Mati’s uncle ignored both her anger and her tears. “His lands will go to his brother, Gwynned. You can stay on your dower lands, but with no one to hold them for you . . . .”
Unwynn fell silent for a long time, and Mati’s mother’s eyes never left his face. He said at last, “These are troubled times, sister. You must marry again. Before Lent. You must marry a man of the Prince’s choosing.”
“I must do the Prince’s bidding before my husband’s body is even cold.” Margaret’s tears were a steady stream, and something different entered her voice. Mati did not recognize it yet, for she was too young. What she heard was grief that would not heal, coupled with the loss of hope.
Unwynn stood, his sword knocking against the stone floor. He had not taken it off nor stopped to wash, before coming to his sister with the news. Blood and dirt streaked his arms and leather breastplate. His face looked weary and older than his twenty-six years.
“I’ll have to tell Matilda.” Margaret wiped her tears and tried to stop their flowing.
Mati flinched at the mention of her name and turned from her mother and her uncle. She cared nothing for princes or cattle, even her mother’s pain was eclipsed by her own sorrow as it rose to choke her. She saw a large bundle wrapped in her father’s cloak at the end of the hall, and she moved toward it.
She was five and her hands were small, but she worked steadily at pulling on the tightly bound wool, careless of the blood on it. Beneath one end of it was her father’s face, already hardening in death. He did not look like himself. Gareth of North Powys had always been a hard man, but Mati remembered him laughing. He had never minded that she was a girl.
She heard her mother’s voice across the hall. “I have no son. I will have to do as the Prince’s commands. I will have to marry again.”
When they went to look for her later, Mati was still sitting by her father’s body. She refused to leave him except to dress in her best linen shift and blue overdress. She stayed with him until he was buried on the hillside next to her grandfather, since her mother had left him on the floor unattended, and spoke of marrying another before he was in the ground.
Chapter One
Norman England
Shropshire, 1097
The train of women, servants, and soldiers moved slowly because they had to keep pace with Margaret’s litter. Mati’s mother refused to ride like a Welshwoman, and instead had adopted the custom of Norman ladies, sitting quietly in her veiled chair, never drawing back the curtains of her litter to see sloping countryside around her. Perhaps she had not wanted to see her old homeland as she was leaving it. Mati did not doubt that her mother was not eager to see her new one.
Mati rode her own miniature pony that her father had brought her from the Pictish lands high in the wilds of the North. In spite of its long hair and rounded behind, its soft nose and large brown eyes, Mati had named her mount Fireheart, hoping that he would learn to live up to his name. So far, he had not, but the pony was sure footed and steady as the group made their way down from the mountains of Wales into the hill country of England.
That morning Mati’s nurse, Kara, had dressed her in her best blue overdress and linen shift, for they would arrive at Sir John Ellsrod’s keep that day. Her mother had married him by proxy at the command of the Prince of Powys, her body given in an attempt to shore up the broken peace. Mati did not understand all that went on in the minds of adults, all of whom were supposed to be far wiser than she, but she knew that she and her mother were exiled.
Early that morning, her nurse had whispered to her that they were already on Sir John’s land, so Mati had trouble containing her excitement. She had not been gone from home long enough to miss it, and her time in the English hill country seemed one long adventure. But as she had recently turned six, she did not shout as she wanted to. In the wake of her mother’s endless silent grief, she was beginning to learn restraint.
The land was different here from her home. The hills were gentle and rolling, not the steep crags she had climbed behind her nurse on her walks from her father’s house. She wished she was taller and could ride a warhorse like Sir John’s men. She wished they were not going to live among the Normans who had killed her father. She wished her mother had not had to obey the Prince, and marry to keep a peace that no one thought would last.
The ramparts of the castle keep loomed before them on the top of one of the gentle hills. A deep moat and a spiked gate surrounded it, but the trees before the moat were great oaks and hawthorns that reminded her of home. Mati would escape later, and climb one.
The drawbridge had been lowered for them, and the men at arms stood at attention on it, their spears presented and their eyes facing front. The keep’s servants had all turned out to greet their new mistress. They stood in solemn silence, very unlike the Welsh servants back home, who were always full of laughter.
Her nurse brought Mati to stand by her mother’s litter. The curtains were drawn open for the first time that day, and Margaret was handed out. Sir John Ellsrod stood in the bailey, a large, full shouldered man with no beard, his blond curling hair so dark that it was almost brown. His heavy chain of office hung around his neck, catching the last of the afternoon light, for he served the Norman king William Rufus as sheriff as well as land holder and knight.
He stepped forward and took her mother’s hand, speaking in Norman French, loud enough for all to hear him. Mati thought his voice would carry well on a battlefield. Her father had had such a voice. He was detached and calm, not an ogre as Mati had feared. He took her mother’s hand as if it were one more burden he would have to carry.
“Lady Margaret, we are pleased to welcome you to Shropshire. All here will serve you well.”
He bent down to Margaret and gave her the kiss of peace. It had been missing from their wedding ceremony.
