“Please.” Her voice breaks. “There must be something you want.”
My steading unburned. My parents bustling around hearth and yard and byre. Brothers two summers apart, Rhael at my door. Miv as big as Margred, playing hoodman-blind with my son and daughter.
I cinch the sinew tight.
“Elen?” William has pulled David upright, balancing the littler boy and helping him hold his palms outstretched to catch the ball. “Look, we’re ready!”
“There is,” I say quietly to Nest, and I toss the ball to the boys, pick up the mazer that one of the kitchen lads refilled, and squish through the rain toward the hall.
Owain is very drunk when I pad back inside. Good. He’s a suggestible and happy drunk. I slide behind him and begin rubbing his shoulders. His muscles are knotted up like bad beef, and he grunts appreciation.
“My lord?”
“Yes, sweeting?” His voice is a low rumble, like a purring cat.
“Is it true you won’t let the little ones play outside?”
Owain tries to swivel to look at me, but I knead harder and he stills.
“I heard them raising a clamor when I was coming back from the privy,” I add.
“No comfort. If you don’t like hearing them squawk, stay away from them.”
I lean close and whisper in his ear, “Makes me wonder what Gerald of Windsor would do, hearing this story out of turn.”
“Out of turn how?” Owain’s voice is mellow, easy as honey. He’s humoring me.
“Right now, all Gerald has are his own worst thoughts.” I push my thumbs along Owain’s shoulder bones, roll them up the muscles. “What if those thoughts went even darker? A few stories from his frightened children — the little ones he left to you when he fled down the privy shaft to save his own neck — well, a murderous father has even less wits than a murderous husband, wouldn’t you think?”
“What are you saying?”
The bench shudders, and Einion penteulu drops next to Owain. “She’s telling you to return the brats to Gerald. Just like your father told you.”
Owain’s back turns to stone beneath my hands. Einion calmly reaches for a mug of wine. The silence grows uncomfortable. I can’t keep talking, though. Not in front of Einion penteulu. Because he’s right.
“Oh, don’t stop on my account.” Einion’s face is hidden by the mug, but I can hear the smirk in his voice. “Saint Elen was doing what she does best.”
“Have some more wine.” I bare a gritty smile, snatch his mug out of his hand, and pour.
“Is that what you’re doing?” Owain asks me. “Because I told you. No comfort.”
“I was . . .” I was about to tell him how bad it is not knowing, but how it’s a different kind of bad when you have pieces that make you think you know. Gerald would have William and his teary, wide-eyed tales of barefoot marches and his mother with soup burns over her wrists, crossing the courtyard head down behind Owain. He’d have David’s staring silence, his muttered Alice. He’d have Not Miv, who’d cry and cry.
“She was whispering in your ear,” Einion penteulu fills in helpfully, “and rubbing your shoulders.”
“And telling me to let them go,” Owain says, like he’s putting pieces together in his head.
I pull my hands away from Owain’s back. “No. No, my lord. Not let them go.”
“But?” prompts Einion, drawing the word out, tipping his mug at me.
That mug would make a nice deep dent in the side of Einion penteulu’s wretched head.
“I don’t think I understand,” Einion goes on in a mocking halfwit drawl. “I’m but a simple fighting man. Perhaps you should come over here and explain it in pretty whispers while rubbing my shoulders.”
Owain slams his mug down, but Einion penteulu is already sliding away on the bench with both hands up as if in surrender.
“Beg pardon, my lord.” Einion bows his head. “That was out of turn.”
Owain slides an arm around my waist and pulls me against him without taking his eyes off Einion penteulu. “Yes. It was.”
I can’t help but slice a grin at Einion, but it doesn’t matter, for he’s standing to like any of the lads in the practice yard, gaze blanked, squared up.
After several long moments, Owain bids me pour more wine and asks if I might rub his shoulders a little longer. His voice is easy once again, and Einion penteulu retakes his seat, and before long they’re laughing at a wolfhound licking its nether parts. When their conversation devolves into whether it’s too cold for a pissing contest, I move my hands away and drift kitchenward, but I’m not two steps from the trestle when Owain pretends to collapse on the bench.
“Thief!” He lolls across the table, flopping his wrists like fish on a riverbank. “Take away my muscles and bones, will you? Put ’em back, sweeting, or I’m of no use to anyone.”
Then Owain tips his head enough to grin at me. Einion penteulu snickers and takes another drink. I sigh and start rubbing Owain’s shoulders again. I also keep pouring the wine, but he’s no fool. I can’t even glance at the hall door without him going limp like David and moaning about bone theft and floggings.
When Owain says no comfort, he does not act in half measures.
I BLINK AWAKE WHEN OWAIN SHIFTS QUICK AND sudden, and I scrabble hard when Einion penteulu’s face appears above the bed.
“He’s on us,” Einion says grimly. “Get up. Arm yourself.”
Owain squints at him, the bedclothes tumbling to his waist. “Who?”
“Your whoreson cousin Madog, rot his soul! Bought and paid for by Gerald of Windsor and that bastard English king!”
“Goddamn it!” Owain rolls out of bed, cursing as he puts on his tunic — dawn raid that son of a — but my hands are trembling as I slide into my gown and grab my rucksack. Madog ap Rhirid who thought to be Owain’s penteulu. Who Owain humiliated in the public of his father’s hall and again in the yard in front of all the warbands. Whose sister is a child of eleven and the only one of Owain’s entire volatile family who looks forward to seeing me.
Gerald did not come hellbent. Nor did he come with a big Norman army. He chose more thorough means.
The hall is in chaos. The lads are stumbling over one another, grappling with weapons and cursing whorebegotten Madog ap Rhirid and all his kin to eight generations. In the corner, at Nest’s feet, William is trying to fasten his hose and keeps fumbling the ties. I start toward him, but Owain pulls me up short.
“You’re with me,” he says. “Einion will see to Nest and Gerald’s brats.”
I struggle, but Owain’s grip tightens. “There won’t be a fight. This is an ambush. We’re getting the hell out of here.”
“Alice! Alice! Alice!” David thrashes in Nest’s arms, red-faced, small hands grabbing, but Owain tows me stumbling toward the door.
Outside, the sky is a harsh screaming pink, and it’s bone-chill freezing. Armed men are flooding around both corners of the hall and through the trees, and I paw the air to my left and panic when Rhael isn’t there gripping and regripping the butcher knife. There’s nothing in my hand, when only a moment ago she shoved the fire iron at me and told me not to be afraid. Miv is not crying oh Christ they got to her already Rhael said they would not care about —