Rhys squares up. His hair is close-cropped like Einion penteulu’s now, and without it to hide behind, he is nowhere near the boy who worried over Normans or thought to protest minding me. “Turn around. At the word of a king’s son.”
“The tide obeys no man’s son.” The captain folds thick brown arms. He’s broad like a barrel and missing half an ear. “It’s running now, and I’m for Wales. Passengers to the stern. Or overboard. Take your choice.”
Rhys groans low at the wharf growing smaller against Waterford. He glances at the small rowboat overturned near the mast, then at the sailors keeping a wary eye on it and him. At length he curses and sways toward us, stepping around cargo and falling over ropes.
The graybeard drops a hand to his knife-hilt, but Nest says to Rhys in a calm, cheerful voice, “You’re too late, lad. We’ve slipped loose of the tether by fair means. Go take a seat before this man hurts you badly.” Rhys’s face gets redder by the moment, and Nest goes on, still light and friendly. “Do please have a care how you speak to us. This man may not understand what we’re saying, but he’ll gut you like a fish should he think you mean us harm.”
“I’m more than willing to leave you to him.” Rhys matches Nest’s pleasant tone. “She’s the one I was sent to fetch back.” He twitches his fingers at me. Like he might to a reluctant hound.
I link arms with Nest.
“Oh, Christ Jesus. You cannot be here willingly. No.” Rhys’s voice goes faint. “I didn’t believe him. Einion penteulu thinks very little of you. I was sure someone meant Owain harm. Make him vulnerable, then . . .”
I cough a quiet laugh. Right. God forbid I go missing and Owain’s the one to worry about.
“Your loyalty speaks well of you,” Nest says to Rhys, “but you’d best steel your guts to stand before Owain ap Cadwgan with the word that he’ll have to do without a saint now.”
“Oh no, I’ll not.” Rhys replies, but he only speaks to me. “You’re going back to Owain. He will not die because of you. I will not have it.”
Nest folds her arms. “I don’t give half a damn what you’ll have. I do give half a damn what Elen will have. So know this. When we land, my husband will be waiting. Elen and I will go with him. You will cheerfully bid us good health, or I swear before every last one of the saints you will not live to draw your next ten breaths, much less return to Owain ap Cadwgan with this news.”
“We’ll see,” Rhys says quietly, and he nods to the graybeard and takes a seat opposite us. The graybeard grunts and makes a show of toying with his weapon. He’s taking no chances, and I’m glad for it.
Rhys catches my eye and makes the field gesture for betrayed, then stabs a finger toward Ireland growing small and dark in the distance. I look away, not from shame like he’d have it, but to his arm that I healed, and I grit my teeth against tears that make no sense. Betrayed. Rhys has been nearly a year in Owain’s warband. More than enough time to watch and learn, to listen to men he’s desperate to earn a place among. To take in the playact as I spun it out. Of course he thinks I’ve betrayed Owain. It’s that simple to him.
My hands want to make betrayed back at Rhys, but I didn’t heal his wound so he’d owe me something. I hoped for belief and I got it. Expecting anything else from the lads will leave me disappointed every time. Even one so young he has no need of a razor, who’s been given the chance to win his spurs by fetching me back.
Even one who still has the use of both arms because of me.
I hope for fair winds to speed us home. Once we land, I will only ever face forward. If Saint Elen truly has been looking to Owain all these years, she might keep at it for reasons beyond my understanding. If she hasn’t, he’s no worse off than he was the moment ere he kicked in my door.
I gesture stand down, and Rhys snorts and turns away. One of us is going to be left high and dry at the end of this voyage, and I’ve come too far for it to be me.
RHYS STAYS CLOSE. THE SHIP IS THIRTY PACES LONG, and he can hardly sit elsewhere, but it’s clear he does not mean to return to Owain empty-handed. Rhys is broader now, less stringy, but he must know he alone is no match for whatever force Gerald of Windsor will bring to the wharf.
That means he has a different plan.
We awaken one morning to find the ship riding the wind toward a smudge of town, pushed by the morning tide. The cog anchors when it’s still a ways offshore, and sailors ready the rowboat. Nest starts toward it, but the graybeard tells her to wait. She fidgets and stands at the rail as sailors lower the boat and the oarsman rows it toward town.
Nest shades her eyes with one hand, but nothing’s out of the ordinary on the wharves. Just seabirds and masts and gangers at their labor.
Then a crowd beings to gather. Men and horses. Enough to make a warband.
After a long while, the rowboat pulls back across the harbor. The sailor hauls himself on board, tells the captain that everything is in order, and hands the graybeard a heavy leather purse. The graybeard peers inside, then throws three handfuls of silver pennies into a strongbox held out by the captain’s penteulu.
Gerald’s coin is real. He’s on the wharf. Soon I’ll be with them again. Warm and squirmy, smelling of porridge and soap.
The graybeard points at Nest, then the rowboat. She all but dances toward it, but when I move to follow, a redheaded sailor puts himself in my path and speaks to me too fast. His tone is mild, friendly even, but Nest whirls to face the graybeard with huge, startled eyes.
“H-he’s wrong,” she stammers, but in her panic she speaks in Welsh. “My husband will pay for us both.”
The graybeard grabs her arm and marches her toward the rope ladder. Nest struggles, arguing in haphazard Norse-Irish, but he pays no mind. She swivels and cries, “Elen. Elen!”
I try to rush toward her, but the sailor blocks me — this way, that way — and his friendly smile takes on an edge of warning. Her protests turn plea as her windblown golden head disappears over the side, hand over hand down the ladder. The last thing I hear before the crush of water drowns her voice is I’m sorry.
Gerald of Windsor must have refused to pay my passage. After all I did for his children, for him to serve me this way. He deserves the vengeance Owain will visit on him, and that day cannot come soon enough.
Given half a chance, I might end him myself.
There’s a scuffle and a splash. The rowboat glides across the harbor toward shore with a sailor at the oars and the graybeard and Nest at the bow. She’s hooded now, her hands pressed to her face.
Rhys smiles, the bastard, smiles like he’s won. He even lifts a cheerful hand to wave Nest on her way.
“Passage,” the captain says to Rhys in his clunky Welsh, and the penteulu sailor appears with the open strongbox.
Rhys reaches beneath his cloak, then begins frantically patting his midsection. “My purse. It’s gone. One of you stole my purse!”
“I’ve no idea what you’re speaking of,” the captain replies in a voice of honey. “You must have forgotten it. Why else would you demand I turn around?”
Rhys goes ashen. His hands fall still. “God rot you.”
“What, no silver?” The captain smiles. “Then we’ll get our price on the Dublin slave docks.”