Daggerspell

  “Speak up, good sir,” Lovyan said. “I’m always willing to oversee any matter of justice, no matter how slight. For what do you seek redress?”

  “Ah, well, Your Grace, it’s about my daughter.” Ysgerryn blushed scarlet.

  “She’s with child, is she?”

  “She is, and not married either, as I’m sure your Grace can guess, or I’d hardly be troubling Your Grace about it.”

  Across the hall, the warband went stock still and listened in desperate suspense.

  “Come along,” Lovyan said gently. “Name the father out.”

  “Well, Your Grace.” Ysgerryn paused for a deep breath. “The little minx swears it’s your son.”

  The warband sighed in relief, and Lovyan in weariness.

  “She really does swear it” Ysgerryn said miserably. “I doubt me you believe—”

  “Oh, I believe it well enough, my good man.” Lovyan glanced around and saw the page snickering under the spiral staircase. “Caradoc, run find Lord Rhodry and bring him to me.”

  For a profoundly uncomfortable five minutes they waited while the warband whispered and snickered, Ysgerryn studied the pattern of braided rushes on the floor, and Lovyn did her best to look dignified instead of furious. A lord who treated his free citizens’ daughters as his private preserve was a lord who caused grumbling at the best of times. Now, when Lovyan’s rule was being challenged by some of her noble vassals, the last thing she wanted was for her townsfolk to feel sympathy for the rebels. Finally Rhodry strode in, whistling cheerily. Just twenty that month, Rhodry was filling out at six feet tall, a man so handsome that Lovyn felt no scorn, only sympathy for the soapmaker’s daughter. When Rhodry saw Ysgerryn, his good cheer disappeared so fast that Lovyan’s last doubt vanished with it.

  “So there you are!” Lovyan snapped. “Our good Ysgerryn here claims you’ve gotten his daughter with child. Is it true?”

  “And how would I know the true or false of it? She could have had another man as well as me.”

  “Indeed? Do you really expect me to believe that you’d stand by and do nothing if another man trifled with your lass?”

  “Uh, well.” Rhodry started poking at the rushes with the toe of his riding boot. “Truly, I’d have slit his throat.”

  “So I thought.”

  “Your Grace?” Ysgerryn put in. “Truly, she was always such a good lass until this. It’s fair broken her mother’s heart, it has, but who was I to say his lordship nay, even when I knew he was riding our way often and twice often. I knew he wasn’t there to collect Your Grace’s share of our soap.”

  Pushed beyond human endurance, the warband laughed and elbowed each other. When Rhodry spun around and glared, they fell silent.

  “My poor Ysgerryn,” Lovyan said. “Well and good, then, I’ll make provision for the lass. I’ll settle a dowry on her, and with coin in her pocket doubtless shell find a good husband even though the whole town knows the scandal. When the baby’s born, bring it to me if it’s healthy enough to live. We’ll find a wet nurse and fosterage.”

  “Your Grace!” Ysgerryn’s eyes filled with tears. “I never expected so much, Your Grace. Truly, I—”

  Lovyan cut him short with a wave of her hand.

  “The bastard of a noble lord can be very useful, provided it’s been raised to be useful. Tell your daughter that her child will be well cared for.”

  Bowing repeatedly, stammering out thanks, Ysgerryn backed away from Lovyan’s presence, then ran out of the hall. When Rhodry looked inclined to run himself, Lovyan grabbed his arm and hauled him toward the staircase.

  “I wish to speak to your lordship. And right now.”

  Like a whipped hound Rhodry followed her to her private chambers on the second floor of the broch. The reception chamber was a little room crammed with memories of the long line of Maelwaedd lords-moth-eaten stag’s heads, old swords, a dusty ceremonial mace, and a row of shields with devices no longer current. In one corner stood a lectern, carved with grappling badgers, which had been the Maelwaedd device before the clan came to the gwerbretrhyn of Aberwyn, and on the lectern was a copy of a book written by the first Maelwaedd, Prince Mael the Seer himself. As soon as they were inside, Lovyan slapped Rhodry across the face.

  “You little beast!”

  Rhodry flung himself into a chair, stretched out his legs, and stared moodily at the cluttered wall.

