Spindle and Dagger - J. Anderson Coats Page 0,11
the lads. All but the newest saw with their own eyes what I did for Owain, how he went from bleeding out on my steading floor to burning down forts and halls instead of lying in the cold earth. There’s not a man in this warband who does not believe Owain ap Cadwgan has the protection of a saint.
“Let’s have a look.” I turn away from the chapel. “Help me bring him to the kitchen.”
The building is all the way across the yard, and we move at Rhys’s shambling pace. He holds his injured arm with the wound turned outward, and I can study it sidelong. It’s bad, but nowhere near as bad as the one that almost killed Owain. I’ll put the irons to it, Rhys will recover and see a miracle, God willing, and every time he’s near me he’ll touch that scar.
The lads of Owain’s warband will see him do it, too.
The kitchen is hot and damp and thick with smells. I poke through the scatter of cutlery and implements on the trestle board, then pick a long, thin spreader and lay its rounded end in the fire. I sit on my haunches watching it heat up. There’s a quiet creak of leather, and Einion kneels at my elbow. He’s built like a bull, all compact muscles and a whipcrack temper. I make myself stay still. He will not touch me.
“Owain’s taking it hard.” Einion rubs a hand over his jaw. “He will not stop speaking of it.”
He’ll be seeing the blade falling. Helpless to stop it. The blood. The gasping.
“But Saint Elen did not save Llywelyn penteulu,” Einion says in an oh-so-quiet voice.
“Saint Elen protects Owain.” The patter rises to save me, and I let it. “She looks to him always. The rest of us are on our own.”
“Seems a strange way to protect a man, removing his right hand.”
I cut my eyes to Einion, but he’s merely studying the fire, balanced toe and knee, ambush-still.
“Then again,” he goes on, “I’m a simple fighting man. What do I know of saints and their doings? They are not motivated by our petty concerns. Like spite. And vengeance.”
His voice is bland. Neither vicious nor sly. It’s nothing I can’t agree with, yet all my arm hairs prickle.
“Fighting men should keep to fighting,” I reply to the fire. “Let the saints do as they will.”
Einion clears his throat. “This boy must recover. Bad enough that Gerald of Windsor got Llywelyn penteulu. Another one lost . . . Owain just . . . cannot have it.” He leans close. “I’ve seen what you can do with those irons, and we’ll all of us pray to Saint Elen.”
I said I could save Owain’s life. I promised it. I wept it, and it was Einion ap Tewdwr who pushed the brutes clear, who made them let me up, who hauled me staggering to Owain’s side and stood over me blade in hand to see I made good that promise. That Owain survived at all was Saint Elen’s doing as much as mine, for I could barely think — or breathe, or move — as I shuddered that knife clear. There can be no other reason I’d remember the time our best mouser limped into the steading with a gaping wound on his hindquarters, and my mother pressed a glowing-hot blade against the poor cat’s side while he yowled and thrashed.
Rhys’s eyes are shut tight, his jaw clenched. At midsummer, this boy was still eating his mother’s oatcakes and tracking mud across her clean floor. I wrap my cloak around my hand and pull the spreader out of the fire. A faint whisper of steam curls off the blade. I nod to Einion, who secures Rhys’s shoulder and wrist.
I have never once used the word miracle, but I can still hope for one. After all, that cat lived an age and caught mice under his big paws right up till his last days.
IT’S CLEAR AND COLD AND DIZZYINGLY SUNNY. Margred and the cousins and I pile outside for a game, and we run up and down the courtyard kicking my ball and screeching like warbanders till our cheeks are burned pink and our feet sting from the ice. Finally, none of us can take another step, and we slump like dishrags on a bench outside the maidens’ quarters, squinting against the sun-glint diamonds on what’s left of the snow. Then the maids and nurses appear in the doorway, clucking over the girls’ red