A Rush of Wings, page 14
“Scold, what is it?” Gawen asked, and she could hear the consternation in his voice.
But Rowenna did not want to speak. It felt as if the silence she was placed under by day was beginning to leach into her bones and become part of her, and when once she might have snapped, she now found herself wordless. She could not bring herself to move, either. The nettles she’d gathered needed soaking, but it seemed an insurmountable task.
The door creaked open and shut.
Rowenna still sat, her mind a blank, everything in her whispering of exhaustion, when the latch lifted once more and Gawen came back in. Through her ravaged fingers, Rowenna saw he had a wooden bucket half-full of river water, which he set down by the hearth. From it, he filled an iron pot and set it among the coals.
A few minutes passed between them in silence before Gawen retrieved the pot, using the hem of his shirt to keep his hand from burning.
“There’s a thing I find myself missing by day, when I’m under the curse,” he said, pouring hot water from the pot into the bucket. A cloud of steam rose up as the frigid river water warmed. “The world seems dim and muddled when we’re in swan shape. It’s hard to think clearly, and it feels like being caught in a snare, wearing that body.”
Gawen crouched before Rowenna and rolled up his sleeves. She squinted down at him doubtfully.
“Give me your feet, scold,” Gawen said.
Pricked by embarrassment, Rowenna pulled her feet farther back, tucking them under her skirt. She’d taken her shoes off upon entering the hut, and what her walk through the castle had wrought was unsightly—stockings bunched around her shins and adhering to the places where her blistered feet had chafed and bled.
Gawen stayed where he was, waiting patiently, until at last Rowenna relented with a weary sigh. She let him take her feet in his hands and lower them into the bucket of warm water.
At first the touch of the water stung bitterly, but after a moment the stinging subsided, and the edges of Rowenna’s pain softened.
“It’s not my wits I find myself missing, though,” Gawen said. While he spoke, he worked carefully, easing the stockings inch by slow inch down Rowenna’s feet as they soaked. Rowenna’s face burned as his fingers coaxed the fabric from her damaged skin. She suspected he was speaking to put her at her ease, but it did little to help, particularly when the image of Elspeth in Gawen’s arms circled around and around in her mind.
“It’s not my own shape I miss either,” Gawen went on. “Nor anything about my own self. But I do find myself wishing to hear your sharp tongue.”
Rowenna looked down at the top of Gawen’s dark head as he bent over the bucket.
“You told me there’s nothing between you and Elspeth,” she said, even as she felt him slip the first stocking entirely off her foot, leaving all of her skin finally exposed to the warm water. “Yet I saw you with her tonight.”
“Aye, I met with her. We’re trying to sort something out that’s grating between the two of us. She’s afraid, and fear’s clouding her judgment. Or at least the way I see it, it is.”
“Afraid?” Rowenna asked in disbelief. “You say she’s a prisoner, but I’ve seen little of fear in her. And she seems independent enough.”
“That’s because you don’t know how to look,” Gawen said. “Just because you don’t notice her guards, doesn’t mean they aren’t there.”
He slid the second stocking from Rowenna’s foot and pulled them from the bucket, sodden and dripping.
“I didn’t like it,” Rowenna said, a little of the sharpness creeping back into her voice. “I didn’t like seeing the two of you together like that. Perhaps if I were better, I wouldn’t have minded, but I did.”
She watched as Gawen wrung the water from her stockings, then spread them out in front of the fire to dry. When he finished, he came back to her, kneeling before her as she sat on the edge of the cot. He rested his arms on her knees, and Rowenna swallowed, vainly trying to still the nervous things that sprang to life in her belly. Even now there was a latent darkness in him that matched her own, and that Rowenna found terribly hard to resist.
“You minded because you don’t trust me,” Gawen said, speaking each word with a significance that sent unfamiliar thrills running up and down Rowenna’s spine. “And I’ve given you no reason to. You’ve got no claim to my faithfulness. But what if you had? What if I gave you one?”
Rowenna could not look away from him, so close that she could feel his warmth and reach out to touch him if she had a mind to.
“What sort of claim might you give, that I don’t have now?” she asked at last.
