Desire Lines (Welsh Blades, #3)

by Elizabeth Kingston

  Back in the guest house, he shared a room with the wounded knight, Sir Gerald, who was silent as Gryff curled onto his own pallet. There was a covered plate waiting for him, set on his blanket. It held a thick slice of cheese and a little bread, though the brothers had already given him his meal when he’d bathed. A kindness, this extra little portion for the starving guest. He ate it slowly and was trying to convince himself that he was safe now, when the wounded knight spoke.

  “Is not her usual way, to kill.” His voice was stronger than Gryff would have expected for one who looked so near to death. “They were too many, and so intent on murder that she must kill them in all haste, that no innocents would die. More often she maims. A hand or a foot, or any wound well-placed to make a man stop fighting but not kill him – that is her way.”

  Gryff wanted to ask more: how this knight knew her, if she was truly deaf and dumb, and why she had habits of maiming and killing. Above all, he wanted to know how this man or any man could be immune to her beauty. Haps he had forgotten how comely women could be, so long had he been away from them. She might be only ordinarily pretty and his eyes unaccustomed.

  Ordinary or not, her beauty was all the more unnerving because it came with such a casually lethal skill. Even if it was not her usual way, she had not hesitated. Sir Gerald’s words were meant as reassurance that there was nothing to fear.

  Or so he thought, until the knight spoke again.

  “When next you think to look on her with lust, remember it. She’ll cool your blood by spilling it, and let you live with the shame and the scar.” He smiled a little, as though it were a pleasant thought, and looked toward Gryff. “But if truly you are no villain, there is naught to fear of her. I vow it, and you may sleep easy in that promise.”

  He did sleep, but it was not easy. It never was.

  1277

  At first among the Normans, only Will paid him any attention to at all – and that was because he wanted to learn Welsh. Will never said that, of course, he just always greeted Gryff in the language and then fumbled for words beyond the simple greeting, obviously hoping for help.

  Gryff pointedly answered in Norman French, or in English when he wanted to practice that language. He never spoke in Welsh anymore. He wanted everyone to forget he was from Wales. Not that they ever would – all they did was remind him how backward he was. Savage and poor and stupid, worthless even to his own father. Well, they never said that last part, but they didn’t have to.

  “My mother is Welsh,” said Will, who at ten years old could not be expected to understand how little his mother mattered to this conversation. “There are Welsh and Norman and English at my home in Ruardean and all are treated as equal. They are all alike except in their speech. It’s not like that here.”

  Will reminded Gryff of his little brother Owain, never wanting to leave his side in work or in play, imitating Gryff in every gesture. Will didn’t have a brother, and he’d been brought here to foster under Lancaster when he was only a baby. He didn’t have a father, either – not one he’d ever known – and he barely even knew this home he spoke of with such authority.

  “It’s not like that here because Lancaster’s wife is more Norman than he is himself, and all the household too.” Gryff stabbed at the dirt with his wooden sword and wished he had a real one. The master at arms said he wasn’t ready for it yet, but Gryff knew it was because he was Welsh. He’d overheard the men saying that he shouldn’t be taught to fight at all. “Lancaster would never marry a Welshwoman, nor let her rule.”

  Will shrugged. “They say my father is mad. Better my Welsh mother rules than a madman.”

  “It’s your Norman uncle who rules,” Gryff corrected him, angry suddenly. “They don’t give marcher castles over to Welsh people. There’s naught in Wales like these manors, we could never – they could never build anything this grand.”

  Will just used the tip of his own wooden sword to dig up a clump of earth, and didn’t look at him. It was obvious he disagreed but didn’t want to argue. “Do you want to go see the destrier?” he asked instead.

  It had become a favorite thing to do, visiting the new war horse that had been brought to Lancaster’s stables. Not that Gryff would ever get to ride a destrier in his life. Will would. He’d also probably get a real sword before Gryff did, even though he was younger.

