A Novel

by Signe Pike

  “Something has happened today and I must speak with you,” I began. “There is no easy way to discuss it. You and I, we both must be brave. Can you do that?”

  Angharad went still, her hand hovering uncertainly over a pinecone. “Mama, what is it?”

  She sat back on the coverlet and looked up at me, suddenly seeming so much older than her years.

  Say the words, I urged myself. Then it will be out. It will be done.

  “I have always known you were special, and your uncle knows this, too. Lailoken would like to take you with him when they leave in the morning. He would train you as a Wisdom Keeper. You would be trained like my mother, the lady Idell, was before you. You could learn all you wished about healing and plants and the gods of our people.”

  “Me?” Angharad blinked. “A Wisdom Keeper?”

  “Yes.” I fought to keep my voice measured. “But do you understand what this would mean, my love?”

  Her gray eyes fell to the coverlet, her voice a whisper in the firelit chamber. “My uncle would take me away from you.”

  “That’s right.” I nodded and pursed my lips, busying myself in tucking her coverlet snugly about her. “He would foster you and love you as his own.”

  “But I don’t want to leave you, Mama!” It was the panic in her voice that made me suck in a breath, fighting to keep my voice steady.

  “I know, my darling.” I pulled her to me so that she could not see my tears, but was almost undone again breathing in the scent of her.

  “I cannot bear the thought of your leaving. I cannot tell you how much I wish for you to stay. But, Angharad, we must both be strong. We must think of your future. You must listen to me.” I drew back, taking her little face between my hands. Her cheeks were hot beneath my thumbs as I wiped away her tears.

  “Your elder sister, Gladys, will be raised in court. When the time comes, she will be married and sent away, the bride of some unknown lord or chieftain. This is her duty, as it was mine. But Gladys’s path is not made for you. As a Wisdom Keeper you would come and go as you pleased. You could make your home in whatever court you so chose. To see the wide world, protected under the mantle of a Keeper, is an honor and a privilege many Britons only wish to have.”

  She looked up, fearful. “Do you . . . wish me to do it?”

  I swallowed. “I will not lie to you, my dove. I am at war with myself. Truth be told, if you should leave me, I do not think I could survive it. And yet, survive it I will, because I do wish this for you. I wish this for you more than anything.”

  Angharad picked up her jay feather and studied it, considering. “But . . . cannot Gladys come with me?”

  “Gladys’s path is hers. This path belongs only to you. Besides. Marrying a far-off lord or chieftain isn’t so dreadful. Look how it brought me all of you.”

  I forced a smile and took her hand, smoothing it as if rubbing away a blemish.

  “We may be apart, but nothing will alter the fact that I am your mother. And I will love you to the ends of the earth and back, wherever you should go. My blood flows in yours. You carry half my spirit in yours. In this we will always be together, do you understand?”

  My voice broke and I squeezed my eyes shut. “You must always remember that.”

  “Don’t cry, Mama, please don’t cry.” Angharad’s voice was small, her slender body now shaking with tears.

  “What’s happened?” Gladys stood in the doorway, stricken, Aela close behind.

  I opened my mouth to speak, but Angharad drew the wings of her shoulder blades up.

  “I’m to be a Wisdom Keeper,” she said, even as her sister’s face fell. “I am to leave with Uncle Lailoken in the morning.”

  CHAPTER 44

  * * *

  I lay awake the long night. Perhaps I thought if I did not sleep, morning might never come. Rhydderch came to bed smelling of peat smoke and ale. In the hut across the courtyard, I could feel Maelgwn lying awake, too, his thoughts trained on me, but there was no place for him where guilt did not devour me. My daughter was leaving when next I opened my eyes. What was the loss of a lover compared to that?

  At last, out of the eerie morning stillness, came the screech of a barn owl; a call from the dead. My mother would watch over her. I closed my eyes and dreamed of feathers drifting from the trees overhead, landing at my daughter’s feet.

  When I woke, I stood numbly as Aela helped me dress, my naked body pricked with gooseflesh. Odd that the sun is shining, I thought, when my heart has been split and butchered in such a way.