Gawen’s throat worked, and warm yearning spilled through Rowenna as his gaze dropped to her mouth.
A fist pounding on the door shattered the tension between them.
“Under the bed,” Rowenna breathed, hardly daring to speak the words aloud. With no regard for his dignity, Gawen did exactly as he was told and had only just disappeared from view when the door flew open.
Rowenna blinked at the man standing on the threshold. Faded yellow hair. Impeccable livery. This was Steward Greaves, who’d brought her to the grounds of Inverness Castle so roughly.
“Did I hear voices?” he asked in his clipped accent, putting his head to one side. “I could have sworn I did.”
Rowenna shrugged, gesturing to the empty hut.
Greaves eyed her narrowly. “It’s my job to keep a watch on everyone in Pendragon’s service. To ensure they’re upright, and a credit to him, and of good character. Do you understand?”
Rowenna nodded.
“No, I don’t think you do.” Greaves drew closer. “I have had my fill and more of insolent Highlanders who think they’re above the laws my master has set in place and the rule he exercises now that he’s settled here. So I will tell you what I tell all new servants at the castle—if I see a single spark of rebellion in you, even so much as a mutinous look, I’ll have you hanged or burned.”
Rowenna only blinked, glad that maintaining the facade of muteness kept her from having to make a reply.
“Answer me,” Greaves barked in frustration. Rowenna pointed to her throat as a reminder and shook her head.
“Of course we’ve found ourselves a mute swan maiden,” Greaves growled. “And a diseased one too.”
He gestured at Rowenna’s blistered hands and feet. “You’re sure you’re not infectious? Because I swear to you, if anyone comes down with a malady like that, I’ll lock you in this hut and burn it to the ground rather than risk contagion.”
Rowenna nodded, and Greaves retreated to the door.
“Right, then,” he said. “Just remember what I’ve told you. Keep to yourself, make no trouble, and you’ll have none from me. I expect to see those swans out on the river every afternoon for Pendragon’s witch, as well. For whatever reason, he still wants to see her kept happy, even now she’s useless to him.”
With that Greaves left the hut, muttering as he went out. “Filthy Highlanders. I’ve had enough of this place for a lifetime.”
Rowenna stood and stepped out of the bucket, where her feet had still rested throughout the exchange. Dripping water, she padded across the packed-earth floor and stood in the doorway, watching him go.
When Greaves was halfway up the hill and well out of earshot, Rowenna felt a stir of air. Gawen’s voice sounded from only an inch or two behind her.
“I don’t like how he spoke to you. Don’t expect you did either. Do you want me to kill him for you, scold?”
There was an undercurrent to the question that told Rowenna it wasn’t entirely meant as humor, and she shivered.
“I don’t want you to kill anyone,” she answered. “In fact, I want all of us to do just as that snake suggested—keep our heads down, mind our own business, and stay out of trouble. Then, when I’ve broken the curse, I’ll try to help you find your father, before getting back home to deal with mine.”
Rowenna glanced over one shoulder at him, standing behind her in the shadows. She could hear her brothers now, talking among themselves as they made their way back to the hut before the change occurred.
“I give you my word, and a claim to my help and my craft when all this is done,” Rowenna said, her voice low. “But where’s the claim you said you’d give to me?”
Gawen gazed out the door at the approaching figures of Rowenna’s brothers.
“Tomorrow,” he promised. “Come hell or high water, scold, I’ll give you a claim over me then.”
Chapter Fifteen
“Close your eyes,” Elspeth said to Rowenna, as she sat in the middle of the riverside meadow. It was the first truly warm day of spring, and the sun beat down on Rowenna’s bare head. She was beginning to sweat, but Elspeth seemed as cool and composed as ever.
Rowenna did as she was told, receding inward, to the dark shore that the sea of her craft beat ceaselessly against.
“Call the wind to you.”
It came frisking down from among the pines.
“Now invite it in.”
Rowenna opened her eyes, fixing Elspeth with a questioning look.
“Ask it to inhabit you? I’m not—I’m not sure how to explain it.” As Elspeth searched for words, Rowenna could see a glimmer of frustration in her face.
