Brandewyne, Rebecca (8 page)

"I
know that this arrangement is not what you had hoped for, daughter, or even
what I would have wished for you. But I am not... as strong as I once
was." The admission came slowly, so she knew how difficult it had been for
her father to make. "I must ensure that Usk is secure from those who would
swallow us whole or piecemeal, and Mercia is a kingdom far more powerful than
Glamorgan or Gwent, whence this attack
upon me must have come."

"I—
I understand, Father," Rhowenna choked out, fighting to recover her
composure and to hold at bay the tears that started as she thought of Gwydion
and all her hopes and dreams, now dust in the wind. "And I will honor my
duty to Usk— if not with a glad heart, then at least with an obedient
one."

"Prince
Cerdic is a rich and handsome man, the emissaries assure me, whole of body,
sound of limb, and in his prime, well able to provide for you and to defend
you. So you need not be afraid on that score, daughter." Pendragon handed
her a small wooden casket he held on his lap. "He has sent you this as a
token of his regard."

Opening
the casket, Rhowenna could not suppress a gasp of surprise and astonishment as
she spied lying upon a bed of purple silk a magnificent gold necklace set with
amethysts that matched the violet of her eyes. Despite being princess of Usk,
she owned no piece of jewelry to compare to this, and some of her hurt and
disappointment was assuaged at this evidence of the unknown Prince Cerdic's
esteem. The necklace was not only resplendent, but also suited her coloring,
bespeaking not only a desire to honor her, but also a thoughtfulness of
character that was
a mark in his favor, she thought. Perhaps he would not be so hard and cruel as
she had at first feared when she had learned he was one of the Saxon wolves
east of Offa's Dyke.

"
'Tis beautiful, Father. Please have the emissaries convey my thanks and
appreciation to Prince Cerdic, informing him that I am honored and that I shall
treasure his gift always."

Her
father was pleased by her response, Rhowenna could tell, and for that, she was
grateful, for she did not want him to worry over her unhappiness; he had enough
problems to fret him as it was. Nodding his approval of her, Pendragon spoke no
more; and realizing the interview was at an end, Rhowenna left him quietly,
taking the small casket away with her to lock it away inside her own larger,
heavier jewel chest in her sleeping chamber, where it would be safe. Then,
after she had closed and secured the lid of her jewel chest and returned her
chatelaine to the fine, gold-mesh girdle about her waist, she tossed her light
wool cloak about her shoulders, and made her way down the winding path that led
to the beach where the Severn Sea merged with the Great Sea beyond.

Spring
had come to Walas at last, the snow
melting from all but the highest peaks
of the land, leaving the gentle hills and the rugged mountains behind her as
green as raw, uncut emeralds scattered against the lapis-lazuli backdrop of the
endless sky, where the sun shone as golden as the necklace Prince Cerdic had
given her and, wings spread wide, the gulls soared and cried their forlorn
song. The wind was a melodious sigh that stirred the flowers and the grass,
setting them a-ripple like the waves of a vast, strange, and wonderful sea that
somehow soothed her aching heart a little. She had hoped to be alone to reflect
on her father's devastating news and what it meant to her, but now as she drew
near to the strand, Rhowenna saw Gwydion there below, his coracle drawn up onto
the sand. Glancing up at her, he smiled and waved, causing her heart to turn
over in her breast as he motioned for her to join him.

"I'm
going fishing," he called gaily. "Do you want to come along?"

"Aye.
Aye, I'll come!" Torn between sudden gladness and despair at seeing him,
she gathered up her skirts to hurry on down to the beach. She was a trifle
breathless when she reached him, her cheeks flushed becomingly, a strand of
hair tumbled loose from her single long braid and billowing in the wind as she
gazed up at him from beneath
sooty lashes half closed against the bright sun.
"It seems ages since I've been fishing."

"My
own thought precisely. Here, help me shove off, then, and we'll get under
way."