  “Nay, I want the kitchen. There will be pears in confit left, and Agnes will have saved some for me.” Agnes was the cook’s daughter and had taken a liking to him.

  Will began to follow him as he headed through the tilting yard toward the kitchen. Gryff frowned at him. “You know well you cannot come with me. Kitchens are for servants.”

  “You’re not a servant.” He got that mulish look, just like Owain used to before a tantrum. Will wouldn’t start shouting and insisting to come along, though. He was too smart for that.

  “I am no servant,” Gryff agreed. “But nor am I the son of a great Norman lord. Go you to the hall and call for pears confit, and the kitchen will bring it to you fresh.”

  He walked away and tried not to care that he’d seen the hurt in the younger boy’s face. He liked Will but he wasn’t sure if Will really liked him, or just wanted to pretend to be Welsh. He was too young anyway. Ten years old was practically a baby. In two years, Gryff would be fourteen and that was the age of manhood.

  He wondered if that meant they’d send him back to his father in Wales in two years. He’d asked how long he would remain hostage and no one could give him an answer. It had stopped mattering to him because he didn’t want to go back to Wales. It was a backward place, and poor, and there was nothing there for him. They were still fighting now, the Welsh Prince Llewellyn against the English king. The Welsh would lose because they always lost, and then they would have even less and the king would treat the people even worse.

  It was stupid. Gryff was glad now that he’d been sent to the Normans. Everything was better here. The food, the buildings, the horses, the weapons. Five months he’d been here, and he’d seen enough to convince him that he should obey his father’s command to learn everything he could of Norman ways. Not to please his father, but to please himself.

  In the kitchen, he had to wait to get Agnes’ attention. There was a boy there, about Gryff’s age, pleading with her and almost shouting about some bit of meat that was cooked wrong. He wasn’t rude about it. He was just desperate. Agnes was saying that she’d happily give him a bit of pigeon pie instead.

  “That’s no help!” the boy despaired. “It must be from the duck she killed, and it shouldn’t be cooked at all. I was to keep it apart from the meat for the kitchens and bring it to the hawk-house myself. Father will skin me like a rabbit, she’s his favorite falcon. Haven’t you got any fresh offal, at least?”

  “I’ve the pigeon pie or a nice roasted capon.”

  “You can’t give her cooked meat!”

  Gryff said this at the same time and in exactly the same scornful tone as the boy, who looked at him, startled. It made Gryff embarrassed somehow. He could feel the heat creeping into his cheeks as they both looked at him.

  “A falcon cannot eat cooked meat,” he explained to Agnes. “And you must not wait too long to feed her. It doesn’t have to be the same duck she killed, though. Any duck, as long as it’s not cooked.”

  Agnes pointed to the larder and said they were welcome to find one. The boy passed by Gryff on his way out of the kitchen, paused, and announced, “You’re coming.”

  They found a fresh duck laid out on the cold stone and though the other boy declared it insufficiently fat, he scooped it up and said they would go to the hawk-house now. Gryff had been avoiding the place, because everyone seemed to expect him to go there. But he followed now, for lack of a good argument against it.

  The boy was named Hal. He talked without stopping and walked almost too quickly and he had skin dark as night. When he demanded to know Gryff’s name and where he was from, the answer actually made him stop in his tracks.

&
nbsp; “But the best falconers are from Aderinyth, and the gyrfalcons!” Hal said, and Gryff could not help but be pleased at the look of awe. “The peregrines too, of course, and once we had some goshawks. How many nests are there really? My father says it must be at least a hundred.”

  “No one knows,” mumbled Gryff.

  It wasn’t a lie, really. There might be more than the three gyrfalcon nests they knew of, and the eighty-two nesting places of other kinds of falcons and hawks that his family knew. But the number of them and their locations were a secret known only to a select few. It was the only wealth they had, and the Normans would steal it if they could.

