RHYS SPENDS THE FIRST DAY OF THE TRIP CURSING in a low mutter and plowing a pace ahead just to make sure I know he’s better than healthy. The second day he wordlessly walks at my side, and as evening is falling, he sidles up as we’re about to raise camp. He holds out his injured arm, the bandages already unrolled.
He’s been waiting to do this. Waiting till he’s nowhere near anyone who’ll call him pisser or ask if he’s the kind of milksop who whines for his mama whenever he gets a little scratch. Rhys isn’t showing me his wound because he thinks something’s wrong. It’s because he’s four and ten, he’s been six months away from home, and more than medicine or a miracle, this boy needs a bit of kindness that no one else will think to give him.
Rhys shakes long tangly curls over his eyes as I step near. There’s a faint shadow of hair on his upper lip, and oh saints but four and ten is young. Younger even than almost-twelve, because Margred is still chasing butterflies and sneaking honey cakes and has not been asked to look terror in the eye.
Mayhap Rhael felt this way too when she told me not to be afraid.
“You’ll be back among them before you know it,” I tell him, and instead of whisking away like a cat, he smiles at the dirt and mutters his thanks, touching the raised edge of the wound as he kneels to kindle a fire.
WE ARRIVE AT THE HUNTING LODGE MIDMORNING. It takes hardly any time to get things settled. The steward keeps the place well in the absence of his lord. He’s been in Cadwgan’s service so long he remembers Owain toddling around the place in baby gowns. If he’s not harried, the steward will tell stories of tiny Owain pissing circles on the walls or trying to ride the wolfhounds like ponies and getting bitten when they tired of it.
On my way into the hall I always pause before a series of thigh-high gashes in the door frame where Owain’s mother once marked his height with her meat knife. I thumb each one in order and wonder how she got him to keep still long enough to get a good reckoning. Llyssun is my favorite of all the royal residences because it’s got these small reminders that Owain’s family isn’t always turbulent and complicated. There was once a place for a mother who delighted in her growing son, so there’s got to be a place for a girl who’d live beside him.
By day, the household is unremarkable. Servants move trestle boards and feed the hearth fire, children run around, and sleet drags against the walls like animal claws. By day I often forget for long stretches that Owain isn’t here. It’s like he’s just out hunting with the lads and he’ll be back for supper all bootsteps and off-color jokes, and later I’ll follow him to the big bed in the king’s chamber and drift to sleep curled beneath his arm.
It’s when daylight starts to fade and there’s no Owain that the quiet sets in. Not the restful kind of quiet, either. Not the quiet that comes with spinning in glowing firelight or petting a pup asleep across your knees or listening to your father and mother sing two-part ballads, their voices twining through the dark while you nestle deeper into your pallet with your sister’s back warming yours.
It’s the quiet that makes me force myself to eat supper all smiles because people are watching. The quiet that keeps me huddled in the big bed, cold and awake and alone. The quiet that makes me recall every time I thought of the knife, how easily I could have killed Owain ap Cadwgan and finished the work my sister started, and wonder why under Heaven I would do such a thing when I should be thanking Almighty God for him.
In that quiet, there are brothers two summers apart. The older one curls his lip in disgust while the younger one just looks sad. They fade into the hills like they never were, and I reach a hand across the expanse of bed to where Owain should be but isn’t.
OUT IN THE YARD, THERE’S A SERIES OF SHOUTS AND the scrunch of gate hinges, then Einion penteulu calling for the steward. I put aside my wool and stow my spindle hastily enough that I seem excited, but not urgent and panicked like there’s cause for alarm. People are watching.
The lads flood the courtyard, plunder on their backs and on tethers behind them. Owain is cheerful and windblown atop a sleek black horse, wearing a crimson cloak he didn’t leave his father’s house with. There’s not a scratch on him.
I turn my eyes Heavenward and silently thank Saint Elen and any other saint listening. Then I head across the yard to greet him — and see the girl.
She’s older than me, likely a few summers older than Owain. Her honey-colored plait twists like a gallows rope over her shoulder, and she’s wearing a bloodstained cloak cinched over a nightgown. Two little boys hunch at her side. One looks about six summers, the other mayhap three. The older boy glares mutinously while the younger looks ready to collapse.
I stop where I stand and turn openmouthed to Owain as he swings down from his horse. He grabs me at the waist and kisses me firm and fierce. He’s cold from the wind, and his leather armor jabs me shoulder to hips.
Owain is talking, big and grinning and boastful. Normans running like frightened dogs. How they fell like ripe barley beneath his warband’s blades. How everything burned so beautifully.
I can hardly draw breath. I can’t look away from the girl.
“Gerald of bloody Windsor never saw us coming.” Owain cranes his neck to peer into her face as she stares hard at the ground. “Did he, Nest?”
The girl, Nest, lifts her chin. “That’s because I helped him escape the moment I heard your noise. All you’ve done is mark yourself. So don’t ever stop looking over your shoulder, for my husband will not rest until your lifeless corpse is hanging from a tree for the ravens to feed on.”
Husband. This is Nest ferch Rhys ap Tewdwr. Daughter of the king of a realm several years fallen. Wife of Gerald of Windsor. Standing in the courtyard of Llyssun, barefoot and in her nightgown.
“Oh yes,” Owain taunts, “I’m terribly frightened of a coward whoreson who slid down the shit shaft to avoid facing me like a man.”
They’ll have rattled through her yard. Kicked in her door. Flooded through like blood from a wound. They’ll have smashed the crockery and rifled through linens for hidden coins. Shoved anything valuable into purse or tunic.
Hard to the floor. Cold everywhere.
Nest grits her teeth as she tries to keep the younger boy on his feet. Then a baby begins to fuss, a low weh-weh-weh like the sound that used to wake me in the dim hours of the morning. Nest wearily shifts enough to heave a baby out of a sling beneath her arm and dark thatchy hair Miv I have to push the cradle against the wall I have to save Myfanwy —
But this baby is not Miv. It’s not Miv because I left her behind to burn.
Owain is ordering Nest to take the children inside, but it’s a slurry of sound because Rhael’s shoulder presses against mine but it isn’t, it can’t be, it’s years ago and it’s yesterday and I’m up against the steading wall and already the room is filling with smoke.
“SWEETING? HEY.” A HAND ON MY SHOULDER. NOT rough, but insistent. Owain frowns at me.
“You . . .” I stay standing. Somehow.
“I said, help Nest with Gerald’s brats.” Owain glances with distaste at her as she wriggles the baby — Not Miv — into the older boy’s arms.