  “It aches my heart, knowing I’ve dishonored her. Truly, you have my heartfelt thanks for being so generous to my poor little lass.”

  Lovyan wondered if he were saying only what she wanted to hear. With a sigh, she sat down across from him and let him squirm for a while. All told, Lovyan had given birth to four sons. The eldest, Rhys, now ruled as gwerbret in Aberwyn; the second had died in infancy; the third had grown to manhood only to be killed in a war. Rhodry was her youngest. Some time before his birth, her husband had taken a young mistress and spent so little time in Lovyan’s bed that Rhodry was her last.

  The mistress had produced a pair of bastards, and it had fallen to Lovyan to make provision for the girls. Now Rhodry was grown into a man much like Gwerbret Tingyr.

  “It’s time you married,” Lovyan said at last. “You can at least provide a few legitimate heirs for the tierynrhyn since you’re so fond of this sport.”

  Rhodry winced.

  “I wonder if the Goddess keeps cursing your betrothals because she knows what kind of man you are,” Lovyan went on. “Three times now I’ve tried to marry you off, and three times she’s taken a hand to spare the poor lass.”

  “Mother, by all the ice in all the hells! I’m sorry, truly I am! I know you need the coin I’ve just made you spend, and I know you need the town’s goodwill, and truly, my heart aches for poor Olwen, too.”

  “You might have thought of all that before you lifted her dresses.”

  “Mother!”

  “I don’t want to hear of this happening again. Save that winning smile of yours for the lasses who stand to make silver out of it in more usual ways.”

  Rhodry flung himself out of his chair and ran, slamming the door so hard behind him that the swords on the wall rattled. Lovyan allowed herself a small smile of revenge.

  For the rest of the day, Rhodry avoided her, which was easy to do in a dun the size of Cannobaen. Out on what might as well have been the western border of Eldidd, since there was nothing much beyond it, the dun stood on the twisted headland of its name at the top of a sheer cliff overlooking the Southern Sea. Stone walls enclosed a crowded ward of about two acres. In the middle rose a four-story broch surrounded by storage sheds and a kitchen hut. Off to the seaward side stood the Cannobaen light, a hundred-foot tower, wound with a staircase, where on clear nights the lightkeeper and his sons kept an enormous fire burning under a stone canopy or rang the bronze bell when it was foggy.

  Beyond the dun, the empty grasslands ran for miles in either direction along the cliff tops, while inland were the farms of Lovyan’s personal demesne. It was a lonely place, suitable for retiring from worldly pursuits—if only Lovyan had been allowed to go into retirement. She’d been given Cannobaen as a dower gift from the Maelwaedds upon her marriage, and when her husband died, she’d gone there to live far from the temptation to meddle in the new gwerbret’s affairs. Just this last year, however, her only brother and his son had both been killed in an honor war. Since there was no other heir, their father’s property had come to Lovyan under that twist in the laws designed to keep land holdings in a clan even if a woman had to inherit them. Lovyan may have married into the Maelwaedds, but by blood she was still one of the Clw Coc, the clan of the Red Lion, which had held a vast demesne in western Eldidd for over a hundred years.

  Blood and clan, children, and their children—they ruled every aspect of a noblewoman’s life, and it was about such things that Lovyan was musing for the rest of that dripping-cold summer’s day at Cannobaen. She profoundly hoped that Rhodry’s bastard would turn out to be a lass, not a troublesome son, and as p
retty as her father was handsome. If she were, then Lovyan could ultimately arrange a marriage between her and one of her many land-poor relations. The Red Lion had done Lovyan a great favor when she inherited the tierynrhyn by adopting Rhodry into the clan, thus making it possible for him to inherit upon her death, rather than having the land revert to the gwerbret for reassignment. In his vanity, Rhodry assumed that Lovyan made that move out of maternal love, but in truth, she had much sterner motives, and arranging the adoption was the lesser of two evils.

  When she took over the demesne, some of her vassals grumbled about having a woman for overlord, even though it was right under the laws and, though rare, far from unknown. Once Rhodry was empowered to succeed, the grumblers could take comfort in knowing just which man would be ruling them in what was bound to be only a few years. After all, Lovyan was not immortal; at forty-eight, she was already old in a world where most women died in their thirties, worn out by childbearing. Soon enough, her vassals would have a man for tieryn if they’d only wait. Even so, however, some were refusing to wait.

