Gwenhwyfar (9 page)

Then they lined up, head to tail, along the paddock fence, and the groom called out what they should do. Oh, not for
their
benefit; it was very clear to Gwen that she wasn’t in control of Adara right now, and it looked to her as if the rest of the beginners were in a similar case. No, no. It was the horses who responded to the commands, and they, the riders, were doing their pitiful best not to fall off, to learn how to move as one with the horse, and not merely balance there.

Ride in a circle; walk, trot, canter, then drop back to a walk. Wheel and do the same in the other direction. Repeat until the horses’ muscles were sufficiently warmed up. Wheel, so that they were all facing the same direction. Charge the fence at a trot, pull up, wheel in place and charge the fence on the other side. Repeat until the young riders were starting to get the rhythm of things. Go back to riding in a circle. Split into two groups, charge each other, making sure no one collided. Wheel and repeat. Go back to riding in a circle. Trot to the fence and stop, then back. Wheel in place and repeat.

Then the groom ordered them all out of the paddock, and Gwen thought they were going to be allowed to just
ride,
on a jaunt across the grazing meadows, as she used to on the pony—but no. The groom directed them to another part of the training field where there were padded poles set up down the middle, and when Gwen saw them, she knew what they were going to be doing. As she expected, the groom set them to weaving through the poles, down and back, first at a walk, then a trot, then a canter. They didn’t go up to a full gallop, but right next to them was another set of poles, around which another set of slightly older warriors-in-training
were
riding at an all-out gallop, and with the reins in their teeth and their hands held out to the side, keeping their seats only through superb balance!

All this was taking an entirely different set of muscles than she used in riding the stolid little pony. She could feel every pull and strain and knew she was going to be very, very sore. And yet—she would not have traded this for
anything.
And no matter how sore she was, it was going to be worth it.

The groom finally led them back to their original paddock, but of course, the work was not over. The horses had to be unsaddled, walked cool, rubbed down, and put in their proper stalls, with saddle arranged on a stand and bridle hung on a peg. Then, and only then, were they allowed to go.

It was sunset, and suppertime, by the time she limped back to the Great Hall. The servants had brought in the kettles of stew and the remains of last night’s feast, and people were settling onto the benches and tucking in. The Hall was nowhere near as crowded as it had been last night; at least half the guests had packed up and headed homeward this morning, and the rest would leave tomorrow. Gwen was not altogether sorry to see them go; she was already tired of being polite and always on her good behavior even when some of the boy guests behaved outrageously.

Her father and mother were already seated at the High Table—on the day after a feast, no one really stood on ceremony—when a shriek and a wail arose from the back of the hall where the bedrooms were, and a moment later Gynath and Cataruna came storming out of the room, the one angry, the other lamenting, with ruin in their hands.

“My best slippers!” shouted Cataruna, her cheeks aflame with rage.

“My belt! I just finished embroidering it! I only wore it once!” wept Gynath, consumed with grief.

The pretty leather slippers had, very clearly, been given to the dogs to play with. They were chewed to shapelessness, and the seams had come half unsewn.

As for the belt, someone had taken it out and trodden it into the mud until nothing of the bright colors that Gynath had so painstakingly sewn into beautiful patterns could be seen for the dirt and stains.

A sinking feeling in her stomach, Gwen walked slowly to the bedroom. She dreaded what she would find. Which of
her
possessions had been taken and ruined? Behind her, she could hear her sisters telling their parents how they had found their things—and Cataruna added shrilly that Little Gwen was nowhere to be found.

Little Gwen.
Of course it was her. She’d wanted something, gotten it, and didn’t like it—so her first thought was to take whatever her sisters took pleasure in and ruin it. Gynath’s new belt had been the admiration and envy of the other girls, for Gynath was the best needlewoman in the castle. And Cataruna’s slippers had made her feet look very handsome indeed in the dancing; more than one young man had said something about them in ways that had made the blood rise to Cataruna’s cheeks last night.

