There’s a faint burst of laughter. I throw the covers back, pull on the bedrobe Aoife gave me, and slide my feet into my shoes. They feel cold and gritty without hose as I tiptoe to the door and look out. Near the palisade wall, Cormac and Owain are holding court, lit orange by firelight, passing wineskins and smaller vessels of the strong stuff that makes them particularly ugly.
Sadb pulled me aside before supper to tell me Órlaith wouldn’t be plaiting my hair or bringing water or even setting foot in the sleeping chamber anymore. The child is frightened, Sadb said. She comes from a decent family. A king’s son should know to keep better company.
It could be months before Cadwgan sends for Owain. Muirchertach Ua Briain may be an ally and a friend, but he’s not a saint or a fool.
The lads are comparing spoils as I edge near. Cormac has a girl’s undershift smudged with grass stains. Owain has a long hank of blue-black hair bound with a leather strip. Einion penteulu has what I hope is a pig’s ear. Rhys notices me first. He nudges Owain with the hinged lid of a jewelry box he’s holding, and when Owain spots me he grins in a slow, lazy way. He’s the kind of drunk that only comes from settling into a flagon in midafternoon.
“Sweeting, it’s cold. Go inside.”
“I will, but . . . when are you coming to bed?”
Cormac says something about fillies and riding, and the Irish lads all snicker. For once I’m glad I understand little of what’s said to me, especially when it’s said quickly. Owain smirks at them and makes a helpless, apologetic gesture, then rises and pulls me a pace away.
“What is it?” he asks in a low voice, clear and steady, and all at once I wonder if I was wrong about him being drunk.
“I — I just wondered where you were.”
“Well, now you know. So go back inside.” He glances at the lads, who watch us, slumped and giggle-drunk, like we’re a bear-baiting. Or a hanging.
“I just . . .”
“She just wants to know where you are,” Einion penteulu simpers. “At all times. Like a wife might.”
Owain laughs aloud. I try to swallow the choke in my throat, but I cannot. I can’t even look at him.
Einion shakes his head, slow and disgusted. “I told you this would happen if you didn’t kill that marriage lie outright. Next thing you know, she’ll whisper in your ear that the likes of us are making you grieve our host like your father warned you against. She’ll pull you onto her lap like a good little dog and wind up the leash.”
“It was a misspeaking, not a lie.” Owain lifts his brows. “Right, sweeting?”
I swipe at tears. That misspeaking is the one thing that might make Owain behave himself here. That could repair what’s already been damaged. I stare at my feet and say nothing.
Einion penteulu makes a lordly told you so gesture into the silence.
“Jesus wept.” Owain presses his hands to his forehead. “So that’s what this is. You and everyone else in this whole place would have me dance like a trained bear. The high king, because I’m to be my father’s son. His wife, because apparently any sort of amusement in her household is ruinous. And you, because of one misplaced word from months ago. By Christ, I seem to remember being promised trickery that could only help me.”
I straighten. “It is —”
“It is not!” Owain cuts in. “It’s humiliating, being here. Sitting at another man’s table. Eating his meat. Sleeping in a bed that’s not mine, beneath a roof that’ll never be mine. Nothing helps with that. I hope you’re getting something out of your little ploy, sweeting, for I’m sure as hell not.”
“It might help,” I stammer, “if you’d let it.”
“My lackwit cousin is running my inheritance into ruin. My father crouches like a whipped hound before the English king. Here I am, apparently the only one who sees what must be done and has the stones to do it, expected to fill my days with useless horseshit while my birthright slips away a little more each godforsaken hour. If that’s not enough, you’re out here clutching at my hem before all these men and begrudging me a little harmless play.”
I was ready to withdraw. Smile big, kiss his cheek, let him save face in front of his foster teulu and let them watch me walk away. Instead I bark a harsh laugh. “So it’s hard, is it? Being under someone else’s roof when you’d rather be home? Expectations you don’t know what to do with? Always on tiptoe, never at ease? And never is it far from your mind that your full belly and warm back depend on the goodwill of one man?”
Owain frowns, cocks his head.
But Einion penteulu sighs like a bellows. “Christ Jesus, lass. That was years ago. Besides, it’s not like you didn’t come out of it well.”
Cormac makes the whipcrack noise-gesture, slow and taunting, and as the rest of them laugh, Owain lets go of my arm and rejoins the flickerlit circle.
“Go inside.” He puts his back to me. “There’s no place for you here.”
I go inside. There’s little else to do.
I don’t sleep, though. I lie fully clothed beneath the covers, trembling. One misplaced word from months ago and here I am, still playing house. Waiting in bed, like a proper wife.
For three years now I’ve spun falsehoods and told myself they were for Owain ap Cadwgan. I should know lies for what they are. How the most tempting of them glitter and shine. How easy it is to believe when you have every reason to want it so.
The pallet shifts like someone is leaning against it. Nest’s whisper glides through the dark. “Are you awake?”
I could say nothing. Pretend to sleep. Heaven knows Nest did enough of that in the last few months. Only I am alone, and nothing will ever be ordinary. “Yes.”
“Can I stay a while? They’ve gone . . . out.”
I throw the bedclothes back, and she slides in beside me. She presses her shoulder against mine as if we really were cousins and sharing space in the maidens’ quarters. Like Margred and I sometimes did for hours at a stretch on lazy afternoons, just like sisters, she’d say, with the cozy delight of someone who had none by birth. She’d whisper what to a child passed for secrets, and my whole heart would hurt at how innocent some girls get to be.
At last I whisper, “You were right. It is just a playact. A misspeaking. I’m a fool for thinking it anything more. It should have worked, though. With the right idea in his ear . . . but he’s no different than he is at home. If anything, he’s worse.”
“He’s no different,” Nest replies. “You are.”
Drunk or sober, Owain speaks of little now but going home. How it’ll be. His warband recalled. His cousin slain. His father shown up and proved wrong. His birthright secured and everything just as it was. Just as it should be.
Which means every holiday will look like Christmas at Aberaeron. Isabel’s cruel smile and Cadwgan’s sidelong disdain. Easter and Michaelmas, Whitsuntide and Candlemas. Every fort like the one before, only Margred will never be there. She’ll refuse to come near the man who killed her brother, even for me. She will grow up and take her place among the wives who ignore me, and in fort after fort I’ll spin quietly in some dim corner and wait alone for Owain to come back, grinning and blood-spattered and loaded down with plunder while men like Gerald of Windsor wait for him deep in the greenwood. If I’m lucky, if my playact holds, back will come Owain ap Cadwgan to wherever he’s decided there is a place for me. He’ll slip some shiny thing over my wrist, still warm from the girl it was taken from, and he’ll grin like a wolf and pass the meat and take me to bed and bloody well praise himself for what a good man he is.