Spindle and Dagger

by J. Anderson Coats

  Both of us watch Owain disappear into the greenwood. Einion ap Tewdwr has no intention of leaving me alone with Owain any longer than he must. He won’t just let me walk out of here, though. If I run, plan or not, he won’t bring me back this time. He’ll tell Owain it was wolves. Or any of the dozens of men who would smile to see him dead.

  Chaos will keep Einion penteulu occupied as well.

  I’m on my feet. Trying to make him look at me. “You can’t think going after Cadwgan is a good idea.”

  Einion snorts. “First you’re telling a king’s son what he wants. Now you’re telling the penteulu of a warband what he thinks.”

  “You have to put a stop to it! However you can!”

  His reply is to move away toward the tree line with a cocksure swagger, and by Christ I will find Owain right bleeding now and tell him that Saint Elen would have him dismiss Einion penteulu in the most public and humiliating way possible.

  But Einion ap Tewdwr is capable and loyal and keeps his head when everything falls to hell. He’s the man who’ll give Owain good counsel long after Saint Elen and I have gone. Einion will look to Owain even if Saint Elen does not. Turning Owain against his penteulu will put him in harm’s way.

  Summer twilight seems to last forever, and I’m still too trembly to even try to sleep, but I’m exhausted enough to lie down. The next moment, there’s a rustling of movement at my back and a light drape of cloth over me, and it’s night-black and I’m lying near what’s left of the fire. Someone’s just lain down behind me and I flinch, hard, because I’m not as sure of these lads anymore.

  “Shh, it’s only me.” Owain’s whisper tickles my ear as he settles in and slides an arm across my belly. I shift away, but he holds tighter. “What’s wrong?”

  “I just . . . I’m tired. Please let me sleep.”

  “But I want to be close to you.” He pauses. “All right?”

  All right. He held out a hand from the curtained bed, and four-and-ten-year-old me was anything but all right. She was trembling too hard to move. Hands clenched, guts writhing, frozen in the shadows. He let me cry till I was done. Then he poured a mug of wine and handed it to me without a word. I didn’t drink it — too bitter — but having something to hold kept me from falling apart completely. Then he started telling me about his favorite wolfhound that had a litter of pups and one of them was red, just like a dog he had as a boy. I held the mug with both hands and breathed. Then he went on about some kind of game that he and the lads played that involved a ball and brawling and mud. His voice was calm, and he made no move toward me. At some point I said all right, and by morning I was curled under his arm and I was not nearly as afraid.

  The spare gown Isabel gave me is under my head. My shoulder digs into the dirt. Owain’s arm over me is heavy but unmoving. I made him believe, but every last thing he’s done has been his own choice. I can’t let him suspect I’m counting the days again, only this time I’m waiting for him to make one more bad decision. The one that’ll let me slip away forever.

  Somehow I will have to go back to sleep. Somehow, with Owain lying beside me. With Nest and the little ones so close, it almost feels like I’m there already. So I pray to Saint Elen with a new prayer, one she will have to stop and listen to, one that will not glide past her ears with the rhythm of a thousand litanies.

  Thank you for everything you’ve done for me.

  Thank you for understanding.

  I will steer him away from evil for as long as I’m able. When I’m gone, he’s entirely in your hands to do with as you see fit.

  THE LADS MARCH BURNING. THEY DO IT FOR DAYS and days. Vale after vale. They burn and smash and hamstring.

  They kick in doors.

  I’m falling behind the column. The lads are shapes moving through the trees, blurry arcs of metal and glowing firebrands and endless, relentless marching. It’s not a chaos for fleeing through. It’s a chaos for living through.

  This has every mark of a Norman raid. Cadwgan will hear of it soon. He’ll call up his warband. He’ll march to drive the enemy out, and he’ll find —

  Vale after vale. The sky turns gray and then black.

  Rhys appears. He’s got soot beneath his fingernails and his hair is just starting to curl again at the ends.

  “I’m all right,” I mutter. “Go on with the others.”

  He doesn’t, though. We move together as whole vales burn. He is careful not to touch me, but we are shoulder to shoulder nonetheless.

