“You said something about Saint Elen.” Owain’s voice is curiously level and wide-awake. “What she should do. I heard you.”
My heart is hammering. I haven’t said her name since the start of my prayer. Which means he’s been listening to me, silent as a cat on the hunt, as I whispered all kinds of things in the dark. Carefully I reply, “I’m praying to her. She’s my name saint.”
I wait. Holding my breath. Owain beside me drawn tight like a bowstring.
At length he mutters, “I’m losing patience with exile. Not understanding what the hell anyone is saying. Having to ask for everything. People expecting things of me. All I want is to go home and take back what’s mine. I’d listen to the Adversary himself if he’d give me a way to do it.”
I shudder. It’s too close to true.
“But I’d rather listen to a saint,” Owain adds quietly.
I don’t wait for the patter. I need him off this idea that he can have any sort of guidance from Saint Elen. I need him off it right now. “I wouldn’t trust Madog ap Rhirid to govern a byre. Who does he think he is, trying to run a province like Powys?”
It lands where I mean it to, and soon Owain lies growling at the ceiling and the Almighty and whoever else is listening, which is me, because it’s always me.
But now he’s talking about what he plans to do. Recall the lads of his warband. End his cousin in a variety of gruesome ways. Things he means to do himself alone, without any help from Saint Elen.
IT’S SUPPERTIME. IT’S JUST LIKE ANY OF THE MEALS at any of the halls in the kingdoms of Wales, only I’m at a proper place before a dish of hammered copper piled with meat and savories. Only I’m wearing glorious shoes and undergarments without a single tatter. Only the lord of this place has welcomed me in and sat me at this very table.
The sole thing that’s the same is that everyone is looking at me and speculating.
I smile. I keep my head high. I bring food to my mouth bite by bite like nothing is wrong. Like Owain didn’t bloody well promise he’d be at supper. Like I didn’t bloody well believe him.
At the high table, Sadb and Muirchertach sit closer than they need to and share a cup of wine. Niall feeds tidbits to the magpie perched on his shoulder, and Aoife catches my gaze and rolls her eyes at him just the smallest bit like I’m sharing her joke at her elbow and not across the room. There’s a place for Nest at my right, but it’s empty because she’s still only picking at the trays they send her in the maidens’ quarters.
I’m merely tired. Please, just let me rest.
There’s a massive thud, then a scuffle. Then singing. Loud, tomcat singing in Irish.
Sadb’s color is rising. She leans into Muirchertach and asks if that’s who she thinks it is, and he nods grimly.
There are another few thuds and some lackwit snickering, then Cormac and Owain stumble into the hall. They look like they’ve been digging turf all morning and fighting to keep it all afternoon. The other lads crowd the doorway, jostling and whisper-chortling but not daring to cross the threshold. Muirchertach rises, slow and ominous, hands in fists like ox hooves. He asks them with very brittle courtesy what in the name of every saint they mean by coming into his hall in such a state and thinking to take a meal.
Cormac makes a flourishing gesture and pulls Owain abreast of him, and they both kneel, still giggling like fools.
I put down my meat knife. Fold my hands in my lap.
Muirchertach makes an impatient gesture and they rise. They head for the guest table, but the high king growls that Cormac should get the hell out of his sight right bleeding now if he knows what’s good for him. Cormac veers toward the door where the others are gathered, still giggling, and the lot of them wisely disappear. Muirchertach stabs a finger at Owain, then at the empty place next to me.
Aoife traces her meat knife in slow, winding loops across her mutton. Her cheeks are red. Niall regards me with open pity. Owain climbs over the bench with a swagger and runs a hand up my thigh under the trestle board. He smells like wind and heather and something else, something sharp and thin and vaguely grainy.
There’s space at the end of the bench at the high table next to Aoife. I can’t get up, cross the hall, and sit shoulder to shoulder with her, even though we could laugh about the cat singeing his tail on a stray hearth coal and share a big wedge of honey cake while her brother spoils a magpie and her parents trade kisses when they think no one is watching. I can’t get up with bread in both hands and share it with Nest in the quiet of the maidens’ quarters.
Instead I sit next to Owain ap Cadwgan in a pretty gown that did not come to me through violence, embroidery at my neck and calfskin on my feet, while knives snick through meat and ale is sipped and bread is torn in a newly uncomfortable hall.
I do it in silence, like a proper wife.
ON MY WAY TO THE PRIVY, I SPOT NEST BY THE GATE. She’s hooded and half in shadow, speaking intently with a graybeard who favors his right side and has a deep gash down his jaw. I rush toward her. She’s on her feet for the first time since April. Perhaps she’s ready to talk. To tell me in words what both of us know is happening.
Nest startles when I grab her hands and hold on. I want to beg her pardon. I want to cry. Instead I whisper, “You have no idea how glad I am to see you up and about.”
The graybeard grunts and holds out a weathered palm. Nest slips one hand out of mine, reaches into her apron, and presses something round and shiny against the graybeard’s fingers. He flips it, squints at it, then bites it. A coin.
Nest just gave silver to a fighting man.
“Yes. About that.” There’s no wavery choke in her voice now. No weak sighing. Her skin is fresh and ruddy. Not sickbed pale. “It’s time you knew.”
“Wait. Wait. You were ill. All these se’ennights. You were . . .” I hold my arms out over my belly, and Nest makes a face like I pissed in her porridge.
“Guh. I know. I’m sorry. I had to let you think it, though. If you didn’t believe, none of the others would.”
My mouth is slowly falling open. She’s been planning this. All those picked-at trays of food. Keeping the bedcovers over her face. Her one complaint — so tired — something no one could challenge her on. Little wonder the court physician could find nothing wrong. Because there is nothing wrong. There never has been.
Now Nest has given money to a man who’s clearly fought in more than one warband, and there’s but one reason she’d do it.
She means to have Owain killed.
There’s nothing to stop her now. Her children are safe. She’s far from anyone who might rescue her. If she hires an assassin, chances are good she’ll be successful. She can kill him and he’ll be dead.
I glance at the hall where Aoife and Gormlaith are likely wondering what’s keeping me, then I gesture for Nest to come behind the kitchen into a patch of ill-smelling shade. I’m too relieved to be angry she lied. I’m more worried about that graybeard and the big knife at his side, how he’s on his home ground and Owain is far from his teulu.
When Nest hesitates, I grab her arm again. My hand closes around something metal. I shove her sleeve up, and there’s the bracelet Owain gave me. The one that was Nest’s, from her father.