Raids are done with steel and terror, quick like the snap of a neck. In the best of them, no one sees you coming and everyone returns alive and weighed down with plunder. In the worst, you carry a friend home wrapped in canvas and pray for his soul and drink his memory till you can barely stand.
My little playact clings to those odds.
“The northern provinces again?” I keep my eyes off that scar.
“Dyfed.”
I push myself up on one elbow. “What? No. You — what?”
“The English king wants to conquer all the kingdoms of Wales. He can’t simply invade, though.” Owain smiles faintly. “The last time a king of theirs tried, he tripped over himself limping home with his nose well-bloodied.”
Cadwgan’s knuckles were first among those that did the bloodying. I wait for Owain to say as much, to tell the stories he must have grown up on, but instead he growls, “The English king refuses to risk himself, so he sends lackeys like Gerald of Windsor to take and hold what they can, and now Gerald governs Dyfed. Which means that patch of dirt on our southern border is a sword leveled at my father’s throat. Mine, too. Which means Gerald of Windsor needs himself a humbling. So I’ll give him one.”
Owain is playing with a strand of my hair and completely underestimating Normans with their walls to withdraw behind and trained fighting men in coats of mail and big two-handed broadswords that can cut someone in half. Who killed Llywelyn penteulu even with armed brothers around him like two dozen sharp palisades.
“Once the lads and I burn every handswidth and carry away the plunder, I’ll hunt down Gerald of bloody Windsor like the dog he is, and with my own hand cut him into small pieces and piss on every last one of them.”
I peer into Owain’s face, waiting for that smirk or eyebrow that’ll let me in on the jest. He’s staring straight ahead, eyes narrow. He’s nowhere near here.
“But not before I string him up in his own dooryard,” Owain goes on, “and while he hangs there writhing, I will carve the name of Llywelyn ap Ifor who he butchered without regard ten thousand times into his flesh, till his hide falls off in ribbons.”
I like to think Saint Elen understands why I told Owain she’ll protect him, that she pitied me for being in a place where that playact was necessary, that she tolerates it still for compassion’s sake. But there is a world of difference between protection and counsel. One is standing by while Saint Elen does as she sees fit, and the other is deciding for her what she should do and say. If I dare to put words in her mouth, to make myself the saint, she will turn her back on me for sure.
So I can’t tell Owain that Saint Elen said not to kill the English king’s right hand in Dyfed in cold blood because no man can ignore such an act. Instead I say, carefully, “Won’t the English king see that sort of killing as a personal insult? Gerald owes him everything he has. Seeking the downfall of someone so loyal does not seem wise.”
“I don’t seek the downfall of Gerald of bloody Windsor.” Owain’s voice is eerily calm, and I edge away from him bit by bit, pulling the blankets with me because I’m shivering now, and not just from the cold. “Bad enough he’s lurking to the south with his eyes on my birthright. Now that he’s raided my very dooryard? Now that he’s killed my friend and warband chief, slaughtered him right in front of me? Oh, I will not merely kill Gerald of bloody Windsor now. I will preside over his complete humiliation and destruction first.”
I can’t tell him Saint Elen said to raid quick and fierce and leave vengeance to the Almighty, no matter how much I want to.
Owain blinks hard and scrubs a wrist over his eyes. There’s a very real chance he’ll sober up on the morrow and this whole thing with Gerald of Windsor will be a dull ache in the back of his throat. A ghost of something noble yet foolish and therefore forgettable. He’ll name another penteulu — please let it be Madog — and he’ll raid Dyfed properly, fire and sword and plunder, just like the last raid and the raid before that one.
“Betimes I think my father is jealous.” Owain slides closer to me, snakes a hand around my waist, nuzzles my neck. “My stepmother may turn heads, but all he got for his pains is a patch of Norman border dirt and a worthless alliance and a nagging voice in his ear. I’ve a saint at my back, and all I must do to please her is keep her namesake safe from all harm and near me always.”
It rolls off his tongue so easily. You’d never know that Saint Elen and her promises were straws I grasped at while I was still changing the dressings on the wound beneath his arm, when the fever that nearly put him before his Maker still muddied his thoughts enough for him to take it as gospel. He should have died that day at my sister’s hands on the floor of our steading in a pool of his own blood.
I nod, though, because he’s done what I told him Saint Elen required. I’m safe from all harm and near him always. I was just not careful what I asked for. Because I got it.
THE CHAPEL IS A STONE’S THROW FROM THE HALL. It’s empty this time of day, no priests around. There’s no proper door so it’s cold within, a skiff of crunchy snow pushed along the threshold. Before the altar lies the body, shrouded in linen and dim. I mean to go further, to look upon Llywelyn penteulu well dead, but even now I cannot.
Even this close, my throat turns to sand. My mouth goes sour. And I am up against the steading wall and Miv is crying and there’s a body at my feet fire iron through the neck and Llywelyn penteulu is roaring in my face. Hard to the floor cold everywhere can’t struggle.
Torn to pieces. Skin to skin. The smell.
There were others after him, but he was the first. Until they let me up.
There’s a scuffle at the chapel doorway, and Einion ap Tewdwr appears, holding a pale, swaying Rhys by one arm.
We killed them both and seized all the beasts. Einion said it like he’d killed them himself. Mayhap he had. My father would have struggled. My mother, too, but they’d have been no match for a warband.
“Miracle girl.” Einion points with his knuckle. “Out here. Now.”
The lads know better than to speak roughly to me. Mostly they don’t speak to me at all unless it’s to ask something trivial, like will I mend a tear in a tunic or refill a mug of mead. I’m too wrung out to challenge Einion on it, though, and Owain is definitely not in a humor to dress down one of his own in his father’s hall while Llywelyn penteulu’s body is barely cold, so I step into the bright outdoors, blinking against it.
“Stand here,” Einion growls, and I’m not sure whether he’s talking to me or Rhys. Einion releases Rhys and storms into the chapel. In moments he’s back, and he says, “Whatever you did, there’s no sign of it.”
“No sign of what?”
“Marks. On the body.”
I gape at him, and he scoffs. “Oh, come now. I don’t for a moment believe you were paying your respects. What other reason could you have for being in there?”
I have no answer that will make sense to the likes of Einion ap Tewdwr, so instead I show him my empty hands. “I’ve no weapon.”
“Doubtless Llywelyn penteulu’s brother thought that, too. Just before you broke his neck with a fire iron to the windpipe.”