Chaos will keep Einion penteulu occupied as well.
I’m on my feet. Trying to make him look at me. “You can’t think going after Cadwgan is a good idea.”
Einion snorts. “First you’re telling a king’s son what he wants. Now you’re telling the penteulu of a warband what he thinks.”
“You have to put a stop to it! However you can!”
His reply is to move away toward the tree line with a cocksure swagger, and by Christ I will find Owain right bleeding now and tell him that Saint Elen would have him dismiss Einion penteulu in the most public and humiliating way possible.
But Einion ap Tewdwr is capable and loyal and keeps his head when everything falls to hell. He’s the man who’ll give Owain good counsel long after Saint Elen and I have gone. Einion will look to Owain even if Saint Elen does not. Turning Owain against his penteulu will put him in harm’s way.
Summer twilight seems to last forever, and I’m still too trembly to even try to sleep, but I’m exhausted enough to lie down. The next moment, there’s a rustling of movement at my back and a light drape of cloth over me, and it’s night-black and I’m lying near what’s left of the fire. Someone’s just lain down behind me and I flinch, hard, because I’m not as sure of these lads anymore.
“Shh, it’s only me.” Owain’s whisper tickles my ear as he settles in and slides an arm across my belly. I shift away, but he holds tighter. “What’s wrong?”
“I just . . . I’m tired. Please let me sleep.”
“But I want to be close to you.” He pauses. “All right?”
All right. He held out a hand from the curtained bed, and four-and-ten-year-old me was anything but all right. She was trembling too hard to move. Hands clenched, guts writhing, frozen in the shadows. He let me cry till I was done. Then he poured a mug of wine and handed it to me without a word. I didn’t drink it — too bitter — but having something to hold kept me from falling apart completely. Then he started telling me about his favorite wolfhound that had a litter of pups and one of them was red, just like a dog he had as a boy. I held the mug with both hands and breathed. Then he went on about some kind of game that he and the lads played that involved a ball and brawling and mud. His voice was calm, and he made no move toward me. At some point I said all right, and by morning I was curled under his arm and I was not nearly as afraid.
The spare gown Isabel gave me is under my head. My shoulder digs into the dirt. Owain’s arm over me is heavy but unmoving. I made him believe, but every last thing he’s done has been his own choice. I can’t let him suspect I’m counting the days again, only this time I’m waiting for him to make one more bad decision. The one that’ll let me slip away forever.
Somehow I will have to go back to sleep. Somehow, with Owain lying beside me. With Nest and the little ones so close, it almost feels like I’m there already. So I pray to Saint Elen with a new prayer, one she will have to stop and listen to, one that will not glide past her ears with the rhythm of a thousand litanies.
Thank you for everything you’ve done for me.
Thank you for understanding.
I will steer him away from evil for as long as I’m able. When I’m gone, he’s entirely in your hands to do with as you see fit.
THE LADS MARCH BURNING. THEY DO IT FOR DAYS and days. Vale after vale. They burn and smash and hamstring.
They kick in doors.
I’m falling behind the column. The lads are shapes moving through the trees, blurry arcs of metal and glowing firebrands and endless, relentless marching. It’s not a chaos for fleeing through. It’s a chaos for living through.
This has every mark of a Norman raid. Cadwgan will hear of it soon. He’ll call up his warband. He’ll march to drive the enemy out, and he’ll find —
Vale after vale. The sky turns gray and then black.
Rhys appears. He’s got soot beneath his fingernails and his hair is just starting to curl again at the ends.
“I’m all right,” I mutter. “Go on with the others.”
He doesn’t, though. We move together as whole vales burn. He is careful not to touch me, but we are shoulder to shoulder nonetheless.
Then one morning Einion penteulu doesn’t give the order for the lads to march drawn and ready. Instead he and Owain stand together in the cold chill of dawn, deep in discussion. They turn when Rhys slants through the trees at a dogtrot, out of breath, and heads straight for Owain.
This is it. Cadwgan is somewhere close, and they’ll be setting up the ambush. None of them will be watching what I’m doing.
“Can’t be,” Owain growls. “We are playacting a Norman raid. Not a man of those bastards would dare the real thing.”
“Not unless he thought he could get away with it,” Einion penteulu replies. “You’re supposedly in Ireland. Your father was negotiating from the border with England. Your cousin Madog in disarray.”
“It’s half-built.” Rhys is panting, deep and winded. “Norman style. The keep’s partway up. Walls look solid, but wood burns.”
“Gerald of Windsor. It can be no other.” Owain grins at the heavens and pets his underwear charm. “Thank you, Saint Elen. I’m listening. Keep pointing me true.”
It’s too much to hope that Nest will be with him. Not somewhere like this. But I’ll get an audience. Gerald of Windsor will know who I am by now. Nest will have told him everything, and he’ll know what I’ve done for his children. How he owes me for leaving me stranded on that pier.
He’ll know what Nest promised, and how it was bought.
We move swift and silent now. Nothing burns. There’s no plunder. By midday I’m belly-down, on a rise alongside Owain, looking down toward a rolling green plain. An earthwork mound rises above a fist of sharpened palisades. A tangle of rope and a web of scaffolding cling to it like cobwebs, but it looks finished enough to resist anyone trying to harm it. Men are at their labor throughout the works, carting barrows of stone and driving teams of horses dragging timbers, and somewhere down there is Gerald of Windsor, directing the digging of the ditch and the fastness of the gate and the placement of the men who will hold it for him.
Gerald of Windsor, who is still offering a bounty on Owain’s head.
Raids are done quick, like the snap of a neck, and this castle looks too sturdy to be taken by a single attack. Owain will bid me wait here where it’s safe. He won’t be able to spare anyone to mind me. When the lads fail and scatter, I’ll need to be gone. I won’t get another chance like this.
“M-my lord?” Rhys’s voice trembles.
“Dusk,” Owain replies, “when they’re at their supper.”
There’s a small grind of metal. I turn and stiffen. We’re surrounded. Men in leather armor stand over us, pointing long spears at our necks. One has Rhys by the collar, a blade quivering at his throat.
“Stand,” one of them says in French. “Slowly.”
I do it. My legs somehow hold me up. Owain always says he gives no mercy to Normans and doesn’t expect it from them. Whatever happens now, Gerald of Windsor will make sure it’s anything but quick.
“Saint Elen,” I whisper, because saints are here to help us for reasons none of us can know, and mayhap it hasn’t been Owain she’s been looking to these last years. Mayhap she’s been looking to me.