Touch them. Warm and squirmy, smelling of porridge and soap. Not Miv. I left my sister behind.
Nest bends over the littler boy, who is curled like a dead grub at her feet, but the older boy is struggling to keep hold of Not Miv as she strains toward their mother. Nest scrabbles to catch the baby mid-tumble.
The littler boy blinks slow, his thumb wedged firmly in his mouth. In one fist is a ratty square of faded red cloth that he clutches against his chest. Miv would be this big. She’s not, though. I left her to burn. To save my own skin.
I kneel and collect the smaller boy out of the mud. He’s dead weight like a sack of barley when I heft him onto my hip. He drops his head on my shoulder and rubs the cloth against his cheek.
The older boy glares up at me. “Put my brother down or I’ll hurt you.”
“William, hssst!” Nest raps him upside the ear. “Not even this girl, do you hear? Not a word to any of these filthy brutes.”
“Mama —”
“I said hssst. Mama needs to think.” Nest presses a fist to her mouth, blinking, blinking.
“I’ll not harm your brother,” I reply quietly to William, “nor you. Nor your mam nor your . . . the baby.”
William scowls and gestures at Owain. “He will.”
I begin to tell the boy that he’s a hostage, and hostages are kept comfortably and not harmed. They’re held to guarantee the good behavior of an enemy, or traded for something valuable. There’s no profit in doing violence to a hostage.
But hostages are not marched barefoot and taunted with a tale of their capture. They’re not made to stand half-dressed and shivering in the midst of a warband.
So mayhap William ap Gerald and his siblings and his mother are not hostages. Mayhap that’s not what Owain has in mind at all.
ONCE WE’RE IN THE HALL, I LEAD NEST AND THE little ones toward the warm hearth and the cushioned benches there. It’s easily the most comfortable place in the hunting lodge, but Nest veers toward a dark corner away from all the doors. As I follow, the smaller boy lies heavy on my shoulder, his fingers digging like talons.
In the corner, Nest drops to her knees, then collapses against the wall and slides into a heap. The baby lands in her lap, squealing joyfully like it’s a game of horsey. Nest closes her eyes and breathes out long and shuddery. When William burrows against her, she hugs him close and holds on. Owain wouldn’t have made Nest walk the whole way, but one look at her cold-reddened feet and I know she walked enough. Without a word, I lower the younger boy next to her, and she chokes on a sob as she holds him tight.
“Will you ask them to kill me first?” William whispers to his mother. “I don’t want to watch you die.”
“Shh, lambie. No one’s going to die. Not you. Not David. Not Angharad.” Nest pets his hair with one shaking hand. “Don’t be afraid.”
William scrubs his eyes with his wrist. David sucks his thumb while Not Miv squirms and fusses. Nest squints up at me, taking my measure. In a cool, courteous voice she says, “Thank you.”
I nod. I look everywhere but her face. Owain ap Cadwgan did not kill the wife of Gerald of Windsor in the burning shadow of her home.
Instead he seized her. And her beasts.
I’m pressed into a corner of the chapel. Holding a fire iron in both hands and making myself breathe.
Killing Gerald of Windsor would have been one thing. Most of the Welsh kings and dozens of Norman border barons would have drunk Owain’s health till the smallest hours, and even Gerald’s so-called allies would have taken horse without delay to seize his lands and castles.
But Owain did not kill Gerald of Windsor. Instead he did something far worse.
Owain will feast his warband tonight and divide the plunder into shares. It will get loud and it will go late. By morning my hands must be empty. By morning I must be firmly here, at Llyssun. Nowhere else.
A shadow slants across the floor. Rhys shifts in the doorway, holding his wounded arm in a way he wishes looked healthy. I should ask about his injury to keep him in the habit of touching that healing scar. I can’t, though. I can’t think beyond the cold metal in my hand.
“Ah . . . it’s coming on suppertime.”
“Already? Well. Doesn’t matter. I’m not hungry.”
“My lord says to bring you.” Rhys clears his throat. “Now.”
I tighten my grip and cut a glance at him, but his cheeks are pink and he’s toeing the floor.
Loud and late it is, then. At least they’ll be in good humor. Safely returned, the lot of them, with treasure for every man. As if Saint Elen herself saw to it.
The first place we go is the kitchen, where Rhys watches as I hand over the fire iron. He stays a generous armslength from me all the while. Once it’s done, I lace my hands together to keep them from feeling too empty.
In the hall, the steward is in heated conversation with Owain, who’s lazily sipping from a mug. The steward stabs a finger at the corner where David lies wide-eyed and unmoving across Nest’s lap and Not Miv is fighting William as he tries to keep her close. It’s plain what the steward is saying — a king’s son has no business shaming hostages with such callous treatment, and Owain should know better.
Owain glances at Nest where she sits like a toadstool, hunched and unmoving, still in her nightgown with her hair straggling loose from its braid, and he grins. The steward’s face is growing red, but he bows curtly and strides away before one of the fists clenched at his sides gets the better of him.
Rhys nudges me. I’ve stopped walking, and I’m near enough to the corner that William looks up at me, lost and floundering: Please just make it better. I stumble forward. Away from them. Toward Owain, who takes my hand, puts it on his arm, then calls out to the hall, “Nest will play at kitchen maid.”
Nest’s jaw drops, her mouth moving soundlessly. At length she shifts David onto the floor and claws her way to her feet. She squares up like a warbander and says, quiet but clear, “Not even you would dare treat a hostage this way, Owain ap Cadwgan.”
Owain lifts a brow. “Who said you were a hostage?”
“I’m a slave, then?”
He flicks his fingers at the hall door, offhand, careless, like the half command is all that’s needed. Nest takes a slow measure of the room. The lads cackling and tipsy, clustered, watching her over mug rims. The steward long gone and hobbled besides. Me — her eye glides over me like I’m a mongrel dog Owain holds on a tether. At last she hauls David and William each to his feet, then shoulders Not Miv.
“And where might you be taking your sons, Nest, wife of Gerald the Coward? Into the kitchen?” Owain tsks. “However do the Normans produce fighting men?”
“I’ll not leave them here alone,” Nest replies through her teeth. “If you want to kill them, you’ll do it looking into my eyes.”
William makes a tiny animal sound and pulls his cloak over his head.
Owain puts on a look of great hurt. “They’re just little babies, Nest. What kind of beast do you take me for?”
Nest wisely presses her lips together, though it’s clear she’d sorely like to tell him just what kind of beast she takes him for.
“I’m really just a lamb,” Owain goes on in a voice of butter. “Elen will tell you. Won’t you, sweeting?”