Grasso, Patricia (2 page)

"Deliver this to the high table," Haylan ordered, handing the girl the bowl. She yanked the girl's bodice down a couple of inches, saying, "Cleavage comforts a grieving man. Be kind to the baron."

"I hope my kindness will kill him," Elen said with a grimace.

"You know my mother's last wishes," Keely said, turning to her cousins. "When supper is done, clear the hall for the deathwatch. I'll return then." With that, she left the kitchen.

Three hours later, Megan Glendower Lloyd lay in state inside the torch-lit great hall, her simple wooden coffin resting on trestles. Wrapped in her white robe, Megan appeared to be sleeping.

Keely walked into the nearly deserted hall. With her ebony mane cascading to her waist in pagan fashion, she wore her own white ceremonial robe and the blazing dragon pendant. In her hands she carried a fresh bouquet of oak leaves and mistletoe.

Odo and Hew stood beside the bier and waited for her.

"Have you seen to the grave?" Keely asked.

"Dug where you wanted," Odo answered.

"And the cross?"

"Carved to your order," Hew replied.

Keely nodded with grim satisfaction and placed the bouquet across her mother's chest. Then she sat on a wooden bench beside the bier.

Odo and Hew sat down on either side of her. Faithful Haylan walked in, carrying her own stool, and sat with them in silence. Finally, Madoc arrived and took a seat on the bench next to Odo.

"Keeping the watch means losing a good night's sleep," Madoc complained.

"It's the least you can do to honor a loving wife who died trying to give you another son," Keely shot back.

"Megan was never a loving wife," the baron grumbled, his voice filled with bitterness. "Her heart always belonged to him. Never me."

Keely froze. He spoke of her father. Had Madoc known him? Keely opened her mouth to question her stepfather but felt her cousins' hands touch her forearms, warning her against rash speech.

An hour passed. And then another.

"I'm thirsty," Madoc announced, breaking the silence as he rose from the bench. "I'm in need of something fortifying. I'll be back."

He left the hall and never returned.

Father Bundles arrived in the crowded great hall an hour before dawn. As he made his way through the mob of clansmen and retainers, the old priest muttered under his breath about the earliness of the hour. Burying a body in the middle of the night was barbaric, he thought. And that was before he saw Keely.

Keely looked like a pagan princess in her flowing white robe. Around her neck hung a wreath fashioned from oak leaves and mistletoe.

"Shame on you for wearing that to Megan's funeral," Father Bundles scolded her. "You'll be needing my absolution before the sun sets this day."

Keely arched a dark brow at him. "I honor my mother's memory, Father Bundles. If you want to waste time in sermons, we'll forgo the funeral mass. The choice is yours."

" 'Tis blasphemy," Father Bundles said. He scanned the crowded chamber. "Where are Baron Lloyd and Rhys?"

"The baron is sleeping off the effects of his drinking," Keely told him, "and my brother is busy plundering the English."

" 'Tis an unnatural family," the old priest grumbled.

"These friends have come to bury Megan," Keely said, gesturing toward the crowd. "Please begin the service."

With Odo and Hew acting as pallbearers, Father Bundles led the way from the great hall to the chapel. Keely walked behind the casket, and everyone followed her.

The old priest opened his mouth to pray, but Keely called out, "Celebrate the short mass, Father. Megan desired a dawn burial."

Father Bundles's expression told Keely that Madoc would hear of her blasphemy. The short mass took exactly twenty minutes.

"Megan will not be interred in the Lloyd vault," Keely announced. "My mother wished to enjoy the rising sun for all of eternity."

Though he did look ready to explode, Father Bundles swallowed his fury. Expressing anger in the house of God was a terrible sin.

Keely pulled her hood up to cover her ebony mane and led the unusual funeral procession out of the chapel. Odo and Hew, carrying the casket, followed her. Behind them walked Father Bundles and then a piper playing a mourning lament. The baron's clansmen and retainers marched behind in silence.

Bright tentacles of orange light streaked the eastern sky as the funeral procession wended its way past the graveyard to a grassy incline where three gigantic oak trees stood together like old friends. The grave beneath one of those mighty oaks faced the rising sun.

"This is unhallowed ground," Father Bundles protested.

"Then you must bless it," Keely snapped, losing patience.

