Sorceress (29 page)

Why had she left him? Because of Isa? What kind of idiot was she?

“Isa, please, if you can hear me—”

Just then, soft knuckles tapped at her door. “M’lady?” a woman called through the thick panels.

Startled, shaken out of her reverie, Bryanna quickly found her tunic and tossed it over her head.

“Just a minute.” Hurriedly, the bodice still unlaced, she walked to the door and held it open just a crack.

A slight serving girl stood in the hallway, a bucket of steaming water hanging from one fist. Her eyes were gold as a morning sunrise, her face spattered with tiny freckles, her eyebrows thin and red as her hair. She dipped her head in a half curtsy.

“I’m Daisy,” she said shyly. “Garnock—he’s the steward here—he asked me to see to you,” she said in explanation, then seemed to take in the disheveled state of Bryanna’s clothing and hair. “But . . . I, um, don’t want to bother you. If you’d like to sleep some more, please do so. . . . Otherwise, mayhap I can help you dress?”

Grateful that she’d been sent any servant other than the cross, sallow-faced Hettie, Bryanna said, “Yes . . . please, come in.” She pushed the door open wide enough for Daisy to pass.

The girl hurried inside. She poured the cold water from the washbasin into the empty bucket before refilling the basin with warm water and leaving a fresh cake of lavender-scented soap on the table. “Garnock said to tell you that breakfast will be within the hour,” Daisy said.

Bryanna stepped behind a screen and scrubbed herself, including the tender area between her legs. Afterward, Daisy, warming to her new charge and chattering on about the scandalous behavior of the wright’s eldest daughter, helped her finish dressing. Daisy’s stories continued on as she combed and plaited Bryanna’s hair.

Bryanna was glad to let Daisy chatter on, as her head ached and she couldn’t escape the feeling that last night had been more than a nightmare, much more than a sensual dream. While Daisy prattled, Bryanna’s thoughts strayed to the night before.

Once the girl was gone, she thought about everything she’d learned in the past day. Could it be true? Could she be the daughter of Kambria and Alwynn, and thereby an ancestor of Llewellyn and Rhiannon?

It seemed highly unlikely.

She touched her neck where the chain of bruises ringed her throat and thought of Gavyn. Why, even in her dreams, would their initial mating have been so harsh, so loveless, so brutal? Why would he not have turned her to face him? Kissed her on the lips as he had before? Why would he have made the act so vile, so malicious?

And then, why would he come to her a second time as a passionate yet caring lover?

She couldn’t think about it another second or else she truly would go mad. She had to do something—
anything
. Without wasting a second, she bundled her things together: her extra dress, her herbs, candles, amulets, and the leather map, still wrapped around the dagger, the knot Gleda had tied still tight.

She slipped it into her pouch just as Daisy knocked on the door to announce that breakfast was ready. Bryanna walked down the two stone flights of stairs and inquired about a monk or a scribe, someone who could pen a letter to her sister at Calon. She was hoping that Father Patrick would agree to send the letter by messenger.

On the main level, they walked through a short arched hallway that opened into a great hall, where the trestle tables had been placed and candles burned brightly. At the far end of the enormous room, upon a raised step, the lord’s table had been covered in a fine cloth and Father Patrick was already seated next to several men she didn’t recognize, possibly members of Lord Mabon’s family.

She took a stool near his. “Good morning, Father.”

He offered her a beatific grin, but rebuked, “You were not at the chapel this morn.”

“I’m sorry, Father, I overslept.”

“ ’Tis not an excuse, daughter.” As a page filled his cup with wine, he added, “No matter how weary we are, we must find time to give praise and penance to the Holy Father and his Son.”

“Of course, Father Patrick.”

“I hope you’ve not let Gleda influence you, Lady Bryanna, for she is . . . well, I wouldn’t say she’s a heathen, but let’s just say she sometimes strays. Her allegiance to God is often in question.”

“Is that so?” Bryanna said, nettled. “I found her to be a woman of uncommon faith.”

