“You want to see my new gown?” Margred kneels by a coffer and perches the mouse on her head while she swings open the lid. “Papa says perhaps next Christmas I can sit with him and Mama in the hall!”
I meet the nurse’s eyes over Margred’s head. Dresses are the last thing I want to talk about. Next year sometime, when she has twelve summers, Margred will start eating in the hall so the nobility can see what her father has on offer, and that’s when I will start to lose her.
I let her show me, though. The gown is blue and grown-up. She and her mother put in every stitch.
My cuff is still damp. Clammy against my wrist. I bump Margred’s shoulder cheerfully and say, “I did bring my ball. Want to play tomorrow after mass? We’ll tread goal lines in the snow in the courtyard.”
Margred grins and tells me all the girl cousins are spoiling for a match. She closes the coffer lid, the gown forgotten, and dances her toy mouse on her knees. We talk of her horse and the garden she’s planning for spring until serving boys turn up with trays of food. It’s cozy here, and quiet, but Isabel would never come to the maidens’ quarters, so I wish Margred and her nurse a good meal and head across the courtyard toward the hall’s glowing door.
Inside, noblemen are crowded at long tables, laughing and drinking mead and talking over one another while Aberaeron’s priest looks on like a proud grandfather. There are women, too, wives and sisters and mothers, glittering in finery, gathered in tight, impenetrable knots. Owain is sitting at the high table, dressed in a gray tunic and holding out a mug to a cupbearer. I move to join him, dodging hips and elbows, but I’m not five steps inside when Cadwgan blocks my way.
“Kitchen’s across the yard by the wall,” he says. “They’ll give you a tray. I imagine the sleeping chamber will be more to your liking.”
I know better than to take the bait. “Owain would have me near him. It’s Christmas.”
“Which is why you will not sit at my son’s right hand in my hall.” Cadwgan doesn’t add like a wife, but he might as well.
I square up and say, “I saved his life.”
“After you stabbed him!”
No. That was Rhael. She picked up the butcher knife and pressed the fire iron into my hands, and we pushed Miv’s cradle into the darkest corner of the steading and stood shoulder to shoulder while the clatter in the dooryard grew ever louder.
I try to dodge around Cadwgan, but he seizes my arm and roughly turns me so I’m facing the hall door and the cold night — only we come face-to-face with Isabel. She’s wearing a green silk gown that must have cost a small fortune, and her veil is crisp and tidy and perfect. Her cheeks are pink, like Margred’s.
This isn’t how I planned our meeting. I pictured somewhere quiet. Private. Somewhere I could be of help. I’m not good in a crowd. But now’s my chance, and I’ve been practicing since I learned I’d have this moment.
A greeting, friendly but not too familiar.
A gracious thanks for her hospitality.
A witty, lighthearted observation about the lunacy of this family that’ll make her grin and take my hands and say something like I feel the exact same way.
Isabel glances at Cadwgan, then me, then at his hand still gripping my elbow hard enough to sting. Then me again, without looking away. Her face is blank like a pond on a still morning.
This is the first time I’m standing before Owain’s stepmother, and I’m trading harsh words with her husband, who’s holding me suspiciously close, and I cannot muster the sense God gave a goat to explain myself.
My throat chokes up. I can’t even babble. But then Isabel silently peels Cadwgan’s hand off my arm and leads him toward some guests by the hearth. Neither of them looks back.
Cadwgan was ready to throw me out of the hall. All she had to do was move aside and let him, but instead she stepped in. She did it with grace and tact, in a way no one else could, so Cadwgan could save face and I could walk away.
Isabel just helped me.
By the time this feast is over, she and I could be chatting every day, sharing a hearth bench and giggling over wine. By summer, we could be friends. By this time next year, the idea that anyone in Owain’s family might think to show me the smallest discourtesy might be a distant, unpleasant memory.
I KEEP SNEAKING GLANCES AT ISABEL NEAR THE hearth, hoping she’s sneaking glances at me. If she is, I can’t tell, since Cadwgan’s back is blocking my view. The feast will last till Epiphany, and that’s se’ennights from now. Plenty of time to invent a reason to pass the hours together, and I’ll be damn sure it won’t be when I need something from her.
For now, what I need is somewhere to stand so I don’t look like a child banished to the naughty corner. Cadwgan expressly forbade me to sit with Owain at the high table, and I’d just as soon avoid his temper. Margred’s still safely in the maidens’ quarters. If Isabel was anywhere but next to Cadwgan, I could —
Owain catches my eye with a smile I know very well, then makes a showy gesture to the empty place at his elbow. So he’s decided to start stirring the pot early this year and make his father the first target.
Well. I can still hope for fewer black eyes, I reckon.
When I reach Owain’s side, there’s nowhere for me to sit. The place at his right is clearly Cadwgan’s even though it’s empty, and Owain’s cousin Madog has taken the spot at his left. I try hard to think well of Madog because he’s Margred’s brother, but tonight he makes that extra difficult as he glances me up and down, fold and drape, slow and deep and hungry.
“You some kind of warbander, honey? You gonna cut me?” Madog’s mug is half full, but it can’t be his first, for he’s thisclose to being out of turn.
Owain catches my hand, kisses my palm, then lifts his brows at his cousin. “When was the last time you looked twice at a woman in the shadows, whether she hid a blade in her skirts? Shove down.”
Madog grumbles but moves enough to make a place for me at Owain’s left. I sit, then reach for an oatcake and break it into crumbs that I line up in neat rows. Everyone watched Owain beckon to me. The nobles, their wives, every servant down to the cupbearers. They watched Owain bid Madog move. They’re all watching me and muttering behind their hands and speculating.
Owain loves it when they speculate. He says the more they’re guessing about me, the less they’re watching what he’s doing.
“You ought to take me on as penteulu when we ravage south into Dyfed.” Madog reaches across me to poke Owain’s shoulder with the butt end of his meat knife. “I’ve never been in a warband that had its own whore.”
I keep crumbling. As speculations go, that one is definitely not new, and anyone who spends even trifling moments near Owain’s warband does well to realize how untrue it is.
But Owain sets down his mug and turns, slow and deliberate, to face his cousin. In a brittle-calm voice he says, “Tell me that you did not just have the stones to suggest in the public of my father’s hall that you of all men should even be considered to replace the likes of Llywelyn ap Ifor as the chief of my warband.”
“Come now, Owain, no disrespect intended, but it’s plain obvious you need a penteulu, and I’m the best choice.”