At a gesture from Sir John, a woman stepped forward, curtseying, and offered a bouquet of flowers to Margaret. Mati watched her mother accept them, wanting to take her hand, but not wanting to show weakness in front of all those Normans. Margaret roused herself from her glassy-eyed stupor long enough to smile and to speak in good Norman French. For they were kith and kin of the Prince of Powys, and all their family learned from birth to speak the language of their enemies. “I thank you for this warm welcome. I will strive to be a fair and equitable mistress.”
There was polite applause, and Sir John Ellsrod led her mother into the main house without sparing Mati a glance, as if she were one of the waiting women. Mati felt her temper begin to rise, and she clamped her jaw down on it.
All the servants headed into the main house. The horses were led to the stable and the men at arms went back to their regular posts. Mati stood alone except for her nurse and a few servants who had stayed to gather up the baggage.
A boy of eight or nine walked up to her and spoke in Norman French. His hair was blond, as Sir John’s was, but lighter. It curled the same way, and clung close to his head where the curls had all but been shorn off, like a sheep in spring. “What’s your name?” he asked, fingering the dagger at his belt.
“Mati.”
“What kind of a name is that?”
Mati stared back at him steadily as he surveyed her with dark brown eyes. “Mine.”
“I heard your name was Matilda.”
“Normans call me that. My friends call me Mati.”
The boy smiled a little. “I’m not sure I want to be your friend.”
Mati shrugged. “Do as you please.”
“You seem pretty calm for a savage.”
Mati’s eyes glittered, but her voice stayed even. “At least we Welsh know how to treat a guest.”
The boy laughed, and he clapped her on the shoulder in approval. “But you’re no guest. You’re my new stepsister.”
Mati had wondered why this boy was so free and easy with her, why he resembled Sir John so closely. She had thought him a by-blow, but now she realized that he was the only honored son. She had nothing polite to say on t
he subject of his father, and while she could not escape the marriage her mother had made, this boy was no brother of hers.
The boy smiled then, and his smile was warm and real, the first smile she had ever received from an enemy. He patted her shoulder as he might pat his hound. But for some reason, this did not annoy her. Instead, she found herself wondering if an enemy might one day become a friend.
“My name is Roland,” he said, as if something had been settled between them. “I’ll see you at dinner, Mati.”
Kara came to her side then, curtseying to Roland Ellsrod, heir to the lands that lay for miles all around them. She led Mati into the house by the hand. Mati stopped on the stairs that led into the keep, and turned to look back. Roland still stood in the bailey, staring after her.
Mati, called Matilda by her new stepfather when he noticed her, followed Roland around like one of his hounds. She followed him from a discreet distance, so she would not be sent away.
There were few girls in that Norman keep, and none who were friendly. She was not allowed to sleep in her mother’s room anymore, but had her own room which she shared with Kara. The place would have been too lonely, had Roland not been there.
Mati watched everything he did with eyes of worship, and took to imitating him in any way she could. She cut her meat as he did, in big hunks with her dinner dagger, and would have choked to death one night had a servant not struck her back.
One evening, she feigned illness and stayed in her room, in the huge bedstead that was all her own. Kara clucked worriedly and made her drink mulled wine, but finally Mati’s nurse grew tired and fell asleep.
Taking the scissors from Kara’s sewing basket, Mati snuck down the stairs into the main hall, keeping to the shadows. She walked to the inner stable where she found an empty stall. She was sawing away at her hair when Roland found her.
“Mati, what have you done?”
She jumped to her feet, brandishing the scissors like a weapon. When she saw that it was only him, she let the blades go into his hand. Roland laughed. “What have you done to yourself?”
“I’m cutting my hair. I want to hunt and ride horses and my hair gets in the way.” She did not say it, but she wanted to be like him.
“Well, you’re making a mess of it. Sit still.”
She obeyed, sitting on her haunches in front of him. He cut her hair smoothly across her forehead. Long shanks of dark brown hair fell around her on the straw, but she did not flinch. She had never cut her hair before.
Roland stood back and surveyed his work with a critical eye, while Mati held her breath. “Now you look like a warrior.”
She smiled. “Can I hunt deer?” She leaped to her feet, almost impaling herself on the scissors he still held.
Roland laughed at her, ruffling her new bangs with his free hand. “You can hunt in my party. But if you cry, I’ll send you back to the women’s solar.”
“I won’t cry.” Mati thrust out her jaw in the same stubborn way she had all her life, the way that made her look so like her father.
“We’ll see.”
Kara wept as she raised the willow wand and struck Mati’s bare legs. Mati flinched, but did not cry. Her mother watched impassively from her carved oak chair.
Kara delivered the final stroke and then stepped back, laying down the wand and wiping her tears on the skirt of her overdress.
Margaret waited in silence as Mati stood and straightened her skirts. Her face was solemn under her new hair cut, but Margaret was surprised to see that it was not tear-stained.
“Never do such a thing again. Do you understand me?” Margaret asked her daughter in Norman French.
“I understand you, Mother,” Mati answered in Welsh.
