This was hardly a surprise, but he bit his tongue against saying it. Her father gave her not to the Church, but in marriage. No matter her preference, she could not be married without her consent, so she must have agreed to this.
“My mother passed many hours in prayer, yet served as lady to her husband and her children, and to our people.” He looked at her bowed head, her submissive pose, and felt more lonely than he had ever felt in his life. “In faith, I hope you will find such a life pleasing to you.”
She nodded again, never looking up at him, and asked if he would join her in prayer this evening, after the meal. He declined as gallantly as he could manage, telling her it was not his habit, that he spent those hours in important tasks that could not wait for morning.
It was the first of what was sure to be many lies to this woman he must soon call wife. After the meal, he spent the evening in discussion with the master falconer, and an hour talking with the bard of inconsequential matters.
Then he went to his chamber and whispered his own prayers in the dark, as he did every night. As he knew he would do for as long as he lived. Mary, Ida, Isabella, Gwenllian, Eluned. He thanked God for them, because they had saved her.
He would not forget their names, because he could not forget her.
Chapter Twenty-Five
She knew the hills to the northwest were Aderinyth, and she felt a nervous fluttering under her skin every moment as she rode past them. She did not look in their direction, keeping her eyes fixed on the spot between the mule’s ears and trying not to hear the other travelers talk about it – how the terrain made attack so difficult that it had protected the place for years, how it was famed for the falcons and hawks that nested there, how its prince was newly returned.
It took a full day of travel until the hills began to fade from sight. Suddenly panicked at the thought that she would otherwise never see it, she turned at the last moment. There were too many shades of green to count, and the evening light fell on shifting mists that clung to the high peaks. She looked for a glimmer of water high in the hills, remembering the lake where he had gone with his brothers to find the fairy queen, but saw only a falcon that soared out of the mists. Her heart gave a painful throb at the sight.
Even in that one glance, it was easy to see why he had longed for this place so deeply, and for so long. It was easy to see why he would do anything to return.
When there was no more to be seen, she turned her attention back to the road. She was not truly needed to guard this party. The men who did this work regularly for Lord Robert were more experienced and knew the road and its dangers far better than she ever could. They were efficient and courteous and – after a man twice her size had put a hand low on her back and she cut off half his mustache with a flick of her wrist – they left her alone. Fortunately that was the most trouble there had been on this journey.
At Whitting she had gone to Lord Robert, not even questioning why, only knowing that it would be a comfort just to be near him. He was looking out at the site where they were building a storage place for the wine, and she watched the progress with him. She thought of the time when he had wiped her tears and soothed her by telling her how a good wine was made. His was the only idle talk that she ever welcomed, because his voice was so warm and kind.
But he did not speak idly that day. He had asked if she would return to Morency.
He and Lady Eluned would go to their own home at Dinwen, and though she knew she was welcome there, it caused a searing pain to imagine herself in Wales. Yet the thought of going back to Morency made her want to weep, for no reason she could name.
“I know not where to go,” she had answered. “If it would please my lord, I could stay here at Whitting.” She could bide here through days and nights without number, just as he had asked her. She could haunt the place, useless and silent and solitary.
But Lord Robert knew her well enough to say, “It would please me to give you a task that I would trust to no other.”
He told her that the wine was arrived from his lands in France and would be delivered to the buyers, who were in many places throughout England. In Lincoln, the carts would be emptied of casks and filled with wool to be taken to Burgundy. They would also carry Elias ben Joseph and his family, did they choose to come. Lord Robert trusted his men with wine and wool, but to guard and care for a family was different. “I know you will see them safe out of Lincoln,” he said.
Could he know how she dreaded that place? Had he sent here there deliberately, to force her out of her listlessness? She would never know. Her only certainty was that she could not refuse him any request, no matter how difficult, so she agreed to it. He said she could even accompany the party all the way to Basel, if she wished. It was not necessary, but perhaps she would like to see more of the world.
As she turned to go and prepare herself for the journey, he said, “With time it will fade, Nan. The heartache. It will become more bearable.”
She stared at his profile, her breath short. “My heart does not ache,” she lied, because he had no right to speak of it. Because he could not know what it was like.
“Your pardon,” he murmured. She had not thought it was possible to feel worse, but his kindness made her wretched. “When I was young I loved a lady who was far above me. My heart did ache to lose her. I have thought it is much the same for you.”
She looked at the lines around his eyes, evidence of a thousand smiles, and tried to imagine him heartbroken for any woman who was not Lady Eluned. It seemed impossible. Yet he had married her only six years ago, which meant he must have spent many years in heartbreak.
“Was there no comfort for you?” she asked him.
“Only the knowledge that if she had abandoned all to be with me, many more were like to have suffered.” He had looked at her then, kind eyes and a sad smile. “In truth, I cared naught for any suffering but my own, for that is the nature of heartbreak. Yet did it comfort me to know it was not lack of love that kept us apart.”
