Exiles in Time (The After Cilmeri Series) (38 page)

And now Cadwaladr was here, walking
into the lion’s den, although not quite of his own accord. Cadfael
had spies everywhere and had known of his coming. The story he’d
put out was that Cadwaladr’s small band had forded the Menai
Straits and met Cadfael’s army just shy of Bryn Celliddu. Cadfael
hadn’t even bothered to meet the force himself, instead delegating
the task to lesser men.

But Rhiann wasn’t so sure, especially
now that she’d heard Cadwaladr’s exchange with her father. Before
the feast, she’d questioned some of the older men in the garrison,
particularly those who’d held allegiance to Cadwaladr’s father once
upon a time. A few of them had muttered among themselves about the
evil Cadfael’s acts would bring to Gwynedd. One even mentioned that
he’d seen demons in the woods surrounding Aberffraw. The others had
dismissed that as fantasy, and then together they’d rebuffed
Rhiann’s questions, as they had every right to do. Yet each,
individually, had given her a look—like he wanted to speak—but
thought better of it. Why had Cadwaladr come, only to be defeated
so easily? Why had he sacrificed his men for such a fleeting
chance?

And sacrifice them he had. Cadwaladr
was the only survivor.

* * * * *

Rhiann pushed open the door to the
room. Cadfael was keeping Cadwaladr in a third floor chamber,
stripped of every piece of furniture. Cadwaladr huddled in a corner
by the dark fireplace, the bread beside him uneaten. The window
above his head had been left open—whether by him or her father
Rhiann didn’t know—but Cadwaladr hadn’t tried to escape that way.
Given that the drop to the ground was considerable, Rhiann wondered
if her father hadn’t left the window open to tempt Cadwaladr to
leap from it, as a way out of the death that faced him
tomorrow.

Cadwaladr looked up as Rhiann entered
and straightened his back against the wall. His gaze was steady. As
before in the great hall, it was difficult to look away from him.
Rhiann shut the door on the guard who’d followed a few paces behind
her.

“
Knock when you’re done
with him.” He coughed and dropped the bar on the heavy oak
door.

Rhiann imagined him smirking behind
the door but didn’t care. Her position in the household was so low
that to fall a little farther could hardly matter. She turned to
the young man on the floor. “Lord Cadwaladr.”

“
Call me Cade. I’ve not
earned my title.” He paused. “Yet.” He moistened his lips. Scabs
had formed on them from the beating he’d received.

“
Don’t.” Rhiann hastened
forward with her cloth and washing bowl. “You’ll start them
bleeding again.”

Cade licked his lower lip again
anyway, prompting Rhiann to make an irritated face at him, annoyed
that he was yet another male who routinely ignored whatever she
said in order to do the exact opposite.

“
Who are you?” Cade
said.

“
Rhiannon. Though everyone
calls me Rhiann. I’m here to see to your wounds.”

“
Why?”

“
You are Cadwaladr ap
Cadwallon,” Rhiann said. “Your very name testifies to the truth of
your claim to be the last Pendragon.”

“
Cadwaladr.” He laughed
under his breath and shook his head. “’Battle-leader’ my father may
have christened me, but today the name bore false
witness.”

“
I don’t know about that.”
Rhiann crouched in front of Cade and put her cloth to a jagged cut
on his forehead. It was a task she’d done for innumerable others:
men such as he who’d been wounded in battle, or in a fight, or in
any of a hundred other mistakes that left men battered and bloody.
She was pleased to see that Cade’s wounds were already healing
well. Cade flinched when she touched him, however, and made to push
her hand away.

“
There’s no need,” he
said.

“
My father sent me to you.
He has sought your death all my life. The better you look, the more
glory your end confers on him.”

Cade had been watching her face as she
ministered to him and now leaned forward to grab the fist that held
the cloth and stop her movements. “You’re my sister?”

They wasted three heartbeats in a
silent tug-of-war with the bloody cloth, but Rhiann persisted and
Cade finally gave up, releasing her.

