Spindle and Dagger - J. Anderson Coats Page 0,5

I’m going to get and halfway to frostbite besides, so I struggle into my new gown, the red one Owain brought me just for Christmas. I adjust the cuffs and notice the dried smear of blood.

I wonder what she looked like, where she lived. I wonder how Owain came upon her and in what state he left her. Mayhap she gave the gown up willingly, just trembled a hand toward a coffer or garment rod while she cowered in a corner. Or perhaps she stood her ground and clenched her fists.

Picked up a fire iron.

I plunge the cuff into new water and scrub. I scrub so hard that fibers come loose and my fingernails ache. Then it’s clean. No traces of what came before this moment. No echoes.

After I’m dressed, I’m not ready to face the hall. Not yet. The windows are bright in the maidens’ quarters and Margred answers my knock, bouncing on her toes and swinging embroidery that’s trailing threads. She’s grown at least a handswidth, and she’s rounder through the hips, even though she’s still wearing a child’s straight-waist shift dress. Her face lights up, and she squeals and pulls me inside, even as her nurse sternly reminds her that she shouldn’t just throw open the door to any strange knocking. That nurse is not wrong, but Margred is already hugging me and rattling on about how much she missed me and did I bring my ball and mayhap there’ll be honey cake at supper, and oh saints, her carefree chatter is like a warm drink of cider. I hold up the toy mouse and she snatches it playfully, holds it to her face, and spins like a child half her age.

“You want to see my new gown?” Margred kneels by a coffer and perches the mouse on her head while she swings open the lid. “Papa says perhaps next Christmas I can sit with him and Mama in the hall!”

I meet the nurse’s eyes over Margred’s head. Dresses are the last thing I want to talk about. Next year sometime, when she has twelve summers, Margred will start eating in the hall so the nobility can see what her father has on offer, and that’s when I will start to lose her.

I let her show me, though. The gown is blue and grown-up. She and her mother put in every stitch.

My cuff is still damp. Clammy against my wrist. I bump Margred’s shoulder cheerfully and say, “I did bring my ball. Want to play tomorrow after mass? We’ll tread goal lines in the snow in the courtyard.”

Margred grins and tells me all the girl cousins are spoiling for a match. She closes the coffer lid, the gown forgotten, and dances her toy mouse on her knees. We talk of her horse and the garden she’s planning for spring until serving boys turn up with trays of food. It’s cozy here, and quiet, but Isabel would never come to the maidens’ quarters, so I wish Margred and her nurse a good meal and head across the courtyard toward the hall’s glowing door.

Inside, noblemen are crowded at long tables, laughing and drinking mead and talking over one another while Aberaeron’s priest looks on like a proud grandfather. There are women, too, wives and sisters and mothers, glittering in finery, gathered in tight, impenetrable knots. Owain is sitting at the high table, dressed in a gray tunic and holding out a mug to a cupbearer. I move to join him, dodging hips and elbows, but I’m not five steps inside when Cadwgan blocks my way.

“Kitchen’s across the yard by the wall,” he says. “They’ll give you a tray. I imagine the sleeping chamber will be more to your liking.”

I know better than to take the bait. “Owain would have me near him. It’s Christmas.”

“Which is why you will not sit at my son’s right hand in my hall.” Cadwgan doesn’t add like a wife, but he might as well.

I square up and say, “I saved his life.”

“After you stabbed him!”

No. That was Rhael. She picked up the butcher knife and pressed the fire iron into my hands, and we pushed Miv’s cradle into the darkest corner of the steading and stood shoulder to shoulder while the clatter in the dooryard grew ever louder.

I try to dodge around Cadwgan, but he seizes my arm and roughly turns me so I’m facing the hall door and the cold night — only we come face-to-face with Isabel. She’s wearing a green silk