  Angharad woke and I hovered over her, helping her dress, fastening her brooch with trembling fingers. “Will your gray cloak be warm enough? There will be wind, and the chill comes at night. Perhaps you should wear the fur.”

  Rhydderch touched my hand. “It is yet summer, my love. Our daughter will be warm. And she rides with Lailoken. She’ll have use of his cloak.”

  “Yes, of course.”

  I watched as he bent and drew Angharad to him. She buried her face against the crook of his neck.

  “There, there, my littlest love,” he murmured. “You have made us so proud.”

  Angharad’s face was calm but her fists were white-knuckled. I looked away and led her down the stairs and to the door. Outside, the men were waiting. It would be a long ride before they rested at sundown.

  Aela and I had packed what things Angharad might need in one of my sturdiest trunks.

  “This is the trunk I brought with me when my father first took me to Partick,” I had told her. “Now it will carry you on a journey all your own.”

  But I would give her one last parting gift. The sun glinted off the dragon hilt as I unfastened my knife from my waist and pressed the gift into her hands. The belt buckle was most worn on the smallest setting, the hole that fit the waist of a little girl once no more than ten.

  “Wear it, my love, and may it bring you luck. There is nothing in my life I have kept closer, save you,” I whispered, securing the belt at her waist. “Ask your uncles. They will teach you to wield it.”

  Then the courtyard, the horses. Parting gifts of bread and cheese and salted pork. Wine in flasks. The bustling of servants and the ominous scraping of trunks on a cart. Cathan had told me once that farewells took practice, but I knew now it was only a ploy designed to appeal to my logic—a distraction for his most ardent student.

  That sunny, late summer morning, I knelt and told my daughter the truth.

  “Angharad, the heart is a bird pricked full of feathers. And each time we say good-bye to someone we love, a feather will fall. One for a friend, two for a lover, three for a child.”

  I took Angharad’s face in my hands. “This means that whenever you should find a feather, you will know it is from me. It has fallen from my heart. Pick it up and keep it close, for it carries with it all my love for you. If you believe this, if you remember this, these feathers will protect you and keep you safe.”

  Angharad blinked. “But, Mama”—her gray eyes clouded—“what happens to the bird when it loses all its feathers?”

  I considered this a moment, caught by surprise. “A bird can never lose all its feathers,” I said. “New ones always sprout in return.”

  Gwenddolau emerged from the guest quarters, his hair freshly plaited and his shoulders squared with purpose. The golden hue had returned to his face, and I watched as Maelgwn clapped him on the back.

  “Ready, then, brother?” There was a tightness in Maelgwn’s voice, and as our eyes met, I knew I was the cause of it.

  I lifted my hand to my collarbone and let it rest there just long enough that he might spy the green ring that glinted on a finger of my right hand. Maelgwn’s eyes kindled and he gave a faint smile. I closed my eyes, pressing the sight of him into my memory. His black hair, tied partway back, his scaled leather armor. His broad shoulders and callused hands. The crescent scar that now marked his brow, and the way his eyes pierced me to the core.

  I crossed the courtyard and embraced Gwenddolau,
passing him a fresh bottle of the tincture I’d made.

  “Thank you, little sister. I am grateful for your care.”

  “I was glad for your visit, whatever the circumstances. But now you leave and you take with you my child,” I said. “Watch out for Angharad. Mind that my brother takes good care of her.”

  Maelgwn spoke instead, his eyes locked on mine: “We will guard her with our lives. I promise you no harm will come to Angharad whilst I live and breathe.”

  “I thank you.”

  As Gwenddolau looked between us, I saw realization flicker at last. He angled his head, a look of warning to Maelgwn, but swung astride his dappled horse and called out to his men.

  “Mount up. It is time to ride.”

  The passing of hours had been like wading through honey, and now the moment had come.

  My fingers clutched at my dress. “I am not ready—”

  “We are ready,” Maelgwn whispered, his fierce voice reassuring. “You know how I feel. Time cannot alter it.”