Margaret winced at the sound of her native tongue. She had not spoken it since they had arrived months ago. The Prince had cast her out, away from hearth and home, to keep the peace. He had betrayed her, selling her to her enemies, the men who had killed her husband. If she had her own way, she would never speak her native tongue again. “You may go, Matilda.”
Mati stared at her mother for a long moment, and Margaret saw that her daughter’s eyes were not those of a child anymore. They were both in exile, and both alone in it, because she did not know how to bridge the gap between them. Margaret straightened her back against the hard oak and forced her hands to lie still on the chair’s heavy, carved arms.
Mati curtseyed to her mother and left without another word, followed by her nurse. The willow wand lay on the floor at Margaret’s feet. She waved her waiting woman away and bent to pick up the wand herself, feeling its supple lightness on her palm. Tears rose in her eyes and she swallowed them. Since the love of her life had died, she had no more use for tears. Tears did no one any good.
“Burn this.”
She handed the willow wand to the Norman woman who carried it out of the solar. It was a warm day in August, so there was no fire. The woman took the willow switch to the kitchen and burned it under the great iron cooking pot where a fire always stayed lit.
Mati flinched as Kara smoothed another herbal salve over the welts on her legs. “Don’t be sad, Kara. You only did it because you had to.”
“I know, Miss. You forgive me then?”
“There’s nothing to forgive. Now stop crying.”
Kara sniffed.
Roland burst into the room, his short sword banging against his knee. Kara quickly covered Mati’s legs.
“Well, I hear you had to pay the piper.”
“I did.”
He searched her face. “I understand you did not cry.”
“I did not.”
Roland slapped her shoulder. “We’ll make a warrior of you yet.”
Mati smiled. “I’m a warrior already.”
Roland came to Mati’s room late that night, when the rush light was lit, after Kara had been long asleep.
“Mati?” He whispered from the doorway.
“What?”
She sat up, her short hair tousled. Roland motioned for her to stand. She put on her clogs and wrapped Kara’s long wool shawl around her, over her night dress. She followed him in silence past the guards who smiled and looked the other way, assuming that the young lord was up to childish mischief with the Welsh brat.
Mati stared at them as she passed. Men like those had killed her father.
Roland led her out past the stables to a low place near the outer wall where he had assembled a pile of kindling. He pulled his flint out of his sleeve and started a fire.
“What are you doing?” Mati asked.
“You’ll see.”
From under his tunic, he pulled out a velvet bag, drawing out a length of dark brown hair.
“That’s my hair,” Mati said. “Why did you keep it?”
Roland handed it to her. “We need to burn it.”
“Why?”
He pitched his voice low. “So the witches won’t get it.”
Mati laughed. “There are no witches.”
“You never know.”
She looked at him for a moment, then down at the hair in her hand. She would not let a good fire go to waste. She took a deep breath, then spoke a few words in Welsh, calling on the dragon that lived beneath the mountains to protect her, and her mother. She knew that one day that dragon would wake, and drive every Norman from the land. If she lived to see that day, she would ask the dragon to spare Roland, for he was her friend.
She tossed her hair into the fire then and it blazed, warming her face. The burning hair smelled like battle.
“What did you say?” Roland asked. She could tell from his face that he did not like the sound of Welsh on her tongue, that to him, her prayer had sounded like an incantation.
“I called on the dragon of Wales for protection,” she answered.
“You don’t need protection from a myth,” Roland said. “You’ve got me now.”
Mati smiled at him, and when he offered his hand to lead her back into the house, she took it.
A we
ek later, Roland went to the stables and found leather leggings and a leather jerkin to fit Mati. He made a leather cap for her out of the skin of a doe he had killed. He presented the clothes to her with a flourish, and she threw her arms around him.
He laughed and ruffled her hair. It had already grown as long as her shoulders.
Mati stepped back, embarrassed, ducking her head and shifting her weight from one foot to another.
“That’s all right, Mati. None of the boys saw you. You are a girl, after all. It’s bound to come out sometime.”
She shot him a glare, embarrassment forgotten. She leaped at the leather clothes but Roland held them out of reach, catching her under his other arm. “Calm down, Mati, and I’ll give them to you.”
She stood still, and he gave her the clothes. She took off her dress and pulled the leggings on, reveling in the freedom of movement they gave her. She had worn dresses all of her life, even while riding Fireheart, even when she had ridden with her father on the front of his saddle. She pulled on the jerkin and pushed her hair under the cap, leaving her dress and shift on the floor of her room. She spun around, kicking.
“The savage in you is coming out, Mati.”
Mati kicked the wall, ignoring him, reveling in freedom for the first time since her father had died.
Roland caught her and held her still. “Let’s go riding.”
She stopped leaping, and looked into his eyes. “So I’m your friend, then?”
He did not look away. “You are.”
“For how long?” she asked.
He did not smile when he answered, so she knew that he meant it. “Forever.”
Chapter Two
Winter, 1106
Mati stretched her bow taut as the deer turned toward her, and she let her arrow fly. The doe was struck in the neck. Still, she ran deeper into the forest, and Mati followed.
The Wolves of Brittany Collection: A Romance Bundle Books 1-3 Page 32