The Faery Bride (The Celtic Legends Series Book 2) (33 page)

D
afydd threw open the door to Rhys’s bedroom, strode to the huge bed, and thrust the curtains aside. “A fine example you are, lolling about in bed until past cock’s crow, without even a woman as an excuse.”

Rhys winced against the light. He scowled in the direction of his brother’s voice. From the open door flooded the noises of morning: men swilling mead and arguing, women bustling about, dogs barking, and harnesses jingling as horses were saddled.

“Come, there’s work to be done, a castle to be built.” Dafydd strode to the tray by the door and poked amid Rhys’s breakfast. “How do you expect your men to give you a good day’s work if you don’t show your face before Prime?”

“The evening patrol for you tonight.” Rhys rolled his legs off the side of the bed. “We’ll see how bright–eyed you are, brother, when you don’t ride home until after Matins.”

“Your oatcake is still hot.” Dafydd chewed a wad to one side of his cheek. “Should be stone cold by now, I suspect that new girl delivered it here late.
Very
late.”

Dafydd mustered a grin. Rhys suddenly knew what made his brother so light–stepped and foolish these past days. Another conquest amid the servants. Another woman he’d trail after moon–eyed for a few months, who’d have him strutting like a cock amid the hens, unbearable to all.

Rhys pulled the chamber pot from under the bed and relieved himself. “I’ll have to speak to her.”

“She’s the blonde one.”

Rhys finished the necessary and footed the pot back under the bed. He swept up his hose from where he’d thrown them the night before. He remembered the woman. Clumsy, but buxom. Attractive in the fleshy way his brother liked. That he himself had once liked, before he’d beheld the likes of Aileen.

Rhys snapped the hose clean. “See to it that the servant doesn’t loll about in bed anymore.”

“A task I’d be more than happy to free you from.” Dafydd strutted across the room, grasped the two bedposts and leaned between them, a flagon of mead dangling from one hand. “In fact, I’ll make it my personal—”

Dafydd choked mid–sentence. Rhys tied on his hose, suspecting his brother had choked on his own swaggering. Then Dafydd’s boots scraped against the floor and his brother suddenly stood before him.

Dafydd said, “By Christ’s Heart.”

Rhys scowled as he saw the direction of Dafydd’s gaze. Dafydd knew better than to comment on his face. Did he have new pattern upon the old already? A patch redder than the others? Another ripple? Rhys stood up, turned his back on his brother, snatched the dangling black leather mask from a post above the bed to slap it over his shoulder.

Dafydd jerked the leather out of his hands and sent it sailing across the room. “By Christ’s Heart, Rhys, it’s receding.”

“My hairline? Or my teeth?”

“Look in a mirror, damn it, and see for yourself.”

Rhys ignored him and wrestled into his shirt. He had no mirror. He’d long given up the urge to peer into a glass, seeking the most infinitesimal change in the mottling of his skin, like a vain woman searching for age lines.

Rhys brushed by his brother and swept the mask up from the ground. “Stop looking for trifles,” he argued, “just to prove her right.”

“This isn’t a trifle. This is half your face.” Dafydd thrust the flagon in Rhys’s free hand and searched the room. “What? Not a polished helmet, not a polished shield in all of this? Ah! I know . . .”

He was gone, breezing out of the room and calling out for one of the men. Rhys filled his belly with honey–mead. The bladder collapsed under his hand. He tossed it aside with a spray of drops. He slapped the black leather back on his shoulder and tied the strings tight under his arm, flung open his trunk and grabbed the first tunic he laid hands on. He jerked this over his head and fastened his girdle around his waist. He yanked his belt tight, tied the knots of his tunic, and wrapped the laces of his boots firmly around his ankles and calves. When he had no more clothing to don, he stood in the light of the smoke–hole and flexed his hands, over and over. His face prickled with awareness.

For a good two weeks they’d been tearing down the north tower of the castle. For a solid two weeks he’d been running his hand over his mangled face in the dark of night, scorning himself for expecting any sort of change.

This is half your face.

Foolishness. It was nothing but a castle, a pile of mortar and stones upon a mound of grass. It was nothing but another valley in a kingdom of valleys. And this thing on his face, it was just another scabrous disease that no doctor knew how to cure.

