Spindle and Dagger

by J. Anderson Coats

  Rhys holds back a tree limb so I can pass, then moves so we walk side by side.

  “At least there’ll be silver in it for you,” I say into the silence. “Handfuls and handfuls. A fine horse, mayhap. I know you have no liking for this, but when you stand before Owain, you can tell him his father bade you. Your king gave you no choice.”

  Rhys grunts, but whether he’s agreeing or simply responding I can’t tell.

  I check the sky once more to be sure we’re heading southwest toward Dyfed and not north to Powys. “You shouldn’t feel foolish. That Cadwgan worked out I’d come with you. That he got you to tell him I was at Worthen. I’m not upset. Honestly.”

  “I don’t feel foolish. Whether I have any liking for this doesn’t matter. I’ve been given a task, and I’m going to see it through.”

  The sun’s still in the right place. We’re going south and west. Whatever he promised Owain, whatever Owain promised him, Rhys is carrying out this task because it takes a rare man to look Cadwgan ap Bleddyn in the face and lie. A rarer man to defy him openly. Rhys is not that man.

  When he was beaten into Owain’s teulu last autumn, Rhys and I stood at eye level. Now I barely come up to his shoulder. He’s broader now and his voice deeper, like a half-dug well. In another year he’ll be someone else. A fighting man I’d hardly recognize.

  Today, though, we’re walking at elbows toward Dyfed, and every now and then he carelessly runs a thumb down his forearm. For today, he is still Rhys.

  Pull back this branch. Not much longer and William will run at me squealing. Move past that stone. Nest will hug me, and I will hold out my arms for the baby.

  Step into a clearing, and a dozen fighting men crouch around a cold meal. I scrabble for a fire iron I don’t have, and one of them stands and it’s Morgan. Morgan from Owain’s warband. There’s Llywarch and Gwilym and —

  “Give her something to eat, will you?” Rhys says to them. “I can likely still catch a ship today if I keep moving.”

  “Don’t bother,” Morgan replies. “He’s already here.”

  Morgan tips his head toward a stand of brush and my mouth falls open, but Rhys merely huffs a sigh, mutters something like of course he is, and gestures for me to follow.

  I edge a step back. “Owain’s in Ireland! Cadwgan said you’d not yet gone to fetch him!”

  “I never said Owain wouldn’t come back of his own choosing.”

  “You told Cadwgan —”

  “I told my king I’d return you where you needed to be. That’s what I’m doing. You need to be with Owain, and now you are.”

  I’ve been given a task and I’m going to see it through. Only not the one Cadwgan gave him.

  Owain must have told Rhys where the warband would assemble, and Rhys had the wit to turn up in this place before boarding a ship just in case. Or — saints, mayhap Owain hinted it would be wise for him to do just that.

  I fall still. I cannot be here. There’s no place for me. “Rhys, please don’t do this. You heard Cadwgan. He will end me if I stay with Owain. Nest will reward you. Whatever you want. She’ll give it to you.”

  “That’s for Owain and his lord father to sort out.” Rhys glares at me. “How can you still believe I’d betray Owain for thirty pieces of Norman silver?”

  I’m counting days now. If Owain’s here, he must have sailed from Ireland soon after we did. Long before his father gave him leave to do it. Nest and me escaping must have given Owain all the excuse he needed.

  The brush shifts and Owain appears, blade in hand. Blade in hand in his own camp. He peers at me like he’s not sure I’m real. He’s somehow put his hands on new leather armor, and there’s a grubby band of cloth tied around his upper arm.

  Rhys is saying something about his task. Bowing his head. Owain wordlessly spins the dagger front to back, front to back.

  I force my eyes off the blade. I draw a deep, shaky breath and say the only true thing in my head. “I’m glad to see you safe, my lord.”

  “Oh, aye,” drawls Einion penteulu as he stations himself at Owain’s elbow. “You wanted so much to see to his safety that you robbed him and abandoned him in a foreign kingdom.”

  Owain’s face goes hard and he regrips his knife.

  “That . . .” I can’t pull in a whole breath. “Saint Elen, she . . .”

  Einion penteulu smiles. “Seems to me that Owain spent all this time untouched without you. Mayhap Saint Elen will look to him anyway.”