  Then one morning Einion penteulu doesn’t give the order for the lads to march drawn and ready. Instead he and Owain stand together in the cold chill of dawn, deep in discussion. They turn when Rhys slants through the trees at a dogtrot, out of breath, and heads straight for Owain.

  This is it. Cadwgan is somewhere close, and they’ll be setting up the ambush. None of them will be watching what I’m doing.

  “Can’t be,” Owain growls. “We are playacting a Norman raid. Not a man of those bastards would dare the real thing.”

  “Not unless he thought he could get away with it,” Einion penteulu replies. “You’re supposedly in Ireland. Your father was negotiating from the border with England. Your cousin Madog in disarray.”

  “It’s half-built.” Rhys is panting, deep and winded. “Norman style. The keep’s partway up. Walls look solid, but wood burns.”

  “Gerald of Windsor. It can be no other.” Owain grins at the heavens and pets his underwear charm. “Thank you, Saint Elen. I’m listening. Keep pointing me true.”

  It’s too much to hope that Nest will be with him. Not somewhere like this. But I’ll get an audience. Gerald of Windsor will know who I am by now. Nest will have told him everything, and he’ll know what I’ve done for his children. How he owes me for leaving me stranded on that pier.

  He’ll know what Nest promised, and how it was bought.

  We move swift and silent now. Nothing burns. There’s no plunder. By midday I’m belly-down, on a rise alongside Owain, looking down toward a rolling green plain. An earthwork mound rises above a fist of sharpened palisades. A tangle of rope and a web of scaffolding cling to it like cobwebs, but it looks finished enough to resist anyone trying to harm it. Men are at their labor throughout the works, carting barrows of stone and driving teams of horses dragging timbers, and somewhere down there is Gerald of Windsor, directing the digging of the ditch and the fastness of the gate and the placement of the men who will hold it for him.

  Gerald of Windsor, who is still offering a bounty on Owain’s head.

  Raids are done quick, like the snap of a neck, and this castle looks too sturdy to be taken by a single attack. Owain will bid me wait here where it’s safe. He won’t be able to spare anyone to mind me. When the lads fail and scatter, I’ll need to be gone. I won’t get another chance like this.

  “M-my lord?” Rhys’s voice trembles.

  “Dusk,” Owain replies, “when they’re at their supper.”

  There’s a small grind of metal. I turn and stiffen. We’re surrounded. Men in leather armor stand over us, pointing long spears at our necks. One has Rhys by the collar, a blade quivering at his throat.

  “Stand,” one of them says in French. “Slowly.”

  I do it. My legs somehow hold me up. Owain always says he gives no mercy to Normans and doesn’t expect it from them. Whatever happens now, Gerald of Windsor will make sure it’s anything but quick.

  “Saint Elen,” I whisper, because saints are here to help us for reasons none of us can know, and mayhap it hasn’t been Owain she’s been looking to these last years. Mayhap she’s been looking to me.

  Owain cuts his eyes my way. Stands straighter.

  The Norman asks something. Owain responds, and the fighting man coughs a harsh laugh and stabs his weapon at the castle works. As we’re marched downhill at spearpoint, Owain makes a field gesture to the lads, one I don’t recognize, then says loudly in Welsh, “I told you, we’re pilgrims! We mean to pray at the shrine at Saint David’s, and we just lost ou
r way.”

  The fighting man growls something that must mean shut up. We’re marched through the gate, and right away Owain is pulled out of line, relieved of his sword, and shoved toward a tent with a Norman banner. The rest of us are herded toward the empty stable, and both guards tell the lads to leave their weapons at the door. Inside, Einion penteulu nods the lads into a huddle, then they pull up their hoods and rub dirt on their faces like travelers.

  “We’re up for trespassing.” Einion speaks quietly in Welsh, one eye on the door. “If we’re careful, they’ll believe it. Even Normans respect a pilgrimage. So look holy.”

  A Norman warbander appears at the tent flap. He points at me, says something, then holds the fold of canvas open.

  “You’re to be questioned,” Rhys says to me in Welsh, and then he says something in French that makes the warbander’s face soften. The Norman’s next gesture is kinder, and I follow him out of the stable now that I know what I’m moving toward.

