Border Bride

by Hale Deborah

  Turning, she beckoned to Myfanwy, who hung back unwontedly bashful, perhaps at the sight of so many strangers arriving all at once.

  “Lord Macsen, if you and your men will follow my daughter, she’ll show you to the hall. I’ll be along in a moment to attend you, but first I must have a word with a certain young fellow in your party.”

  The border chief nodded and flashed a fond smile that made him look much less forbidding. “Gather him into your arms, if he hasn’t grown too manly to permit it. And even if he has, tell Bryn ap Howell his lord commands he submit to his mother’s embrace.”

  “I pray he’ll still come willingly.” Enid cast covetous eyes toward her son. “But if not, I shall be glad to avail myself of your order, my lord.”

  As Idwal and the other men of Glyneira led their guests’ horses to the stable, Lord Macsen and his party followed Myfanwy into the house.

  A little anxious after what Lord Macsen had said, Enid held her arms open to Bryn. His only concession to young manhood was to make certain none of the Hen Coed company was watching before he pelted into his mother’s waiting embrace.

  “You feel like a pigwidgeon!” she cried, gathering him to her and planting a doting kiss on his still-downy cheek. “All skin and bones. Are they not feeding you well enough at Hen Coed? Have you been ill?”

  She couldn’t help exaggerating her concern. Not under torture would Enid admit anyone else could possibly look after her son as well as she.

  “I’m fine, Mam, and they feed me plenty,” protested Bryn. “It’s just that I’ve grown since you last saw me. Why, I’m taller than you now.”

  “So you are!” Enid wailed, looking up into her son’s face for the first time.

  If only she could make the years run backward, until he was a fat jolly baby again, crowing as he bounced on Idwal’s knee. “It’s a good thing I got that wool dyed to weave you a new cloak, Master Longshanks. Between Auntie Gaynor and me, we’ll fatten you up while you’re with us.”

  If events unfolded as they should, she wouldn’t have to part from him again when the time came for Lord Macsen’s party to return to Hen Coed.

  But Bryn would be a man all too soon, a warning whisper in Enid’s mind cautioned her. In a few years’ time, he might fly her safe nest for good. Myfanwy and Davy would one day have lives of their own, too. Meanwhile, she’d be committed to Macsen ap Gryffith for the rest of her days.

  A fair trade, to keep her children safe until they grew old enough to make their own way in the world, her maternal nature insisted.

  Her face must have betrayed the contention within her, for Bryn gazed at her with fond concern. “Is something wrong, Mam? How can I help?”

  As quickly as she’d cleaned old rushes from the floor of the hall, Enid swept her troubles from her mind and fixed on a makeshift smile that she hoped would reassure her son. “I’m content as I can be, now that I have all my chicks under my wing again. All you need do to complete my happiness is eat your fill and enjoy your visit with us.”

  “Bryn!” Davy scampered across the courtyard with the squirming puppy in his arms. “I’ve got a dog all my own. See?”

  “A likely looking whelp he is, too.” Bryn petted the little dog, who barked and licked his fingers. “I mind you’ll make a fine sheepdog out of him, one day.”

  Davy replied with a vigorous nod. “If I put him on a leash, maybe Con will let him come along with us to the ridge tomorrow.” The child glanced past his mother.

  Enid spun about to find Con standing close behind her. A gasp stuck in her throat.

  “You will take us up to the ridge like you promised, won’t you, Master Con?” asked Davy. “Myfanwy said you wouldn’t come back, but I knew you’d never break your word.”

  “It was good of you to have faith in me, Davy-boy.” Con’s countenance looked more grave than Enid had ever seen it. “Yes, unless something prevents, I’ll go along with you to the ridge, tomorrow. Pwyll is welcome to come along if he promises to behave himself. I can’t be searching for him the length and breadth of Powys if he wanders off.”

  “I’ll make sure he doesn’t get away,” Davy vowed, as solemn as if he were swearing a blood oath.

  “And I know you’ll never break your word. Do you think your brother would care to come along with us?” Though Con feigned a tone of cheerful indifference, Enid marked the intent gaze he bent upon her elder son.

