The Faery Bride (The Celtic Legends Series Book 2) (5 page)

R
hys rolled his fingers around the javelin and then hefted it just above his shoulder. On the straightway to the target stood spears buried in the ground, angled wildly. He bent his knees, gauged the force and direction of the wind, and then peered down the shaved wood to the enemy.

With a grunt, he heaved the javelin. He watched the spear whistle through the air. It sank into the ground and splattered the target with clods of earth.

“Try throwing a few paces closer, brother.”

A horse’s harness jangled and Rhys realized that Dafydd had joined him. Rhys crouched on his haunches and rubbed his palms full of grit, stanching his annoyance at the uninvited company. His fool older brother was growing more patient with the years: Now it took a full day before Dafydd’s curiosity overcame his common sense.

Rhys said, “One learns nothing from an easy target.”

“What are you learning here?” Dafydd slid off the horse and yanked his blue silk tunic down from the beast’s bare back. “We’d never fight the English on so much open land. Better to find a way for a javelin to twist past a tree, or—”

“Show me that trick,” Rhys said, tossing a javelin to his brother, “and you sit by the fire this night.”

Dafydd closed his hand over the spear. Wind tugged at the tails of his well–trimmed mustache as a light of challenge brightened his hazel eyes. But then he scanned the bare hill with its circle of lichen–covered stones. “You would choose to do this here,” Dafydd said. “It’s a wonder King Arthur doesn’t rise from this grave and fight you for disturbing his slumber.”

“This is a mound of earth, nothing more. If I care to practice upon it and old King Arthur disapproves I urge him to come and give me a good sparring.” Rhys’s gaze fell upon the sword he’d abandoned on a nearby rock, along with all his clothing but for his
braies
which now sagged from the rope belt around his hips. “Practice with me, one–on–one. Your sword hasn’t seen a dent—”

“Go back to your spears.” Dafydd sank the point of the spear into the earth and grimaced at the grit on his fingers. “I’ve no stomach to strip down to my skin and practice swordplay on the grave of a legend.”

“Get yourself a Christian bedmate, Dafydd. You’ve been spending too much time between the legs of that milkmaid.”

“Easy, brother, else the devil will rise to challenge you.”

“If he had the courage to face me, I’d welcome him.”

“What about a witch?”

Rhys tossed his brother a glare. Dafydd’s eyebrows—well–oiled this day—only arched a little more.

Rhys set off across the field with Dafydd falling into step beside him. He clenched his jaw. Dafydd was his second in command, his older brother, and he owed the man too much to let his own hot temper fly. But why now did he choose to interrupt? Dafydd knew better than to come between Rhys and his nightmares.

“This one has lost its point.” Dafydd frowned at the bare end of a javelin he’d yanked out of the ground. “I must speak to that blacksmith about the fitting. That’s not the first time—”

“Out with it.”

“Out with what? The arrow is already gone, buried somewhere beneath the dirt.”

“I would have been back to the homestead for dinner, but you ride out here to confront me only hours before.” Rhys clattered a spear on his shoulder and strode still farther to collect more. “Have more cattle been stolen from the southern border? Or have they attacked from the English side this time, hoping to draw me into conflict with the Marcher Lords?”

“Actually, it has been quite an uneventful day.”

“Good.”

“It’s your own household you must see to.”

“You are the keeper of my household.” Rhys yanked another spear out of the ground, dislodging a stone the size of a hen. “Spare me the reports of cows which have stopped giving milk, or fires which refuse to be lit, or oatcakes burning in a cold pan—”

“Come to think of it, there was an odd fire in the stables this morning.”

“Then carry a twig of mountain ash.” He shrugged the weight upon his shoulders as her words came back to haunt him. “Or hang a horseshoe above your door.”

“Too much burnt crust in the oatcakes this morning, brother?”

They reached the target end of the field. Rhys seized the last spear and clattered it on his shoulder with the others, then turned around to head back. His ears stung with sudden heat.

He confessed, “She’s a harridan.”

“She refused to heal you?” Dafydd reared back in mock surprise. “How ungrateful of the wench. After all you’ve done for her.”

“I must have been crazed,” Rhys said, “to let you talk me into going to Ireland.”

“Only a fool would scorn the words of a man of Annwn.”