Together
with an ease born of skill and long practice, they pushed the coracle into the
water, then climbed into the light, round craft and settled themselves in its
bottom. As Gwydion rowed them forward across the waves, Rhowenna fell silent,
not knowing how to speak to him of her betrothal. She inhaled the cool, briny
wind and watched the sunlight play upon the water, and it occurred to her now,
for the first time, that although Gwydion had in the past told her that he
loved her, he had never done more than kiss her cheek and, once, tenderly, her
mouth. Yet, surely, she had not misread the expression in his eyes whenever he
looked at her. Surely, he would be as dismayed by the arrangement her father
had made with Prince Cerdic as she had been when she had learned of it.

At
last, when they reached a spot where Gwydion thought that the fish would be
plentiful, he drew in the paddle and laid it aside, letting the coracle gently
drift as it would, while he and Rhowenna between them cast a small net.

"You
are uncommonly quiet this
day, Rhowenna," Gwydion observed finally after they had worked for some
time in companionable silence, although with only a modest catch yet to show
for their efforts, "and pensive. Something troubles you. What has upset
you?"

For
a moment, Rhowenna's hands stilled on the net she and Gwydion had emptied into
the bottom of the craft. The fish they had caught thus far shimmered silvery in
the sunlight, gasping and twisting and flopping. The fish were helpless out of
their natural milieu— just as she would be in Mercia, Rhowenna thought, far
away from home, a stranger amid strangers in a foreign land.

"Only
a short while ago," she responded at last to Gwydion's question, turning
away from the dying fish, "I discovered that my father... my father has
arranged a... betrothal for me, Gwydion— with Prince Cerdic of Mercia."

"I
see," he said softly, after a time, very still. "My felicitations.
Prince Cerdic is very wealthy... and handsome, I have heard."

"Oh,
Gwydion!" The cry was low and anguished. "Have you nothing more to
say to me than that?"

"What
more
is
there
to say than that, Rhowenna?" he asked, a muscle flexing in his set jaw,
his voice rough with feeling. Then,
glimpsing the expression upon her
countenance, his own face and his tone gentled. "I'm sorry. Did you dare
to dream for us, then? I didn't know. You never said—" Gwydion broke off
abruptly, striving visibly to master his emotions. Then, after a moment, he
continued quietly. "I was not so brave, you see. I never dared to hope
that there could ever be anything more between us than what we already share.
You are princess of Usk, Rhowenna... and not for the likes of me, with no
kingdom to call my own. Did you truly think that 'twould prove otherwise?"

"I—
I don't know. Oh, I suppose that deep down inside, I knew better. But... oh,
Gwydion! You are right! I
did
dare to dream! And now... now, all is
changed, and will never be the same again. When you went away for your
fostering, you knew you would return, but I won't be coming back, Gwydion. I
will have to spend the rest of my life among the Saxon wolves east of Offa's
Dyke, with a husband who is a stranger to me...." Her voice, sad and
bitter, trailed away as she uttered the painful thought aloud, making it seem,
finally, real and not just some dreadful misunderstanding or an event so far
distant as to appear unlikely.

"
'Tis small comfort, I know, but
strategically, from Usk's point of view, an
alliance with Mercia is the wisest course of action, Rhowenna, considering the
nature of the attack upon your father this past winter. We can no longer trust
Glamorgan or Gwent to keep to its own boundaries. To launch an assault against
Usk, Mercia would have to send its armies across Offa's Dyke and the river
Severn both, so we would have ample warning of their approach and time to
prepare to hold out against them. That means they would be the lesser threat
and a more desirable ally."

"I
know, I know. My own mind tells me the truth of your words, Gwydion. 'Tis my
heart that rebels and calls them lies and wishes I were only a plain serving
maid instead of princess of Usk, to be bartered away as the price of a
treaty!"

"And
I wish I were a prince worthy of your hand, Rhowenna. But I am not, nor likely
to become one; and so I have loved you as a brother loves his sister, and
spoken of no more than that, because it was not meet or possible and because I
did not want to cause you pain. That I have done so anyway grieves me
sorely."