  When Owain pets the smudgy cloth above his elbow, it flutters enough that I recognize the edging of embroidery. It’s a strip of linen torn from a shift I left drying on an Irish clothesline. He’s turned my undergarments into a relic of me, like I’m a saint, too.

  “The boy did as you told him,” Einion penteulu says to Owain in a smooth, treacherous voice, “but things have changed. He couldn’t know. I’ll attend to it, my lord.”

  Rhys is still standing next to me, but in two clean, sharp motions, Einion shoves him clear and swivels me away from Owain. Morgan steps closer, then Llywarch. One by one they gather, the lads of Owain’s teulu, quiet and hulking like dogs waiting to set to.

  “What the hell is this?” Rhys comes after us, but Einion, still smiling, pushes him hard at Gwilym, who holds him fast.

  “Einion.” I struggle to pry his fingers loose because I am against the steading wall and Rhael isn’t here and I am very, very afraid. “This isn’t what you think. If you’d just —”

  “It’s exactly what I think. Shut up or I’ll shut you up.” Einion penteulu hands me off to Morgan and Llywarch. They haul me fighting and stumbling toward the tree line while Einion slings an arm over Owain’s shoulder, turns him bodily, and gestures to this tree and that hill while Owain fidgets with his charm, not putting a stop to this because Einion’s voice has been the only one in his ear for way too long.

  Rhys is shouting, cursing like a drover and begging the others to heed him, but Gwilym is built like a boar and twice as strong. He’ll hold Rhys fast till this is over.

  “You don’t want this.” I’m struggling now. Wrenching hard to catch Owain’s eye. “Saint Elen — you want — Owain!”

  “Oh yes.” Einion cackles. “Keep telling a king’s son what he wants.”

  “Don’t you listen to him.” My voice is raw. “Don’t you listen to the Adversary. Not when you can listen to her.”

  Morgan shoves me against a tree hard enough to clatter my teeth. I brace for the ground, sobbing already, but something seizes my jaw and I force my eyes open and it’s Owain. I haven’t been this close to him in se’ennights, and I’m overwhelmed by the smell of him, the restless vigor that all but pours off him in waves.

  “What was that?” he whispers.

  “Be careful.” I’m trembling. Cold to the marrow. If someone’s going to end me here in the woods, by Christ may it be Owain ap Cadwgan and not one of these bastards. “Be careful who you listen to. Not everyone means you well.”

  Einion groans. “My lord, really. She must think you’re a fool.”

  Owain nudges Morgan, and suddenly I’m free. Somehow I stay on my feet before Owain ap Cadwgan, who’s worrying his charm like beads on a paternoster, with Einion penteulu hovering behind him, outraged and murderous. He is utterly still, not even a scowl or an eyebrow that I could reckon with. At length he whispers, “Say it again. Loud. So my penteulu can hear you.”

  I lick my lips. “Wh-what?”

  “That I can listen to her.” Owain’s voice carries through the clearing, and Einion’s jaw twitches although he stays silent.

  The tree bark digs into my back. I pull in long, whistling breaths and let each one out as a silent curse on Rhys’s head. All he had to do was see me safe to Dyfed. All he had to do was heed his king.

  “For months I was trapped in exile, and my father was the one who kept me there. I might have forgiven that. Someday.” Owain leans close, fast and smooth like a striking snake, and I flinch like I haven’t in years. “But he’s in league with Ger
ald of Windsor now. I know he is. It’s why he sent some bastard to kidnap you and Nest. Stole you both right out from under me just so he would have his way and I’d have nothing. Like he wants. Like he’s always wanted.”

  It’s been three years. I’ve made it easy for Owain to believe, but the playact isn’t the only reason I’m still in his company.

  Nest was right. He was never going to let her go.

  He won’t ever let me go, either.

  “So I prayed to Saint Elen. She looks to me always. I asked her what I should do. Then I found this.” Owain turns the underwear charm and runs his thumb over the embroidery. “She sent me a banner. I’m to ride to war. Saint Elen is going to help me take down my father.”

  “KILL YOUR — BUT CADWGAN’S THE BACKBONE OF Powys! Ceredigion too! If you kill him —”

  “What?” Owain snarls. “What will happen if my lord father isn’t around to tell me what I can plunder and when I can take a shit?”