“That visitor wasn’t from any pagan heaven, Dafydd. He was a demon sent from hell, and we’ve brought back his witch.”

“You’d best hope she isn’t a witch, else with the way you’ve been treating her you’ll find yourself croaking in the mud and eating flies.” Dafydd stepped up close enough for Rhys to smell the orange–oil his brother used to dress his hair. “And remember: It was your idea to kidnap her and drag her here. Yours alone.”

At the end of the field, Rhys shrugged the spears off his shoulder and let them clatter to the ground. Sweeping one up, he whirled to heft the shaft upon his shoulder and squint down at the target, seeing nothing but the blood–red haze of his own foolishness.

He should have done exactly what he’d gone to Inishmaan to do. He should have tossed a bag of gold at the witch’s feet in exchange for her sorcery. He should have bared his face upon that shore with only Dafydd and the witch as witnesses to the humiliation. All the roads to Hell were paved with such good intentions.

He couldn’t do it. Not after he’d seen her striding through the mists with the sea wind buffeting that wild hair. She looked like some nymph that had slipped between the veils that legend said separated this world from Annwn. One look at her, with her eyes the color of the Welsh winter sky, and all he could think was that such a young woman would cringe at the sight of him. Her revulsion would cut him to the bone.

For a flash of a moment, he had been of a mind to step back into that boat and leave that wretched island without a word. But his feet had stuck in the mud. In all the years of pilgrimages, at all the saint’s shrines, in the stinking huts of women–charlatans, and under the bleeding–knives of too many physicians, he’d never once felt so gripped by the presence of the unworldly.

What difference would one more sin weigh upon his soul?

“Rhys,” Dafydd said, “you must treat her kindly.”

“You always were overburdened with conscience.”

Rhys sighted down the level field to the target swaying in the wind. He envisioned that stuffed linen with a wild mane of hair, with stormy gray eyes and a mouth full of venom. That was a witch, indeed, who could strike so close to the heart of the problem without even knowing its name. Rhys heaved the spear back and hurled it toward the target. The lance fell wide of the mark.

Rhys said, “I won’t take her off bread and water.”

“At least stop calling her a witch.” Dafydd ignored, as usual, what he didn’t want to hear. “At least not aloud, in Welsh. The bondswomen would have her burnt to a crisp before Sunday if they thought you harbored a witch under your roof.”

“Who else but a witch would a demon send me across the seas to fetch?”

“No one but us knows about our Midsummer’s Night visitor. Marged has been uncharacteristically silent.” Dafydd twisted one end of his mustache between two fingers. “So I’ve spread the truth instead: Aileen the Red is a healer.”

Rhys swiveled on one foot and bundled a fistful of his brother’s silk tunic in his hand. “I warned you to stay silent.”

“There hasn’t been a woman–healer in this house since old Gwenffrewi died three years ago.” Dafydd’s steady gaze glittered over Rhys’s knuckles. “Now you’ve brought one back for us. Better they think that, than think their great lord makes a habit of stealing women from their homes.”

If he were another man, oh, another man, he’d have knocked Dafydd onto the muddy ground in all his silks and all his oils. Instead he bit his fingernails into his palm hard enough to draw blood through the calluses and dirt. There’d be no satisfaction in beating a man who spoke only the truth.

He thrust his brother away.
I am such a fool.
Rhys would mock himself if the whole world wasn’t already laughing into their beards.

“The bondsmen are beginning to wonder,” Dafydd added, as he smoothed the wrinkles in his tunic, “why you’re treating her so badly.”

“Think of some lie.” Rhys’s sword flashed as he scraped it off the rock.

“There are other ways to bring a woman around.”

You would know them, wouldn’t you, my brother? You with your bright silks and easy smile, you with a list of conquests so long as to rival that of the Prince of Wales’s best bull, in spite of that handless arm—perhaps because of it.

Rhys thumbed the edge of his sword. “You think the tricks you use on the she–vipers of Llywelyn’s court will soften the will of a witch?”

“I think,” he said, as a few drops of rain splattered in the mud around them, “you might try a gentler persuasion.”

Gentleness? He remembered the word, vaguely, a sense of soft woolen blankets on a woman’s bed.

“Some good food, a bath, a soft place to sleep,” Dafydd continued, “they can work wonders on any woman’s disposition.”