“. . . it was no accident, Father!” Cataruna snarled. “The slippers were in my chest, on top of my kirtle, right where I put them last night. She took them and gave them to the dogs, then put them back!”

Gynath was sobbing too hard to be coherent. She had been working on that belt all summer. Gwen didn’t blame her for weeping.

But Gwen didn’t have to look far to find Little Gwen’s revenge on
her.
There in the corner where she had been left was Gwen’s poppet. Or rather, what was left of her poppet.

The doll had been torn limb from limb, scalped, and decapitated. Her clothing had been shredded. Mutely, Gwen gathered up the pitiful remains in both hands, and went out into the hall where her mother was trying to soothe a disconsolate Gynath, and her father to placate Cataruna with promises of a new pair of slippers even prettier than the ruined ones. She waited until Gynath’s sobs had quieted into sniffs and hiccups, and Cataruna had run out of names to call their sister. That was when the king and queen finally became aware that she was standing there. When their eyes fell on her, she silently held out her hands. It took them a few moments to realize what it was—or had been.

“Oh, no—” It was Gynath who realized it first, and it came out in a moan. “Oh, no, oh, Gwen, your poppet, your poor doll!”

Cataruna’s cheeks flamed anew. “That—that—” she spluttered. “Oh! I am going to
shake
that brat until her head falls off and her teeth fall out!”

Eleri’s eyes narrowed with anger. The king put up a hand. “You’ll not touch her. When she’s found, she
will
be whipped, and she’ll be living on bread and water for a fortnight, and put to whatever work Bronwyn deems suitable. There will be no playtime for her until the snow flies, and perhaps not even then if I am not convinced of her repentance.” He looked to his queen. “I’ve spoiled and indulged her overmuch, as you said time and again, and this is what comes of it. I am sorry that you, my
good
daughters, have fallen victim to her mischief.”

“And her poppet will be yours, Gwen,” the Queen began—

“Lady Mother—no,” Gwen replied, feeling dimly that if she were given something of
Little Gwen’s
rather than just a replacement, her youngest sister would only see it as a reason for more vengeance. She straightened her back, gently piled the pathetic remains of the doll on the table, rubbed the back of her hand across her stinging eyes, and looked up at her mother and father. “I’m a warrior now. Warriors don’t need poppets. I won’t have time to play with it, anyway.”

Her mother gave her a skeptical look, but her father relaxed and beamed his approval. “Well said,” was all he replied, but Gwen felt that approval fill her and ease some of the sadness she felt at losing her plaything.

“Bronwyn,” Eleri directed, “Take these things and see what, if anything, can be done with them. The belt especially. Then look for Gwenhwyfach, and when you find her, see she is put in the guard closet to await our pleasure. And let us eat. There is no reason for a nasty child to spoil our supper, nor make us wait until our meat is cold.”

Gwen ate slowly, feeling the ache of every overworked muscle, every bruise. She actually didn’t mind it; concentrating on that made everything else secondary. And while Eleri consoled Gynath and Cataruna with the most golden-crusted of the pies and the last of the honeycakes, the king directed his server to give Gwen all of the leftover goose and with his own hand poured her cup full, not of cider, but of honey-mead. “You’ll be aching, young warrior,” he said in an undertone. “This will help you sleep.”

The mead was sweet but with a fire under it. It burned its way pleasantly down her throat as she slowly ate slivers of goose, spread a surprise bit of goose liver on some bread, and sopped up the last of the goose fat with the rest of the bread. And it did start to make the aches go off into the distance and give her a warm and soft-edged feeling, as if she were falling asleep. Halfway through dinner, Bronwyn returned and reported that a sulky and unrepentant Gwenhwyfach had been put in the guard-closet, with one of the turnspits as a guard on the door.

The guard-closet was a tiny little windowless niche in the stone walls, with a single hard stone bench in it, that the king used to keep single wrongdoers in while he debated what punishment to mete out to them. From time to time all of the girls had been confined there for mischief, but never had he done what he did now.

