Thief (16 page)

Sorcha sought out the princess as she danced with the prince, savoring his every attention as though he was the only other one in the room. Eavlyn was not only intelligent but brave. Braver than Sorcha. But no matter how noble her cause, Sorcha realized at that moment she could not go through with her wedding to Cynric.

The music came to an end. Red-faced and winded, Cynric bowed before Sorcha. “Milady, you are light as an elf upon your feet and twice as lovely.”

Sorcha curtsyed. “Milord is kind.” Would he be so kind once she told him she couldn’t marry him?

Chapter Fourteen

Tunwulf shot a glance around the room and swore beneath his breath. “The entire kingdom is hers tonight … and my father, dancing like a pet bear to her tune,” he grumbled over his empty cup.

“As I would be, given the chance,” his royal companion replied. Aethelfrith, prince of neighboring Diera to Bernicia’s south, had left his privileged position near the king’s dais to meander among guests. “And so would you,” he reminded Tunwulf.

Sorcha’s popularity annoyed Rhianon as well, but she was better at hiding it. “The scop may boast a golden voice and pretty face, but you know well I can please far more than the ear and eyes.”

Dutifully, Rhianon refilled her consort’s cup, allowing him and Diera’s atheling another feast for the eye in the dip of her bodice. Rhianon hated the way Saxon women were expected to pour drink for their men like serving wenches. It was demeaning.

“Of that I have little doubt,” the prince remarked, staring beyond politeness. “I meant no slight to young Elford’s lady.” But it was lip service only. Aethelfrith had little regard for women beyond satisfying his thirst and hunger within and without the bower.

Rhianon intended to change that. “None taken, milord prince.”

Although she had to be careful. Most Saxons did not tolerate witchcraft but, in their ignorance, drowned those accused of it, sometimes after unthinkable abuse. But Rhianon had seen the Dieran prince secretly forming alliances with the intention to seize Bernicia. She could point out each man Aethelfrith had approached.

Their faces had all appeared in her scrying dish. Not even her nurse and teacher of magic had mastered that art. Rhianon could see what was or had been afoot in any place she could visualize in the water of her sacred bowl. Tunwulf cherished such a gift, and so would Aethelfrith, when the time was right to reveal it. They were cut from the same cloth.

With the pitcher empty, Rhianon moved behind Tunwulf. Pressing her bosom into his back, she whispered low for his ear alone, “Let her enjoy her high ride while she can, darling. We both know it won’t last long. I promise you.”

Just as she expected, Tunwulf’s thinned mouth twitched with the promise of a smile. Men were like clay in her hands, so easily controlled. And unlike Caden, who’d had to be misled subtly, this one would jump to any length to get what was rightfully his. Aware that Aethelfrith still watched her, she blew in Tunwulf’s ear and stepped away, mischief lighting in her gaze as he groped at her waist. “The pitcher’s empty. I’ll be back soon, darling.”

“Perhaps we might speak in private,” she heard Aethelfrith propose to Tunwulf as she walked away.

Good. Her plan was working. A shadowed alliance between Tunwulf and Diera and the open alliance of Cynric to Hussa placed her lover in both camps, no matter which prevailed in the future. For scrying revealed only what had been or was afoot, not what was to be.

For now, Rhianon needed to deal with the present. She had to be certain of how the beer was dispensed so that everything would go exactly as she planned … although she might have to use Tunwulf to distract Mildrith. The old crow watched over the barrels as if she’d paid for every dram with her own coin. Blending into the shadows close to the walls where bright tapestries had been hung to give this barbarian place some hint of civilization, Rhianon watched the servants filling the pitchers for the queen and her ladies as they were needed. The goddess forbid any splatter on their gowns.

It would take little effort to stand with Sorcha at the wedding feast and—

“What devious thoughts are churning in that pretty head of yours, I wonder?”