  There would be messages this time. Perhaps there would be a way yet to tell him what he deserved to know.

  I tested the buckle of Lailoken’s girth as he helped Angharad astride, nestling her in front of him. “If she grows tired, let her ride in the cart.”

  “I will.” He took my hand. “We will send word when we reach the fort.”

  “May the Gods keep you close,” I said. “I love you, my little dove.”

  Angharad looked down at me uncertainly now, as if she might have changed her mind, but in the same moment Lailoken gave his gelding a swift kick. I climbed the wooden platform of the rampart and watched until they disappeared from view. The last thing I saw was Angharad looking over her shoulder, her tawny hair streaming across her face, clinging to her tears.

  “Mother.” Rhys’s deep voice brought me back to myself.

  Had I other children? I blinked and pressed my hand to my stomach as if to keep my innards in.

  I did have others, and now they had come to stand beside me. Gladys was leaning against me, her face swollen with tears. Cyan was looking out over the field, a fierce look upon his face and a tremble in his lower lip. My sob came before I could stifle it, a keening that caused me to clutch at my skirts, doubling over. Gladys swayed with me and I wrapped my arms about her, burying my face in her smooth fair hair. We stayed like that for some time, the four of us. The courtyard emptied behind us. Rhydderch stood below for a while; when I next looked, he had gone.

  • • •

  Days passed, and it was soon time to return to Partick. The leaves of the trees above the river burned gold and the pines had begun dropping their cones. I busied myself overseeing the packing of our trunks to keep from the hole that Angharad’s departure had left. Macon was an old man now, but I trusted no other to keep Cadzow slumbering on tightly through the winter. It soothed me to use my body, and the servants indulged me as I helped move the horses to pasture so we could clean out the stables and checked and rechecked the hay stock and food stores. The men always cursed their luck, because even though our forest was thick with deer, no spear or arrow seemed to catch them when I was in residence. Now that I was leaving, the deer, too, would be left to fend for themselves.

  Rhys rode with me down to our little quay on the Clyde to chat with our tenants as they hoisted heavy sacks of flour and grain onto my father’s old boats.

  I turned to him. “Do you like it here?”

  The wood smelled of freshly fallen leaves, and Rhys was riding with his face tilted up to the sun. “Like it?” He opened one eye in a childlike squint that made me smile.

  “Good. Someday it shall all be yours.”

  He straightened then, as if suddenly remembering the burden of adulthood, and I cursed myself for speaking.

  At sunset on the eve of our departure, I went to sit beside the mound among the oaks that held my father’s body.

  “I’ll come with you, my lady.” Aela set aside her sewing to help me with my cloak.

  “No, Aela, thank you, but I wish to go alone.”

  Alone. It wasn’t the truth. At Cadzow I was never alone. I was surrounded by ghosts: the spirits of the dead and the memories of those yet living. Their shadows were soaked into stone and earth and wood. Here was the field where Maelgwn had caught me in his arms, barefoot with soot upon his face. Here was the hut where Cathan had sat, his open hands resting on his knees as he taught us of laws and nature and man. Here was the mortar and pestle gripped by Ariane and, before her, by my mother. There in the Hall were the shields painted by Brodyn and Brant, and the coverlets sewn by Crowan that yet warmed the beds.

  I rounded the bend on the forest path and spotted the oaks up ahead. They stretched their timeworn limbs, welcoming me like an old friend. The sentinels of a great king. The grassy mound where his body slumbered was lit like a torch by shafts of sinking sun.

  I circled the mound sunwise until I reached the spot farthest from the path where I could sink into the grass and be hidden, my knees tucked to my chest and my back bolstered against the depths of earth piled between us.

  At first, as always, there was only me. I set the little spray of golden leaves and rowanberries I’d gathered on my walk upon the grass next to me and let my eyes fall closed. My lips moved in a prayer for my parents, for Cathan and Crowan in the Summerlands, for the ancestors who had come before them. I pulled the flask from my cloak and poured the wine. And then a soft autumn wind rose and rustled in the trees. It played at the wisps of hair at my ears and suddenly I felt them gathered close, if only for a moment. As if my mother’s love and my father’s body sleeping below could stir the winds of the earth to touch my cheek one last time. Cathan had once promised me that the dead never leave us. In this moment I felt that it was true.

