Spindle and Dagger - J. Anderson Coats Page 0,9
and everyone returns alive and weighed down with plunder. In the worst, you carry a friend home wrapped in canvas and pray for his soul and drink his memory till you can barely stand.
My little playact clings to those odds.
“The northern provinces again?” I keep my eyes off that scar.
“Dyfed.”
I push myself up on one elbow. “What? No. You — what?”
“The English king wants to conquer all the kingdoms of Wales. He can’t simply invade, though.” Owain smiles faintly. “The last time a king of theirs tried, he tripped over himself limping home with his nose well-bloodied.”
Cadwgan’s knuckles were first among those that did the bloodying. I wait for Owain to say as much, to tell the stories he must have grown up on, but instead he growls, “The English king refuses to risk himself, so he sends lackeys like Gerald of Windsor to take and hold what they can, and now Gerald governs Dyfed. Which means that patch of dirt on our southern border is a sword leveled at my father’s throat. Mine, too. Which means Gerald of Windsor needs himself a humbling. So I’ll give him one.”
Owain is playing with a strand of my hair and completely underestimating Normans with their walls to withdraw behind and trained fighting men in coats of mail and big two-handed broadswords that can cut someone in half. Who killed Llywelyn penteulu even with armed brothers around him like two dozen sharp palisades.
“Once the lads and I burn every handswidth and carry away the plunder, I’ll hunt down Gerald of bloody Windsor like the dog he is, and with my own hand cut him into small pieces and piss on every last one of them.”
I peer into Owain’s face, waiting for that smirk or eyebrow that’ll let me in on the jest. He’s staring straight ahead, eyes narrow. He’s nowhere near here.
“But not before I string him up in his own dooryard,” Owain goes on, “and while he hangs there writhing, I will carve the name of Llywelyn ap Ifor who he butchered without regard ten thousand times into his flesh, till his hide falls off in ribbons.”
I like to think Saint Elen understands why I told Owain she’ll protect him, that she pitied me for being in a place where that playact was necessary, that she tolerates it still for compassion’s sake. But there is a world of difference between protection and counsel. One is standing by while Saint Elen does as she sees fit, and the other is deciding for her what she should do and say. If I dare to put words in her mouth, to make myself the saint, she will turn her back on me for sure.
So I can’t tell Owain that Saint Elen said not to kill the English king’s right hand in Dyfed in cold blood because no man can ignore such an act. Instead I say, carefully, “Won’t the English king see that sort of killing as a personal insult? Gerald owes him everything he has. Seeking the downfall of someone so loyal does not seem wise.”
“I don’t seek the downfall of Gerald of bloody Windsor.” Owain’s voice is eerily calm, and I edge away from him bit by bit, pulling the blankets with me because I’m shivering now, and not just from the cold. “Bad enough he’s lurking to the south with his eyes on my birthright. Now that he’s raided my very dooryard? Now that he’s killed my friend and warband chief, slaughtered him right in front of me? Oh, I will not merely kill Gerald of bloody Windsor now. I will preside over his complete humiliation and destruction first.”
I can’t tell him Saint Elen said to raid quick and fierce and leave vengeance to the Almighty, no matter how much I want to.
Owain blinks hard and scrubs a wrist over his eyes. There’s a very real chance he’ll sober up on the morrow and this whole thing with Gerald of Windsor will be a dull ache in the back of his throat. A ghost of something noble yet foolish and therefore forgettable. He’ll name another penteulu — please let it be Madog — and he’ll raid Dyfed properly, fire and sword and plunder, just like the last raid and the raid before that one.
“Betimes I think my father is jealous.” Owain slides closer to me, snakes a hand around my waist, nuzzles my neck. “My stepmother may turn heads, but all he got for his pains is a patch of Norman border