  Powys will be overrun before the season turns. Gilbert fitz Richard de Clare and his thirty land-hungry Norman knights will occupy Ceredigion in a month’s time. Cadwgan ap Bleddyn is the only thing keeping his kingdom together, keeping Welshmen and Normans alike wary and reluctant to step over any of the borders. Not a man of them crosses Cadwgan without weighing it well.

  “No.” I’m trying to breathe. “No. Saint Elen does not want you to harm your father.”

  “How do you know?” he asks quietly.

  If I make myself the saint, she will strike me down.

  If I don’t, someone in this clearing will.

  “It’s just that . . .” I clutch at another true thing. “You’ll have plenty of time to be king. This is your father.”

  Owain’s face is slowly going hard and blank once more. This is not what he wants to hear, and a playact only works when Owain ap Cadwgan wants it to. My eyes go to the blade gripped loose in his hand. He could kill me in two motions. Owain is not used to Saint Elen working against him in any way. He is not used to hearing no.

  Einion penteulu steps closer. “I’ll be honest, my lord. I had my doubts about your battle banner and how you came by it, but I take it all back. At least a saint will not rob you. She will not change her tune when she’s held to account.”

  “Your father didn’t kidnap us, and he certainly didn’t send a man to rob you.” I edge near enough to touch a fold of Owain’s tunic. I need him off this idea. That a saint might guide his hand. I need him to hear me. “None of this is what it seems.”

  “Then what is it?” Einion asks, soft and cutting, and he is at Owain’s shoulder and they are a shield wall just as they always have been. “I’m a simple fighting man, but even I know when a girl thinks to lead me by something that’s definitely not my hand. Perhaps men have been whispering in your ear these days, hmm?”

  That’s got to be out of turn. But Owain does not raise a fist. He doesn’t even bristle. All he does is wind a finger around his underwear charm like these shadowy doubts are commonplace. Like it’s not impossible there’s something to them.

  “When we were in Ireland, you wanted nothing more than to retake Powys from your cousin Madog.” I’m talking to Owain and only Owain. “Now you can. Now you should.”

  “Says who?” he asks.

  I open my mouth to tell him. Your father. Cadwgan ap Bleddyn. But all he’ll hear is shut up and go plunder something.

  “Saint Elen.” It’s out of my mouth before I can stop it.

  Owain squints at nothing for a long moment. “She’s mistaken. I will ask her myself.”

  “I – I don’t think saints are ever mistaken, my lord.”

  “This time she is,” he says in a too-quiet voice.

  The whole clearing goes blurry as it catches up to me, what this is. What it’s been becoming these last se’ennights. I’d much rather listen to a saint.

  This is his playact now.

  “The Normans are going to raid Ceredigion,” Owain says into the silence. “Since I’m still in Ireland, my father will lead a warband to drive them back into Dyfed. There’ll be an ambush. No survivors. Very tragic.”

  No. I want badly to say it. Cadwgan ap Bleddyn just wanted me gone. He could have cut my throat. Instead he opened his hand.

  But it’ll be chaos. No one notices girls in the shadows. No one thinks they will do anything but what they’re told.

  I said I could save Owain’s life. Not Saint Elen. Me. Saint Elen came later, once I realized he’d make light of the saving and turn me out once the fever was a memory and the wound just one more tale to tell around a fire. I knelt at his side as his color drained around the hilt of the butcher knife beneath his arm, and when I gripped the handle to pull it free, every teeming thought in my head screamed twist it twist it twist it.

  This time I know enough to think. This time I must take what I want with my own hands.

  There’s cold meat for supper. I can’t get near enough the fire. I’m still trembling. Rhys puts himself next to me, but I won’t reply to any of his polite attempts at conversation. My head is throbbing. My arms, where Morgan held me. Rhys’s fault, all of it. He’s the sole reason I’m not under a pile of squealing, happy children right now.

  He runs a thumb over his forearm and doesn’t move from my side.

  The lads of the warband look at me differently now. There’s no more reverence. No more cautious, courteous distance. They’ve heard two stories about me, and even though Owain is a king’s son and they dare not cross him, Einion is their penteulu. He is a man they listen to.

