Gerald snorts and gestures, and the Norman behind Owain hauls him away stumbling. Outside, someone calls for rope, lots of it.
I scrub tears from my eyes. I’m numb.
Owain will hang. He will hang at the hands of a man whose destruction he swore to preside over. Knowing Saint Elen will not save him because she has never looked to him. Knowing it was I who brought him to this moment.
Nest will hug me. She’ll tell me it had to be done. That at least hanging’s clean. She will sit with me all the hours I need to mourn, and if Saint Elen has any mercy, one day the echoes of this betrayal will fade.
“My lord Clare?” Another Norman standing at the tent flap gestures at me. “What of her?”
“I’ve heard enough. Send her out.”
My mouth falls open.
“Hang her with the others?”
“Nah. I’ll not hang a girl.”
“C-Clare?” I swallow and swallow. “No. No, you’re Gerald of Windsor.”
The man on the bench smiles the smallest, faintest bit. Then he nods at the warbander, and the world is dissolving into blurry color and I am stumbling with a painful hand on my elbow and then I’m in the mud outside the tent.
Not Gerald of Windsor who Nest promised would see us all a family. Gilbert fitz Richard de Clare. Who commands thirty land-hungry knights who’ve all been promised a piece of Ceredigion.
Owain will hang, this province will fall, and I’m no closer to Nest than I was when I stepped in this tent.
I PICK MYSELF UP. I’M MUDDY AND SORE AND MORE than a little greensick. A handful of Norman fighting men stride among the laborers, shouting in French and cackling. One of them gestures to the walls and pretends to jerk at the end of a noose like a hanged man. The rest of them roar laughter.
It won’t be just Owain. All the lads will die today. Einion penteulu. Rhys, who has barely seen a fifteenth summer.
Clare turned me loose. He opened his hand. The gate is a stone’s throw from the tent. It’s pulled closed, not even latched, and the gateman is snickering and distracted. No one looks twice at girls in the shadows.
Gilbert fitz Richard de Clare made me a weapon. I am a fire iron, and by God Almighty and all the saints, I am coming down.
I sidle up to one of the open smithy fires burning in the yard and snare a bucket. Then I shovel embers inside and add some pitchy-ended staves. The stable is quiet and empty. The lads have been wrestled outside toward their fate, and all the horses must be hauling logs and stones and loads. I scatter the embers into piles of hay, and they brown, blacken, then smoke in earnest.
I will make my own chaos. I will bring down this whole miserable castle works around Clare’s wretched Norman ears, and I will leave Owain and the lads to come out of it however they can.
The staves have become firebrands, and I shove them into the roof rafters until everything is crackling nicely. Soon flames are licking up the stalls and smoke is snaking from the roof-thatch and pumping out the door.
This is how the lads can do it. This is how they march burning and pay no heed to cries for mercy or pity. They are no longer flesh and blood. They are weapons, and weapons are made of iron and steel.
There’s a cry, a jabbering in French that’s pure panic.
Men run and shout through the castle yard. There’s no well yet, no water, so they work frantically to pull down buildings near the stable with long hooks. They mean to limit the damage, but sparks leap from the blaze and catch the timbers and fall into cloaks and hair. Horses smell the smoke and start grunting and screaming, fighting to break free and run.
Rhael said not to be afraid. I am not afraid. I am bloody well angry.
There’s a clatter at the gate. Owain and the lads have freed themselves, and now they’re nose to nose with the porter, who’s standing before the latch-bar with a spear, but he’s also outnumbered five to one, and his cries for help are lost amid cries of fire. Einion penteulu pretends to grab at the weapon while Rhys kicks out the porter’s legs from behind. Morgan and Llywarch fall on the poor wretch with heels and fists while Owain shoulders open the gate.
And he is gone.
All of it is gone. The playact. Saint Elen. Burned, the lot of it, just like the castle works. My eyes sting a little, but mostly I feel light, like the smoke drifting skyward and hazing out the sun.
None of the Normans pay me a bit of mind as I slip out the gate. They are trying to save something that was never meant to stand.
I mean to put the sun at my right and walk south, but the day catches up with me and I find an old log deep in the greenwood and sink down.
Deep breaths in. I burned a half-built Norman castle unlawfully standing on Cadwgan’s territory.
Long breaths out. Owain will come after me. He will not let this lie.
In. Dyfed can’t be far if we’re near enough to the border for Clare to risk raising a castle.
Out. I must find Gerald of Windsor before —
There’s a riffle of brush so quiet I only hear it because I know to listen. I’m on my feet, and it’s Rhys who emerges first, his whole face anxious. Einion penteulu is a step behind, coughing into his sleeve. They are five, and there are no more columns. They travel in a pack now, like wolves.
Owain steps toward me, but he’s not carrying a blade. Perhaps he intends to kill me with his bare hands. I draw my meat knife. If I’ve bought my liberty with betrayal, I can’t act in half measures.
“Clever, sweeting,” Owain says cheerfully, and with two small motions my knife is out of my hand and in his. “Clare believed you completely. Hellfire, even I did for a moment there! I thought I was a dead man, but Saint Elen saw me through yet again.”
I blink. Not sure I heard true.
He’s playing with my blade, rolling it down his hand and catching it midfall, balancing it tip-down on his finger. Like a toy I might hand to Margred.
I snatch it back and grip it tight enough to sting.
Owain frowns, then reaches an arm toward my waist. I step away from him. His good cheer falters, and he asks, “What is this?”
Einion penteulu looks up sharp, then draws Rhys aside and mutters in his ear. Rhys shakes his head, but when Einion stabs a finger and makes the perimeter field gesture, Rhys reluctantly slips away, looking over his shoulder every third pace.
“Saint Elen brought me to a Norman enemy,” Owain goes on warily, “and she gave me victory and kept me from harm like she always has. Did she not?”
The patter rises to save me. It tells me to put away the dagger. Smile big, spin out the falsehoods, let him slide an arm around my hips and plant a noisy kiss on my cheek. Wear my spoils, put on my show, spread my legs. Be part and parcel of whatever full measure of vengeance he thinks to carry out. Follow after like a good little pet. See to it that I’m doing all the things he’s decided make a place for me with him so no one pays much attention to what he’s doing.
“No,” I say, quiet but steady. “No, she didn’t.”
Einion penteulu moves to Owain’s shoulder. Gestures to the other lads to step back and stand ready.
“I beg your pardon?” Owain asks in a low voice.
The patter wants to save me, but there’ll be no saving myself that way. Nest will save me. The little ones, their giggles and chatter. A family will save me. One I’ve made myself, with my own hands. I clear my throat and repeat, “No, Saint Elen did nothing.”