Arianna smiled suddenly and reached for the bowl, setting it into the cradle of her spread knees. It was said a pregnant woman could discover her baby’s sex by pricking her finger and letting a drop of her blood fall into holy spring water. Perhaps using Myrddin’s bowl would enhance the magic.
Edith handed Arianna an eating knife. Grimacing in anticipation, she pricked the ball of her thumb with the small sharp point. But then she hesitated.
“If it sinks, it will be a boy,” Edith said. “If it floats, a girl.”
“Aye, aye … I’m scared of a sudden. Mayhap I don’t want to know.”
Edith bent over to pick up the bowl. “No, wait,” Arianna said. She held her thumb over the mazer and squeezed out a drop of blood. The drop started to sink, then floated back up to the surface again. “What the devil does that mean? Is it to be a boy or girl?”
“I don’t know, milady. Mayhap you ought to try again.”
But the water had already turned a deep red, too red for such a little bit of blood. She stared at it, at the bleeding water, and felt its pull, sucking her in, down, through. Her hands wrapped around the bowl and a torrent of fire flared up her arms. She felt the power, drank it in. No, her mind cried, I don’t want to see. But the thought was a lie. She wanted to see, wanted the power of seeing.
The water swirled, faster and faster, like a whirlpool, throwing up a bloody mist. A light shot up out of the whirling vortex, a clear, cold light that bathed her with its radiance until all around her was the crisp, sharp white of ice.
A war-horse thundered at her from out of the light, ears back, nostrils flaring. Then the light faded, became a forest, cool and damp, the air heavy with the mulchy smell of crushed leaves, and the odor of fear, like sour sweat. The ground quivered with the sound of clashing metal and screaming men. Among the fiery autumn leaves there was a sudden bright, piercing flash, the sun shining on chain mail. She flung her hand up in front of her eyes.
A glint of metal flickering among the orange and red leaves of the trees … he flung up his shield. Crossbow bolts landed on the varnished hide with a clatter that rattled his bones. He spurred his horse forward, crashing through the forest, yelling, “À moi, À moi …” Branches whipped his face, the dying leaves catching in his hair and eyes as he struggled one-handed to fasten his helm.
Men and horses, colliding, wheeling, charging, and falling. Flashing blades, battle cries. Screams and lurid oaths. Damning God and calling on the devil to save them. Everywhere, everywhere, the sweet, hot smell of blood.
Charging, charging … He peered over the end of his lance point, saw it dip as his hand, slick with sweat, slid along the painted wood. He tightened his grip until the tendons in his wrist burned. The point came up, held true, caught a man beneath the armpit. He felt the point sink through flesh, strike bone with a grating sound. He let go of the spear and charged on.
Screamed. God, the man had screamed.
He had his sword in his hand and he swung it up to stop a descending blade. Steel clashed with a ringing sound that battered his ears and made his teeth ache. He thrust upward, aiming for the man’s neck, felt the soft, sucking pop of flesh giving way. A mace flew by his head, so close that it caressed his cheek like a sigh. He whirled his charger, swinging his sword in a wide arc, sunlight flashing like lightning off the steel. His sword met a scream that ended with a gurgle as blood spurted over him, wet and warm and stinking. He swallowed down the hot taste in his mouth that was rage and blood lust and fear. He killed and killed and killed.
A horn sounded retreat.
Quiet, for a moment. Then moans, the scream of a horse in pain, ravens shrieking. Something wet, warm … blood in his lap. Not his, thank God.
His hand began to shake and he sheathed his sword, hiding the shaking from himself. Arianna … she filled his mind, warm and soft, touching him. He thought he saw her, lying on their bed in sleep, candlelight glinting in her long, dark hair. She twisted and turned, crying out in her dream, crying his name, warning …
He spun around. A man in silvered mail emerged from the fiery trees. He wore no helmet and his hair glowed golden, brighter than the yellow leaves, brighter than the sun. He carried a Welsh longbow in his hands.