Ready to argue, Father Bundles glanced at Odo and Hew. Their great size, combined with their threatening expressions, made him reconsider.

Father Bundles recited a few prayers in Latin, sprinkled the grave with holy water, and hurried away. After offering words of condolence, everyone but Keely and her cousins dispersed.

Odo and Hew lowered the casket into the ground as the sun rose in all of its radiant glory. The air was hushed as if the world held its breath.

Keely closed her eyes, raised her arms toward the sun, and whispered, "Father Sun kisses Mother Earth." She looked down at the open grave. "Rest in peace, dear mother. Watch the light come into the world each day."

Odo and Hew refilled the grave and set the temporary marker, a Celtic cross carved from oak, into its place. Later, the stonecutter would place the permanent cross there.

"Rhys should have been here," Keely said, her disappointment obvious.

"He'll be furious with Madoc," Odo remarked.

"My earliest memory is of Mother and me sitting beneath these oaks," Keely said, tears welling up in her eyes. "We sat here every day, no matter the season or weather, and she taught me the Old Ways. I'm alone in the world now."

"But you have us," Hew protested.

"And don't forget Rhys," Odo added.

And Robert Talbot,
Keely thought. But she said with a sad smile, "Thank you for your loyalty, cousins."

Brushing the tears from her cheeks, Keely knelt beside her mother's grave. She removed the oak and mistletoe wreath from around her neck and placed it over the cross, whispering, "Send me a sign, Mother."

A sudden gust of wind blew the hood off her head, and falling oak leaves fluttered around her. Keely closed her eyes and murmured, "Until Samhuinn."

Unnerved, Odo and Hew looked at each other. Those two fearless warriors of many a raid made a protective sign of the cross—just to be sure.

By the time Keely and her cousins returned to the great hall, clansmen and retainers were crowded inside eating their morning meal. Looking tired and none too happy, Madoc sat at the high table. His complexion was ashen, and his head rested on one hand.

Father Bundles stood beside him. The old priest appeared in a high agitation as he talked and gestured toward the hall's entrance.

"Aye, Father," Madoc agreed in a loud voice, his gaze sliding to his stepdaughter. "Megan raised her daughter to be as heathen as she."

Heedless of consequence, Keely advanced on the high table. "Do not foul my mother's memory by slandering her good name, you sniveling son of a—"

"Curse and rot you!" Madoc shouted, banging his fist on the table, stopping Keely in her tracks. "I am the lord here. Never speak to me in that disrespectful manner again."

Knowing her stepfather was all bluster, Keely arched one ebony brow at him. "Your grief makes you cranky," she said. "Perhaps a mug of ale will revive your good humor." She threw him a contemptuous look and added, "A lord? More like a drunken snake masquerading as—"

Leaping out of his chair, Madoc banged his fist on the table again. Rage reddened his complexion.

"You are naught but a bastard witch!" Madoc shouted, advancing on her.

Odo and Hew stepped in front of Keely like two fierce hounds protecting their mistress.

"Stand aside," Madoc ordered.

"You must go through us to get to her," Odo announced.

Madoc couldn't credit the insubordination he was hearing. He glanced from one hulking brother to the other and said, "Your combined brains are no bigger than a rooster's balls."

At the insult, Odo and Hew growled low in their throats. Madoc wisely retreated several paces.

"You are not of the Cymry," Madoc said to his stepdaughter. "Take your few possessions and leave Wales."

"The blood of Llewelyn the Great and Owen Glendower flows in my veins," Keely cried. "I am a true princess of Powys and Gwynedd."

"You are the Princess of Nowhere," Madoc sneered in a voice that carried to the far corners of the hall. "That blazing dragon pendant and those violet eyes mark you the uncherished by-blow of an Englishman."

Everyone in the chamber gasped audibly and fell silent.

"Megan is dead," Madoc went on. "Seek out your English father. Begone from my land." Turning his anger on clansmen and retainers, he warned, "Show your backs to this simpering bastard, or be outcast yourselves."

Keely turned on her heels in a swirl of white robe and ebony hair and marched proudly out of the hall. Before following her outside, Odo and Hew growled as menacingly as they could at the baron, who leaped back another pace.

When her cousins joined her outside, Keely said, "I never thought Madoc would—" She broke off with a sob, and tears streamed down her cheeks.

