward the row of wet boots.

  “Soldiers?” Adam, like his mother, asked.

  “Only travelers,” said Madoc. “Do you get many knights on the road?”

  “Not lately and not knights. Though there might be some men coming back.”

  “That’ll take time,” said John. He glanced at Madoc. “And you’d know better, perhaps. Is there truly a treaty with the Scots? Ralf Atmill heard there was, when he was sowing beans up at the manor, but tales get lost in the telling.”

  Across the table, Moiread reached for her spoon. The motion wouldn’t have seemed deliberate to any of the others, but Madoc could read the hint. “There is. As of May Day.”

  Adam snorted. “Trust a stripling and a woman to eat out of the savages’ hands. His grandfather would have known better.”

  “You were barely walking then,” said Matilda, shaking her head, “and none of us is to know what a king would have known, or done.”

  “We’ll light a candle for thanksgiving,” said John, “and pray for the returning and the lost. The levy took a few village men,” he explained to Madoc and Moiread, “mostly for archers. Adam was far too young, and our other sons not yet born. ’Tis strange, to think of it… There’ll be men returning to grown sons and daughters they never met as babes.”

  “The way of the world, at times,” said Madoc. He tried to get a view of Moiread’s face, but Adam was leaning forward, blocking his line of sight.

  “When the realm is threatened, aye, of course,” Adam said. “I wish I had been old enough to go.”

  “God disposed that too. And rather to our joy,” John said, which softened Adam’s face. “Gwen’s too, I’d think. How fares my namesake?”

  “Plaguing the life out of the dogs, the goat, and his mother at once. And eating enough for an army. Gwen swears he’s taller every dawn than he was the previous night.”

  The young man laughed with paternal pride and leaned back. With a clear sight of Moiread, Madoc searched her face for anger, ready to try to calm her by a look or to take her aside if that failed.

  To his relief, but his surprise as well, there was no need. Moiread sat silent and thoughtful, to all appearances not just calm but amused. It seemed no act, either. The slight smile on her lips touched her eyes.

  Madoc would have paid gold to know what she was thinking then.

  Thirty-three

  After the border came the Marches, the borderlands of Wal
es that English lords had held for Moiread’s lifetime. Grim gray castles lined the hills they rode through, squatting atop mottes like enormous grave mounds. Moiread and Madoc stopped at none. They stopped as little as possible, in general.

  “Are the English so cruel here already?” Moiread asked once.

  “Not worse than any other lord of any other place, I believe. Not yet. Each of the lords is a king himself, in many ways, and many have Welsh blood and hold to our laws. But”—he shrugged—“they’ve more to do with England, by necessity. And we’re too close to the border here. I’d not risk tales getting out.”

  “Ah. Wise.”

  “It would be a bitter thing to meet with trouble so near the end, though logic would say I should comfort myself, in that case, with what I did accomplish.”

  “Which is plenty.” She heard the end mostly without pain, even with gladness. Who wouldn’t look forward to an end to roaming, to roadsides and flea-infested inns and, foremost, to the hunters who had dogged their steps with supernatural persistence? She did. It had been pure chance that the journey had as much good in it as it had.

  She would miss the good. She missed things at times, but the world spun onward.

  Besides, it would have taken a harder woman than her to feel sorrow in the face of Madoc’s obvious joy. He was quiet about it, and he’d not been melancholy elsewhere, but a light had come into his eyes when he crossed the border that Moiread hadn’t seen before. She’d caught him whistling that morning.

  She knew the feeling. Her home was far away, but she remembered her own joyful return and was glad to be out of England. Knowing the English ruled in Wales weighed more lightly than she’d thought it would, just as it had been easier than she’d thought to cope with the farmer’s son’s slights on her people.

  And it was a beautiful land.

  Meadows and trees spread out on either side of them, liquid emerald in the early-summer sun, with gray stones here and there. White sheep and black cows dotted the hillsides, with men and boys and dogs occasionally taking an interest in them. Even the dull gray of cottages and the brown of plowed fields blended well, grounding notes among the brighter colors.

  The shape of the buildings, the dress of the people, and the voices she heard were all different from those in Scotland. She supposed that the plants weren’t quite the same either, to those who cared about such things, and the hills weren’t as high or as steep. Compared to many places, though, and particularly to England, her surroundings were very much like home.

  “It’s a pretty place,” she said, gesturing around with one hand as they were riding one afternoon.

  “Loveliest the world over, I’d say,” Madoc replied, his returning smile tilting the edges of his eyes, “but then, I’ll never pass as impartial.”

  “That’ll likely make you a good lord.”

  “If I’m careful,” he said and then shook his head at her frown. “I’ve not grown morbid about our chances of coming through this, no, nor my likelihood of inheriting. It’s only that there’s a balance needed, yes? Between loving your own land and seeing it clearly, the rotten parts as well as the sweet. Or between tending to your land, your people, and seeing the wider world and your place in it. A lord might grow unwise, else.”

  “Aye, that’s so.”

  Madoc smiled, more abashed than he’d ever looked while naked. “I didn’t mean to give you a lecture.”

  “You didn’t,” said Moiread, who’d mostly been thinking about how easily he’d read her face—wondering how she felt about that, and how she should try to feel. She considered what he’d said, felt the weight of it balance in her mind, then nodded slowly. “Being a man as well as a dragon. So to speak. I’d agree, but mind, I’ve had few lessons, not being the heir or even the second.”