She wanted to ask him how long it would be until the pain was bearable. Or how he knew the lady had truly loved him, if she had given him up. Or if he had felt a terrible anger, as she did, to be left behind. But she only looked at him and kept the words locked up inside of her, where they would burn for the rest of her days.
“It was my idea to send you to Morency, you know.” She blinked at him, startled. “I told you once, that I did think my lady wife wished you to be a true friend, and not her servant. I knew if you did not leave her side and make your own way, you might never let yourself be her equal. And because she thought it best for you, she put aside her sorrow and bade you go.”
Nan knew she could never bring herself to call Lady Eluned her friend, though she was that and more. Friend and mother and savior, her protector and her confidante. “Never could I be equal to so great a lady,” she said.
He smiled fondly at her. “Already are you her equal. You have only to believe it, and you will be as great as she.”
Perhaps it was true. But it could not make her a lady.
Soon after, she had left to meet the baggage train, ignoring Robin’s request to accompany him first to Morency and then go on to Lincoln from there. She was too eager to be among people who had not known the Welshman, to have a purpose to her days again, to spend her time on the alert with a knife in hand, ready for something. Anything. So she had passed the summer guarding carts of wine barrels from one town to another. It felt strange to use the main roads, after so many months of disregarding them, but she grew accustomed.
They must pass some days in Lincoln, so she went to Wragby to see how Aunt Mary fared. She spent a day in cleaning again, and cooking, and refusing to take the mule back with her. “I have no use for him, Aunt Mary,” she insisted. She endured the questions about her fine Welshman – where was he, and was it true he beat a man at the market? Nan said only that he had gone home, and then ignored the questions about her sister.
She made sure to avoid the so
uthern road, and Bargate. Even to think of the woman who had once been her sister hurt, but she found she was accustomed to hurt. In Lincoln she tried to avoid the falconer’s home entirely. But she must be sure little Cecilia was well. She braced herself when she went to the door, but the falconer and his wife were not at home. The girl was thriving, so happy and smiling that she seemed a different person entirely.
When she offered a plate of stew to Nan, proud that she had made it herself, her face shining, Nan shocked herself by bursting into tears. Poor Cecilia – no, her name was Erma now, it had always been Erma. The girl could not know that it was little Bea that had appeared in Nan’s mind. Bea as she might have been. Bea as she never would be, because wishes were nothing against the cruel realities of the world.
There was no trouble for Elias and his family when they left. They brought little with them, having sold nearly everything. Nan had to turn away from the sight of him as they left the house that his grandfather’s grandfather had built. The look on him was one of such grief that it felt wrong to witness it.
It had been his home, his children’s home, his father’s home – and he must leave it, knowing he would likely never see it again. This was hiraeth being born.
Every night since, she had lain awake and thought of it. It made her understand the choice the Welshman had made, and took the sharpest edge off her anger. She had never had a home, not truly. As a child, her family had moved from place to place with the seasons, rarely the same village twice. There was no place she could call her own, and there never had been. Her heart dwelled in the people she loved. And if she had been forced to choose between keeping them safe and being with him, would she have chosen any differently than he had?
As the mountains surrounding Aderinyth diminished into the distance, she made herself imagine him not as her Welshman, but as their prince. Like the mountains that protected his land, he was the only thing that stood between the people, powerless and vulnerable, and the might of Norman lords who would take all that they could. He had been starving with a well-fed falcon on his wrist, because the great were not ruled – could not be ruled – by their own selfish desires.
He had always been a great lord. She had wanted him to be less than he was, only so she could have him.
“Have you never been on the sea?”
It was Marcus who asked it, one of the younger men of Lord Robert’s hired guard. She shook her head and tried to look unfriendly, though he had always been respectful of her. He began to describe the upcoming journey, reminiscing with the other men over past bouts of seasickness.
They were at an inn awaiting the ship that would take them to France, and she was surprised and pleased to see how well the men behaved in this port town. Elias and his family were safely in their chamber above with Fuss guarding their door, and Nan had come to the common room below. It was filled with half-drunken travelers and there was no reason for her to be here at all – and many reasons for her to avoid such a place – but she did not want to be alone with her thoughts.
Soon she would cross the sea. She would not return for months. She might not return at all.
It felt like running away because it was. She wanted to be far away when he took a wife. If France agreed with her, she might find some kind of work. She would build a life that made sense, far from all of this. She would stop thinking of green hills one day.
The sound of men speaking Welsh nearby reached her, tugged at her though she tried not to hear. In France, she told herself, there would be no Welsh to haunt her. It would not drift to her when she least wanted to hear it.
But soon she would not hear it at all, and so she listened in spite of herself. Among all their drunken chatter, she heard a name that put a dread in her. Rhodri.
It might be any Rhodri. It was a common enough name. It was none of her affair. But then: Aderinyth. The prince. Wedding. Slay him.