"He wouldn't dare if Rhys was here," Odo said, putting a comforting arm around her.

"Madoc lies," Hew added.

Both Keely and Odo stared at him blankly.

"You never simper," Hew explained. "At least, I never saw you simper." He looked at his brother and asked, "What does
simper
mean?"

Odo cuffed the side of his brother's head. "What does it matter, you blinking idiot?"

Hew shrugged. "I guess you don't know either."

In spite of her predicament, Keely smiled at her two giants. "I thank you for being faithful cousins," she said. "Odo, please prepare Merlin for traveling. Include a bag of feed for her. Hew, ask Haylan to pack a food basket for me. Enough to get me to England."

"We're going with you," Odo said.

"Sharing my exile is unnecessary," Keely said, refusing to let them give up their home.

"We insist," Hew said. "Besides, nothing is forever."

"The three of us will return to Wales one day soon," Odo added.

"Then I accept your offer," Keely agreed, grateful for their company. "My father lives in Shropshire."

"Who is he?" Odo asked.

"Robert Talbot."

"Talbot does sound like an English name," Hew remarked.

Keely looked at him. "The renowned Duke of Ludlow is most assuredly an Englishman."

"The Duke of—?"

"Your hearing is keen. The Duke of Ludlow sired me," Keely said, already turning away. "Now let's not waste any more time. Meet me at the stableyard in one hour."

With her few possessions neatly folded inside her leather satchel, Keely spared a final glance at her spartanly furnished chamber and then hurried outside. The stable-yard was conspicuously deserted except for Haylan, Odo, and Hew. Apparently, the Lloyd clansmen and retainers were too fearful of incurring the baron's anger to see her off. Keely didn't blame them for keeping their distance from her. If Madoc was capable of outcasting his own stepdaughter, he could do the same or worse to them.

When she stood in front of Haylan, Keely pasted a bright smile onto her face. "Thank you for everything," she said quietly to the older woman. "Especially for your loyalty to my mother."

"Megan was a great lady," Haylan replied. "The same as you'll be one day."

Keely hugged the woman, saying, "Please tell Rhys not to follow me. I'll write him after I've settled into my new home with my father."

Haylan nodded and then looked at the two giants standing there. "Protect the girl with your lives."

Odo and Hew bobbed their heads in unison.

Fighting back tears, Keely gave Haylan another quick hug and then mounted Merlin. Odo and Hew mounted their own horses.

"Wait!" a voice called.

Keely turned and saw Father Bundles running into the stableyard.

"I'm sorry for this trouble I've caused you," the priest said when he reached her side.

"There's no need to apologize," Keely told him. "At the moment of my conception, the wind whispered my destiny to the holy stones. What is happening was meant to be."

Father Bundles refrained from lecturing her about the sinful folly of her religious beliefs. "I'll celebrate a mass each day for the repose of Lady Megan's soul," he promised.

"Thank you, Father," Keely replied. She believed in the significance of the Christian rites no more than her mother had, but to insure the peace of mind of people like the priest, they'd always pretended otherwise.

"God protect you, child," Father Bundles said, blessing her with the sign of the cross.

Without another word, Keely and her cousins rode out of the stableyard. Though an aching sadness settled around her heart, Keely never once looked back for a final glimpse of her former home. Her destiny lay in England. Megan had seen it, and what her mother saw came to pass. Always.

Leicester, England

The sun rode high in a cloudless blue sky that sultry day in mid-August. Unusually hot summer weather gripped the land and its people.

A solitary horseman reached the crest of a grassy knoll and felt a rejuvenating surge of relief at what he saw. After journeying for long days beneath that scorching sun to catch up with Queen Elizabeth on her annual summer progress, the Earl of Basildon had arrived at his destination. Before him rose Kenilworth Castle, the home of Robert Dudley, the Earl of Leicester.

Tradition linked the ancient castle with the reign of King Arthur, but Richard Devereux knew better. The great house actually began as a Norman fortification. Henry V added a summer house on the shore of an artificial lake, and Dudley built his own block of buildings in the light high-windowed style so popular in these modern times.

"I can't believe Elizabeth gifted the son of a traitor with all this," Richard muttered to himself. To the Dudley family, loyalty was like the weather—subject to change without warning.