  The conversation brought back memories: herself, Cathal, Agnes, and her cousin Erik, answering questions under Artair’s gimlet eye or learning from Douglas the knowledge he’d devoured far earlier. She recalled books edged with gold leaf, wet days in front of the fire, the restlessness of pent-up youth. Douglas had been and was the young laird, but misfortune happened to MacAlasdairs as well as human men—and besides, Agnes and mayhap Moiread would need an eye on their husbands’ estates.

  That line of argument had been singularly unconvincing when she was ten.

  Ten had been a very long time ago.

  “I’ve had too many, I sometimes think,” said Madoc, “and few of them formal. Books, mostly, and watching my father or Gilrion…and spending a great deal of time going over the matter, so that I may be best prepared when it comes my turn.”

  “Is that why the magic?”

  He tilted his head minutely from side to side. “I like that for itself. There’s a pattern to it and a richness, like a good poem or a song. But then, I also like magic for what it can do to aid us in this world. And there are patterns in lordship too. I was young when I began to learn of them both,” Madoc added. “They may have spun themselves together in my mind.”

  “Young, hmm?” Moiread asked. “You’re not far from it now. But then, you’re not as mortal as you first let us think. Does your bloodline make aging as slow as ours does?”

  “A terribly personal question, that,” Madoc teased, lips quirking at the corners. “But I think to a lesser extent. I didn’t look fifty, last I had a mirror to hand, but nobody with sight would think me eighteen either. My father’s coming to the end of his days”—he crossed himself, though he spoke with acceptance rather than grief—“but he’s more than twice my age, and hale enough to be lord in truth as well as name.”

  * * *

  Visio dei had its disadvantages, but it did show quite plainly that all of those Madoc and Moiread encountered on the road were human. Madoc thought that he was learning to read it. He had a vague notion that the colors around a person glowed brighter when they were upset or excited, that violence would darken them and evil acts warp them.

  There was one man they passed, middle-aged and harmless to all appearances, who rode in a grayish cloud that might have once had violet patches. Madoc kept his hand on his sword, and when the man passed without any move toward them, Madoc tried not to wonder what the stranger had done—or might yet do. If he’d known the auras better, been more certain of the meanings, Madoc might have pursued him, but he couldn’t kill a man on such scarce evidence, and he was on his own quest. Another would have to intervene down the road, if intervention became necessary.

  On the other hand, the vision did let him relax around the group of pilgrims they encountered. Six men, one of their wives, and her maid were making the journey to Holywell. All seemed to be enjoying the journey and the chance-met company as well. They were quick to offer food, conversation, and particularly wine, of which Madoc drank only enough to be polite, as it was barely watered.

  The colors around the pilgrims ran clear as light through stained glass, a few faint shadows signifying perhaps a tendency toward temper or a hint of business done sharper than conscience could wish. They were simple folk, and merry. Madoc easily turned the few questions they asked back toward them, so that they talked of the pilgrimage and the wool trade, told stories and sang.

  He joined in the songs, and to his mild surprise, so did Moiread. Her voice was strong and sweet, though she stumbled a little over a few words and only hummed along when the verses were in Welsh. The pilgrim with the lute eyed her after one song.

  “You’re lucky to have broken so, boy,” he said and added with a sly grin, “and luckier that you weren’t in the East a few years younger.” He made a snipping gesture with his free hand. The other men, Madoc included, winced.

  “Do they really?” asked one of the younger men. “They couldn’t.”

  “The Crusaders said it,” said the lute player. “Men who were at Constantinople when it fell. Would you doubt them?”

  “Perhaps ’tis I should be making a pi
lgrimage,” Moiread replied. As it had from the beginning, her accent drew a few sideways looks, but nobody commented.

  “At least light a candle or two in thanks,” Madoc offered, with a shudder that he didn’t have to exaggerate much.

  He was glad of their company, glad of the vision that let him accept it with an open heart, and glad to be seeing his homeland through magical eyes as well as mortal ones. As they went on, the faint glow of the trees and meadows seemed to be calling to him, welcoming him back. He saw the vibrant shades of new life in the springtime and the darker solidity of the earth that had always been there, the brighter glow of beasts and the varied colors of the people. All was familiar from using the visio dei before, but all seemed different here and now.

  When they’d left the main road and the pilgrims behind, Moiread glanced over toward him. “The country’s the best place for it.”

  “That it is.” Cities and castles made using the visio dei difficult. With large numbers of people about, Madoc had found that he might spot someone if he was particularly looking for them, but otherwise people tended to blur, and it was hard to look directly at them. Nor could he sustain such vision for nearly as long. “Here in particular.”

  “That partiality again?”

  “Yes. I wish I could show you…or that you could see for yourself, were we not worried about attacks. I can only imagine what it’ll be like at home. You should see the lands there, even normally.”

  When Moiread smiled, Madoc realized that he’d come close to babbling. He truly did need to leave the vision aside when he was in exalted company, but Moiread didn’t seem to mind. Her voice was warm when she answered: “I expect that I will. I’m with you to the end, remember?”

  Thirty-four

  By now, arriving at a castle felt almost routine. Llanasef Fechan was only the third keep Moiread and Madoc had specifically journeyed to, but the prickly uneasiness Moiread had felt at Hallfield had diminished greatly during their journey. She could watch levelly as servants led Madoc off to meet with the lord his kin, while others took Moiread toward the barracks. Any danger that awaited Madoc within the castle’s walls was not one Moiread could prevent by being at his side.