Rhianon spun and caught her breath. Oafish boor that Caden O’Byrne had been when he was drunk, he was a handsome rake who could still make her heart beat like a bird’s. She’d mourned his loss as a lover, having found no equal. Certainly not the clumsy and brutish Tunwulf. She cocked her head at him, brandishing a coquettish smile.

“What would you say if I told you I was thinking of you?” she replied, teasing the vee of his plain woolen tunic with her finger. He caught her wrist, stopping her cold.

“I’d say you were lying …
as usual
.”

How dare he sling such insult after all she’d done for him? “I lied plenty for you, Caden, and you didn’t seem bothered by it then.”

“You lied plenty
to
me as well … about the babe, for instance.”

Rhianon expelled her breath in exasperation. “Well, what was I
supposed
to do? I wanted more than anything to have a baby, and there was that
woman,”
she said, referring to Caden’s sister-in-law, Brenna, “pregnant without even trying! I so wanted to give you an heir that I’d convinced myself I was with child. It’s not unheard of.”

Caden laughed. “I guess lying just comes naturally from those lips.”

Undaunted, Rhianon leaned in. “I remember a time when you worshipped these lips.” She ran the tip of her tongue between them, moistening them. “And they worshipped you. By the goddess, I have missed you in my bed.”

“Indeed.” Leaning against a post between the tapestries, Caden studied her mouth, as if a kiss was merely a breath away.

Rhianon held hers. He wanted her. She knew he did. And she wanted him. The memory of his bare, sweat-damp skin shining in the firelight flushed Rhianon with a warmth she’d not known since that night of dark magic in Keena’s hut when her nurse had summoned a spirit to help them.

“But I think those lips have been busy enough without me.” He straightened and grinned.

Curse the man! She’d forgotten how playful and absolutely infuriating he could be. Rhianon splayed her hand on his chest. “I’m supposed to sleep with the servants in the queen’s hall tonight while Elford and Tunwulf return to their haws below the rock.”

“A night without a man.” Caden tutted. “You
must
be desperate.”

“I am.” Her shame was black as a Cheviot bog, but Rhianon didn’t care. She recalled what her old nurse had put in his drink. The black magic she’d worked. Rhianon had the same knowledge now.

“But
I’m
not.” Caden lifted the cup in his hand, drained it, and handed it to her. “I don’t need anymore,” he told her, leaving her to discern whether he meant her or the beer.

The nerve of the oaf! Rhianon swelled with fury in his wake, watching as Caden rejoined the Lothian party and spoke to the priest among them. Whatever Caden said made the holy man look her way, hands clasped, with a milksop smile, as though sending her his blessing. With a curse, she pivoted away rather than meet Martin’s eye. Of all the priests in Albion chosen to marry Princess Eavlyn to the atheling, it had to be that old hermit from Glenarden! How Rhianon hated him.

Feared him. Hadn’t he driven her and her poor nurse over the cliff with his mumblings?

Her emotions fairly seethed until Rhianon realized that her jaw ached from the clench of her teeth. But she was
not
the hysterical young woman the old fool had driven over a cliff with his prayers to his God. Rhianon was wiser now … and stronger.

Hadn’t she amazed Tunwulf when she’d
seen
the Mercians mustering against Diera before the news arrived at Din Guardi? If only the dolt had believed her enough to pass his knowledge on to the king, she might be sitting at the royal table with Aethelfrith himself, instead of relegated as a tagalong to Elford.

Though she hadn’t seen Caden’s survival.

She hadn’t
looked
, Rhianon argued against her doubt. She shoved the empty pitcher at the servant working the beer barrel tap. Why would she, when she’d thought him dead?

And the Devil take Caden O’Byrne now … if she didn’t find a way to dispose of him first. The thought drew a smile to her lips. Perhaps she should look into her dish.

The morning came cloaked in gray, but by midday the sun had batted away the cloud cover and dried the lingering dampness.
Saterdaeg
, the seventh day of the week, was the Christian holy day, so Sorcha accompanied Princess Eavlyn to a Sabbath service held in the front corner of the king’s meadhall. The men chose to get a good start on their hunt instead of attending. Later, they would join the ladies at the queen’s outing, where a repast of food and drink, as well as a bonfire, would await them.