Rhiann shook her head, dabbing at his
forehead again. “No. My mother is not yours. She was my father’s
mistress and died at my birth, not long after he married your
mother. You are two years older than I am.”

Cade sat back. At his apparent
acceptance, Rhiann took a moment to study him as he was studying
her. She knew what he saw: black eyes and black hair, pale skin and
straight teeth. She looked nothing like her father or her dead
mother, her nurse had told her. As a child, she’d hoped that she
was a changeling and dreamed of the day her true family would come
to take her away.

Rhiann also looked nothing like any of
the daughters Cade’s mother had produced with Cadfael. They were
blond like she was, harking back to the northern blood of her
ancestors. Yet Cade little resembled Alcfrith either and Rhiann
wondered at his long dead father. Was he as tall? Were his
shoulders as broad and his hair as dark as Cade’s? Did he draw the
attention of everyone in a room to him as Cade did? It was only his
eyes he must have gotten from his mother, although hers were a pale
blue, like a washed out winter sky, and his were brighter and more
piercing.

“
I noticed you standing
behind your father’s chair.” Cade released Rhiann from the spell
that meeting his eyes had put her under. She moved back, setting
down the bowl to rinse the cloth in the warm water. “If not for the
fine cloth of your dress, I’d have thought you one of his
slaves.”

“
I’m hardly more than that,
in truth,” Rhiann said. “My father demands that I serve
him.”

“
And you do not wish to?”
Cade said.

“
He murders you tomorrow,
Cade,” she said, by way of explanation. “And you are hardly the
first.”

“
So you’re a prisoner of a
kind as well.” Cade reached out as if to touch the back of Rhiann’s
hand with his finger. He held his hand above hers, touching but not
touching, and then withdrew. “How am I to die?”

“
Hanging,” Rhiann said.
“They’re building the gallows now. Are you much wounded
elsewhere?”

Cade shrugged and rested the back of
his head against the wall. “Only a few bruises. And my
pride.”

Able suddenly to give voice to her
anger, Rhiann threw down her cloth. “Why? Why did you come
here?”

Cade canted his head to one side to
look at her. “Why do you care?”

Rhiann gazed at him, exasperated.
“Because we’ve been waiting! The people of Gwynedd have been
waiting for twenty years for you to come, and we would have gladly
waited for many more until you were ready, rather than have you die
tomorrow by my father’s will.”

Cade shook his head. “You don’t know,
do you?” His voice was barely above a whisper and Rhiann leaned in
closer to hear him better.

“
Know what?” she
said.

Cade shook his head again. “Never
mind. It doesn’t matter now.”

“
It does matter,” Rhiann
said, feeling fierce. “What does the bard sing of Arthur? ‘Fear and
dread followed him, even to his death?’ That describes my father
just as well. You shouldn’t be dying here for nothing.”

“‘
Fear and dread followed
him, even to his death, before we covered him with earth. Yet death
do I prefer to cowardice. For this bitter death, I lament,’” Cade
quoted. “I know that Arthur cast a shadow far longer than mine ever
could, but I would be such a one as fought at his side.”

“
Arthur is dead, Cade,”
Rhiann said. “And you’ll die tomorrow. There’s not much there for
the bards to sing of.”

Cade gave her a blank stare, which she
met, and then looked away. “I’m sorry,” Rhiann said.

Cade sat silent, and then he sighed
hard, forcing the air out of his chest. “I am less of a man for
telling you, but my heart tells me that I must speak to someone,
even if she is only a girl-who-is-not-my-sister.”

He studied Rhiann again and she
waited, feeling like she was finally going to be told the truth,
and perhaps it was only a stranger such as he who could do it.
“Rhiannon,” he said, surprising her by using her formal name, “your
father invited me here.”

Rhiann’s hand jerked and she nearly
spilled the bowl of water. “He what?”

Cade gave her a rueful look. “We were
to meet at the ford of the Cefni River, here on Anglesey. We’ve
been negotiating our meeting for weeks.”

“
I’m sure nobody but my
father and a few advisors knew that,” Rhiann said. “There’s been no
talk; no gossip.”

