The Faery Bride (The Celtic Legends Series Book 2) (6 page)

“This is not for drying.” The words came out with a chatter of her teeth. “Would you get me a fitting piece of cloth? I’m near frozen to death here.”

“Aren’t you a strange one. Dry yourself, now.” The woman swept the linen around her. “It wouldn’t do for a healer to be catching the ague the moment she steps foot in Wales. I’ll get another linen for your hair, now, just a moment.”

Aileen wrapped herself in the linen and stepped out of the cask as Marged bustled about, blathering on without taking a breath and rifling through the things she had carried in. Aileen rubbed the fine weave against her skin, thinking all the while what a waste it was to dirty such exquisite linen drying a body that hadn’t been properly washed in all the weeks of the sea voyage. Wasn’t that the way of the wealthy and the powerful, to put all the hard work of some expert spinner and squinty–eyed weaver to waste like this?

She pressed the soft linen against her face. She wasn’t so weak from a few days’ diet of bread and water not to know something was up and about. Life wasn’t always easy on Inishmaan, and there had been more than one season in her lifetime when she’d felt the pang of hunger. Rhys had much to learn if he thought by sending her a bite of food, a bath, fine linens, and someone who spoke a civilized tongue, that she would then do sorcery for his whims.

She had a suspicion she knew what those whims were.

“Here’s another.” Marged snapped out another linen. “Faith, you are a tall one, I’d have to clamber on a cask to get to your hair. You’ll have to do this yourself, unless you’re of a mind to squat in the rushes.”

“Five–and–twenty years I’ve done well enough without a servant.” She twisted her hair into the cloth and cast her gaze around the room, searching amid the scatter of silks for her wheat–colored tunic. “Will you tell me where my clothes are?”

“They’re in the washing, of course. My lord brought you something else to wear. Now let me see if I can put my hands upon it, fine stuff, it is.” Marged walked like a cat in a hurry. “A waste it was lying in that chest for so many years. It’s good it’ll see some use. Here it is.”

Aileen stared at the fine stuff in Marged’s hands, cloth that smelled vaguely of heather. “You’re mocking me.”

“Now why would I be doing that? Fine clothes, these are, though a bit musty, I’ll admit, for they’ve been in a chest in the master’s room for more years than I care to count, but they should fit you fine enough.”

“Would you be wearing them?”

“Faith, I’m too old to be wearing such things. Besides, such richness is not for the likes of me.”

“Nor me, either. If this is your lord’s idea of kindness, I’m of no mind to accept it.”

Balancing one linen atop her head and gripping the other over a breast, she tiptoed through the rushes, plopped down on a sack, and curled her legs beneath her.

So now it’s come to silks, she thought. What would Rhys ap Gruffydd want, seeing her dressed in silks like some fine lady?

“Are you refusing our hospitality, lass?”

She avoided Marged’s eye and arranged the edges of the linen around her legs. Yes, it was rude to refuse a gift so fine. “I’ve had a bellyful of Welsh hospitality, truth be told. I’ll wait for my own clothes, thank you very much.”

Aye, her fine serviceable tunic, the fibers spun with her own hands from her family’s own sheep, woven into cloth by her mother’s hands, sewn into a tunic by her sister’s quick fingers, and dyed along the edges with blue from woad. Aye, aye, she wanted her tunic, with its deep shoulders and comforting warmth and the lingering smell of salt–sea, with the tear in the hem where she’d torn it looking for bird’s eggs on the western cliffs.

“I’ll see to it, but I don’t know what the master will be saying about this.”

A short time later, dressed in her own wool which had been brushed to a fine clean nap, Aileen plaited her hair and fixed it with a bit of string that had unraveled from one of the sacks of grain. The door opened again, pouring the cold white light of day through the room, but this time a tall, broad–shouldered silhouette filled the portal.

With a quiver in her stomach she turned to him, only to find herself face–to–face with the man who had come to her home that fateful day, the one–handed Welshman who had aided Rhys in capturing her.

“I think,” he began, dipping his head to step into the food shed, “that if a gaze were an arrow, I’d be standing here shot clear through.”

“I’ve met the devil. Now I meet the devil’s right hand.”

“The devil’s right hand has a name. It’s Dafydd.”

“I see you’ve no problem getting your tongue around the Irish now.”

“My mother taught both me and Rhys.” He shrugged a broad shoulder under silk the color of summer grass. “Our mother and Marged, that is, who rarely allowed us to get a word in.”