  Just at the time for the evening meal, a visitor came to the dun, Lord Sligyn, who held land in fealty to Lovyan about ten miles to the east. Possible rebellion, it seemed, was very much on his mind. During dinner Sligyn could say nothing with so many eavesdroppers around, but Lovyan knew he was troubled simply because he was the sort of man who showed his thoughts on his face. Lovyan sincerely liked him, a stout, red-faced man in his early thirties, with a thick blond mustache and shrewd blue eyes. To honor him, she had taken his son Caradoc into her hall as a page. That night, Carro waited upon them at table, poured the mead perfectly, and carved the beef with skill. When the lad was out of earshot, Sligyn admitted that he was pleased with his son.

  “And speaking of sons,” Sligyn said with a nod at Rhodry’s empty chair, “Where’s your lad?”

  “Probably eating whatever he can beg from the cook out in the kitchen. He doesn’t care to face me at the moment.”

  “What’s he done now?”

  “Sired a bastard on a common-born lass.”

  Sligyn sighed and drained his goblet.

  “Bound to happen sooner or later, giving young Rhodry’s ways with the lasses. My wife and I would count ourselves honored to foster the child for you.”

  “My sincere thanks. If the baby’s born alive, I’ll send it and the wet nurse to you straightaway. I’m most pleased to find I have such a loyal man.”

  “Unlike some, eh?” He paused significantly. “Well, if I can have a private word with Your Grace later?”

  “You may, and as soon as we’re finished here.”

  Just as Lovyan suspected, Rhodry never joined them for the meal. As soon as they were done eating, she took Sligyn up to her reception chamber. She already knew that the chief grumbler against her rule was Lord Corbyn of Bruddlyn, and that he’d been putting out feelers to see how many lords would ally themselves with him in rebellion.

  “They know better than to approach me,” Sligyn said. “But I hear things in my own way. Now Nowec’s gone over to them, and that truly aches my heart. I thought he was a better man than this.”

  “So did I.”

  “Huh, I wonder how these dolts think they can pull this chestnut out of the coals. What have they done, forgotten that the gwerbret with jurisdiction over the tierynrhyn also happens to be your own son?”

  “They may have some reason for thinking that Rhys might not exercise his right of intervention. It’s the coin, I suppose. Matters of loyalty so often come down to the dues and taxes.”

  “That’s a cynical little remark, Your Grace.”

  “Well,” Lovyan said with a toss of her head, “I knew that I was making a hard choice when I made Rhodry my heir. The lords of the rhan already pay one set of dues to the Maelwaedd clan because Rhys is gwerbret. Then they pay a second set to the Clw Coc through me. When I die, they feel that they’ll be paying both to the Maelwaedds, because they’ll always see Rhodry as a Maelwaedd, no matter how many of my cousins vouched for his adoption. I’ve no doubt that it rankles them.”

  Sligyn snorted like an angry mule.

  “I see. And if they carry on this rebellion long enough to make Rhys rule in their favor, he’ll, add your lands to the gwerbretal demesne, and there’ll only be one set of taxes to pay. By every god and his wife, would Rhys really dispossess his own mother just for the wretched coin?”

  “I doubt that, but it would gladden his heart to dispossess me.” It was Rhodry, striding in boldly. “Her Grace is doubtless right about the coin. All that grumbling because you’re a woman never rang true.”

  “Here!” Lovyan snapped. “How long have you been listening at the door?”

  “Long enough.” Rhodry flashed her a grin. “I wanted to hear what you said to his lordship about my dishonor.”

  “We discussed that at dinner.”

  “At dinner?” Rhodry flopped into a chair. “My lady has a strong stomach.”

  “Now, listen, you young cub.” Sligyn would be Rhodry’s equal till Lovyan died, and he minced no words. “You treat your lady mother with some respect while I’m around.”

  “My apologies, I do but jest. But truly, Mother, I see what you mean. Rhys must be licking his chops, thinking he has a chance at what’s rightfully mine.”

  “I cherish no illusions of brotherly love between the two of you, truly. But if it comes to open war, I trust Rhys will intervene.”