  “Aye,” said Bryn, at the same instant his mother cried, “No!”

  Both boys turned on her with furrowed brows.

  “Y-you should ask your foster-father’s permission before going off on some lark, Bryn.” Enid tried to keep a note of desperation from her voice. “Lord Macsen may have need of your service tomorrow.”

  She ignored the glare Con shot her.

  “You’re right, Mam,” said the boy. “I’ll go ask him, now. Come on, Davy. Let’s show Lord Macsen your pup. Race you to the hall.”

  Letting Davy get a good lead on him, Bryn winked at his mother…and Con. In that instant, the resemblance between her son and his natural father struck Enid like a cruel blow. It was all she could do to keep a whimper from escaping her lips as she watched Bryn chase Davy toward the hall.

  From behind, Con’s voice wrapped around her, scarcely louder than a passing breeze. His words thundered in her ears, just the same. “You never truly wanted to wed me, did you, Enid? It was only a ruse to drive me away from Glyneira before the boy came.”

  A palisade of hurt and fear went up around her heart. Archers on the ramparts took aim at Con ap Ifan.

  “Yes…it…was.” With each lying word, Enid bought back a piece of her self-respect. Not for the world would she let Con guess the truth of it. The man had too many advantages over her without adding the certain knowledge of how much she still wanted him.

  Had wanted him. Had wanted him.

  Con made no move to circle around and face her. Enid did not trust herself to turn and confront him. Anyone watching from a distance might not even realize they were talking to one another. Enid was content to keep it that way.

  “I don’t know how he can be mine,” Con murmured. “But I know he is.”

  The look on his face when he’d entered the courtyard had already told her so, still Enid flinched to hear the words from Con’s lips. Though she could not bear to meet his gaze, and it galled her to beg any boon of him, she forced herself to turn.

  “You won’t tell him, will you?” She stared at the clasp that fastened Con’s cloak. “If you ever had any true feelings for me, I beseech you say nothing of this to Bryn.”

  “We must talk, you and I.” Con sounded like a victorious warrior dictating terms of surrender. “I need to know how this happened and why you kept it from me all these years.”

  If he couldn’t guess the answer to that, he was a fool. Though Enid wanted to rage at him, she did not dare for so many reasons. “Tonight, after the meal, we can meet down by the river where there’s no chance of anyone overhearing us. I’ll make certain Idwal takes the watch himself so our going is not marked by anyone who’s apt to gossip.”

  “Very well. After the meal, by the river.” Without another word, Con strode away.

  Realizing he had not replied to her plea, Enid ran to catch up with him, grabbing the hem of his cloak with such force it was a wonder the cloth did not rend.

  “Say nothing of this to my son,” she hissed. “Promise?”

  “I will hold my tongue until I’ve heard you out, tonight.” Con wrenched his cloak from her grasp. “After that, I promise nothing.”

  So it was true.

  Con moved through the rest of the day like a reeling drunkard, caught so deep in his own thoughts and memories that his spirit might have been ensnared in the past while his empty husk of a body remained in the present.

  Though he did his best not to call attention to himself, he took every opportunity to stick close to Bryn. Observing the boy, Con saw fleeting glimpses of Enid, of her father…and of himself. Was he also
catching a peep of the father he’d never known?

  “Say, Bryn,” Davy pulled his brother over to the dim corner of the hall where Con had taken a seat. “Did you know Con was a soldier in the Holy Land?”

  “Is it true?” The lad’s eyes, blue like Con’s but tinged with his mother’s darker shades of purple, fairly glowed with eager curiosity. “How long were you there? Did you ever fight the Saracens?”

  “More often the Turks.” Sparked by Bryn’s avid interest in him, Con launched into a thrilling account of one of his adventures with Rowan DeCourtenay.

  These days, Rowan himself was a new father to a lusty infant boy, Con recalled. What would his old friend and comrade make of Con having a son almost grown? Especially one so handsome, clever and good-natured?

