Spindle and Dagger

by J. Anderson Coats

  “Whatever my father tries to tell you about Elen is unkind, unwarranted, and profoundly untrue,” Owain says, “especially for a man who thinks as highly of the saints as he does. Besides, we both know he’s not happy if he’s sparing the rod.”

  Isabel smirks and rolls her eyes good-naturedly.

  “You, on the other hand, know how to hold out a proper welcome to your hearth.” Owain bows his head again, and Isabel shrugs, coy and demure, but she can’t quite hide her triumphant smile. “What’ll people think if they see Elen sitting in the dust all alone? She is a guest in your hall, after all. She is my guest in your hall.”

  Isabel looks pained, but she sighs and points to an empty place at the end of the bench. I make no move. The wives busy themselves sewing or spinning, but they’re watching us sidelong. Owain’s attention is mostly over his shoulder near the door, where the lads are jostling and passing a flask and snickering. Only when he nudges me again do I perch on the very edge of the bench. It bites a sharp line into my backside. Once I’m seated, Owain grins, kisses me again, then leaves without a backward glance. He rejoins the lads, and they pile out the door and thrash their way outside, throwing snowballs, mayhap, as they head toward the gate.

  I pinch out some wool like nothing is amiss and push the spindle down my leg to get a good twist. They’re all watching me, and Owain loves it when people speculate. After several long moments, after the courtyard is quiet, Isabel clears her throat. “You must go.”

  “Beg pardon?” I widen my eyes, all innocence.

  Isabel rises and jabs a finger at the corner where I came from, but I intentionally let my work tangle and then start fixing it. If I’m not on this bench when Owain returns, there’ll be an argument I’ve no wish to be at the center of.

  “Awww, leave the poor little lass alone.” Gwerful tsks and pulls a stitch clear with plump fingers. “Owain will soon take a proper wife, and then where will she be? Out on her ear, that’s where. Unless she starts giving him sons.” She glances at me like I don’t have the sense to work this out myself, but I can’t think of sons without smelling smoke.

  “I doubt it.” Annes grins. “Whatever else, she’s made Owain like her better than any of our husbands like us. Who knows? Mayhap she’ll end up the proper wife.”

  The women giggle because it’s hilarious that a girl born in some nameless steading might one day wed a king’s son. I laugh, too, because I’m picturing the look on Cadwgan ap Bleddyn’s face should such a thing somehow come to pass.

  “If it were as easy as that, don’t you think she’d have done it by now?” Eiluned picks a fleck of grime out of her wool. “I would have.”

  It’s not a matter of easy. I wish it was. But it never will be.

  “Come now, don’t taunt her,” Gwerful scolds. “She might stay kept, but Owain will marry a girl like Isabel here. Someone with land and a family full of sword-arms. Someone his father would have peace with.”

  “Poor child! At least the saints have blessed her —”

  “Shut up, all of you!” Isabel snaps. “If my husband walks by and sees her here, I’ll never hear the end of it. She may be a guest in my hall, but I do not have to pass time with her!”

  I grip the bench edge, but Isabel wrenches me up, spindle and all, and shoves me hard. I stumble backward into a baby wobbling on tiny bare feet while clutching a fistful of his nurse’s skirts. The baby loses his grip and sits down hard on his backside.

  Miv.

  Miv we hid in the shadows. Already she was crying in her cradle, arms up, hold me hold me hold me. Rhael said they would not care about her. Mam and Da would come back from the hills and find her wet and hungry and angry, but unharmed.

  We did not think of fire.

  This baby is not Miv. Miv had shaggy dark hair past her ears. This baby has a trace of sawdust-colored ringlets struggling free from a little gray hood. This baby looks up at me, up and up, and his lip trembles as he stretches his arms to be held.

  An elbow hits my ribs, and I stagger, hard, crunching Gwerful’s foot and knocking over Annes’s sewing basket. When I recover, clutching my side, Isabel is drawn up like a murderess with the child on her hip.

  “Did you just knock my baby down?” She strokes his tiny round cheek again and again. “You did. I saw you. Your master put you up to this, didn’t he? Owain ap Cadwgan may be all smiles to my face, but I know exactly what he’d do to little Henry given half a chance. One more brother means his share of land and cattle is that much less, and don’t think I haven’t heard him calling my son a half-breed cur!”