  “Please protect my loves,” I whispered. “Please keep them safe.”

  The only answer was a drop in the breeze and the plaintive call of a ewe who’d strayed too far from her flock. Then there came a rustle in the hedges. I bristled at the sudden wave of discomfort. As if the very air in the wood around me had grown thin, and I was suddenly no longer alone.

  But what did I know? I was no Wisdom Keeper. And though Ariane had promised, she had never taught me the language of the wind. I gathered my things and stood too quickly, breaking the evening spell.

  • • •

  Winter came early, with snows piling past our horses’ knees and, with it, the season of stories, of Clota and the Seven Geese, of Brân the Blessed, son of Lir. There were new tales, too, as Song Keepers traveled between courts spreading news and stories about the kings, Keepers, and warriors of our land. I wondered what the Keepers in Tutgual’s court were saying of Gwenddolau and Lailoken, for even the Song Keepers knew better than to sing their praises before Tutgual King.

  Angharad sent word that Lailoken warmed her bed with a hot stone on cold nights, and Maelgwn sent word that the Dragon Warriors were charmed beyond belief; the brave men of Gwenddolau’s fort were wrapped round my daughter’s little finger. It somewhat eased my mind to think she was so well loved by my brother and his men, safe under not only Maelgwn’s hawk-eyed care but also that of some of the most famed warriors of our island.

  And as Rhys’s seventeenth winter came and went, his father took him to the mountain for three nights. He returned, his fingers and toes burned by frost, but he’d been made into a man. He would not speak of what had transpired, but he stood straighter and spoke with more care. Village and noble girls of Partick alike began to appear wherever Rhys went, their eyes lit with romance at the sight of him, and I could not blame them. With his dark hair falling to his shoulders and his sea-green eyes, he was the very image of his father.

  As the snows receded, fiddlehead ferns began to poke up from the earth. Summer came, and then the first days of autumn. I pushed Cathan’s prophecy from my mind until one fall morning, more than a fortnight before Samhain, when my weaving was disturbed by the incessant cawing of a crow beyond the shutter. Elufed s
at beside me, her smooth brow bent over her work until she looked up in annoyance.

  “Well, go see to it, will you? It isn’t here for me.”

  “Do you mean the bird?” Gladys stood and Elufed cast her an impatient look.

  “Never mind it, my child. This is for your mother.”

  Gladys glanced between us uncertainly before taking her seat.

  “Don’t worry, Gladys. I’ll only be a moment.”

  Elufed need not say what I already knew. There were few times I spotted a crow without thinking of Cathan, but even as I wrapped a woolen shawl hastily about my shoulders and stepped outside into the autumn gloom, I shivered a little with a sense of foreboding.

  The crow sat on the slender ledge that trimmed the window, its black feet planted stubbornly.

  “Very well. What is it?” I whispered, too aware of the gate guards with their crosses pretending to be good Christian men. The bird whipped round and regarded me with a tilt of its head, the lids blinking over its inky eyes. Then, as suddenly as it had appeared, it lurched toward me with a great “Caw!”

  “Sweet Gods!” I cursed and shrank back, heart racing as the bird took flight over my head. The gateman spun on his heel, spear in hand.

  “No, it’s all right,” I assured him, placing a hand to my racing heart. “It was a bird is all.”

  He gave a curt nod. I watched the crow’s dark silhouette glide high over the gate as if in warning. Someone was coming. Someone with ill intent. I would not have to wait long, for the next moment a rumble sounded like distant thunder. I looked to the tarnished sky in search of rain before I realized it was the thrumming of horse hooves sounding from the road.

  The sentries squinted and gathered together, testing the heft of their weapons in their hands as the riders approached. I heard a great thudding of hooves come to a stop.