"Nay,
Gwydion." Rhowenna shook her head, blinking back tears and attempting to
smile, although the result was pitiable. "If
there has been fault between us,
'twas mine— and mine alone. I heard what I wanted to hear in your words. I
longed for the moon when I knew in my heart that it was beyond my reach. 'Twas
you who were wise and I who was foolish. You are not to blame for that."

But
even as she spoke the words and although she recognized their truth, the fact
that Gwydion had deliberately built a wall around his heart against her wounded
her; she felt he could not have done that unless his love for her had been a
shallow thing, unworthy of what she had felt for him in return. Had he loved
her deeply, he would have taken her in his arms, kissed her feverishly, and
begged her to run away with him, Rhowenna thought, to set sail in the coracle
and to cast their fate to the wind, believing that wherever they were bound,
whatever they must endure, it was enough that they were together, of one heart
and one mind. Some part of her had hoped desperately for that, she realized
now. But perhaps that, too, was a notion as foolish as all the rest of her
romantic dreams had proved. Still, she could not put it from her head; and her
disappointment in Gwydion was as painful to her as her father's news of her
betrothal had been.

If
Gwydion sensed this, however, he did not show it, but turned their conversation
to light, inconsequential matters, seeming not to notice that Rhowenna made
only monosyllabic replies and bowed her head and busied her hands at their
tasks more than was necessary to avoid meeting his eyes. She would see naught
save pity there, she thought; and she could not bear that, not from Gwydion.
She would have thrown away kingdom and crown for him had he but stretched out
his hand to her and asked her to go away with him. But he had not, and so her
only refuge now was her quiet dignity and this pretense that there was nothing
more between them than devotion and kinship.

When
he remarked that it was growing late and that they had best be getting back to
shore, she raised her head finally from the shining, dead and dying fish. The
westerly sun reflected off the sea into her eyes, and it seemed that for a
moment on the far horizon, a clutch of dragons rode the waves, crimson sails
unfurled wide against the sun to catch the wind. She could not suppress a wail
of terror.

"Rhowenna!
What is it?" Gwydion's voice was sharp with anxiety as he stared at her
eyes, huge and scared in her pale face, and filled with a stark blankness, as
though she
were tranced and saw something he did not. "What is it? What do you
see?"

The
sound of his voice penetrated Rhowenna's senses at last, and blinking her eyes,
she realized with some confusion that the horizon was empty save for the fiery
sun sinking into the sea, that what she had seen had been nothing more than a
trick of the light, after all. Yet the vision had seemed so real that she could
have sworn that it was...

"I
thought... I thought— Gwydion, for many long nights now, I have had a dream, a
hideous dream of the Northmen's coming to ravage Usk"— without warning,
her terrible secret came spilling out— "and for a moment, I thought I spied
their long-ships there in the distance, on the horizon. 'Twas only the sun in
my eyes; I see that now. But I was so frightened—"

"The
Northmen! Rhowenna! Have you told anyone else of this?"

"Nay."
She shook her head, biting her lower lip contritely, suddenly ashamed that she
had permitted her fear to silence her when so many lives were at stake.

"But...
why not?"

"I
was afraid," she confessed, her voice low and remorseful, "afraid
that Father Cadwyr would denounce me, would call me
accursed, a
witch. He has no tolerance for the old ways, for the old gods whence my dream
comes to me, I know, Gwydion. He would not think it a true vision, but a
wickedness visited upon me by the devil— and I've no wish to be burned at the
stake because of a priest's blindness and stupidity!"

"Of
course not. Still, Rhowenna, the Northmen! Do you not remember the tales of the
slaughter and ruin they wreaked upon Anglesey some years ago?"

"Aye,
I do. I do. That is why I have been so troubled and torn, not knowing whether
to speak or to remain silent...." She paused for a moment, contemplating
her dilemma. Then, finally, slowly, she continued. "There is still more,
Gwydion, the worst of all, the reason why I did not tell even you about all
this before. In my dream... in my dream, I saw the Northmen... strike you down
and— and slay you, Gwydion!"