“Here,” he said, carefully picking out the hardest and most stale piece of trencherbread and a leather cup that he filled with water. He handed both to Bronwyn. “Give her those, and tell her she will be staying in the closet until morning. In the morning, my dogmaster will whip her. And then for the next fortnight, she will sleep in the rushes with the dogs and the scullions. I’ll not have her sharing a soft bed that she did nothing to deserve. I’ll not have her sleeping comfortable beside the sisters she wronged. When she is repentant and ready to act like a king’s daughter instead of a low-born brat, we will see if she may sleep like one.”

Gwen’s astonishment woke her up from a half-drowse. Eleri nodded approval.

“I put you in charge of her, Bronwyn, to direct her as you like,” the king continued. “While she sleeps on the hearth, you will give her work to do so that she learns the evil of idleness. She’ll have nothing but bread and water. At the end of that time, she will apologize, and if I am convinced she is repentant, she may go back to the bed and the board.”

Bronwyn bowed silently, took the bread and water, and disappeared into the shadows.

Gwen sopped up the last of the fat, ate the last bite of bread, drank the last swallow in the bottom of her cup. She felt the fatigue of the day settle on her like a weight; she begged permission to leave and plodded back to the bedroom.

On the way there she passed the turnspit guarding the door to the guard-closet. There were muffled sobs coming from inside. But they didn’t sound repentant, or frightened, or sorrowful.

They sounded angry.

Winter did not
stop the training. Even when conditions were too foul to ride, it was the responsibility of the warriors-in-training to take the horses out to the paddock, turn them loose, clean the stalls, then give their feet a thorough cleaning and put them up again. Normally the grooms did this, but when the horses were confined to the stable, rather than running loose, the stalls fouled that much faster. A horse standing in a fouled stall was in danger of thrush. And a horse with thrush was in danger of having to be put down. As the horsemaster told them all sternly the first time they were set to this task, “Every horse in this stable’s worth three of the likes of you, an’ ne’er ye forget it.”

It was true, too. So foul weather only meant another sort of work with the horses.

As for warrior training . . . well, foul weather meant that some of their “training” involved ax work . . . against the firewood. The trainers had very clever ways of making sure that every stroke accomplished some wood-splitting. Gwen built quite a set of muscles over the winter. And once they could be safely trusted with bows and arrows, they became part of the army of hunters that provided meat for the king’s table. And a miss there, against rapidly moving targets, had more serious consequences than a miss at a wand. Gwen learned to appreciate every bite of rabbit pie and to look on goose, duck, venison, and boar with an appreciation she’d never felt before.

After a month of punishment, Little Gwen finally broke down and repented . . . or at least made the motions of repentance. Gwen was expecting some other form of retaliation, but at least where she was concerned, nothing happened. In fact, Little Gwen left her alone for the first time in memory. Perhaps it was nothing more than the fact that from Gwenhwyfach’s perspective, Gwen’s training regimen was worse than any sort of revenge. It hardly mattered, really; the only time she ever saw her little sister was at meals and bedtime and often not even then. Gwen ate early, rose early and went to bed early, so tired from the physical work that she was dead asleep from the moment she got under the blankets.

But once back in the king’s good graces, Little Gwen seemed to be putting most of her effort into becoming his favorite—and to making herself as unlike Gwen as possible. She began walking and talking as daintily as any girl trying to catch the eye of a boy, kept herself fastidiously neat, and for the first time volunteered to do things, as long as they were womanly. The king found this very amusing; as for Eleri, she was too preoccupied with her own matters to pay much attention. And Gwen was just relieved that Little Gwen had finally found something to keep her from plaguing her older sisters.

The winter was not as harsh as everyone had feared, and most took that as a sign that the High King’s marriage had had the desired result on the land. Certainly at the Year Turning and Fire Kindling, the Midwinter Solstice, word crept across the kingdoms that the new queen was properly increasing, and that was a good omen indeed.

Someone else was increasing as well, although the queen had kept it to herself until almost February, revealing it only when her women threatened to tell the king themselves. But again, this had little impact on Gwen’s life; now one of the warriors-in-training, she was effectively out of Eleri’s household.