Spindle and Dagger - J. Anderson Coats Page 0,27
to hold, giving him Nest in marriage so she’d be looked after. Just as he did with Gerald of Windsor all those years ago.
“If Gerald wants them back, he can come bareheaded up that aisle and beg for them on his knees.” Owain takes a drink of wine. “Until then, I’ll keep them as I see fit.”
William twists a hand into my cloak and whispers, “Is my papa coming?”
I give him what I hope is a reassuring smile and put a finger to my lips because there’s no good answer to that question.
“This is a mistake, son.” Cadwgan shakes his head. “I’m as happy as you to see Gerald humbled, but this is beyond Gerald now.”
“You worry overmuch. Everything’s in hand.” Owain rises from the king’s chair and gestures grandly to it. “Take some meat? You must have been all day in the saddle.”
“We’re not done here,” Cadwgan replies, but he lowers himself into the chair with a groan as Owain takes a seat on the bench next to him.
They’ll want wine, and anything I can do to keep this fragile peace will be good for all of us. I gently pull away from William, hold up the flagon by way of explanation, and murmur that he should help his mother with the baby. He nods and creeps along the wall toward Nest, keeping to shadows. I approach the high table, David still on my hip, and fight down the desire to brain Owain ap Cadwgan with the flagon and knock half a measure of sense into him.
I made Owain this way, though. I stood over his sickbed and taught it to him chapter and verse as I put salve on the raised ripple of flesh that my sister gave him and I burned clean.
“What does your oh-so-clever bedmate think of your captive?” Cadwgan asks Owain. “Are they tearing each other’s hair out? Or mayhap you should be worried they’re in league against you.”
Owain laughs and holds up his mug. “Why would they be in league against me?”
I pour the wine, a long crimson sluice that catches stray winks of firelight.
“This isn’t the first time Nest has been carried off by an enemy,” Cadwgan says. “She had about eight or nine summers when the Normans killed her father and took her away to England. You came by your clever bedmate much the same way.”
“It’s nowhere near the same.” Owain takes a drink and smooths a hand over my hip, and I twitch as if stung. “Elen saved my life. I keep her close. All the Normans did for Nest was shove her at the English king to help her get on in the world. Giving that roaming-handed lecher a child set her up for life.”
That’s one way to see it. How a man would see it.
Cadwgan frowns. “I don’t think you understand the scale of what you’ve done. I planned a war, lad. Not a slaughter.”
“I know exactly what I’ve done,” Owain replies. “I’ve sent a message to every man the length and breadth of the kingdoms of Wales: Keep your damn hands off my birthright. Stay well clear of anything belonging to me and mine.”
“That may be what you think you’ve done.” Cadwgan tips his mug at Owain. “Gerald of Windsor will come for her, though. That means he’s coming for you. No quarter given.”
I will not think of my father, how he was killed with my mother and all the beasts seized so there was no one to come for me.
Nest’s father, too. I touch the bracelet, then pull my sleeve over it.
Owain merely smiles and asks politely after Isabel’s health. For a long moment Cadwgan looks capable of killing his son with his bare hands, then he coughs the kind of helpless laugh you do when there’s nothing left to say.
Because when Gerald of Windsor comes for us, it won’t be the hellbent, rage-driven attack of a mad dog after all. Not if Gerald can trade on his friendship with the English king. He’ll call up an army of big Normans and use all the resources of Dyfed to hunt down the man who abducted and misused his wife and children.
Owain will have just the lads of his warband. And the favor of a saint he’s never had a reason to question.
The feast peters out and Cadwgan leaves, but the lads still sit around the hall and laugh too loudly and tell boastful stories while drinking through the contents of Cadwgan’s storehouse. Owain has had way too