Rhael told me not to be afraid. We would give them the food we’d prepared. We’d give them the animals in the byre. We would give them whatever they wanted, then they would leave. She said it clear and confident, gripping and regripping the big knife, and I believed her.
I face Einion steady on and ask, “What do you want?”
“Show her.” Einion jostles Rhys forward with a shake of tunic.
Rhys merely sways like a drunk. Einion sighs and pushes up the boy’s sleeve for him, revealing a deep gash the color of rancid meat. When Einion swivels Rhys’s arm, the boy sucks in a breath and a flash of bone turns like a fish’s silvery belly.
“Is this from the raid?” I ask. “The raid from days ago?”
When Einion nods, I groan, but I can hardly blame Rhys for not wanting to be called baby and told to grow a pair. Especially considering that worse befell one of their family that morning.
“Why did you not bring him to the court physician?”
“The boy needs a miracle as well as medicine.” Einion peers at me. “What does Saint Elen say?”
I did not think. I only acted. I never used the word miracle.
They do, though. All the lads. All but the newest saw with their own eyes what I did for Owain, how he went from bleeding out on my steading floor to burning down forts and halls instead of lying in the cold earth. There’s not a man in this warband who does not believe Owain ap Cadwgan has the protection of a saint.
“Let’s have a look.” I turn away from the chapel. “Help me bring him to the kitchen.”
The building is all the way across the yard, and we move at Rhys’s shambling pace. He holds his injured arm with the wound turned outward, and I can study it sidelong. It’s bad, but nowhere near as bad as the one that almost killed Owain. I’ll put the irons to it, Rhys will recover and see a miracle, God willing, and every time he’s near me he’ll touch that scar.
The lads of Owain’s warband will see him do it, too.
The kitchen is hot and damp and thick with smells. I poke through the scatter of cutlery and implements on the trestle board, then pick a long, thin spreader and lay its rounded end in the fire. I sit on my haunches watching it heat up. There’s a quiet creak of leather, and Einion kneels at my elbow. He’s built like a bull, all compact muscles and a whipcrack temper. I make myself stay still. He will not touch me.
“Owain’s taking it hard.” Einion rubs a hand over his jaw. “He will not stop speaking of it.”
He’ll be seeing the blade falling. Helpless to stop it. The blood. The gasping.
“But Saint Elen did not save Llywelyn penteulu,” Einion says in an oh-so-quiet voice.
“Saint Elen protects Owain.” The patter rises to save me, and I let it. “She looks to him always. The rest of us are on our own.”
“Seems a strange way to protect a man, removing his right hand.”
I cut my eyes to Einion, but he’s merely studying the fire, balanced toe and knee, ambush-still.
“Then again,” he goes on, “I’m a simple fighting man. What do I know of saints and their doings? They are not motivated by our petty concerns. Like spite. And vengeance.”
His voice is bland. Neither vicious nor sly. It’s nothing I can’t agree with, yet all my arm hairs prickle.
“Fighting men should keep to fighting,” I reply to the fire. “Let the saints do as they will.”
Einion clears his throat. “This boy must recover. Bad enough that Gerald of Windsor got Llywelyn penteulu. Another one lost . . . Owain just . . . cannot have it.” He leans close. “I’ve seen what you can do with those irons, and we’ll all of us pray to Saint Elen.”
I said I could save Owain’s life. I promised it. I wept it, and it was Einion ap Tewdwr who pushed the brutes clear, who made them let me up, who hauled me staggering to Owain’s side and stood over me blade in hand to see I made good that promise. That Owain survived at all was Saint Elen’s doing as much as mine, for I could barely think — or breathe, or move — as I shuddered that knife clear. There can be no other reason I’d remember the time our best mouser limped into the steading with a gaping wound on his hindquarters, and my mother pressed a glowing-hot blade against the poor cat’s side while he yowled and thrashed.
Rhys’s eyes are shut tight, his jaw clenched. At midsummer, this boy was still eating his mother’s oatcakes and tracking mud across her clean floor. I wrap my cloak around my hand and pull the spreader out of the fire. A faint whisper of steam curls off the blade. I nod to Einion, who secures Rhys’s shoulder and wrist.
I have never once used the word miracle, but I can still hope for one. After all, that cat lived an age and caught mice under his big paws right up till his last days.
IT’S CLEAR AND COLD AND DIZZYINGLY SUNNY. Margred and the cousins and I pile outside for a game, and we run up and down the courtyard kicking my ball and screeching like warbanders till our cheeks are burned pink and our feet sting from the ice. Finally, none of us can take another step, and we slump like dishrags on a bench outside the maidens’ quarters, squinting against the sun-glint diamonds on what’s left of the snow. Then the maids and nurses appear in the doorway, clucking over the girls’ red toes and sighing mightily in my direction for winding them up before they have to sit for lessons. I assure the cousins I won’t do anything fun without them, then promise to come by the maidens’ quarters before supper.
Now I’m lurking in a dim corner of the hall, idly toying with my spindle while Owain and the lads are gathering at the door. They’re going hunting, and they’re daring one another not to wear undergarments, laughing and shoving like drunken halfwits.
The wives and sisters and mothers from the feast have drawn the hall benches near the hearth, and now they’re chattering over their spinning and sewing in the gentle orange light. Isabel sits among them, giggling because of a knot in her yarn.
Rhael and I always talked about how it would be. We’d marry brothers two summers apart, just like us, and we’d have steadings across the vale and be in and out of each other’s kitchens all the time.
Owain slaps Einion ap Tewdwr upside the head, and the lads cackle and mock him. I tease out a length of leader yarn, there in the corner by myself with my secondhand spindle.
Rhael and I each wanted two children, a son and a daughter, and they’d play together all day while we cooked and hauled and spun and laughed. Our husbands would come home from the high pastures, and we’d sing ballads and tell stories while the sun sank over the hills.
A shadow slants across my legs. Owain stands over me, cloak aswirl at his shoulders. “You all right, sweeting?”
I nod and show him the twist of thread around the spindle shaft.
“Aw, you don’t want to sit on the floor all alone.” He gestures cheerfully over his shoulder at the wives clustered near the hearth. “You were looking forward to meeting my stepmother, weren’t you?”
I touch my arm where Cadwgan seized me, where Isabel slid her cool fingers beneath his grip and pulled him clear. “My lord . . .”
“What?” Owain’s smile drops abruptly. “Do you not want to pass the time with her?”
No. I don’t. Not now.