The bow came up. An arrow, bright and sharp and fletched with peacock feathers, pointed at his heart. The man in silver smiled. “Did you die this day, big brother?”
“Not yet, little brother.”
He laughed, because they had played this game before. He stopped laughing in the second it took him to realize that this time he’d left it until too late to duck.
The arrow struck his chest like the blow of a fist. He expected pain but felt nothing. He heard someone screaming his name and then he was falling, falling, falling into a soft white light….
Arianna …
“Raine!”
Arianna jerked upright. There was the taste of a scream in her mouth, and the echoes of it in her ears.
She was lying on the bed, on top of the coverlet, still wearing her vair robe. But the cresset lamps had been doused, only the night candle burned. “Edith?” she whispered, though she knew the room was empty. There was a smell in the air, a hot, sweet smell. A familiar smell, though she couldn’t place it.
She got out of bed, fighting down dizziness and nausea. Something gleamed on the chest beside the window. The golden mazer.
It all came back to her then, with such a rush it was like a punch in the chest, and she doubled over as if from pain. Raine, fighting in a forest in France, the killing and the blood and the screams, then quiet … She had turned, no he had turned, and Hugh had been there, lifting the bow, and she had left it until too late. Falling, falling, falling into a soft white light …
“No!” Arianna cried.
She stood in the middle of the room, battling down a paralyzing fear. His name was like a drumbeat in her mind, Raine, Raine, Raine … She had to warn him. She prayed she had been given a glimpse of the future and not the past.
She dressed for hard traveling, arming herself with a quillon dagger. She bumped her protruding stomach against the jamb on the way out the door and a slightly hysterical laugh burst out her throat. She kept forgetting there was more of her than there used to be.
A thought pushed into her mind of what hard traveling might do to her and her unborn babe, but she pushed it out again. Peasant women harrowed a cornfield in the morning, stopped to birth their babies in the afternoon, and were carding wool before the fire that evening. If they were that strong, then she was stronger. The blood of Cymry warriors pumped through her veins. Tough as old bacon were the princes of Gwynedd, how often had she heard her father say that. Tough to bring down, tough to kill …
With all the carousing still going on in the hall, it was easy to slip out unnoticed. But once in the bailey she pulled her fur-trimmed chaperon over her face and kept to the shadows. The ground felt encrusted in a mail coat, cold and hard. But there was no snowfall as yet this winter, and the sky above was clear as ice, sparkling with stars.
Rushlights burned outside the stable doors, though at the moment there was no one about. She ducked inside and began quickly to saddle her palfrey.
“Goddess spare me! I knew this would happen sooner or later. One must watch you every second, else you rashly set off on some foolish escapade.”
Arianna whirled, her hand at her throat where her breath had caught.
“Taliesin!” Her first thought was that Raine had returned, and her heart swelled with the joy of it. Then slowly collapsed again when she realized that the guard would have announced the lord’s arrival with a blast of trumpets to rouse the entire castle. “What are you doing here? Where is my husband?”
“My lord is in France. My lady, may I ask why you are again saddling a horse in the middle of the night?”
The squire’s golden helmet pulsed and glowed. A blue light surrounded him, shimmering, like a flame disturbed by a draft. And his eyes … his eyes were two shining stars floating in a black
sea. I am not imagining this, she told herself. I cannot be. “I—I am going to France.”
Outside, a strong wind had come up. The stable walls groaned beneath the force of it; a door banged somewhere. It had grown suddenly cold. Her breath left her mouth in vapory white clouds.
He stepped toward her and she backed away. The wind whistled through the cracks in the walls, stirring up little whirlpools of dust and straw. She pulled her mantle tighter against her throat to close out the creeping cold.
“My lady, you cannot be such a fool,” he said. “You are heavy with child and ’tis not as simple a matter as riding to town. The south coast is leagues away and then you must take a boat to cross the channel waters. And if through the grace of the goddess you did manage to make it safely to France, do you know where you are going once you get there?”
Arianna shook her head, mesmerized by the glimmering light in his eyes.