Dafydd was wrong. There would be no making a kitten of that lioness, Rhys knew that. He’d felt the sink of her claws. She knew nothing at all, yet when she stared at him so full of loathing, he thought surely hellhounds couldn’t muster so much scorn. It was as if she knew already what he was and all that he had done.

Rhys clasped the hilt of the sword in both hands. “I don’t give a damn what you do to her.”

“Yes, you do.” Dafydd headed back to his horse. “You just don’t want to hope.”

***

“By all the blessed saints, look at that hair!”

As the door swung open, Aileen startled where she sat in the wide barrel, sending a spray of water over the wooden edge. A tiny woman stopped in the doorway.

“They warned me in the kitchens that you had hair like a pelt of a fox,” the woman said, “but I wasn’t after believing them. Those girls talk and talk until it’s nothing but nonsense coming out of their mouths.” The woman slammed the door shut. “I’ll be sending someone else to see to your needs when the sun rises, my lady. It’s bad luck to meet a woman with red hair first thing in the morning. No offense meant, of course.”

Aileen lay in the tub with a bar of lye squeezed in her hand, blinking at the blur of woman as she tossed bright bolts of silk and linen over the jumble of casks. All morning a parade of servants had passed through her room, dragging in the wooden tub, then lugging pails of steaming hot water, then serving her a tray of some flat bread and watered–down ale. But this was the first one who babbled in a language she could understand.

“Course, that’s only on the days I’m off on a journey, I suppose. It’s no matter on any other day. It’d be worse luck to meet a cat or a dog first thing in the morning, though a hard thing that is to avoid in this place, with all the hounds wandering about the yard because of that lazy dog–keeper the master took in—”

“You speak the Irish.”

“Aye, that I do, and a fine thing it is to be speaking it in the full again. It’s like I’ve finally spit the rocks out of my mouth.” Wayward edges of the woman’s turban flapped as she darted about. “It’s true my lords use it now and again, when they’re of a mind to tell me something they don’t want to tell the world. But most times I’m forced to twist my tongue around the Welsh. A fine hard thing that is, don’t you know, though I’ve lived here over thirty years now. My name is Marged, my lady.” She smiled as she approached. “Let me see to that hair of yours.”

“There’s no need for you—”

Aileen sputtered as Marged hefted a pail of water over her head.

“Thick, it is, blessed be, but it could be using a lavender rinse, if you don’t mind me saying so.” Marged plunged another stick of lye deep into Aileen’s hair and tugged and pulled it into lather while Aileen gripped the edge of the tub to keep from being yanked about. “I was thinking, looking at your hair, that it’d be as hard and springy as the wire the armorer uses to make his chain mail—no offense meant to you, my lady, it’s just the look of it, all curled up so tight and wild. Mayhap the trials of your long journey did not leave it at its best—but despite its looks it has softness in it.”

“You’re pulling it straight out of my head.” Aileen seized the lathered length of her hair and twisted to look up. “And I’m no lady, I’ll have you know. I have two hands strong enough to wash my own hair.”

“Will you be denying me the pleasure? It’s been near twenty years since I’ve set my hands into a lady’s hair. I came over from Ulster as a lady’s maid, with my master’s sainted mother—may she rest in peace. She was Irish, too, like myself, and when the time came for her to go to God I stayed on, by the grace of the late master. He made me the keeper of this house in a lady’s absence. But I’ll have you know, it’s no easy task seeing to a
llys
—that’s what the Welsh call this homestead—with all the servants and the master’s men to be fed and their clothes woven and sewn and mended and laundered and the livestock to be seen to. Lass, don’t be getting out, the water’s still warm.”

“My mother didn’t raise me to loll about in a bath until the water grows cold.” Aileen stood up in the wide–mouthed half–cask and squeezed her hair. Water sluiced down her body and cooled in the autumn drafts sifting in between the ill–mudded walls. “You and the others can get in, now. You all worked so hard filling it up.”

“Oh, the bath was for you alone. Faith, look at you.” Marged thrust a linen at her and looked unabashedly up and down Aileen’s figure. “Like the leanest of the master’s hounds, all bones and muscle, true, but a woman nonetheless.”

Heat rushed over Aileen. For all the baths she, her sisters, and her mother shared, never had she stood naked before an outsider. She seized the linen from the woman’s hands only to pause as she felt the fine weave, as soft as butter.