Isabel and I have never been properly introduced, not even at their wedding, but she’s sure to look at me and see herself. A girl out of place and in need of allies and sympathy.
Owain’s kin look through me and past me, but Isabel’s someone who might meet my eye across the room and nod, like she sees me and doesn’t care who knows. Someone who might be able to carve me out a place in this turbulent family and leave me to occupy it in peace. I won’t come with empty hands, either. There must be things she still struggles with. Words she can’t say right. Or mayhap no one has invited her to play at ball.
At this year’s Christmas feast, I may not dance caroles or get rosy with ale, but I will steer Owain away from trouble and find a way to make his stepmother a friend, for Owain ap Cadwgan is the closest thing I have to a family.
Not by blood. Not by marriage.
Because of Saint Elen.
THE LADS TRAVEL PRECISE AND DELIBERATE IN TWO columns of nine with a spear-length between men, Owain heading one column and Llywelyn penteulu the other. I follow at the end at elbows with Rhys. Every now and then he’ll smile sidelong to prove he’s not bothered minding me.
There’s a soft snick of brush, and in the next heartbeat men are on us with short swords, a dozen men who rush like ghosts through the still, snow-lined trees. The lads draw steel and fall hard on the attackers. There’s a burst of shouting in harsh French, the solid sound of bodies colliding, the clatterclunk of metal on metal. The hiss of a name — Gerald of Windsor.
Normans. Butchers invading the kingdoms of Wales, but not just for killing. They’ve come to take what they can, and they’d have the kingdom of Powys from Owain’s father. His province of Ceredigion as well.
Owain is amid it. If he dies, no saint can help me. If he dies, I’m done for.
The fight is sharp and grim and over quickly. Three Normans lie slain, and the rest are pelting through the greenwood toward wherever they came from. The lads stand panting, their eyes wild and their sword-arms fidgety. Owain is whole and unharmed, and I thank every saint who ever lived even as I struggle to keep my breakfast down.
“Oh, Christ. Dear God Almighty, no.”
Owain’s voice is raw and desperate, both hands shoved through his hair. The man crumpled at his feet isn’t Norman. It’s Llywelyn penteulu, and Owain is pushing away the lads who have gathered and dropping to his knees at the side of his warband chief and oldest friend.
“Die,” I whisper, and the greenwood falls away and I’m up against the steading wall held fast, cold everywhere can’t struggle, and Miv is wailing but there are other cries too, panicked, angry, and faint amid that noise is a haphazard shuddery weeping that turns my stomach.
Oh saints, no. Not the echoes again. They’d all but faded to shadows.
“We’ve got to do something.” Owain’s wild gaze rakes the lads, all standing like pallbearers, red-eyed, shuffling, looking to the branches above and the torn-up mud and everywhere and nowhere.
“What of her?” Einion ap Tewdwr steps forward, hopeful and urgent. “The miracle girl?”
I freeze. I would have to touch him. Skin to skin. The blood. The smell of him.
But every last one of the lads is looking to me. Owain, too, even as his color drains and cold mud climbs the hem of his tunic.
I’ve never once used the word miracle, though if I’m honest, I have let it hang there.
So I make myself go, but when I get to Llywelyn penteulu’s side, it’s plain there’s no doing for him. Not by me. Not by anyone. The Norman blade caught him across the neck and took a wedge of wet red flesh with it. His stare is already going blank.
I should beg Saint Elen to intercede with the Almighty the way she did for Owain, but I don’t. Instead I look Owain in the eye and say as steady as I can, “Saint Elen kept you safe. Did you see how she knocked that blade aside? Every man of those Normans wanted you dead. Are you dead?”
Einion’s mouth falls open and he chokes on a few broken curses. Owain stifles a shuddering breath that’s suspiciously like a sob. Then he presses his forehead against Llywelyn penteulu’s and grips his friend’s hand and chokes out some odd garble of the paternoster and last rites.
In less time than it takes to piss, Llywelyn penteulu is dead.
At my elbow, Owain sits back on his heels, panting sharp and shallow. He scrubs a wrist over wet cheeks as he regards the body. Then he reaches out a shaking hand and closes his warband chief’s dull staring eyes. At length he whispers, “Saint Elen kept me.”
“Yes, she did,” I reply to my knees as they gouge the bloody, mud-slick ground, “because she looks to you always.”
We stay pressed together for a long moment. Then all at once, Owain rocks to his feet and stomps a handful of paces away. He tips his head to the sky and roars, “Gerald of Windsor! You miserable Norman bastard! You’re a dead man! You hear me? I will find you and kill you!”
I scrape blood from my hands with my handkerchief. He’s dead. Llywelyn penteulu is actually dead. I will never again catch his eye by mischance. I will never again shiver outside a door waiting on his departure. Every echo of him will soon be gone.
The lads drift toward Owain, gathering, murmuring Saint Elen and hairsbreadth and blessed. They stand together like a flock of crows, shoulder to shoulder, solid as a fist. Now and then one of them glances at me, crossing himself, slow and reverent like he just walked out of mass.
“We mustn’t linger here.” Einion ap Tewdwr seizes Owain’s sleeve. “Gerald and his bastard Normans know where we are now.”
Owain nods without looking at him. He’s still trembling. Einion pulls several of the lads aside. They dig through their rucksacks and one produces a length of canvas. Owain crouches alone beneath a nearby oak while the lads wrap the body. He looks young of a sudden. Not like a man with almost twenty summers who’s been in the field since four and ten. Not like a king’s son who’s been training with arms since he could hold a sword, always with an eye to borders that would one day be his to defend.
I should go to Owain, kneel beside him, offer something comforting. Not moments ago, there was a death in his family. His most trusted advisor. His brother in everything but blood.
I don’t trust my knees to work properly, though.
It’s one thing to know how Owain and his warband spend their days. Another thing entirely to see how easily something as simple as a journey can go wrong. Another thing besides to swear to him up and down that he has a saint’s protection when every word of it is a lie.
He can die by blade. He can die in a drunken brawl or a fall from his horse or by choking on a chicken bone. He nearly died today, right in front of me, because Saint Elen has made no promises to Owain ap Cadwgan.
None of what I tell him is true.
Three summers ago, I spun this playact out of some choice falsehoods on the thin hope that Owain might believe it worth his while to safeguard me if I had something he wanted. I should not be surprised he took to the idea like a bull to rutting. Not when he’s convinced he can do what he likes, say what he likes, rough up who he likes, take any chances he likes — all because a saint stands over his shoulder and keeps him from harm. Whether he deserves harm or not.
Mayhap Saint Elen is keeping Owain safe in spite of me, or possibly just to spite me. Or it might be that she’s merely watching, amused, to see how my playact turns out. God Almighty sent the saints to listen to us and help us, but why they do anything is a mystery. I can’t command Saint Elen or persuade her, but I can talk to her.