“It’s like—a partnership.” Elspeth tried again. “A working together and being together. I would show you, if I could. My mother showed me. But you’ll just… you’ll have to sort it out yourself.”
She pressed a hand to her forehead, and a stab of pity twisted through Rowenna. She made for an ignorant student, and Elspeth was trying to help her in spite of that, all without any obligation to. Obediently Rowenna shut her eyes again.
Come here to me, she thought at the wind.
We’re here with you, near with you, the wind sang, stirring the damp hair on Rowenna’s forehead.
No, come here, Rowenna tried. Closer? Nearer? I’m not sure?
The wind seemed to hesitate. And then: You wish us to see with you? To be with you?
Yes, Rowenna thought firmly. Come in.
With a sudden gust the wind buffeted her, and an overwhelming vertigo made Rowenna sway. She could see herself, seated in the meadow, and Elspeth at her side, but all from above, as if she hung suspended in the sky like a bird.
Or like the wind.
And the wind itself, which had always spoken in half-understood phrases, was within her. Rowenna stood on the shore of her craft and could feel the wind’s wildness, its wideness, as it moved through her and surged over Inverness, jubilant and free. She could understand it without words—with the sort of knowing that came in a flash of intuition.
The wind twisted about Rowenna and sank her into vision, and remembering.
Dimly she saw the River Ness. A woman with a lined face and graying auburn hair stood in the shallows, and a pair of liveried guards had hold of each of her arms. Greaves waited on the riverbank, and at a signal from him, the guards shoved the woman farther into the water and forced her below the surface. The water roiled as she struggled, and then all went still. They pulled the woman up and she choked and gasped, but before she’d fully caught her breath, under she went once more.
Again and again the guards ducked her, until a familiar voice rang out.
“Stop,” Elspeth Crannach begged, tears shining in her eyes. She stood in the shade of a nearby pine, at the side of someone in fine broadcloth. But his face was shadowed, and Rowenna could not make it out. “Please. I’ll do as you ask. I’ll do anything. Just leave her be.”
There was anguish in every one of the girl’s words, and she dropped to her knees before the shadowy figure, taking his hands in her own.
“Whatever you want,” Elspeth swore. “I’m yours.”
With a motion, the figure before her stopped the guards. They dragged the woman onto the riverbank and dropped her there, sodden and coughing up fetid water. Elspeth started toward her, but Torr Pendragon—for it must be him—stopped her with a hand on her arm.
“No,” he said evenly. “You don’t go to her. From now on, you stand at my side. You set yourself apart.”
Tears slipped down Elspeth’s face as she nodded. But she fixed her gaze on her mother and did not look away, not as the guards hauled the woman to her feet roughly and dragged her off, up toward the castle.
The wind receded from Rowenna. Gently it slipped away, leaving her empty and bereft, and haunted by what she’d seen. She opened her eyes, and Elspeth stood before her, untouchable and beautiful as always, with a look of mild curiosity on her face.
“Did it work?” Elspeth asked.
Rowenna got to her feet. She crossed the small distance between them and wrapped her arms about the other girl. Sharp and proud as Rowenna could be, she was not heartless, and she knew all too well what Elspeth had felt, watching her mother near drown. And though Rowenna did not know the full price Torr Pendragon had exacted from Elspeth in exchange for her mother’s life, she’d have done precisely as Elspeth did and given herself up, had their situations been reversed.
“Oh,” Elspeth said softly, and hugged Rowenna back.
After a moment Rowenna stepped away and nodded in answer to the question Elspeth had asked.
“Well, good,” Elspeth said with a smile. “I wasn’t—I wasn’t sure I’d made it clear.”
* * *
Rowenna had made it her habit to sleep during the afternoons, when there was no darkness to hide her curse-breaking work and when Elspeth was occupied at the castle. But this particular afternoon she found herself restless and unwilling to fall into one of her tortured dreams of home. A bale of nettle-flax fiber sat waiting for her in one corner of the hut, but she could not spin it into yarn without a drop spindle at very least, and there was not enough yet to complete the curse breaking with.