“Then, I fear, you’re mistaken,” he said as three pages with platters entered the room and approached the lord’s table. Smoked trout and cheese on one wide platter, wastel bread and roast boar with onions on the next, and jellied eggs with fig and milk pudding smelling of cinnamon on the third.

“Ahh, I see the cook has outdone himself,” the priest said. He offered up a long prayer once the savory food had been served upon thick trenchers.

Once the long prayer was over, Bryanna ate hungrily. She avoided most conversation except to ask for help in sending a missive to her sister, which the priest, though seeming a bit annoyed, agreed to do.

When she’d nearly finished eating and the castle hounds were stirring, staring hungrily at the gravy-sodden trenchers and bones, a soldier strode into the keep. Grim-faced, he wended his way through the trestle tables filled with castle workers and soldiers. At the lord’s table, he leaned down and whispered gravely to the ruddy-faced constable, who listened, frowned, then brushed off his fingers. “Don’t move them. I’ll be right there,” he said. Then, as the soldier made his way back through the tables, the constable turned to speak to the priest in low tones. The only word Bryanna was able to hear was “Gleda.”

She’d been dipping a piece of bread in gravy, but she put down the food as she turned to the priest. “What is it?” she demanded, for the expression on the constable’s face was dire.

Father Patrick made the sign of the cross over his chest. “They are in the guardhouse?” he asked. The constable nodded as he pushed aside his trencher and stood. “I’ll be there soon.”

As the tall man left, Father Patrick turned to face Bryanna again. “I’m afraid there is bad news,” he said with more kindness than she would have expected.

Bryanna’s stomach dropped. “What?” she asked, though she wasn’t certain she wanted to know.

“It’s Gleda. Both she and her husband, Liam, were found this morning by hunters.”

She thought she might faint. “What?”

“They were both dead, apparently drowned in the creek.”

“No!” Bryanna shot to her feet, nearly knocking over her stool. “But she was here last night. You and I, Father, we . . . we talked with her. She was alive and well and . . . this I can’t believe.” Tears filled her eyes, but she dashed them away with the backs of her hands.

“There is no reason for my men to lie,” he said.

“I want to see her.”

“What? Oh, child, I don’t think that—”

“I want to see her and I want to see her now,” she insisted, her voice rising enough that several soldiers at a nearby table looked her way.

“Perhaps we should pray,” he said in that melodious, self-important voice she was quickly learning to detest.

“I just want to see her. Now. Take me to her. We can pray over her body.” Bryanna was already heading for the door. Not bothering with a mantle, she rushed through the crowded great hall, ignored the guard, and pushed open the door. The air was thick and moist from the recent storm, tinged with the scent of wood smoke.

Following a pathway muddied by a trickle of water running downhill, she headed across the bailey to the guardhouse. Already some girls were gathering eggs while two boys, red-haired twins by the looks of them, were strewing oyster shells and seeds for the clucking, pecking chickens. Dyers were at their vats, swirling spun cloth with wooden paddles in their open-air huts, and the potter’s wheel was whirling as he shaped mazers and ewers and jugs. A thatcher was on the farrier’s hut, fixing the roof, and the clang of a stonemason’s hammer and chisel rang through the bailey.

Bryanna found her feet flying over the earth, passing the kennels, where hounds were barking, and the stables, where horses whinnied and nickered as they were being fed.

She brushed past a man who was standing in the shade of a hayrick and stopped dead in her tracks when she realized he might be Gavyn. She turned quickly to seek him out, but in a matter of a heartbeat he was gone, probably just a figment of her imagination. Her wild imagination . . . hearing voices and following a mysterious quest.

Breathlessly, she hurried onward, her shoes slipping in the mud, her mind still caught in a web of thoughts of Gavyn.

Bryanna’s heart sank as she swept past the guard at the door of the gatehouse and forced her way inside.

