“He was a brother to me,” Owain says in small, sharp words, “and his body is barely cold and bleeding all over the floor of my father’s chapel and we are at a Christmas feast and I am a guest here or so help me God I would make your mother weep to look upon you.”
Madog scowls. “Christ. Just trying to lift your spirits. I thought it would ease your mind to have a good penteulu when we sack Dyfed.”
“I have not yet decided who will follow my friend as penteulu. I’m eating my meat and enjoying the company — some of it, anyway. There’ll be time enough for such things later.”
If Madog is at Owain’s right hand, organizing drills in the yard of whatever fort we’re staying in and imposing marching orders and offering counsel and sorting out disputes, I’ll see so much more of Margred. Not just on holy days and at weddings and burials, but at informal gatherings, too. We’ll be all but kin. I’ll be the voice in her ear as she’s eating with the grown-ups in the hall, handing her toys instead of rosewater and keeping her running up and down a ball court for as long as I can, and one day years and years from now, she’ll be one of the wives who’ll let me stay and sit and spin and simply be.
Madog is not my favorite of Owain’s kin, but he’s right about one thing. He is the best choice for penteulu. None of Owain’s brothers by blood are old enough, and no other male relations are ready or trustworthy. He’s got to be wrong about the other, though. They can’t be raiding Dyfed. That province is armed to the teeth and bristling with castles and crawling with Normans who’ve come from England for no other reason than to take land from men like Cadwgan ap Bleddyn. Even a ruthless warband would soon be run to ground.
“You’d best not take too much time.” Madog’s face is scarlet, and he hunches over his mug of mead. Owain doesn’t hear him, though. Cadwgan has taken his seat, and the two of them are discussing something in growls. Me sitting here, like as not, and I brace for the argument that will doubtless get mean in a hurry.
But I hear only names of people who aren’t me and places to be won or lost. It’s nothing I haven’t heard a thousand times, but with different names and different places. Cadwgan’s enemies and allies turn their cloaks one way or another depending on the day or the se’ennight or the month, depending on who ambushes whose fort and who castrates who, and he does the same to them. Someone may be an enemy now, but by Easter he may be attacking someone else on Cadwgan’s behalf. Or the other way around. Or Cadwgan may set them both on a third enemy he hasn’t even made yet.
I’ve never been happier to be overlooked. It’ll give me a chance to approach Isabel once more, since she’s taken her seat on Cadwgan’s other side. She’s chattering cheerfully to the woman next to her, pointing to her guest’s necklet and running an admiring hand down her gown sleeve. When Isabel pauses to take a sip of wine, I catch her eye and smile. I’m trying to thank her for what she did earlier, and with Owain and Cadwgan between us discussing raids, it’s the perfect chance to point out something we share. You know men — ignoring us to speak of bloodshed.
But Isabel does not return my smile. She lifts one brow and deliberately turns back to her guest, cups her hand over the woman’s ear, and begins to whisper. The nasty sow grins and darts her eyes to me before snickering like I just stepped in something.
Oh saints. I’ve misjudged all this. Badly.
Isabel is not an outsider. She never has been. She’s the wife of the king of Powys. She’s well on her way to charming this disreputable lot into good behavior. She’s wearing a gown that never had blood on the cuffs.
She is nothing like me.
I can’t do this myself. I can’t just decide there’s a place for me here and stand in it. If I could, I’d have done it by now. If I don’t have someone like Isabel on my side, I will always stand apart.
THE MEAL GOES WELL PAST SUNDOWN. VENISON AND savories and mug after mug of wine and mead. I don’t so much as look Isabel’s way again. She was not helping me. She was removing her husband from my presence. I didn’t see it. I should have seen it.
Down the table, there’s a burst of cackling muffled by hands.
This is the nest of vipers Margred will put her foot into next year. Sweet, kindhearted Margred, who has promised we’ll be friends forever, come what may. She’s still young enough to make those kinds of promises. She’s that sure of her place in this difficult family and that innocent of what her promise might cost.
It’s full winter dark when I follow Owain across the snow-skiffed yard to the sleeping chamber. He leads me near the banked fire and pulls his blanket over us both, and we lie together in the dying emberlight. Afterward, he holds me close and I rest my head against his shoulder. His arm across my back is comforting and solid, and his sun-browned hand over my hip looks like armor.
I open my mouth to ask Owain how long we’ll be stuck here and if there’ll be gingerbread and whether he minds if I spend the morrow with Margred and the cousins, but before I can, he wraps his other arm around me and into my hair he murmurs, “I can’t believe he’s gone.”
I can’t say how much I glory in Llywelyn penteulu soon to be food for worms six feet beneath God’s green earth. I dare not speak ill of a single one of Owain’s brothers, living or dead.
The patter rises to save me, smooth and well-trodden like a path I’ve walked a thousand times. “Saint Elen kept you from harm, just as she always does.”
“Not an armslength from me,” he whispers. “I turned . . . and the blade was already falling, and I . . . shouted, but . . .”
Owain slides a finger along the scar beneath his arm. It’s a slim, wine-colored line of flesh that runs about the length of my finger. It looks like nothing. Mayhap a ridge worn into his skin from too-tight leather armor or a scratch by a stray fingernail during bedsport.
He almost bled out from that wound, though. Owain ap Cadwgan would have died that day, were it not for me.
“Saint Elen looks to you always,” I repeat.
He lets out a long, trembling breath and tightens his arms around me, but I don’t snuggle against him this time because now I’m looking at that scar and thinking how in two motions I could kill Owain ap Cadwgan.
One motion to seize the knife.
The other to cut his throat.
The dagger is within easy reach beneath a pile of clothing. I could kill him and he’d be dead. I close my eyes against a clatter in the yard. The fire iron cold in my hand as he kicked in the door. Miv crying. Blood everywhere. I begged Saint Elen for my life that day, and she gave it to me.
“When are we leaving?” I finally ask.
Owain sighs deep. “Epiphany. Would it was sooner. I’ll not be good company for man or beast. My father may send us out early just to be rid of us.”
Rid of me, he must mean. “Where are we going? The hunting lodge at Llyssun?”
“You are.”
“Where are you — oh.”
He and the lads will disappear into the hills and later sweep down with fire and sword on dwellings and goods belonging to some enemy of Cadwgan. They’ll kill anyone who fights back and burn everything that stands and smash anything that won’t burn and plunder everything of value and drive off whatever lows or grunts or bleats. They will wreck and pillage again and again until the tenants of Cadwgan’s enemy have nothing but postholes and cinders and corpses, so it’s known to every man that their lord is helpless to defend them.