His fingers strayed up to his jaw. As always, his skin lay liquid beneath his hand, as if it had melted and swirled before being baked back onto his bones. Damn Dafydd for seeing things. Damn him for trying to justify bringing the lass all the way back to Wales. His brother was so eager to prove her faery–lore right, to see elves in the twilight and magic in nonsense.

Rhys thrust his fingers through his hair, rested the butt of his hand on his forehead.

He froze.

“Look.” Dafydd rushed in and thrust a helmet into Rhys’s belly. “Pedr stole it from an Englishman all those years ago. He always keeps it polished to a shine if only just to admire his mustache in its sheen.”

Rhys seized the rim of the helmet and tossed it up, one–handed, turning it so he could raise it high. He peered into the distorted surface of the scratched steel.

The face that peered back was the face of a man he’d left behind years ago, a man who had not yet fashioned the mask that was to become his only ornament—the face of a man one–quarter disfigured, the skin of forehead and cheekbone as smooth and unmarred as that of any man of his years, the creeping horror of what was to come just rising over his jaw.

The helmet chinked to the paving stones and rolled, flashing, a new dent along its side.

“The lass is right.” Dafydd seized the helmet in both hands. “It was the castle all along.”

Rhys resisted the urge to snag the helmet from his brother and stare in it again, lest what he saw before turned out to be an illusion. Dafydd’s laugh filled the room but Rhys didn’t move. He couldn’t.

This could not be
.

Fairy–rings and magic earthen mounds. Screaming that he couldn’t hear. Curses for building on land that belonged to little creatures, the
Y Tylwyth Teg
, immortal creatures who could not be seen or heard, creatures the church ignored or wrote off as the souls of virtuous Druids who could not enter Heaven.

Faery–women so beautiful they could steal a mortal’s heart.

Rhys brushed by Dafydd and strode through the hall, ignoring the gasps of the kitchen servants, ignoring the men’s stares. He burst out of the mead–hall and knew the minute he strode through the dust that everyone had heard. Dafydd had made it known. The news had traveled like a brush fire on the slopes in July. Now his people clustered. They watched him as he passed, as he seized the first mounted horse he could find and climbed upon it. He yanked the reins toward the portal, kicked the horse and bent over him to speed him down to the cluster of huts at the base of the cliff.

Was this why she had returned, then? To give him what he wanted when he no longer needed it? His face still stung with the prickling, and now with something else, with the unfamiliar feel of wind against it, blowing his hair free. He’d ridden like this with Llywelyn on campaigns, bare–faced, unashamed, a frisky horse between his thighs and dreams in his head.

Aye, he remembered it. Too well.

Dirt choked his passage, but the dust did not discourage the women who peered out their open doorways at the sound of hoofbeats, or the children who squealed at the sight of him. The new thatch of Aileen’s hut glared flaxen, shimmering in the mid–summer sun. She kneeled in the garden and worked the dark soil, her hair caught up in a bit of linen. Catching sight of him, she rose to her feet and slapped her hands free of soil.

He dismounted and strode up the newly laid paving–stone. She stood in front of this tiny hut, her chin raised as if she stood before a castle, her hands firm on her lean hips, her woolen skirts streaked with mud. She fit in so well with the peasants who fell into a cluster, in hushed silence, just beyond his horse. She looked as if she’d lived here all her life. Yet she owned the carriage of a woman noble–born, and her eyes were bright.

“Just what brings you to my home on such a fine, hot day, my Lord of Graig?” She dropped her gaze from his head to his toes and back again. “Couldn’t be a touch of the ague, could it? Or are you looking for an ointment for the sting of those black biting bugs that come out by the marshes this time of year?”

She stared him straight in the face with something twitching at the corners of her lips, her eyes full of
knowing
, as if this was nothing more than a broken bone set to rights when the impudent little wench knew that five years of thwarted hope lay behind it.

“You’re looking fine this day,” she continued, “but if you don’t mind me saying, my lord, you’re in need of a bit of sun. One part of your face is as pale as a breast of chicken. I wonder how it got that way?”

She’d spoken in Welsh, loud enough for the audience just beyond his horse to gasp and choke upon chuckles.

“This,” he growled in Irish, “is the work of your hands.”