“Wait, m’lady,” he cried, and she recognized him as Quigg, the flat-nosed soldier she’d met the night before, the sentry Gleda had known since he was a boy. “Please, ’tis not a good idea—”

Ignoring his protests, she pushed her way past other men standing around a table. A fire burned, candle flames flickered, and weapons of all sizes and shapes—knives, swords, quarterstaffs, maces, and broadaxes—were mounted on the walls. But she paid little attention to anything but the two bodies lying upon a wide plank table.

“Oh, sweet Jesus,” she whispered, her hand flying to her mouth as she recognized Gleda and her husband, Liam. They lay side by side, the pallor of their faces a dismal gray, their clothes still clinging and wet, water dripping onto a puddle on the stone floor. “No,” she whispered, shaking her head as if she could dispel the image by denying it. Gleda looked so small and frail. Bryanna couldn’t believe that just yesterday the feisty little woman had told her about Kambria, the woman who was supposedly her mother. “How . . . how could this have happened?”

“An accident,” the captain of the guard said, his face sober. “M’lady, I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to be here. Mayhap you should wait at the keep for—”

“What kind of accident?” she demanded, ignoring his suggestion.

“She and her husband drowned in the creek, not far from their home,” he said. “Two hunters on their way out this morning found them and brought them back to the keep.”

“Why did they drown?” she demanded.

“Who knows?” The captain shook his head. “The sheriff, he’s on his way to look at the creek, but probably Liam here came looking for his wife, who had been late coming home from the keep. ’Twas a bad storm. Mayhap the horse shied and she fell, striking her head on a rock. . . . There is a mark upon her forehead. But who knows? ’Tis a tragedy.”

Bryanna wanted to collapse, to fall to her knees and scream at Isa or God or anyone who would listen. Instead she gritted her teeth. “You are certain this is an accident?” she demanded, feeling the eyes of all the soldiers in the room boring into her.

“Aye. As far as we can tell, nothing was taken. Their horse was wandering nearby, still saddled and bridled. There were coins in Liam’s pocket, and their house seemed undisturbed.”

Bryanna found it impossible to believe that on the very day Gleda had spilled a secret she’d held for sixteen years, both she and her husband would die, not just one, in his or her sleep, or after a long illness, but together and suddenly. It seemed too coincidental.

And yet why would someone kill both Gleda and her husband? To what end?

She heard the priest huffing and puffing as he picked his way along the wet bent grass and mud. “Oh, dear,” he said, viewing the bodies.

Before he could suggest that everyone pray over Gleda and Liam, Bryanna slipped outside into the fresh air. Bile rose in her throat, and she feared she would lose all of her breakfast. Leaning back against the wet stones of the gatehouse, she tried to stave off tears by staring at the ominous clouds scudding across the sky.

What had happened to Gleda?

To Liam?

An accident?

Or, she feared, something darker and much more sinister.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

S
he couldn’t stay here.

Sniffing back her tears, Bryanna hurried to the keep. Though she knew the priest would want her to stay and pray for Gleda’s soul, the very soul he’d dismissed so easily at breakfast, she had no stomach for it. She needed to get away. To escape.

To find Gavyn
, the voice within her mind demanded as she chased a waddling goose up the path and sidestepped the spots where others from the flock had defecated.

Word of Gleda’s death had already whispered through the castle walls, and children were huddled near the door of the gatehouse while laundresses, eyeing the steely sky, carried baskets toward a huge open-air shed to dry their recently scrubbed linens. Gossip floated on the air. . . .

“Drowned, fer sure, but coulda hit her head. . . .”

“Both of ’em, ye say? ’Tis a shame.” The heavier of the two women clucked her tongue and shook her scarf-wrapped head as she set her tub onto the ground.

“A shame or a sign from God,” the other laundress said. “Old Gleda, some people say she was a witch. . . . Well, if not her, then at least her niece, the one who died a while back.”

Two boys raced past, their noses running and hair flying. Gleefully they chased three dogs heading toward the gatehouse.

“Hey! You, there! James Miller! Get those pups back to the kennel master, right now! You, too, Jones! Now!” She turned back to the thinner woman, adding, “The witch’s name was Kambria, if I remember right.”