  Con could hardly wait to whisk the boy off to Brantham for a proper introduction. Perhaps a presentation to the Empress in Gloucester? Or to Prince Jocelin’s opulent court in Edessa? Suddenly, Con felt his hunger for advancement hallowed by a higher purpose. To ease the path for his son…and his son’s sons.

  The notion set him dizzy with wonder. Might there come a day when his descendants, among the first in the land, would hear the bards recite their proud genealogies?

  Rhys ap Madog ap Bryn ap Conwy.

  From clear across the room, Con felt Enid’s glare boring into him as she looked up from washing Lord Macsen’s feet. The climax of Con’s story fell rather flat, though Bryn and Davy seemed not to notice.

  “Whatever brought you back to Wales from such an exciting place?” Admiration glowed in Bryn’s young face, shadowed only a little by puzzlement. “I can hardly wait until I’m old enough to take the Cross!”

  “Me, too!” Davy’s small brow puckered. “Whereabouts do you take the Cross to, Bryn?”

  His elder brother chuckled. “I guess you take it to the Holy Land. Taking the Cross means pledging yourself to go on a Crusade. It’s a fine, noble deed. Tell us more, Master Con.”

  Though he had his own beliefs about the nobility of his service in the Holy Land, Con held his tongue so as not to tarnish young Bryn’s idealism. Perhaps he could convince Enid to let him take the boy to Edessa as his squire.

  Until the evening meal was served, Con kept Davy and Bryn occupied with further stories. Though Enid looked daggers at him whenever he glanced in her direction, she did not bid either of the boys away to do chores. Nor did she advance any of the other excuses Con expected to part the lads from him.

  It wouldn’t matter if she had. He would have balked her. Bryn had grown almost to manhood, never knowing his true father, believing he’d been sired by another. No hard looks from the boy’s mother would keep Con from becoming acquainted with his son now.

  When the food was brought in, Con reluctantly accepted an invitation from Lord Macsen to dine at the head table. Even from there he kept a jealous eye on Bryn. When he was bidden to sing and recite after the meal, he put on the performance of his life. All to coax his son’s smile and awestruck gaze.

  To Con’s surprise, his singing and harping drew praise from another quarter.

  “Well done, Con ap Ifan!” As Lord Macsen clapped his large hands, his rugged visage relaxed from its earlier look of wary suspicion. “If you are even half as fine a warrior as you are a bard, I may do well to heed the counsel you bring me.”

  “It is honest counsel, my lord. I look forward to sharing it with you.” Though his ambition reared, Con found himself conscious of every man, woman and child in the hall. What would his mission to the border lord mean for them in the weeks and months to come?

  “Tomorrow,” said Macsen ap Gryffith, fighting a yawn. “We will speak more of it tomorrow.”

  While everyone at Glyneira prepared to bed down for the night, Con wandered out into the courtyard with a few other men to relieve himself in the privy. On the way back to the hall, he turned left when the rest turned right, slipping off into the darkness. Idwal opened the gate for Con without a word, as if he saw no one there, but was only glancing outside for his own benefit.

  As Con headed for the river, Idwal’s tardy whisper pursued him. “Go easy…with her, Con. She’s a…good lass.”

  Con raised his hand to acknowledge Idwal’s appeal. But under his breath, he muttered to himself, “She’s a lass who has plenty to answer for.”

  Down by the river he waited and waited, until he began to wonder if Enid had forgotten him. Or if she’d never intended to come in the first place. Even the soothing music of the flowing water could not temper his gathering anger.

  He thought about Bryn, growing up as he had—never knowing his father. Con didn’t want that for any child, let alone one of his own blood. Did it make it better or worse that the boy had believed Howell was his sire?

  Better for Bryn, perhaps, but worse for Con.

  How much had he missed during those years he’d been freebooting around Europe and the Holy Land? His son’s birth. The boy’s first steps. His first hunt. Teaching him to sit a horse and handle a bow. Perhaps even passing on the workaday magic of coaxing oxen.

  Enid had robbed Con of all of that. Now she wanted to deprive him of Bryn’s company, and keep the boy from learning the truth of his parentage.

  “Not whilst I breathe.” Con’s hands balled into such tight fists, his short-pared nails bit into his palms.