Cade shrugged. “I was clearly a fool
to believe him, and even more of one to come here; but it was not
without cause. After I took from him one of his forts on the
mainland of Gwynedd, he sent an emissary to me. He said that he
didn’t have an heir and would bestow the honor upon me, given that
my mother is his wife. But he felt he needed to meet me first. You
must admit, this overture was not without precedent and after my
initial skepticism, I believed him.”

“
He . . .” Rhiann swallowed
hard through the thickening in her throat. She could barely get the
words out. “Nobody who knows my father would ever have believed
him. He hates you with such passion I’ve thought at times his heart
would give out when he speaks of you.”

“
I didn’t have the benefit
of your experience,” Cade said, “nor the advice of counselors who
would know better. Even my foster father agreed that I should make
the attempt. Unfortunately, he, along with the other counselors I
did have, paid for their ignorance and my naïveté with their
lives.”

Rhiann bowed her head, not wanting to
think about their wasteful deaths, soaking and squeezing the cloth
over and over again. Finally, Cade reached out a hand and gently
took it from her. This time, she let him.

“
I’m sorry,” Rhiann said
again.

“
And my mother?” Cade said.
“How goes it with her?”

Now it was Rhiann’s turn to shake her
head. “You’ve not seen her? Not since you were an
infant?”

“
No,” he said. “Not until
today.”

Rhiann didn’t know what to say; how to
begin or not begin. “I don’t know. She has never . . .” She paused
and tried again. “I have lived with her my whole life and she
showed more emotion in seeing you than I have ever seen from her.
For the first time it occurs to me that she didn’t give you away,
she gave herself. She sent you away and kept herself from you so
that you might live.”

Cade stared past Rhiann at the
fireless hearth and she followed his gaze. It was the beginning of
February, but even so, not too chilly in the room, despite the
recent rains. Rhiann supposed the guards would not have lit the
fire anyway for fear of finding the fort burning down around them
in the night. Then Cade flexed his large hands and Rhiann imagined
him grasping a sword and wielding it. Even the heavier Saxon ones
would give him little difficulty.

“
Go now, and do not watch
tomorrow. I would not have you see me . . .” He stopped and cleared
his throat. “I’d prefer you didn’t see what happens to me
tomorrow.”

Rhiann had been kneeling on the floor
but now got to her feet, leaving the bowl and cloth in case he
wanted them. “Shall I send for your mother?”

Cade didn’t answer. Rhiann let the
silence lengthen and then turned to the door because it didn’t seem
like he was going to respond. She knocked so the guard would let
her out.

“
No,” he said, finally. He
remained sprawled in his original position on the floor.

Rhiann nodded. The guard opened the
door to allow her to leave and then barred it behind her. The guard
had once been one of Cadwallon’s men, long since retired from the
field and now reduced to guarding his former lord’s son. He refused
to meet her eyes, but spoke anyway.

“
It’s best this way, miss,”
he said.

“
No, it isn’t.” The
fierceness of before rose inside her again. “This is wrong. I can’t
believe I’m the only one who sees it!”

The man shrunk under Rhiann’s attack,
but before he could say anything more, Rhiann felt a step on the
floorboards behind her. She turned to see Alcfrith watching them
from the other end of the hall. Their eyes met and Alcfrith tipped
her head towards the entrance to her room before entering it. She
left the door ajar.

Hesitantly, Rhiann followed her into
the room and shut the door.

“
You’ve seen him?” Alcfrith
said.

“
Yes,” Rhiann
said.

“
Is he badly
hurt?”

“
He’s not much injured. Far
less than I’d feared. He will certainly live long enough for Father
to murder him.”

“
As he murdered Cadwaladr’s
father,” Alcfrith said.

“
What? What did you say?”
Rhiann said. “My father killed Cadwallon?”

Alcfrith turned to Rhiann with a blank
stare, one that told Rhiann she was already so far gone in grief
she didn’t see her—and perhaps her words had not been meant for
Rhiann, but for the woman Alcfrith had been.