Rhys darts a glance toward the side of the ship, and that’s when they seize him. He struggles and bawls, “God damn every last man of you thieves!”
A heavy presence appears at my elbow. It’s the captain, and he leans tree-bough arms against the rail and squints at the harbor. It takes all my will, but I keep from shrinking from him, even though big Norse-Irish sailors are binding Rhys’s wrists and I am very, very afraid.
“Now then,” the captain says, “about your passage.”
“G-Gerald of Windsor should have paid you.”
“He did not know you. He had not even heard your name.”
I lick my lips. “His wife. She arranged it.”
“The Englishman barely had the silver to pay her way,” the captain replies. “Once the price went up.”
Once the price went up. Gerald of Windsor didn’t betray me.
“So now you owe me for your passage.” The captain speaks to the harbor, his posture easy. He has no need to corner me. This is a ship thirty paces long. I’ve nowhere to go. “Or it’ll be the slave docks for you as well.”
“I can pay.” I pull Owain’s purse from where it hangs beneath my armpit. I grip it hard so there’s no trembling. “Part now, and part when I’m on shore.”
The captain holds out a weathered brown hand, and I fill it with silver. As I pour, I sneak glances at the wharves. A number of horses cluster nearby, spilling down the rickety waterside lane. That’s them. Gerald of Windsor is collecting Nest right now. She’ll be telling him there’s been a mistake. That somehow he must put together coin enough to get me off this ship.
The rowboat is back, and the sailor appears on deck. The captain tilts my coins, nods, and gestures to the ladder.
Rhys writhes and curses while sailors tether him to the mast. One slams a meaty fist into his jaw, and he slumps against the ropes. His warband hardness is gone, and he’s all boy now, bone-scared and greensick.
Mayhap this is what Einion ap Tewdwr saw when he shoved them clear of me one by one. All hardness gone. Empty hands.
“Him too.” I drag my eyes away from the wharves and point at Rhys. “I’ll cover his passage. Let him go.”
The captain laughs. “Your silver pays for you. Now get in the boat before I change my mind.”
“I’ll give you a ring for him.”
“Let’s see it.”
I fling my rucksack off my shoulder, reach down to the bottom, and pull out Owain’s heavy gold ring. I’m cold, down to my vitals, and I can’t stop shaking.
The captain takes the ring with one hand, and with the other jerks my rucksack out of my grip and scatters the contents across the deck. Owain’s dagger and the silver torc for Cadwgan and the bracelets and necklets Owain’s given me over the years and every stitch of clothing not this moment on my back — all of it flies over the planks for God and man to see.
“The lot will satisfy me, honeycomb,” the captain says as the penteulu sailor collects the valuables into the strongbox. “Hope he’s worth it.”
The sailors cut the ropes and shove Rhys toward me. He comes rubbing both wrists, pulling in deep shuddery breaths, and tries to shake hair over his eyes that isn’t there anymore, so all he can do is shove past me toward the ladder. I’m right behind him. I don’t even pick up my clothes. I fumble blindly down slippery hempen rungs as fast as I dare and try not to think on the view I must be giving the oarsman as my skirts bell out in the sharp breeze.
The moment my backside hits the makeshift seat, I cry, “Go! Hurry!”
The oarsman glances at Rhys crouching sullenly in the bow, then up at his captain, who waves us clear. He grins at me, up and down and winky, then pushes off the cog with one dripping oar, turns us, and rows through the choppy harbor.
Up on deck I could see the wharves and horses fine, but down here it’s just a wash of color, even if I half rise from my seat and peer hard across the glittering bay. Someone is sure to know where they’ve taken lodging. Perhaps Gerald left a man on the wharf to meet me in case I worked out a way to get off the ship myself.
I’m still trembling. Still cold.
The rowboat pulls up to a wharf chockablock with sailors calling to one another in a dozen languages. There are men with skin that’s brown like rich mahogany, and men whose pale faces have burned a peeling red. Nest is nowhere in sight. Neither is Gerald of Windsor. Not a single horse or waiting retainer. Just a chaos of torn mud and manure.
Rhys is first out of the rowboat and halfway up the wharf before it’s even tethered. I climb onto the planks after him, hand the second half of the passage money to the oarsman, then ask, “The other girl. This wharf?”
“Her man had horses waiting in the road.” The sailor holds his hands like reins galloping, then points away at the distant hills.
Of course Gerald of Windsor would not want to spend one moment outside of sturdy walls once he got his wife back. He might have even suspected treachery after being fleeced by the graybeard, or the captain, or both. I blink back tears as I thank the oarsman. He nods, waves, and rows back toward the cog while I lean against a damp post and shiver.
Rhys is pacing. Talking to himself in a low mutter. “This is bad. It’ll be se’ennights till she’s back with Owain. No passage money. Nothing to trade.”
Not moments ago, we both nearly landed on the Dublin slave docks. Now Rhys is on about hauling me back to Owain as if nothing happened. He could at least thank me for what I did. Knowing what it cost. Knowing what would have happened had I done nothing.
“My lord Cadwgan. I’ll beg some coin of him. There’s nothing else to do, and he may not like it. It has to work, though. Please let it work.”
One side of Rhys’s face is screaming red, and his eye will be purple by morning. His cloak is firmly cinched, and not just against the wind.
Oh. I know what this is. These are echoes talking. This is Rhys fighting ghosts of the unspeakable, trying to make things ordinary. He stood alone. No armed brothers with him who would have stepped up with drawn steel, odds be damned. Just a girl who had every reason to stand by and let the sailors finish their work.
I know something of that. I may not be in Owain’s teulu, but I have looked unspeakable right in the eye.
Rhys is rubbing his thumbnail. The same motion as praying with a paternoster had it not been taken off him by the sailors. “Saint Elen is looking to Owain. She must be. Nothing less would keep the Normans from taking her. For making it so I could bring her back to him.”
I close my eyes.
“You never said it.” Rhys has fallen still. Arms crossed over his belly. Blocking the road.
He’s not looking at me, but I know he wants an answer, so I reply, “Never said what?”
“That you left of your own choosing. She said you did.” Rhys peers at me hopefully, head tilted as if he still had stringy curls to hide behind. “Did you?”
I cannot outrun Rhys. I can’t overpower him. I definitely can’t convince him to help me find Nest.
At a royal residence, I’ll be safe while I catch my breath. Owain is forbidden to come home till Cadwgan sends for him. That could be tomorrow. It could be two years from now. The last we heard, Madog ap Rhirid held all of what was once Cadwgan’s with the blessing of the English king, and Cadwgan was in the wind pulling strings and calling in favors. Owain still has a price on his head that the English king would very much like to redeem. Owain coming back, reminding everyone why this happened at all, would only make things worse.