Spindle and Dagger - J. Anderson Coats Page 0,19
face is growing red, but he bows curtly and strides away before one of the fists clenched at his sides gets the better of him.
Rhys nudges me. I’ve stopped walking, and I’m near enough to the corner that William looks up at me, lost and floundering: Please just make it better. I stumble forward. Away from them. Toward Owain, who takes my hand, puts it on his arm, then calls out to the hall, “Nest will play at kitchen maid.”
Nest’s jaw drops, her mouth moving soundlessly. At length she shifts David onto the floor and claws her way to her feet. She squares up like a warbander and says, quiet but clear, “Not even you would dare treat a hostage this way, Owain ap Cadwgan.”
Owain lifts a brow. “Who said you were a hostage?”
“I’m a slave, then?”
He flicks his fingers at the hall door, offhand, careless, like the half command is all that’s needed. Nest takes a slow measure of the room. The lads cackling and tipsy, clustered, watching her over mug rims. The steward long gone and hobbled besides. Me — her eye glides over me like I’m a mongrel dog Owain holds on a tether. At last she hauls David and William each to his feet, then shoulders Not Miv.
“And where might you be taking your sons, Nest, wife of Gerald the Coward? Into the kitchen?” Owain tsks. “However do the Normans produce fighting men?”
“I’ll not leave them here alone,” Nest replies through her teeth. “If you want to kill them, you’ll do it looking into my eyes.”
William makes a tiny animal sound and pulls his cloak over his head.
Owain puts on a look of great hurt. “They’re just little babies, Nest. What kind of beast do you take me for?”
Nest wisely presses her lips together, though it’s clear she’d sorely like to tell him just what kind of beast she takes him for.
“I’m really just a lamb,” Owain goes on in a voice of butter. “Elen will tell you. Won’t you, sweeting?”
Owain pulls me onto the bench at his right hand, harsh and sudden, and grins at Nest, all teeth. She blinks rapidly. I know exactly what she sees. What he’d have her see. His hand on my arm and me all but on his lap. I dare not shake him off or shift away, but I cannot look at her, either.
Nest takes her time hefting David onto one hip while settling Not Miv on the other, and she herds a whimpering, limping William in front of her toward the hall door.
There are hostages at royal residences all the time, sons and brothers of men Cadwgan can’t quite bring himself to trust. They’re given the best lodging the place affords, and they sit at table and go to mass with the rest of us. All that’s denied them is freedom to come and go. Anything less, and Cadwgan’s sons and brothers, and those of his allies, will get the same at someone else’s hands.
The lads take their places at the trestle table, crowding the benches and elbowing one another. They’re recounting the raid on Gerald of Windsor’s home. How they went over the wall in the darkest part of night. How you could see the burning wreckage from leagues away till dawn and then some. What each of them took. Who each of them killed. Just like any ordinary raid. Only it’s not.
At length — at long length — Nest shuffles into the hall with an earthenware bowl of something steaming. The lads chortle and laugh and hoot, and color swarms up her neck as she brings the bowl toward the king’s chair and Owain, who’s leaning his chin on one fist and regarding her with a faint taunting smirk.
Somewhere outside, Not Miv is wailing.
Nest places the bowl before Owain. Her eyes are steady but absolutely violent, and her hand trembles as if she’d like nothing better than to dump it in his lap. But she steps away. Bows her head.
“And the lads?” Owain asks in a loud voice.
Nest makes an incredulous gesture at them all, arrayed like a small army along the benches.
“It’s a great honor, Gerald’s wife, to serve such company at table.” Owain smiles again, and I think of the knife, how there have been times I could have killed him in two simple moves. How he shouldn’t even be alive, but he’s alive because of me.
“I’ll help her,” I say quietly, and Nest is suddenly hopeful, all the way pleading even though I