  Gryff didn’t care about keeping any promises to his father, or keeping Welsh secrets safe. But he stayed silent about the nests.

  When they came to the hawk-house, Hal went immediately to his father and confessed everything about the missing duck and its replacement, then moved on quickly to introduce Gryff and say where he was from.

  Gryff barely heard any of it. He hardly even noticed Hal’s father at first, though the man was taller than anyone he’d ever seen and had a voice so deep it would shake mountains loose from the moorings of the earth. He just looked at the row of birds on their perches and breathed in the familiar smell and could not move.

  “That’s Amabel,” came the deep voice of Hal’s father who, he was to discover, was the master falconer.

  Amabel was a gyrfalcon, snow white and in perfect health, sitting peacefully on her perch with one leg tucked up under her feathers. The price of her, when sold, might have kept a family for a year. More, even. Gryff could not help but think of Philip Walch, pointing at the place in the cliff where the nest of the whitest gyrfalcons hid, explaining how blessed they were to have such rare birds.

  She was beautiful and perfect. She looked like an old friend, patiently waiting for him here in a quiet corner of this strange new home. To look at her made his heart ache.

  “God give you good, Amabel.” He whispered the greeting in Welsh, because in that moment it was the only way he knew how to be.

  Chapter Three

  1288

  In the black hours before dawn, she lingered in the shadows outside the church as the brothers prayed their nocturns. The rise and fall of their voices was soothing, though the sound barely reached her. She waited until an answer came to her, finally, in the little silence between prayers.

  Be selfish.

  She had promised it years ago. Somewhere along the way it had become the only course she trusted in moments of uncertainty. To swear fealty to no one, to serve no one and nothing unless it be the leading of her own heart.

  But her heart was divided. It told her to go ahead without delay and finally find word of her sister. It told her also to stay with Sir Gerald, care for his wound, take him safely back to Morency to heal. Two duties, two urgent needs. How to choose between them?

  Be selfish. She did not want to return to Morency, or tend Sir Gerald’s wounds. He would fare as well without her, and she did not want to lose another day that might be spent in finding her sister.

  It was her haste that had led them to travel in so small a party on the main road, vulnerable to attack. Nine men dead, eight by her hand and one because she had been too slow. As soon as she thought it – too slow – she could hear Gwenllian contradict her. Not too slow. No one could be that fast, her teacher would say, not even you. Still she felt her heart pulled in two directions again: remorse on one side, cold indifference on the other.

  It was necessary. They were villains. None would mourn them.

  They were men. They were alive. Now they were not.

  Be selfish. Guilt changed nothing, served no one. It was a luxury she could ill afford, and so she would let it go. She would confess, say her penance, and move forward with a spirit unencumbered.

  There was the ragged man, little more than bones and beard and filth. Dark eyes and desperation. It had been years since she had seen hunger so deep. In her memories, it wore her sister’s face. But even more than the hunger was the way he shied from shadows that were not there, how he shrank from any contact with others, how even now when he was safe he could not sleep soundly.

  She saw herself there, the girl she once was. The girl she would be still if not for the selfless care of a kind stranger.

  And he was Welsh. That was not easily dismissed. Of all things, a Welshman in need. It felt like God’s own hand had put him in her path.

  What was owed? Everything, her heart answered. Nothing, said her mind.

  Be selfish. The brothers would care for him. Her task was more important. Her dog did not like his hawk. It should be an easy thing to turn her back upon.

  But even to think it caused her pain. It would disturb her dreams. Already it disturbed her dreams – why else was she here, surrounded by prayers in the dead of night? For years she had prayed too, every day, giving thanks for her own rescue from a fear that had nearly swallowed her. In spite of her promise to swear fealty to no one, she had loyalties that were bound by love if not by her word: her sister, her lady, her teacher, her friends. She did not need another.

  Yet she could not banish the memory of his eyes fixed on the bread in her hands. He looked at it like it was his own heart she offered to him, cupped in her outstretched palms.

