Spindle and Dagger - J. Anderson Coats Page 0,82
but her free hand is pressed over her mouth. Then she’s flying across the yard, getting her pink gown all muddy, and she flings one arm around me and holds on tight. She is sobbing things into my shoulder — forgive me couldn’t help it never meant to — and I hug her back and the baby too and she might not be Rhael but she is my sister and I forgive her.
“I told the gatemen to keep watch for you,” Nest says through the choke in her voice. “I knew you’d find a way to get yourself clear. Thank every saint there is.”
I can’t help but turn my eyes Heavenward and thank one saint in particular.
Nest pulls away, and her whole face goes hard as she puts a hand to my tender eye and cheek. “That bastard,” she murmurs.
“I told him everything.” I say it like an explanation. The only thing that could make Owain ap Cadwgan raise a hand to me.
But she asks, “Told him what?”
A spare handful of people know the truth. If Owain is careful or brutal, he might yet still control the story of Saint Elen, especially if he can kill Gilbert fitz Richard de Clare. Gerald of Windsor may or may not have ever believed that a saint looks to the safety of Owain ap Cadwgan, but if he learns it’s not true, it won’t be from me.
“Can I hold the . . . can I hold Angharad?” I ask. “And the boys, are they here too? I . . . I hope they still want to see me.”
Nest drops Angharad into my arms, warm and whole and safe. “Oh, child. William asks at least twice a day when you’re coming.”
William wants to show me everything. The stables. The kitchens. The horse trough that’s best for jumping off. He really wants me to meet his father, but Gerald of Windsor is elsewhere and won’t be back till God knows when.
“He’ll have nothing but a welcome for you.” Nest says it firmly, like this matter is more than settled. “He owes you. We both do.”
Nest shines like the sun. Her color is back, her cheeks are no longer hollow, and her smile could bring birds from the trees. There are sticky handprints on her sleeves, and her apron is full of shiny rocks and bread ends and feathers. When William runs ahead, eager to show me something new, Nest’s fingers twitch as if to grab his sleeve and hold him close. Instead she pulls Angharad tight against her, or she pets David’s hair as he perches on my hip.
“Alice,” he murmurs, and grips my shoulder.
At last William wants to show me the nursery. It’s a little alcove in the hall set off by curtains and warm from the nearby hearth. The pallets are plump and neatly made up, and there’s a bench and a coffer for sitting. It’s simple, but snug and comfortable. Like the steading I grew up in.
After supper, William begs to be allowed outside to play border raids with the other boys. Nest hesitates, then nods. As he goes whooping out of the nursery corner, Nest quietly tucks Angharad into the cradle she’s nearly outgrown and gestures for me to put David to bed in the pallet nearest the wall.
The hall beyond the nursery curtain is cheerful and lively, but instead of slipping out and sitting at the hearth with everyone, Nest takes a seat next to me. “I like to sit here in the evenings. I hope you don’t mind. I find it hard to be apart from them. Even when they’re sleeping.”
“Why should I mind? They’re your children.”
Nest looks down. “Perhaps you’d want to leave if you thought you weren’t needed here.”
“I thought you might have changed your mind,” I whisper. “That I’d remind you of him. Of all that happened.”
Nest is quiet. “William will be seven in the fall. I know he must be sent out to be fostered soon. The Normans have a different name for it, but it’s the same thing. He’s going to leave home. Be warband-trained by someone Gerald trusts. He won’t be the first baby of mine being raised by someone I didn’t choose. But William is different. He will always be. David and Angharad, too. We survived a harrowing, the four of us, and one by one my children will go into the world where I can’t protect them. As soon as they go, that’s all I will be able to think about,