  I want to beg Isabel’s pardon. I want to tell her my imposing on her spinning circle was not my idea, that she must pay Owain no mind for he’s trying to needle his father through her. That no one put me up to anything, but they did, and Miv is wailing and Rhael stands chin up defiant for a staggering long moment before Einion ap Tewdwr roars like a beast and slings her against the wall, Owain at her feet with a knife-hilt beneath his arm.

  I dodge around Isabel and throw myself out the main hall doors into eye-dazzling snow that stings my bare feet. I slog to the chapel, where Llywelyn penteulu’s body still lies before the high altar.

  I don’t have a fire iron. I do have a meat knife.

  I draw it warband-style, my thumb pressed to the tang like Owain taught me, but the moment I come within an arm’s length of the body, I freeze.

  Even now.

  “Goddamn you,” I mutter, and I swallow hard and grip the knife till it burns.

  That first year, echoes of it happened right before my eyes, day after day, whenever Llywelyn penteulu entered the room, whenever I so much as heard his voice. I kept to the shadows and thought about knives and imagined this moment a thousand different ways.

  It’s been three summers now. Owain believes the playact like it’s the paternoster and has not taken a proper wife. I can move from hearth to kitchen to spindlecraft, smile from my place at Owain’s right hand, and sleep through the night.

  I slack my grip, roll the knife-hilt in my hand, twice, thrice. Then I slam the blade into its sheath at my hip and turn away. I wouldn’t be seeing echoes at all had Owain ap Cadwgan not led Llywelyn penteulu and the others to my steading. Had Owain not kicked in my door and let the wolves in behind him.

  EPIPHANY FINALLY COMES, AND THE DAY AFTER, WE gather at barely-light in the yard. I’m bound for the hunting lodge at Llyssun. Owain and his warband are headed south toward Dyfed.

  This part is always hard. I still get a bellyful of worms whenever Owain leaves on a raid, and I won’t think of the body in the chapel that’ll go unburied till the ground thaws. As the priest gives them a blessing, the lads stomp and shift against the cold, their breath all in ghostly puffs. Among them is Rhys. He should be near a fire with his wound bound up in damp cloth and a mug of stew in his good hand, but instead he stands with the others, bleary-eyed and pale. Not feverish, though. That’s something, even if the bandages are a little grubby and he has politely but insistently refused to let me look at the wound no matter how I ask.

  I did catch him in the chapel whispering thanks to Saint Elen. I overheard the word miracle. I went around smiling for days.

  Margred comes onto the stoop of the maidens’ quarters, sleep-tousled and wrapped in a nubby cloak that’s too big for her. She holds up the toy mouse and waves its little paw.

  I’ll make her a dog next. It’ll be Easter before we know it.

  Owain steps out of the hall and into the knot of noblemen at the doorstep. His cousin Madog punches him cheerfully on the shoulder, and Owain nods. Madog leans over to whisper something in Owain’s ear, but Owain steps a pace away.

  Nearby there’s a thrash and a scuffle and a throaty yelp. Einion ap Tewdwr has Rhys in a headlock, and Rhys is struggling like a madman to keep Einion’s blade from his throat.

  “Hey!” I blurt, and Owain turns just as Einion looses Rhys, who stumbles, clutching his arm, glaring.

  “Sorry, lad,” Einion says to Rhys as Owain
storms up, Madog trailing him like a curious puppy. “You’re not ready. Another fortnight for certain. Mayhap longer.”

  Owain squints at Rhys. “Let’s see it.”

  “It’s fine, my lord,” Rhys mutters. “He just took me by surprise, is all.”

  “Oh, aye,” Owain drawls, “and Normans are known for giving fair warning before they seize you and run you through. Show me your arm.”

  Rhys scowls but peels back the bandage enough to reveal some of the wound. It’s a dull red now, not bright blood-shiny, and the scab is no longer tender, but it’s nowhere near healed. When Owain shakes his head, Rhys insists, “I’m sound! I’ll not be so slow when there’s Normans to kill.”

  “Perhaps,” Owain replies mildly, “but it won’t matter, for you’ll be taking Elen to Llyssun.”