“You flatter me.” She hefted a basket full of greens into the crook of her elbow. “Would that it were the work of my hands. That would have avoided more than a bit of trouble, wouldn’t you say? But it’s been a fine long time since I’ve laid my hands upon you.”

He closed his hands into fists to keep from reaching out and wiping away the soil which streaked her freckled cheek. “Tell me what you did. Did you give Marged some of those herbs? Sprinkle them in my mead? Chant spells under a midnight moon?”

She casually feathered her fingers over the greens to gauge the contents. “Aye, and here I was thinking you gave no mind to such things.”

He seized her arm. “Then you did do something.”

“I’m the one who told you to tear down the castle, for all the mind you gave me. And by the looks of you, the north tower is near down to the foundations.” She swiveled on one heel. “The day brings me double the good news, then.”

She marched off to the doorway of her hut without a never–you–mind, her thin hips twitching with each step.

His mind fermented with suspicion. She was in league with the English. Or his wretched half–brothers. There were enough people who didn’t want to see such a strong castle raised in such a vulnerable place, people who would pay well for a witch to work her magic to their ends. Even as the thought passed through his mind, he knew it was foolishness. If she’d known of a way to free him of this affliction she’d have done it long ago when he’d first kidnapped her. She would have done it for the price of her freedom.

Why now, why now? What magic did she use? How long would it last? What demon powers had she summoned for this little trick, what price would he have to pay, and how long would he be beholden to her for this unbidden magic?

He strode after her. He dipped his head beneath the door post and entered the coolness of the hut, ripe with the scents of something sweet boiling in the pot, wood–smoke, and newly cut greens.

She clanged the rim of the cauldron as she thrust a spoon into the contents. “So you’ve come looking for explanations, have you? You’re like a child who cannot stop saying ‘Why?’ ‘Why?’ ‘Why?’ until a woman is like to grow as mad as a loon answering the unanswerable.”

“I’ve no liking for witchery.”

“There’s that word again.” She splattered herself with the hot liquid, but ignored the stains on her bodice. “I thought that was a word of the ignorant. What would please you, my lord? Thrusting my hand in boiling oil to see if I scream out? Tossing me into the river to determine if I float or sink? Searching my body for a mark of the devil—”

She pulled out the spoon and turned away to clatter it on a table littered with herbs and wooden mortars and pestles. Even in the dim room, Rhys saw the color rising over her face and felt an answering surge of blood. He’d searched that body for marks already. He’d tasted every crease, every curve, he knew the way the freckles tapered on her thighs and left a belly with skin as creamy as May–milk. There was devilry in that body, there was bewitchment between those thighs. A man could lose himself in the earthy woman–scent of her, a man could lose a part of his soul.

Sighing, she tossed a few leaves into a mortar and seized the pestle to grind it into a gloppy green mess. “If you’re here looking for explanations, the answer is the same as before. You’ve a faery–curse upon you for daring to build a castle upon a sacred place.”

He leaned back against the wall next to the portal and dug the butt of his palms into his eyes. There she went again, talking faery–nonsense, and thinking he would believe it, even after all this time.

“For all I know,” she continued, “that island may be the last doorway in all of your wretched Wales between this world and the Otherworld—the world you know as Annwn. The faeries, they’re doing whatever they can to hold onto this world, though only God knows why, with so many ignorant people walking about. They must get rid of the stone and mortar weighing down the mound.”

“So they sent one of their own to me,” Rhys argued, hating the sarcasm dripping in his voice, “named Octavius, to lead me to you.”

“I suppose that’s the way of it.” She bustled to the cauldron and scraped the dark green muck into the pot with the edge of the pestle. “And they’re not English, mind you. They don’t care for the wars and the struggles for land above the ground, so don’t you go thinking there’s anything else to this but a faery–curse.”

“You haven’t told me anything that any Welsh grandmother couldn’t whisper to me across a fire. Why would they go to such lengths to send me to you?”

The mortar and pestle clattered on the table. She lifted her chin and stared sightlessly at the wall. A piece of wood cracked beneath the fire. Outside, a cuckoo flitted across the garden and trilled its song in the thatch overhang.

“They sent you to me,” she began, steadily, “because I’m one of them.”