  Owain and Einion are a ways distant deciding where the sentries will be posted, where the trip lines will go. It’ll be dark soon, and Owain will come over here. He’ll tuck an arm around me and slide a hand up my leg and I — I can’t.

  “I’m not going to tell him,” Rhys says quietly. “Where you meant to go. What you meant to do.”

  “He wouldn’t believe you anyway,” I murmur, and Rhys rubs his upper arms and winces.

  “Just . . . why?” Rhys peers at me sidelong. “You . . . share a bed with him. Don’t you care what happens to him?”

  When Owain kicked in my door, Rhys was a boy dropping worms in his sister’s hair and tying thread to spiders to make pets of them. To him, Owain and I must seem as good as married. He has always seen us as ordinary.

  “What about me?” I say it so quiet that Rhys must not hear. But I say it.

  “I mean, all right, Owain was a bit of a bastard to you in Ireland,” Rhys goes on. “He owes you an apology. But if you’re not with him, he can die.”

  I pull my cloak tighter across my shoulders. Owain ap Cadwgan owes me a lot of things, but I owe him, too. Things went bad enough for me after he kicked in my door, cold everywhere can’t struggle, and they could have gone worse, but instead I spent three years kept by a king’s son when no one but him would have had it so. There was a price, but there was no screaming or dragging. It’s not because we shared a bed that I care what happens to Owain ap Cadwgan, and it’s sure as anything not going to keep me here a moment longer than it must.

  “Up you get, pisser.” Einion penteulu appears out of the shadows and holds out a fistful of tiny sticks at Rhys. “Time to draw your lot.”

  Owain is a step behind him and cheerfully points at one of the sticks. “Not that one. It’s the short lot. You don’t want first pull, do you?”

  “I don’t know much about short lots, my lord,” Rhys says, “and as for pulling, you’d have to ask Einion here.”

  There’s a moment — openmouthed, staring — and then Owain cackles and claps Rhys on the back hard enough to send him staggering. “There he is. We’ll make a warbander of you yet.”

  Einion penteulu is grinning, too, as he nudges Rhys’s shoulder with his fistful of lots. Rhys chooses a stick that’s long enough that he’ll get a decent night’s sleep, but when Owain drops to the ground at my side, Rhys clears off without a word.

  It was easy to be done with Owain in the darkness of the maidens
’ quarters. Easy to say it to Nest, who Owain wronged all over again every day she woke up sore and scared and away from her children. Especially easy in those early hours after he turned his back on me in the courtyard at Rathmore. It was even easy to say it to Cadwgan ap Bleddyn. I meant it every time.

  But now he’s here. It’s the middle of nowhere and he’s spent too many days listening to Einion penteulu suggest time and again that he is better than fine without me. Owain might be listening to a saint on his own terms now, but there are other things he gets out of keeping me safe and near him. Sure enough, he hooks a palm over my hip and pulls me against him. He has that hungry look to him like he does when he comes back from a raid, days away from me, se’ennights. Impatient and intent. He leans his face into my hair and breathes in deep.

  “Owain.” I try to pull free, but his other arm slides around my waist and holds me close. “Wait. Stop.”

  He rumbles a slow groan and doesn’t move away, but his hands go still where they are.

  I could tell him it’s my monthlies. I could tell him that my head hurts from when his men slammed me into a tree. I could tell him Saint Elen says to lay himself down anywhere else but with me. Now is the time to say everything I’ve always bitten back. Instead tears slide down my face and I swipe at them.

  Owain doesn’t know what to do with me when I cry. It means he must speculate.

  “Oh, aye, stop,” Einion penteulu says, and there’s a curious edge to it. “You didn’t draw your lot.”

  He’s back from the other side of camp and Owain cuts a glare up at him, but Einion merely holds out the lots. Even a king’s son must have a turn at standing watch. He jerks a stick out of Einion’s fist. A short one. Owain curses aloud and snaps it in half.

  “First pull, eh?” Einion penteulu almost smiles. “Bad luck.”

  “Sorry,” Owain mutters into my hair, and then he’s up and across the clearing.

  When he’s gone, Einion kneels and opens his hand. There are no long sticks. Only short ones. In the time it takes me to work out what it means, he’s scattered the lots and risen.