“I thought not,” he went on. His mouth took on a smug curl that was all boy. But he was no boy, she knew that now. The wind screamed and something that sounded like gravel pelted the walls. “And, besides,” he said, “it’s kicking up a blizzard out there.”
“You lie, boy. The sky was as clear as spring water a moment ago.” But it had grown so cold, and the wind …
She ran to the front of the stable and flung open the door.
And looked into a blinding, undulating maelstrom of whirling white. Ice crystals whipped past her face, and the wind slashed and cut like a knife, so cold it flayed her cheeks and made her eyes water.
He’s doing this. He’s making it snow, just like once before he made it storm with lightning and thunder and so much rain the river flooded and the bridge washed away.
Suddenly he was standing in front of her again, though she had not seen him move. His helmet blazed, bright as a summer sun. The blue lambent sheen that surrounded him, throbbed, grew brighter. “You are magi,” she said. “Llyfrawr.”
The squire erupted into a fit of boyish giggles. “Would that I were a wizard, milady. I’d change Sir Stephen into a toad. He beat me this afternoon for not cleaning Lord Raine’s hauberk properly when it wasn’t his place to do so. My lord never beats me, though he does growl a lot and—”
“If you were being beaten in France this afternoon, how come you to be here in this stable tonight?”
God’s death, even I am no longer making sense. I must be dreaming this, she thought. Yet it felt so real. She could hear the horses shuffling in their stalls, smell the pungent odor of straw and dung. She could feel the tickle of her fur chaperon against her cheek. She had seen … she had held the magic mazer in her hands, felt its heat, its power.
She grabbed his arm, and a jolt of fire coursed through her, as if she’d just touched the golden mazer. “Taliesin, I don’t know how you come to be here, but you must go back to Lord Raine, you must warn him that his brother will try to kill him—”
“He is safe, my lady. It is not his destiny to die in France. You must believe me,” And the word echoed back at her, believe, believe, believe….
His eyes glimmered, star-filled, possessed of the wisdom of the ages. Time is a circle, she thought, and those eyes see it all. All that was, all that is, all that is yet to be. A white light blazed from his eyes, filling her mind. She embraced the light to ask of it the only question that really mattered to her.
Is it Raine’s destiny to love me?
She saw his lips move and knew that he answered her. But she couldn’t hear. The white light was a scream in her mind, drowning out his voice and the wail and whistle of the wind, drowning out her fears. For one single joyous moment she thought she understood it all. But then the white light shattered, exploding into thousands of glittering crystals that floated and melted away, like snow-flakes.
“Milady, are you awake?”
Arianna opened her eyes onto Edith’s round, berry-colored face. The maidservant had a steaming cup that smelled of mint in her hand and she held it up to Arianna’s lips. “You were sleeping so late, we had begun to worry.”
Arianna pushed the cup aside without drinking. She got up, and pulling on her robe, went to the window. A pale, watery winter sun hung low in a washed-out sky. There wasn’t even a dusting of snow on the ground.
She turned away from the window. Edith bustled about the bed, straightening the covers. “Did you hear the blizzard last night?” Arianna asked the maidservant. “There was snow and wind and it was cold, so cold.”
Edith covered her mouth with her palm to catch a giggle. “Oh, no, milady. Mayhap you dreamed it.”
Arianna crossed the room to stand in front of the brazier. She held her shaking hands out over the burning coals. “Have you seen the boy Taliesin this morning?” she asked, oh so very casually.
Edith’s forehead crinkled. “Taliesin? Why, he is in France, squiring your lord husband.” She came up to Arianna, concern on her normally placid face. “Milady, you do look pale. Mayhap you ought to spend the day abed after all.”
Arianna allowed the girl to lead her back to the bed. “Edith? Last night, did we look to see the sex of the babe, using holy water from St. Winifred’s well?”
“Aye, milady.”
“What … happened?”
“Why, at first we couldn’t tell. The drop of blood seemed to sink, but then it floated up to the top again. So we did it again and … and … ” The girl stopped. Her eyes went blank a moment and her mouth fell open. Then she blinked and went on. “It sank that time, my lady. Aye, that was what happened. Twill be a boy.”