  Caught in the undertow of his indignation, he did not hear the faint rustle of Enid’s approach until she stood beside him. The scent of her still made him long to pull her into his arms, even after all she’d done to hurt and deceive him. The warrior in Con bridled at this unfair advantage she held over him.

  “I came as…quickly as I could.” Her words stumbled out on a ragged gasp of breath. “Lord Macsen…detained me for a word.”

  “A marriage offer?” Though the night was calm and mild, Con fancied his words chiselled in ice.

  “Perhaps.” Enid settled herself on a tussock of reeds beside Con. “If I’d let him speak. There’ll be plenty of time for that in the days ahead, I hope.”

  “No!” Con wanted to bellow, but he clenched his teeth to imprison the word until it died in his throat.

  In the meantime, a tense hush stretched between them.

  “Well,” said Enid at last. “You bid me come here as the price for your silence, so here I sit. What do you want from me?”

  “Answers,” Con snapped. “The truth. It’s long overdue after thirteen years, wouldn’t you say?”

  “What would you have had me do—tell the world my firstborn was not begotten by my husband?” Her wrath beat against Con in cold briny waves. “Howell knew and the knowing ate at him. But he was good enough to give my son a name and a place, which is more than you were willing to do.”

  “Because I never knew I had a son, damn you!” Fearful someone might hear him, even so far from the maenol, Con pitched his voice quieter, but not a whit less hostile. “I never knew I had a son until a few hours ago. I still don’t know how it came about.”

  “The usual way.” Enid turned her face toward him. The moonlight cast a chill silver-blue light over her fey features. “After all the women you boasted of bedding, I thought you’d know by now how babes are got.”

  She sounded like a young lady of the estate talking down to an ignorant plowboy. Something she’d never done in their younger years.

  Very well, then. He’d answer her like a plowboy. “I knew that long before I bedded any woman. Yet I never saw a ewe give birth to a lamb without first being tupped by a ram. How did you get with my child when we never…”

  Con couldn’t bring himself to say the words for they were sure to ache with his old yearning.

  “We did.”

  Had Enid spoken? Or had he interpreted a whisper on the wind to say what he longed to hear?

  “We…did?” He murmured his disbelief almost as softly. “How? When? I remember nothing of it.”

  For a man like Con, that last admission did not come easy. Had Enid used some dark magic to rob him of the memo
ry as she had robbed him of the child who grew from their joining?

  “Perhaps I should take umbrage.” For the first time since he’d rejected her sham proposal, Enid didn’t sound angry with him. “But I suppose I can hardly fault you for having no recollection of that night. You were very drunk.”

  “The night before I left Gwynedd to become a mercenary?” When else? He’d never been so drunk before or since.

  Beside him Enid nodded as her hushed chuckle sighed on the night air. “I only wonder now that you had enough iron in your loins to do the job.”

  Con didn’t want to laugh with her. It felt like a kind of surrender. But he couldn’t help himself. “I’ve heard other men complain that strong drink makes them want what they’re incapable of taking. It’s never affected me that way.”

  Beside him, he felt Enid tense. Suddenly Con’s laughter caught in his throat where it almost choked him.

  “By all the saints, lass,” he gasped when he finally recovered his breath. “Tell me I didn’t take you against your will when I was blind drunk?”

  The thought of it made him want to retch up his supper.

  “No, it wasn’t like that,” Enid hastened to assure him. Awash in relief, Con almost missed the harsh whisper Enid might not have meant him to hear. “There were times I wished it had been.”

  “In heaven’s name, why?”

  “Because then I could blame someone else for all that happened to me thereafter, instead of living with the knowledge that I brought it on myself by my own folly.” The words burst out of her with the force of a stopper from a jug of well-fermented cider.

  Somehow Con knew he need ask no more questions to coax the whole account from Enid. He must only stay still and open his ears.

  “You might say it was I who took you, Con. Though you didn’t put up much resistance.”

  He could well imagine!

  “You must understand,” continued Enid. “I was at my wits’ end. You were going away and I was so sure I’d never see you again. I felt certain you’d march off and be killed somewhere.”