“I’m not.” Seeing Isabel weeping and thwarted should make me smile, but she’s alone here in this place that’s only hers. “I’m asking what Cadwgan loves that you can get to. So you can ruin that instead.”
She snorts. “His warband. His dogs. His sword.”
In Ireland I spent months playacting as Owain’s wife. I wore undergarments and shoes and spun with the daughter of the house and sat at Owain’s right hand and delighted in how ordinary it felt. Before me is Isabel de Say, the wife of Cadwgan ap Bleddyn, who is king of Powys and lord of Ceredigion. Her place secure, for all the good it does her. She is not just any wife, and even her child isn’t safe. There are locked chests in this house that should be hers alone.
It would be no different for any proper wife of Owain ap Cadwgan.
“His wine.” Isabel’s head bobs up. “There was a cask of claret left over from when His Grace King Henry was here. The good wine that costs a fortune. You-know-who says he’s saving it for the next time he has to eat crow before an enemy. It’s hidden in the kitchen.”
I nod. It’ll gush like a bleeding wound and make purple mud in the courtyard.
“We’re going to roll that barrel into the hall.” Isabel sits up straighter and grins. It’s the same smile she aimed at me at Aberaeron, but this time it seems cozy and sly, like Margred planning a birthday surprise. “We’ll drink every drop.”
The steward protests, then forbids. Isabel elbows past him with two mugs and taps the cask herself with a meat knife. She fills them, then stations a big kettle beneath the burbling leak. One mug she shoves at me. The other she takes a big drink from while the steward goes twitchy and his color rises.
“I’ve got witnesses,” he mutters, and all but flies away. Isabel giggles and takes another drink, and she gives me such a look that I cautiously do the same. The wine is undiluted, and I nearly sputter. I’ve just drunk the cost of a whole summer’s worth of some poor man’s labor in one swallow.
Isabel pulls me toward the big bed in the corner, now stripped down to the fat straw-stuffed pallet that perches upon zigs and zags of tightly strung hemp. She climbs up and looks at me expectantly.
I hesitate. I’m here to steal, not comb Isabel’s hair and gossip.
The bed whispers promises. Every muscle in my body keens. Ireland feels years away, and I can barely remember the last time I slept well. Passing one night in some kind of comfort will not undo my plan. Besides, it will be easier to pilfer if Isabel trusts me and does not suspect till it’s too late.
I climb up after her. Isabel pulls the curtains closed, and we’re plunged into a gauzy darkness. It would be like the maidens’ quarters if I trusted her at all. She slides till her back is against the wall, holding her mug aloft to keep from sloshing. I fold my legs and take a small drink. It’s like the high king’s wine. Strong and rich, so good there’s no grit on your teeth.
“Do you think you-know-who has worked it out by now?” Isabel takes a hearty swig. “That you left with me? That you’re my guest?”
I shrug. I don’t tell her that Cadwgan likely had no idea I’d come with Rhys. Cadwgan has been looking for a way to be rid of me since the first time Owain put an arm around my waist and explained why I was holding his elbow and would be needing a place at table. Had Cadwgan seen me in the courtyard, Owain far away in Ireland, I doubt I’d have left that border fort alive.
“Likely he’s more worried about Powys and Owain returning and what Madog will do once he learns of the English king’s terms.” At her scowl, I hurry to add, “But don’t worry. Your husband will be good and angry when he does finally learn of it.”
“Owain ap Cadwgan.” Isabel spits it like a curse and takes another long drink. “I’d like to slap him senseless. Had he just gone to war, none of this would have happened and Henry would still be with me.”
She peers at me like I’ll defend him. Like she wants me to so she can go on at length what a bastard he is. But I know something of vengeance, and if you let it move through you and keep it from settling in your quietest places, over time it will trickle away. There is nothing to defend here. Owain did not have to abduct Nest, much less the little ones. He could have sent them back when his father bid him. He definitely did not have to humiliate her again and again and make them all suffer at every chance. Another man might have made vengeance a weapon, sharp and hungry, and gathered a warband about him, but Owain ap Cadwgan was not content with ordinary vengeance. His was a vengeance to preside over. One that would make allies and enemies alike as wary of crossing him as they were his father.
I drain half the mug and let it burn all the way down.
“I wager a whole shilling that Owain did all this on purpose,” Isabel says. “He’d have my son stay a hostage forever.”
Llywelyn penteulu, his neck open to the sky. His harsh, shallow gasping. Owain biting his knuckles, touching the scar beneath his arm like it burned.
“It’s got nothing to do with your baby.” I upend my mug again.
The world is beginning to blur at the edges, and my whole body feels full of honeybees calmly lulling with warm flowers and gentle buzzing. It’s getting easier not to think about Owain. To let the bees drown him out.
Isabel’s lip trembles. “Henry still smells like milk. He can say Mama now. He has such tiny little feet, and you should see the way he rushes over squealing when he sees me . . .”
Her voice gets quiet and sweet and loses those sharp Norman angles and her hair gets darker and she becomes Rhael. Rhael who once snuggled next to me on our pallet in the steading, where we’d whisper about whether lambs could be taught to count and whose hair was shinier and if there’d be ginger cake for May Eve again this year.
“Owain saw an opportunity.” I won’t think how Nest limped into the courtyard that first day barefoot and in her nightgown. “The rest of it? Madog ap Rhirid invading Powys because he was lured by Gerald’s bounty? All those kinsmen who backed him? That was a gut-punch.”
Rhael snickers and she becomes Isabel again, and I down another fierce swallow of wine because mayhap it’ll bring my sister back, even for a moment.
“My fool husband got those men to help Madog,” Isabel says over the rim of her mug. “It’s not like that came cheap, either.”
I choke on my wine. “It’s true? Cadwgan ap Bleddyn paid his own kinsmen to support Madog’s invasion? But Madog holds Powys now while Cadwgan is holed up on your lands!”
“Yes. But no. Madog held Powys and Ceredigion because he was permitted to. You-know-who let it happen and convinced his kinsmen to keep Madog from making too big a mess of it. Now Madog is a breath from losing both. He promised His Grace the king that there would be peace and law. Instead every vale is crawling with warbands.” Isabel giggles and pokes me with her toe. “Can’t imagine who might be behind such disorder. Can you?”
I take another long, steadying drink. “So Cadwgan allows Owain to return from Ireland. Now that he’s made sure Powys is reeling and helpless, and Owain spoiling to reclaim it after stewing for months in exile. That bastard doesn’t even have to get his hands dirty.”
“My husband may be a fool and a bastard,” Isabel says, tipping her mug, “but he knows well that retaking Powys from the likes of Madog ap Rhirid will be easier by tenscore than it would from Gerald of Windsor or Gilbert fitz Richard de Clare. Madog holding Powys and Ceredigion — and His Grace the king giving his blessing — meant no Norman lord could simply invade.”