Our mother . . . She narrowed her eyes. She saw the resemblance now. They were of the same height. This man’s hair was a lighter black, the jaw not as sharp, the eyes not so piercing. As she stared, a smile lit those features.

Of the same blood, she thought. But not of the same temperament.

“So,” he continued, swiftly, casting his gaze over her tunic, “what of the silks I sent you? Did they not fit?”

“
You
sent the silks?”

“And the bath and the food and Marged.” He shrugged again. “We’ve no woman in the house, so I hope you’ll forgive the belated hospitality.”

“You’ve an odd way of showing it.” She turned away and wondered at her vague sense of disappointment. Why had she expected any kindness, even kindness with a purpose, from the man who’d stolen her away? “And I’m no Lady O’Brian of Connacht, to be painted in rich colors.”

“The green would have done you justice.”

“Rich gifts from guilty hands.”

“Ah.” His brows shot up, and she swore she saw him suppress a smile. “I’d heard this about the Irish. My mother was stubborn too.”

“Was she stolen from Ireland? Do the sons follow the follies of their father?”

“I hope not, indeed.” His smile hardened. “My father sired nine sons, most on the wrong side of the blanket.”

“If you’re looking for redemption,
David,”
she interrupted, the name tripping on her lips, “don’t be doing it with silks. Get me on a ship back to Inishmaan, and then mayhap your soul will find peace.”

For a moment, looking at him, she thought she saw a shadow pass over his face. Could that be shame? Before she could be sure, he shifted his gaze to the horizon outside the door.

“Three days in a musty place like this will strain the disposition of even the most gracious of ladies.” He reached up and tugged his mustache with his fingers. “Come and take a turn with me around the yard. The air is brisk, but—”

“Aren’t you afraid I’ll try to escape?”

“With mountains between here and the ocean, and an ocean between Wales and Ireland? No, lass. There is no escape . . . unless you can make a broom fly.”

The hesitant grin on his face took the threat out of his words and did even more than that: It disarmed her. She didn’t want to fight, anyway. She needed to get out, even if it meant putting up with the curious looks of outsiders. She needed to take stock of her surroundings, find out how well she was guarded, and get an idea of how difficult it would be to slip out under the cover of night.

She snatched her mantle off a cask. “Pots, pans, and tempers—I’ve made them fly. But never a broom. At least, not yet.”

She strode past him into the bright day, and then staggered to a stop. She’d never get used to a horizon that began so high that she had to arch her neck to look at it. Dizzying, it was, all those jagged blue peaks, they left her weaving in a state of unbalance that had her thankful for the hand Dafydd curled around her arm.

But only for a moment. As soon as the dizziness eased, she pulled away from him. She let him lead her around the perimeter of the yard. The
llys,
as he called it, consisted of a circular enclosure of wooden palisades set in a clay–and–earth bank. Wattle–and–daub houses lined the inside edge—storage, Dafydd told her, for grain, hay, wood, weapons. One long shed sheltered the horses, another the butter and cheese. The mead–hall loomed in the center, a large building of slate–thin layers of stone. The roof was thatched with reeds.

She turned her eye to the people. A swarthy folk they were, dusky haired, light eyed, and she felt as if the sun set her bright hair afire amidst them. The blacksmith’s clanging faltered as they passed. The stable boy lifted his head from where he worked polishing a harness. The chatter of the kitchen servants ebbed to a whisper as they moved on. A workman wattling a hole in the palisades wobbled on the ladder as he caught sight of her. Dafydd barked something in Welsh and curled a hand around her arm.

“Forgive us.” He led her across a muddy trench. “Living so far from sea or road, rarely do we have visitors. Even more rarely, visitors from so far afield. The people of Graig are curious about the healer in their midst.”

“Your mother should have birthed you first.” She sidestepped a pile of tinder just outside one of the huts. “Had you been Lord of Graig, there would have been no woman–theft, I’d wager.”

“Ah, but my lady, I am the eldest son of Gruffydd, the eldest of all his sons.”

Nay, it couldn’t be…not older than
him.
Those hazel eyes gleamed with too much wickedness, that smile came too easily.
He
looked ten years older, twenty years wearier.

“In Wales,” he explained, “a father does not pass his wealth to the oldest son. He divides it equally among all his sons and dies praying they’ll not kill each other over it.
Gavelkind,
it’s called. The scourge of Wales.”