  Gerald of Windsor. Who sent the warband that rid me of Llywelyn penteulu. Who left me stranded on that lonely pier. Who’s about to get me clear of Owain ap Cadwgan and back with Nest and the little ones where I belong.

  If I’m to be questioned, I’ll convince him that Owain and the lads truly are pilgrims. Gerald is no fool. He’s done well for himself in the kingdoms of Wales, and he won’t risk the wrath of all his neighbors — to say nothing of the Church — by letting vengeance so consume him that he’d punish blameless pilgrims who mistakenly blundered through his dooryard. He’ll see them on their way and send me to Nest.

  I can see to it that all of us come out of this well.

  A man in a coat of mail sits on a bench in the middle of the tent. He’s got a trim, reddish beard, and he doesn’t stand up when I enter. Sure enough, there’s no sign of Nest. Nothing of a woman here. I knew it would be so, but a friendly face would make this easier.

  I put myself before Gerald and curtsy like I would to Cadwgan, but I’m so used to having patter at the ready that I don’t quite know what to say. “My lord. I’m sorry to have to approach you like this. But I’m —”

  “I know who you are.” Gerald’s Welsh is fluent, but the Norman tilt in the words makes me cringe. “You’re the girl who Owain ap Cadwgan believes brings him a saint’s protection.”

  My mouth falls open. Nest must have told him of me, but he’s never so much as seen my face. “H-how did you know?”

  Gerald sits up straighter. “So that is Owain ap Cadwgan who’s trussed up in my gatehouse, playing at bettering his soul.”

  This doesn’t feel right. If he knew who he’d captured, Gerald of Windsor would already be torturing Owain in full view of every last man in this place and forcing us to watch. Unless this is part of the torture. Nest never said her husband had a stomach for cruelty, but where she’s concerned, perhaps he’s finding one.

  “No.” My skin is prickling. My arm hair. Cold all down my back. “I mean, yes, I’m the girl you’re speaking of, but Owain and I parted company. Those pilgrims you caught pitied a woman traveling alone and promised to bring me to you. That’s why they were near your castle works. They’re good men. But I must tell you —”

  “Hmm.” Gerald squints. “I’ll just keep you here, then, shall I? I’ll turn Sir Pilgrim and the rest of his very well-armed fellow penitents loose. Then we’ll wait.”

  Gerald will release Owain and the lads, and in less than a pissing while Owain will come for me with the same hellbent rage he once expected of this man. Not just because of Saint Elen, either. I may as well be barefoot and in my nightgown.

  Or wearing a collar, like a good little pet.

  I will get myself clear. With my own hands. “Do one better. Send me to your wife. Nest promised I’d be nurse to your children.”

  “You’re not going anywhere.” He says it simple and final, no edge of threat or menace, but he’s peering at me as if trying to solve a riddle.

  “Owain ap Cadwgan won’t come for me,” I insist. “You can’t lure him here by keeping me.”

  “I think I can,” Gerald replies mildly. “He won’t do without his precious saint. Making him safe from all harm. As long as you’re near.”

  Nest has every reason to want Owain ap Cadwgan dead. I don’t begrudge her that. She would have told Gerald everything she knew, everything she observed. The playact’s not a secret — that’s how it does its work — but now Saint Elen is a weapon in Gerald’s hands.

  I’m a weapon. And there’s but one way to blunt it.

  “Don’t bother. It’s all lies.” I square up and blink back tears I can’t account for. “Saint Elen does not protect Owain. She never has. I made it all up for my own ends. He finally found out. Turned his back on me. Abandoned me. He wants nothing more to do with me or Saint Elen ever again now that he knows everything he believed about her is a lie.”

  “Everything?” Gerald raises one rusty brow.

  “He can’t stand knowing he’s just a man. No better or worse than any other.” My belly is churning. This ends here. Gerald will have no reason to keep me from Nest. “Owain will not come here, so you may as well —”

  “Hsst.” Gerald gestures to a Norman fighting man standing at the tent flap, who drags Owain in by his bound wrists. “Say it again for Sir Pilgrim.”

  I can’t breathe. I’m trying to speak. And the patter is gone completely.

  Gerald of Windsor is smiling.