  “No doubt, if you ask him.” Rhodry turned sullen. “But I want the chance to prove myself to these vassals of yours.”

  He said it so carelessly that Lovyan was sick at heart. If things came to war, Rhodry would be cadvridoc, the war leader, delegated in her stead to lead the army. She knew him too well to hope that he would lead his men from the rear.

  “I heard you tell Mother that Nowec’s gone over to the rebels,” Rhodry said to Sligyn. “I never would have thought it of him.”

  “No more would I. Wretchedly strange rumors going round.”

  “Dweomer again?” Rhodry said with a laugh.

  “Just that.” Sligyn paused, chewing on the edge of his mustache. “Makes a man wonder, seeing Nowec break his bond this way.”

  “Horseshit! Uh, my apologies, Mother. But I don’t believe a word of it.”

  “Well, neither do I, of course. Eh!” Sligyn said. “But it has its effect on the men. Morale, that kind of thing. Once a rider starts thinking about dweomer, well, where’s he going to stop?”

  Lovyn nodded in agreement. Since no one knew the powers of that mysterious craft—since, in truth, so few people believed that it existed—once a man started brooding on what it might or might not be able to do, there was no limit to it.

  “They say it’s this councillor of Corbyn’s,” Sligyn said. “Loddlaen his name is. He’s the one that everyone thinks has the dweomer.”

  “Indeed?” Rhodry sneered. “Well, I’ve met the man, and I find it hard to believe that this mincing fop has any kind of power at all. May the gods blast me if I know why Corbyn even listens to a man who stinks of perfume.”

  “Its strange, all right. But isn’t that the point?”

  Rhodry’s sneer disappeared.

  “You know,” Lovyan broken in. “I think I should send for Nevyn.”

  “What?” Rhodry said. “How do you send for no one?”

  “Nevyn the old herbman, you little dolt. Don’t tease with things so serious.”

  “My apologies, Mother, and send for him if you like. I know the old man amuses you, and you’ll need good company if we ride to war.”

  “I will, then, if I can get him a message. He’s probably wandering the roads with his herbs, but he may be at his home.”

  “You know, Your Grace,” Sligyn said, “I’ve never understood why you honor the old man so highly. He’s well spoken and all, but he’s practically one of your peasants.”

  “It’s as Rhodry says. He amuses me.”

  Lovyan was in no mood to explain. If the stolid Sligyn
and her rake of a son were too stupid to know a man with dweomer when they saw one, she wasn’t going to waste her breath enlightening them.

  Three days out of Cernmeton, the caravan of Dregydd the merchant reached an oddly named river, the Delonderiel, which flowed fast and deep between grassy banks. Near the village of Bruddlyn was a stone toll bridge, owned and maintained by the local lord. Since the caravan would have to stop soon anyway to ensure that there was enough daylight left for the horses and mules to graze, Dregydd decided to camp for the night near the village and trade for fresh food. He had a couple of packs of cheap goods for just this kind of barter, and as he told Jill, the villagers were more than willing to trade beef and bread for colored ribands and copper brooches.

  “Besides,” Dregydd said. “It’ll give Lord Corbyn a chance to come down and buy somewhat if he wants. Always be courteous when you’re passing through someone’s demesne.”

  Although the lord himself never appeared, one of his councillors did. Jill was hanging around, watching Dregydd haggle with a farm wife for a barrel of ale, when the man rode up on a beautiful silver-gray horse. He was tall but slender, with dark violet eyes, and he had the palest hair that Jill had ever seen, practically the color of moonlight, and cut long to fall over his ears. He dismounted and strolled over to Dregydd, who was just handing over an iron skillet in return for the ale. At the sight of him, the farm wife turned pale and backed off. Jill noticed her making the sign of warding against witchcraft with her fingers as she hurried away.

  “My name is Loddlaen,” he said in an oddly soft and musical voice. “Are you carrying any fine weapons?”

  “Some swords of Lughcarn steel, good sir. The finest there are.”

  While he examined the swords, Loddlaen ignored Jill completely, and she was glad of it. Although he was courteous enough, there was something about him that creeped her flesh, and it wasn’t only that he smelled of rose scent. At last he picked out the best sword in the lot.

  “Well and good, councillor,” Dregydd said. “And is it for you?”