Arianna got back into the bed. She didn’t protest as Edith pulled the covers up, tucking her in like a child. She was sure the maidservant had not remembered one way or the other what had happened last night. Edith had imbibed so much Christmas ale doubtless it was all a hazy, drunken blur.
I could have dreamed it, Arianna thought. Dreamed the vision, dreamed Taliesin in the stables, dreamed the blizzard. What did it matter anyway, dream or real, she could change nothing. In the light of the day, she knew she could not go to France, not six months pregnant, with no idea where Raine even was at this moment.
It had been autumn in her dream-vision, the trees dressed in orange and yellow and crimson. The wind would have stripped the branches naked by now, the ground would be hard and crusted with ice and snow. Whatever she had seen had happened already. If he were dead …
If he were dead, she would know it. There would be an empty hole in her heart that nothing could fill.
The coral-tinted sea smacked against the bow as the ship jibed, turning up the wide mouth of the river Clwyd. A flock of gulls led the way, and a westerly breeze filled the square leather sails, carrying him home.
Home.
Raine stood at the pointed prow of the ship, heedless of the salty spray that wet his face. He narrowed his eyes against the setting sun. A soft haze hung over the shore where, silhouetted on a hill, a man gripped the handles of a plow, while a woman walked ahead, wielding a goad to drive the oxen. The colter cut deep into the black earth, leaving a fresh furrow across the land. His land.
It had been September when he had left and the crops had just been harvested. It was the end of April now, the plowing and sowing season. Yet it was not the land he had missed, or the safe walls and comfort of his castle, or even the dreams and ambitions he had left behind. It was her.
Arianna … his wife.
He would see her soon. He would drown in those sea-foam eyes and taste the sweetness of her lips. He would hold her softness in his arms.
“The tide’s in, my lord,” Taliesin said, coming up behind him. “We’ll be able to tack right up to the quay this time.”
Raine acknowledged his squire with a nod. The bloodred walls of Rhuddlan Castle appeared suddenly around the bend. On the spring wind he heard the clamor of bells. The sonorous toll of the village church bell clashed with the tinny peals from the castle chapel until they filled the sky with a glorious noise.
“They’ve spotted our sails,�
� Taliesin said. “They’re welcoming you home.”
They moored the warship among the fishing scows, near the tidal wheel of the stone mill house. A man who was fat as a muffin emerged from the open door of the mill house, wiping his hands on a flour-smeared apron.
“Why do the bells ring, miller?” Raine called out to the man who looked up at him from the wharf, squinting against the glare of the setting sun.
“They be ringing to induce the saints to ease the Lady Arianna’s pain. She be in labor with …” Recognition dawned on the man’s face, as he finally made out the features of the man he spoke to. He bowed low, scraping the weathered boards with his cap. “With your son, please God, milor’.”
Fear slammed into Raine’s chest like a fist. “Taliesin, fetch me a horse.”
The boy jumped onto the dock, rocking the boards. “Oh, there’s no need to rush, sire. First babes are always a long time in coming. It could be hours yet—”
“Taliesin, if you don’t shut your mouth and find me a bloody horse before my next breath, I will hang you up by your thumbs until you rot!”
In the end he didn’t wait for a horse, he ran up the road to the castle on foot. It was a sight they were to speak about for years to come—the Lord of Rhuddlan arriving home from the wars in France, pelting up the road as if all the devils of hell were after him, to be home in time for the birthing of his first child.
By the time Raine crossed the drawbridge into the bailey, his heart seemed to be squeezed up into an area just below his throat, so he couldn’t breathe. The yard seemed unusually empty of life for just past sunset. Even the mews and the kennels were silent.
The door to his chamber opened halfway before it was blocked by the formidable bulk of Dame Beatrix, the midwife. “My lord! You are not supposed to be in here. It isn’t allowed.”
Keeper of the Dream Page 34