  Owain’s mouth hangs open, making words that don’t come out. Hunched over like a boot to the guts. Like a knife to the back.

  “My, my,” Gerald drawls, “Sir Pilgrim looks remarkably upturned for the sake of a man he swears back to front he is not. You, dear girl, look as wretched as Judas. I wonder why that is.”

  Nest would fold her arms. She’d say Owain has this coming. But she did not have to drag me into it. She could have told Gerald to take his vengeance swift and clean in a raid.

  But if it’s not cruel and ugly, it won’t be vengeance.

  “So let me see if I have this clear.” Gerald jabs a mocking thumb at Owain. “You’re a simple pilgrim who is definitely not Owain ap Cadwgan, and I definitely cannot lure that double-dealing son of a whore to this place by keeping this girl, because somehow she just spun a tale out of nowhere that he was fool enough to believe for bleeding years. So I definitely should let the girl go at once and should definitely not hang every man of you from the walls.”

  Owain’s face is going warband blank. Like it’s foregone that the others will watch him die, and he is deciding now how that will look.

  “Th-that’s right, my lord.” I can still make this right. I must save them. “They’re pilgrims. Let them go. Please. You will face Owain ap Cadwgan before you know it, and you will do well to be ready for him.”

  Gerald snorts and gestures, and the Norman behind Owain hauls him away stumbling. Outside, someone calls for rope, lots of it.

  I scrub tears from my eyes. I’m numb.

  Owain will hang. He will hang at the hands of a man whose destruction he swore to preside over. Knowing Saint Elen will not save him because she has never looked to him. Knowing it was I who brought him to this moment.

  Nest will hug me. She’ll tell me it had to be done. That at least hanging’s clean. She will sit with me all the hours I need to mourn, and if Saint Elen has any mercy, one day the echoes of this betrayal will fade.

  “My lord Clare?” Another Norman standing at the tent flap gestures at me. “What of her?”

  “I’ve heard enough. Send her out.”

  My mouth falls open.

  “Hang her with the others?”

  “Nah. I’ll not hang a girl.”

  “C-Clare?” I swallow and swallow. “No. No, you’re Gerald of Windsor.”

  The man on the bench smiles the smallest, faintest bit. Then he nods at the warbander, and the world is dissolving into blurry color and I am stumbling with a painful hand on my elbow and then I’m in the mud outside the tent.

  Not Gerald
of Windsor who Nest promised would see us all a family. Gilbert fitz Richard de Clare. Who commands thirty land-hungry knights who’ve all been promised a piece of Ceredigion.

  Owain will hang, this province will fall, and I’m no closer to Nest than I was when I stepped in this tent.

  I PICK MYSELF UP. I’M MUDDY AND SORE AND MORE than a little greensick. A handful of Norman fighting men stride among the laborers, shouting in French and cackling. One of them gestures to the walls and pretends to jerk at the end of a noose like a hanged man. The rest of them roar laughter.

  It won’t be just Owain. All the lads will die today. Einion penteulu. Rhys, who has barely seen a fifteenth summer.

  Clare turned me loose. He opened his hand. The gate is a stone’s throw from the tent. It’s pulled closed, not even latched, and the gateman is snickering and distracted. No one looks twice at girls in the shadows.

  Gilbert fitz Richard de Clare made me a weapon. I am a fire iron, and by God Almighty and all the saints, I am coming down.

  I sidle up to one of the open smithy fires burning in the yard and snare a bucket. Then I shovel embers inside and add some pitchy-ended staves. The stable is quiet and empty. The lads have been wrestled outside toward their fate, and all the horses must be hauling logs and stones and loads. I scatter the embers into piles of hay, and they brown, blacken, then smoke in earnest.

  I will make my own chaos. I will bring down this whole miserable castle works around Clare’s wretched Norman ears, and I will leave Owain and the lads to come out of it however they can.

  The staves have become firebrands, and I shove them into the roof rafters until everything is crackling nicely. Soon flames are licking up the stalls and smoke is snaking from the roof-thatch and pumping out the door.

  This is how the lads can do it. This is how they march burning and pay no heed to cries for mercy or pity. They are no longer flesh and blood. They are weapons, and weapons are made of iron and steel.