by Anna Elliott
Three weeks earlier …
“UP, MAMA! Want up up up now!” Jory’s lip was quivering in the way that meant the words would soon be turning into tears. Which would turn into screams before you could turn around three times.
Dera gritted her teeth against the aching stab that shot through her ribs and bent to pick him up. “I’m sorry, my lady. He’s just—”
But the Lady Isolde of Camelerd, widow to the High King Constantine, was there before her, scooping Jory up into her arms and tickling him.
Dera watched Jory’s sulky face break into laughter and thought there had to be something wrong with her. She’d die for her boy, no question—she didn’t even have to think about that. But why was it dying for him sounded a lot easier some days than listening to him whine for one single moment more?
Now, though, listening to the way his breath wheezed even when he laughed, and looking at the purplish gray shadows under his eyes, Dera’s heart felt squeezed tight in her chest.
She’d never been much of a one for praying, but watching Jory laugh she thought, Just let him get better. Please, I’ll—
What? Let Jory get better and she’d what? Drop some coins or a piece of jewelry in one of the tithe boxes at a church? Fat chance on her ever having more than she and Jory needed just to buy bread for the day. Stop bedding the soldiers in the King’s army—like the nuns at the last holy house they’d begged shelter at had told her she ought? Take that advice and she’d not even have enough for her and Jory’s bread.
It wasn’t all that many men who were willing to take the chance on lying with a woman who’d a great purple birthmark all across one side of her face—the kind that marked someone out for an unlucky life. Especially not these days.
The Lady Isolde was talking to Jory. She had a pretty voice—clear and sweet sounding—and Jory was listening to her with eyes as big as soup bowls while she talked. Did he like dogs? She’d a dog who was terribly lonely for some company. She was busy with wounded soldiers all day long. Would Jory play with Cabal for a while?
They were in the infirmary, crowded rows of sick and injured men lying on beds of straw and the smell of blood and piss and smoke from the fire thick in the air. But there was a clear space in one corner of the room, and the Lady Isolde got Jory set up there with the big brown and white war dog who’d been asleep by the hearth, and a ball made of tied up rags. Jory was tossing the ball to the dog and clapping his hands before Dera had even got her wits together to say, “That’s very kind of you, my lady. He’s a good lad. It’s just we’ve been on the road walking since dawn and he’s tired and—”
She could feel a whine pushing its way up her throat, wanting to creep into her words, and she clamped her jaw shut. Not that she was above begging now and again if it got her and Jory a meal or a roof over their heads for a night or two. But three months ago, the Lady Isolde had risked her own life just to save Dera, a common army whore. And Dera still didn’t know why.
“And hungry,” Lady Isolde finished for her. “Both of you are. I’ll get you food and something to drink in a moment. But first”—her eyes swept over Dera— “you’re injured, aren’t you?”
She didn’t look much like a fine lady. Certainly not like a lady who’d been High Queen until a few short months ago. Or a lady with the power of magic about her—which she was, if all the stories about her could be believed.
Not that Dera had seen many fine ladies for herself. Or magic, for that matter. But the queens in bards’ songs wore fur-trimmed clothes and fairly dripped with jewels. The Lady Isolde’s dress was common blue wool, pinned at the shoulders with plain bronze pins. And she must have had a badly wounded man come in today, because the front of her skirt was all spattered with blood.
She was pretty, though. More than pretty, really, with her white skin and big gray eyes and her black hair braided and pinned like a crown around her head. She was also small and slight, and Dera knew she couldn’t be more than twenty summers old. But the look in her eyes still made Dera think of Mam. Who’d been dead since Dera was sixteen. And still, thinking of her made stupid tears rise to Dera’s eyes.
“No, my lady. It was Jory I came here for.” She nodded to her son. The dog had lain back down by the hearth, and Jory was curled up beside him, scratching him behind the ears. “He’s this cough, you see. Started just after Samhain, and it’s lingered. Just won’t go away, and—”
Lady Isolde nodded. “I heard it. And I’ll give you some horehound syrup for him. But if you’re in need of attention, as well—” she had small hands, slim and graceful and very quick. One of them reached out and lightly touched a place on Dera’s ribs, then moved to a spot on her cheek, just below her right eye. The bruises must not have faded yet. And she could still feel the cut on her upper lip. Though at least it wasn’t so swollen anymore.
“I’m all right. It’s nothing to speak of, my lady. Just—” Dera clenched her teeth again to stop her voice from trembling, even as she felt her mouth twist. “You know what men are.”