For a short while she sat in the sun outside the hut, watching her brothers and Gawen as they alternately dozed in the warm light and paddled about on the river. The wind’s vision of Elspeth haunted her, as did the way she’d lost Mairead. She did not want to lose anyone again. Whatever the cost, she’d not give up on her family when there was the least chance they might be saved.
So despite the bright sun, Rowenna picked herself up and climbed the hill to the castle. The way to the chapel was gratifyingly quiet, even as she slipped through the tall boxwood hedge and into the menagerie. The strange creatures there were all napping in the afternoon sun, and Rowenna nearly overlooked the graveyard boy, who sat on the gravel before the fuath’s cage, watching the creature at rest.
The fuath lay in the cage’s sole shady corner, its grasping hand draped into the small bowl of brackish water that was the only moisture afforded it. Every now and then the monster gasped, feathery gills on its neck opening and shutting with a moist, stomach-turning sound. Not a hint of glamour clung to it, at least that Rowenna could see. Under the full sun it seemed pitiful and wretched—a thing cast up on shore to dry out and die. Passing the graveyard boy, Rowenna crouched before the bars of the cage and looked full into the fuath’s murderous face.
The creature looked back, regarding her with enormous, pale eyes.
“Put out your hand to it. See what it thinks of you.”
There was a hint of eagerness to the graveyard boy’s voice, and for the first time in his presence, Rowenna felt a twinge of mistrust. He gestured to the fuath, who’d raised its head as if scenting the air, wide eyes gone lightless and black.
“Go on. Reach through the bars. I’d like to see what it does.”
Rowenna hesitated. But the creature looked so weak and desperate in the sun. And a small, dark part of her found it tempting—the thought of having a monster like the one that had killed her mother within her power.
“You’re quite safe,” the graveyard boy said. “You’ve nothing to worry about.”
Rowenna glanced anxiously over one shoulder at him, and he smiled. A sudden wave of reassurance swept through her.
The creature rose to its feet in a single, sinuous motion, and, drawing closer to where Rowenna stood, pressed its face to the bars.
“Look,” the boy coaxed. “The beast has taken to you. Don’t be afraid.”
His voice was warm and pleasant, and there was something in the way he watched Rowenna that set the better part of her at ease. To look at, he was honest and open, entirely trustworthy.
But the wind fretted about her, muttering to itself. Beware, beware, beware.
Rowenna reached out and brushed the fuath’s wicked face with the back of one hand.
Tha mi eòlach ort, a vicious whisper said, cutting into Rowenna’s mind. I know you. I know your kind. Do you think he wouldn’t put you in a cage as well? Ask the other one what she thinks of her chains.
Shocked, Rowenna stepped back.
“I saw its true form,” the graveyard boy murmured, reverence in his voice. “I saw it, at your touch. Did you know it holds its glamour for the rest of us even now? Even after three years as a captive? All I see when I look at it is my own face reflected back. But no creature can help showing its truest nature when it falls beneath a witch’s hand. I’ve never seen it unmasked before—it wouldn’t suffer Elspeth to come near it, not even when she had her craft.”
Rowenna swallowed. She did not want to be here, caught between this disarming boy and the fuath in its cage. But the fuath, at least, was a known quantity. The boy, however—he looked nearly like a farmhand, in his belted trousers and loose, fine-spun shirt, with a scattering of freckles across his nose. There was something that had begun to nag at her though—his self-assurance, perhaps. Rowenna had begun to have her suspicions.
Steeling her courage, she went to him. The graveyard boy stayed motionless, a slight smile playing at the edges of his mouth, as Rowenna reached out. Just as she’d done with the fuath, she brushed the back of her fingers against his jaw.
At once it felt as if a weight had dropped from Rowenna. Until now, she hadn’t realized the extent to which she’d had to push against this stranger’s aggressive trustworthiness, to keep from revealing more of herself and her truths than she intended. Though the boy’s face remained much the same, she caught a glint in his eyes she’d never noticed before. A calculating light—a sharp and predatory wit. And when Rowenna looked down at his hands, they were rimed in blood to the elbows. It dripped from his fingertips to the ground and pooled there in a crimson puddle.