“Then why does Rhys hold the title? Doesn’t that go to the eldest son?”

“Sometimes.” He lifted his other arm. Scarlet silk drooped over the knobbed wrist. “But it wasn’t for a man like me to rule.”

By the ease at which he used the stump, she guessed that Dafydd had to have been born without it. That would explain why Dafydd was not the Lord of Graig. A maimed chieftain cannot rule, not in Ireland, either. It was an ancient law, older than even Da knew, rarely spoken but always followed. Many an Irish warrior–chieftain had been unseated from power because of a disfiguring war–wound. A maimed man was thought of as less of a warrior. A sick or disfigured one, bad luck to the health of the land.

Then she remembered Rhys’s mask.

“That arm of yours shouldn’t make a bit of difference,” she said, setting out to finish their circuit of the yard. “Your brother manages to rule with that war–wound of his.”

“War–wound?”

“The one on his face.” She traced on her own features the line of his mask. “How is it that he rules and you cannot, when he is just as disfigured?”

A strange expression flitted across Dafydd’s face. “That’s no war–wound.”

“Isn’t it now?” So, it was just as she suspected. “Then what the devil is it?”

An odd light gleamed in Dafydd’s eyes. Grinding to a halt, he spat something in Welsh, and swung around with a snap of his cloak to stare up at the northern hills.

“My brother needs a knock on the head.” His lips whitened into a grim line. “And if I had two good fists I’d be the first to give it to him. I should have known he would not tell you.”

“Tell me what?”

But Dafydd was gone, striding toward the stables, abandoning her in the bright open courtyard, not far from a cluster of girls feeding chickens from their aprons. Their curious whispers rode to her on the breeze, but she didn’t care.

Now she knew for sure that she hadn’t been summoned to heal the three–legged dog she’d seen amid the hounds, or the falcon with the broken wing she’d glimpsed in the mews, or the young stable boy with the bloody linen upon his arm—the only signs of injury she’d seen among the people and the livestock of Graig.

She was here to heal Rhys.

And Rhys was too proud to admit it.

***

Aileen and Dafydd approached the mound from the south, skirting the stretches of ground too boggy to cross. Despite the chill filtering through Aileen’s cloak, the morning mist had long dissipated in the valley. She saw a solitary figure standing upon the barrow, wheeling a falcon through its paces within a circle of ancient standing stones.

She watched with scorn and more than a bit of horror. Wasn’t it like this arrogant lord to play at falconry within the confines of a faery–ring, as if he were the master of it? She’d mark it as stark ignorance if Dafydd hadn’t informed her that the place was called King Arthur’s grave, the resting place of a great warrior of ancient legend. Even ignorance couldn’t be used as an excuse, for in Ireland, such a circle of standing stones bubbled with invisible music, so much so that even those who were deaf to the ancient voices still veered away from the place, sensing what they could not understand.

Yet there he stood, wheeling the bloodied lure over his head to tempt the falcon back down to the ground.

When she reached the foot of the mound, she tilted her head, listening for the distant strains of faery music. She cast her gaze to the ground in search of footmarks in the mud. There should be some whisper of the Otherworld here…. She struggled with the odd sensation of entering a familiar place and finding something gone, and not knowing for sure what the thing was.

Dafydd unwound the reins from his handless wrist, eased off the horse, and then helped her dismount from her donkey. “I’ll wait here for you.”

She said, “You’re not coming?”

“There are times, Aileen, when a man doesn’t want a witness.”

She tugged her tunic off the back of the donkey and made her way up the muddy slope. She gathered her cloak in her arms so as not to drag it through the grass and mud, warning herself that she must watch her tongue. If she let it loose and told him exactly what was on her mind, he’d likely buttress himself behind that shield of pride and she’d be no better off than before. Better that she set to the matter straightaway, as if there was nothing wrong with his foolish silence.

Oh, what lengths a woman must go to tiptoe around a man’s pride.

She let her skirts fall as she reached the first of the standing stones. Such a cold, forlorn place, with the wind howling and the sky leaden above. That strange sensation gripped her again. Surely, the wind of her island blew just as frigid over the bare rock. Yet even on the rawest day, there had always been a whisper of laughter in the air or a patter of feet in the faery–place. Here, the ground did not pulse, the air did not sing—the pitch of the wind, the scent of the earth, everything lay so different, so silent, as if she’d stepped through time to return to a familiar place, now age–worn and abandoned.