  Rhys gapes, first at Owain and then at me. The poor boy looks convinced he’ll be my minder for the rest of his natural life while the grown-ups go out a-plundering. I’m delighted, though. It’s several days’ walk to Llyssun. I will ask Rhys how fares the arm. I’ll recommend a salve. I’ll remind him how close to death he came, how wound-sickness takes many healthy men to their graves but not him. He will mutter something and shake hair over his eyes, but he’ll touch his bandaged wound like I’m blessed.

  And I will forget for entire moments that the whole thing is merely a playact.

  “I’d strongly recommend shutting your mouth and having a care what you say to me next,” Owain says to Rhys in a steel-edge voice, “while you recall that the speed of your blade matters to more necks than just your own. I will not put a single man of my teulu at risk for the sake of one little pisser’s pride.”

  Rhys flinches.

  “Besides, I know you’d not want me to think that you object to seeing to Elen’s safety like it’s some kind of chore,” Owain goes on, and Rhys squirms and studies his feet. “So off you go to Llyssun and let your arm heal. And don’t worry. There’ll be plenty of Normans for you to kill.” He grins. “You have my word on that.”

  “Which brings us to the question of your penteulu.” Madog claps Owain’s shoulder again and smiles.

  Margred’s father holds a fort near Llyssun. Once Madog has been made penteulu, he’s sure to let her come stay with me a while. We’ll stoke a fire till it’s very late. There’ll be cider and giggling, and we’ll play all the fortune-telling games we know.

  Owain does not look at his cousin as he pushes Madog’s hand off his shoulder with two fingers. “There’s but one choice. It’ll be Einion ap Tewdwr.”

  The lads raise a cheer, muss Einion’s hair, shove him gleefully. Einion struggles for words, then remembers himself and kneels in the mud before Owain while muttering a jumble of gratitude and promises. Owain hauls him up by the forearm and cuffs him on the head, grinning.

  “No,” I whisper, because Einion ap Tewdwr has some unpleasant notions about saints and miracles and no sisters of noble birth who play at ball, and now he’s at Owain’s right hand.

  “What the hell, Owain ap Cadwgan?” Madog growls.

  “I’ll tell you what the hell. While you were over there telling me why you should be penteulu, Einion was over here behaving like one.”

  “What has that to do with anything? I’m your first cousin! Our fathers were brothers!” Madog’s hand quivers near his blade-hilt.

  Owain makes a show of shrugging, and an uncomfortable silence falls over the yard. The lads have frozen mid-revel, and Einion stands to like a thief caught with four purses. In the doorway of the maidens’ quarters, Margred looks ready to rush over and hug her brother fiercely and glare down anyone who’d say such things to him.

  At length Madog asks, “You’re really going to pass me over? Here? In the king’s dooryard? In front of your warband?”

  “I am.”

  Einion. Einion will be penteulu. Einion ap Tewdwr, who killed them both and seized all the beasts.

  “And now that it’s settled, we must be off.” Owain nods at the gate. “Those goods won’t plunder themselves, you know. Rhys, you’ve your orders. Einion, let’s go.”

  Madog closes his mouth and squares up. “You’re a bastard whoreson, Owain ap Cadwgan, and by God, I will end you.”

  Owain merely smiles and snaps off a taunting little wave, and at Einion’s gesture the lads fall into their columns and march away, heading south. On his way past me, Owain falls out of line, slides his hands under my cloak, and pulls me close for a kiss. He glances one more time at Madog, now fully gripping his blade handle, grins, then glides after the lads.

  I watch them till they’re gone. Einion ap Tewdwr, of all men. Einion penteulu now.

  It’s not unheard of to name a penteulu who isn’t a kinsman, but doing it when one stands fighting fit before you is meant to land and land hard.

  “How’s the wound?” I ask Rhys quietly, and I wait for him to touch the bandages.

  “We should go,” Rhys mutters, and nods at the gate in the same motion he shakes hair over his eyes. His face is still red, though whether that’s from Einion’s arm crushing his windpipe or being relegated as my minder I can’t be sure.

  On our way out, we pass Madog ap Rhirid muttering very black things to himself in the shadow of the wall. Any other time I wouldn’t give two figs for his foul mood, but if I could change Owain’s mind, I would. I thought to see Margred again at Easter, but now that she’s the sister of a man Owain publicly snubbed instead of the sister of Owain’s penteulu, it might be longer still.