After a fretful night, in which she could find none of the peace or conviction her royal companion seemed to possess, Sorcha tried paying close heed to the Christian service. Yet her mind would not leave its quandary behind. How would she tell Cynric that she no longer wanted to marry him?

There was no peace to be found in the priest’s words. But then, if the Christian God was all they believed, He’d know she was a thief and not deserving of such. Sorcha left disheartened and even more bemused by Christians. The notion of eating the flesh and drinking the blood of the God who’d sacrificed Himself for the sins of mankind was as repugnant as the ancient warriors of Mithra drinking bull’s blood. At least the Christians substituted bread and wine for their ceremony.

“It’s symbolic,” Eavlyn explained later that afternoon in a meadow where the noblewomen had gathered to see the queen’s prize falcon hunt. “The bread and wine are consumed to help us remember that Christ’s blood was shed and his flesh torn for our sake. To remind us of His sacrificial love, hence nourishing our spirits as our bodies are nourished by the bread and wine.”

“Our heroes are satisfied with a glorious song to honor them,” Sorcha replied as they meandered along a well-worn path marked with fresh hoofprints where the men had passed that morning.

It led through a wild hedge of hawthorn and gorse lining a streambed to the forest beyond. Father Martin sat close to the shining ribbon of water on one of two large rocks that Sorcha supposed had been put there to mark the crossing. Elsewise they seemed out of place at the meadow’s edge.

“Your heroes are mere men whose deeds are oft undone in time,” Eavlyn reminded her. “Jesus is the Son of the Living God, and His sacrifice is everlasting. The heroes are gone, but Christ lives on in Heaven, and His Spirit lives in us.”

The other ladies in the party seemed perfectly content to linger by the fire’s warmth, but with the sun high overhead, it wasn’t that cold. Sorcha’s new cloak of chevron-woven wool grew too warm, even when she wandered away from the bonfire to avoid the smoke that continued to shift at whim.

“How can He live in us? How do you know His Spirit is there?”

“By how you live, what you say and do,” Eavlyn answered. “We are like trees that bear fruit. Good fruit shows the presence of the Holy Spirit. Bad fruit shows its absence.”

That Eavlyn believed in this Christ and that Spirit with all her heart was evident in all she said and did. The princess wanted to serve Him, instead of having the gods and goddesses serve her and paying them for their blessings with sacrifices.

Sorcha wondered what kind of fruit she produced.

“You produce good fruit,” Eavlyn said, answering the unspoken question. “The way you care for helpless children.”

“But I don’t have the Spirit in me,” Sorcha pointed out.

“No,” Eavlyn agreed, “but I believe your heart is a home ready to receive Him.”

But the princess didn’t know about Sorcha’s stealing. Did that count if it was for a good cause? Gemma always said they did what they had to do to survive. It made sense at the time, but now doubt crept into Sorcha’s mind. Yet how could Sorcha have helped the children, if she didn’t steal? She couldn’t have.

“Hello, Father,” Eavlyn called out to the priest, drawing him from his contemplation of the wood beyond. “Do you mind if we join you? The smoke is less worrisome here.”

“And the view superb as the day,” the priest said, rising from his perch.

Sorcha had to agree. The forest’s new dress of reds, golds, and browns was brilliant. A trail left by the men’s horses where they’d crossed the stream emerged on the other side of the stream and bore into the wood.

A swift movement in the periphery of her vision drew Sorcha’s attention from the sun-dappled trees to the priest, who grabbed at his staff to keep it from rolling off the stone where he’d propped it. This close, it was impossible to miss the carvings on it. A man standing on water. Though Sorcha had been absorbed in her own thoughts that morning, she recalled the priest’s speaking about a man walking on water before the bizarre ceremony with the bread and wine.