Dera would wager the Lady Isolde did know what men were, all too well. She’d been forced into marrying Lord Marche of Cornwall three months back. And Dera had watched her, while she and Jory had waited for her to get done with her rounds among the wounded men. Lady Isolde never stopped being gentle and kind—and she’d a way of speaking to the men that could get a smile or a laugh out of even the roughest-tempered. But when one of the sickest of them clutched at her, grabbed her arm or her hand in some fever-dream, Dera had seen her go very still, like she was holding her breath and forcing herself not to flinch or pull away.
Then Lord Marche had turned traitor, had gone against Britain and joined his armies to the Saxon devils. The fine lords and kings on the High King’s council might have been surprised by that. Not Dera. She’d scars of her own she’d gotten at Lord Marche’s hands, when she’d been fool enough to take payment from him for a night’s tumble. Turned out that tumbling hadn’t been all—or even half—of what he’d wanted. Which she should have known; you got to recognize the mean ones by the look in their eyes. The man who’d given her these bruises had had that look about him, as well. But Jory’d been hungry enough that she hadn’t been able to tell him no.
And besides, all the men were in vile tempers these days, with the fighting going so badly, and battle after battle lost to Lord Marche and his dirty Saxon allies. Half the soldiers who asked for it used her like they were punishing her for the loss of their brothers and friends. As if the bloody war had been all her idea, or it was her fault Lord Marche had to be not just a traitor but a master warrior, as well.
At least this last man had paid her; sometimes his kind just laughed and told her she should be thanking them for a good time. But this one had paid with a battered bronze finger ring taken off a dead Saxon. And that had bought her and Jory a ride on a cart here, to Dinas Emrys, the new High King Madoc’s fortress high in the rocky Gwynedd mountains. A place as safe from Saxon attacks as anywhere was, these days.
Now Lady Isolde was looking from the bruise on Dera’s face to the way she was holding herself hunched over to guard against the aching stabs that kept shooting through her ribs—and Dera saw her big gray eyes filling with tears. “I’m so sorry.” Her voice sounded soft, shaky, sort of. “I did look for you, three months ago. You and Jory, both. But you were gone. I should have looked harder, though. I should have—”
Lady Isolde stopped at a commotion at the infirmary door: two men carrying in a third, who was screaming and bellowing like an angry bull. Not that Dera blamed him; the front of his tunic was all cut open and stained with blood, and she could see the sword cut in his belly and part of his guts poking out through the wound.
“I’m sorry.” Lady Isolde was already moving towards the new man, but she stopped long enough to touch Dera’s arm. “I must go. But please stay—as long as you like. And I’ll get you the horehound syrup for Jory just as soon as I—�
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The rest of what she said was lost; she was already gesturing for the screaming man to be put down on one of the empty pallets of straw, kilting up her skirts and kneeling down next to him, taking out a little bone-handled knife and using it to cut the bloodied fragments of his shirt away.
Dera looked over at Jory. But he was asleep, head pillowed on the big dog’s middle and his thumb in his mouth. Amazing that all the man’s noise hadn’t woken him. Though the gods knew he’d practice enough at sleeping through anything by now.
Dera didn’t know why she moved closer. She’d seen her bellyful of ugly sights these last months and days. But ugly sights were like that sometimes: you’d be sick to your stomach and still somehow couldn’t drag your eyes away. Like it was so awful you had to keep looking and looking, trying to decide whether it could be true.
The next she knew she was standing right next to where Lady Isolde was kneeling—and Lady Isolde was looking up at her, with the same look in her eyes as a man might have when he inspected a weapon to be sure it was sharp. She’d wadded up a pad of clean linen and had it clamped over the sword cut in the man’s belly, but Dera could already see the fabric turning wet and red.
“Can you help me?”
Dera gaped at her. “Can I—”
Lady Isolde shook her head and seemed to come back to herself a bit. She spoke quickly. “I shouldn’t ask this of you—I know this wasn’t what you came here for. But this man is going to need stitching up. I’ve been handling the usual run of injuries on my own—help is short here just now. And this is going to take another pair of hands. Can you do it?”
Dera looked from the Lady Isolde to the man’s face. He was older than the usual run of fighting men. Maybe forty or forty-five. Heavy-muscled and tall, with a long, black mustache and curly hair threaded through with gray. His eyes were dark, staring straight at her, but so bleared with pain she could likely have turned into a raven like the women in the faerie tales and he’d not have blinked an eye. He’d stopped screaming and was biting down on his lip; Dera saw a trickle of blood run down his chin.
At least he wasn’t one she could remember servicing. Not that she made it a habit to study their faces, most times.
Dera’s throat felt like her last meal had been sharp-edged rocks, and one had stuck, but she swallowed and then nodded. “All right. Reckon I can. Just tell me what to do.”
* * *