  He woke to find her leaning over him, her cool hand laid along his cheek. Slowly the dream dissipated, screams fading and fire dwindling to darkness. Her brows were drawn into a frown of concern, and he knew he must have cried out in his sleep. She meant to soothe him, but it was like waking into a different kind of nightmare. Instead of sharp terror, it was the slow press of reality – this new life, this changed body.

  He could feel every knob of his spine where it pressed against the pallet, the product of long hunger. Her hand moved to the scarred mess at the side of his head, her fingertips outlining his ruined ear. At least enough of his hair had grown back to hide the worst damage, leaving only the edge of the scar visible. It would always be there, though, a permanent reminder. He could ignore the memories until they faded into nothing, but there would always be evidence of it. It had happened. He lived now in the aftermath, where beautiful women looked on him with pity instead of desire, and visited his bed only to quiet his ravings.

  “The pain is gone from it,” he said even though he did not know if she could hear it, because it seemed to him that was the question in her eyes. “I buried my face in the snow to stop the flames.” He was lucky it had not taken half his face and scalp. “In my dreams the snows are not there, and I burn.” He licked his lips. “I burn and burn.”

  Her beauty was even more unearthly in the candlelight. It was overwhelming, to be so near to a woman after so many years. Near enough that, beneath the mingled fragrance of wood-smoke and fresh bread on her sleeve, he caught the scent of her. The salt sweat and musk of her skin.

  It made his mouth ache, a ravenous hunger that had been dulled by the more urgent demands of survival. With a vicious suddenness, he wanted to devour her, to slide his hands beneath her skirt to find bare flesh and push her thighs open, to put his mouth on her skin and thrust into her. His breath came short, so vividly did he imagine the feel of her tight heat around him.

  There was only silence from her as she withdrew her hand and stood. He watched her feet as she walked to the door where her little dog was stationed. The feet paused, stopped, turned back to him, and waited. He raised his eyes to her. The flame of the lamp she held flickered in the draft from the door, but he saw her perfect face, perfectly clearly. Her look told him she had seen the lust in him. As clearly as though she had spoken it directly in his ear, that look told him: No.

  He dropped his eyes to the knife that hung at her belt. A simple eating knife, like any common woman would carry. But what she could do with it spoke more loudly than any words or any look. It made the lust in him curdle into nothing.

  He turned his face up to contemplate the ceiling, and listened to the even breaths of the wounded knigh
t who slept only a few feet away. Such easy, deep, unbroken sleep.

  There was a faint sound at the door, a little rustling. Then the dog was at Gryff’s side. It looked at him, then back at her where she still stood in the doorway. She made a gesture, gently patting the air with her hand and holding her palm up, and the dog came closer to Gryff. It curled up next to him, the warm little body pressing against his ribs as the girl left.

  “Bran,” he said, and put a hand to the dog’s head. It gave a very big sigh for something so small, and settled in to sleep.

  It was day when next he woke, which seemed miracle enough. He had not slept so many hours together since...before.

  Almost as miraculous was the still intact meat pie that was wrapped and set near to his head, while patient little Bran sat inches away and stared longingly at it. It smelled heavenly.

  “It is pork,” he informed the dog. “And you are well trained.”

  Bran only looked at him hopefully, restraining himself from leaping on the pie as Gryff picked it up and broke off a bit of the crust. The smell made his mouth water painfully. He put the bit in his mouth and blinked back the rush of tears. So pitiful had he become that he was unmanned by a pork pie.

  He broke off another piece and held it out to Bran. The dog came forward slowly, never taking its hopeful eyes off Gryff as it took the most careful, gentle bite he’d ever seen from man or beast. Laughter escaped him, jagged and rusty, stabbing the quiet. He kept laughing as the dog nibbled almost daintily from his hand until the portion was gone. Then Bran retreated to a spot several feet away and sat, watching solemnly while Gryff ate the rest.