She calmed her breath and slowed her heart. She did not think. She only eased away from her small party to move closer to the corner where three men sat talking. One seemed almost sober, at least enough that he warned the other two to keep their voices down. He was answered with laughter, and the insistence that there were no Welsh here besides them, so there was naught to fear. He looked up at that moment and saw her.
Nan knew the look. It was always either this wolfish look or the worshipful one. Always a whore or an angel.
He called out to ask if she was for sale, his eyes moving over every inch of her, and she pretended not to hear. It terrified her, that look. It turned her knees to water every time. She concentrated on not putting a hand to the knife on her belt, the only one she wore that they could see.
“Look at her, it needs a soft touch,” said the man who was more drunk. He was older, the obvious leader of their group. “Put your eyes back in your head, for decency, if you will woo her.”
This was where she would slip away, in the normal way of things. But they had said the prince, Rhodri, slay him. So when the more sober man switched to English and beckoned her, she came. She saw his face when she stepped into the light, her features no longer in shadow, and thought of what her lady had once said to her about beauty. That it was an asset, a power, a thing that might be wielded like a weapon.
Nan had never learned to use it that way, because the power to stir a man’s lust only frightened her. She preferred a weapon that was under her control, not subject to the whims of others.
But she looked in this man’s eyes and saw he was caught. He would let her near and tell her what she wanted to know and never even ask who she was. All because she had a face he liked.
“You are Welsh?” she asked him.
After he nodded, she feigned a shyness of his friends and he came to join her a little away from them. It was easy, except for the terrified pounding of her heart. She filled his cup with the strongest ale and made herself smile once or twice. She asked him if he knew of Rhodri, the bastard brother of the newly returned prince. She said little, and his eagerness to impress her made him talk too much.
It required less than an hour and two more servings of ale to learn everything. He and his companions were to travel to Aderinyth where Rhodri waited, their movements easily lost amid the many guests who had begun to arrive in the weeks before the wedding. They were part of a small party of mercenaries who would be paid well to aid him in his plan to slay the prince.
“I am promised enough land that I may keep a hundred sheep,” he said, leaning close.
She did not recoil, even when he put an arm over her shoulder. She only smiled and looked right in his eyes, and when he sighed and said she was so very comely, she swallowed her fear and asked him what was the village where Rhodri waited. He said the name of the place three times, because her tongue tripped in trying to pronounce it, wasn’t Welsh such a strange language? How kind of him to help her learn it.
She almost felt sorry for him when she slipped from under his arm, and she heard him lose his balance and hit the floor behind her. He would probably look for her when he was sober tomorrow, if he remembered. But she would be gone.
“What is he like, your prince?”
It was impossible to refrain from talking with the Welsh whom she met when she crossed into Aderinyth. They opened their homes to her, and shared what little they had, and refused to take any kind of payment. It was their duty, they said over and over again, to welcome guests warmly and never leave them wanting if they could help it. All they ever seemed to expect in return was her company.
So she talked when they expected it, answering their questions and asking her own. The old man who served as her guide had brought her in four days to the heart of Aderinyth, taking her along hidden ways through the mountains, away from towns and villages. He was so hale that she was ashamed at how much more easily he climbed the hills while she struggled to keep up.
“I have heard as he does not like to be called a prince,” said the old man. “He tells us the king in England is our true leader now, and we mu
st remember Prince Gruffydd bows to him always. But no other man the king has sent has been so good, and the prince is one of us for all his Norman ways.”
A young girl had joined them in this last leg of the journey, having business near the village they sought. She was daughter to a falconer, and said she had met the prince many times.
“There are some bards who like him not, and some of the falconers, too,” she said now as they climbed the last hill. “In truth, their hate is only for King Edward. And their bitterness counts as naught against the many who do love our prince well. He has made a way for us to trade with the towns more easily. It will save many from hunger when the snows come. He’ll not let it be like last winter, he said.”
There was a reverence in the girl’s voice, the kind of bone-deep gratitude that Nan recognized easily. The king had ordered castles built throughout Wales, and new towns founded for the English to settle. It was forbidden for the Welsh to live in the towns, one of many laws that seemed to Nan to impose an impossible hardship. But their lord had spent the summer in hearing their complaints and doing everything in his power to ease the pain caused by the new laws.
“Here it is,” said the old man as they crested the hill.
A little village lay below, no more than a dozen small homes. In the distance she could see a keep – a single tower on a hill, the beginnings of a new castle. There was movement everywhere, builders moving stone and earth, visible even from this distance. Nan fixed her eyes on a figure standing at a wide window, just a tiny speck from here. It might be him.
This was his home. It fit him perfectly.
She paid the old man for his help in bringing her here, and watched him walk back over the hill after a lengthy farewell. The falconer’s daughter looked suspicious when Nan had no ready answer for who she was visiting. But the girl pointed to a spacious barn at the edge of the village and said it must be where Nan was going, as some other guests had been brought there recently.
Desire Lines (Welsh Blades, #3) Page 27