  RHYS SPENDS THE FIRST DAY OF THE TRIP CURSING in a low mutter and plowing a pace ahead just to make sure I know he’s better than healthy. The second day he wordlessly walks at my side, and as evening is falling, he sidles up as we’re about to raise camp. He holds out his injured arm, the bandages already unrolled.

  He’s been waiting to do this. Waiting till he’s nowhere near anyone who’ll call him pisser or ask if he’s the kind of milksop who whines for his mama whenever he gets a little scratch. Rhys isn’t showing me his wound because he thinks something’s wrong. It’s because he’s four and ten, he’s been six months away from home, and more than medicine or a miracle, this boy needs a bit of kindness that no one else will think to give him.

  Rhys shakes long tangly curls over his eyes as I step near. There’s a faint shadow of hair on his upper lip, and oh saints but four and ten is young. Younger even than almost-twelve, because Margred is still chasing butterflies and sneaking honey cakes and has not been asked to look terror in the eye.

  Mayhap Rhael felt this way too when she told me not to be afraid.

  “You’ll be back among them before you know it,” I tell him, and instead of whisking away like a cat, he smiles at the dirt and mutters his thanks, touching the raised edge of the wound as he kneels to kindle a fire.

  WE ARRIVE AT THE HUNTING LODGE MIDMORNING. It takes hardly any time to get things settled. The steward keeps the place well in the absence of his lord. He’s been in Cadwgan’s service so long he remembers Owain toddling around the place in baby gowns. If he’s not harried, the steward will tell stories of tiny Owain pissing circles on the walls or trying to ride the wolfhounds like ponies and getting bitten when they tired of it.

  On my way into the hall I always pause before a series of thigh-high gashes in the door frame where Owain’s mother once marked his height with her meat knife. I thumb each one in order and wonder how she got him to keep still long enough to get a good reckoning. Llyssun is my favorite of all the royal residences because it’s got these small reminders that Owain’s family isn’t always turbulent and complicated. There was once a place for a mother who delighted in her growing son, so there’s got to be a place for a girl who’d live beside him.

  By day, the household is unremarkable. Servants move trestle boards and feed the hearth fire, children run around, and sleet drags against the walls like animal claws. By day I often forget for long stretches that Owain isn’t here. It’s like he’s just out hunting with the lads and he’ll be back for supper
all bootsteps and off-color jokes, and later I’ll follow him to the big bed in the king’s chamber and drift to sleep curled beneath his arm.

  It’s when daylight starts to fade and there’s no Owain that the quiet sets in. Not the restful kind of quiet, either. Not the quiet that comes with spinning in glowing firelight or petting a pup asleep across your knees or listening to your father and mother sing two-part ballads, their voices twining through the dark while you nestle deeper into your pallet with your sister’s back warming yours.

  It’s the quiet that makes me force myself to eat supper all smiles because people are watching. The quiet that keeps me huddled in the big bed, cold and awake and alone. The quiet that makes me recall every time I thought of the knife, how easily I could have killed Owain ap Cadwgan and finished the work my sister started, and wonder why under Heaven I would do such a thing when I should be thanking Almighty God for him.

  In that quiet, there are brothers two summers apart. The older one curls his lip in disgust while the younger one just looks sad. They fade into the hills like they never were, and I reach a hand across the expanse of bed to where Owain should be but isn’t.

  OUT IN THE YARD, THERE’S A SERIES OF SHOUTS AND the scrunch of gate hinges, then Einion penteulu calling for the steward. I put aside my wool and stow my spindle hastily enough that I seem excited, but not urgent and panicked like there’s cause for alarm. People are watching.

  The lads flood the courtyard, plunder on their backs and on tethers behind them. Owain is cheerful and windblown atop a sleek black horse, wearing a crimson cloak he didn’t leave his father’s house with. There’s not a scratch on him.

  I turn my eyes Heavenward and silently thank Saint Elen and any other saint listening. Then I head across the yard to greet him — and see the girl.

  She’s older than me, likely a few summers older than Owain. Her honey-colored plait twists like a gallows rope over her shoulder, and she’s wearing a bloodstained cloak cinched over a nightgown. Two little boys hunch at her side. One looks about six summers, the other mayhap three. The older boy glares mutinously while the younger looks ready to collapse.