she was, but dangerous, too, a woman given to fits of anger so fierce she was finally locked away in a tower for her own good. She died by leaping out the window in the midst of a fit, dashing her brains on the paving below. Fortunately Hoell had not inherited his mother’s rages. Instead he became meek as a newborn lamb, easy to care for, but wholly unable to deal with the fractious, brawling chiefs and lords who comprised the nobility of Brynhyvar, let alone the insinuations of his foreign bride and her relatives.
Another image flashed through Donnor’s mind: the bewildered look in the King’s sad, slack eyes when Donnor had thrown down the ritual gauntlet on the floor beside Hoell’s chair at the head of the Council table, where Hoell sat, a forlorn figurehead, King in name only. Queen Merle shrieked a curse in her native tongue, her black eyes blazing like jet in her white face. The other Councilors, all foreigners like Renvahr and the Queen now, gasped as one body.
But Hoell only picked up the glove, and stroked the much-creased leather. “You dropped this, Uncle,” the King said, a hesitant smile lifting the full, soft mouth as plump and red as a woman’s. Donnor closed his eyes, remembering the pain of betrayal that lanced through his chest.
Renvahr rose to his feet, hand fumbling for the hilt of his sword, while the two Councilors sitting on either side of him struggled to hold him back. “You want war, Gar?” he shouted. “Then, by the goddess, you shall have it!” Renvahr’s eyes had flicked over to Cadwyr, where he stood beside the door, waiting to follow Donnor out of the room. “And what about you, Allovale?” he’d barked. “Will you betray your blood?”
“You are no blood of mine, Renvahr,” had been Cadwyr’s terse reply. They had stalked out of the Council chamber together, shoulder to shoulder, the only two native-born members left, for not even Renvahr had dared to remove them. Yet. Donnor allowed himself one last look at Hoell’s face, and felt another stab of guilt that he should so betray his brother’s son, even as the Queen screamed obscenities, Renvahr cried for order, and Hoell dissolved into a slow stream of tears.
Below, a low, keening wail erupted from one of the women as she recognized a father, a brother, a lover, or a son, and Donnor braced his shoulders against the nameless woman’s grief. A familiar form crossed his line of sight—the slim, blond shape of Cecily, his Duchess—as she hurried to the grieving woman’s side. Was she even five-and-twenty yet, he wondered? Surely she’d been no more than sixteen when her parents had agreed to the match. It was a wildly advantageous marriage for him, for it linked two rival septs of the Clan Garannon, but it did not prevent tongues across the breadth and length of Brynhyvar from whispering about the forty-year difference in their ages. But he’d learned long ago that such a plum ripened only rarely, and he hastened to seize it while he could. In all the eight years she’d been his wife, she’d failed him in only one respect—she had never carried a living child to term. Now the front of her apron and her gown was stained with blood and dirt and worse, while worry creased her forehead and sleeplessness smudged dark shadows beneath her eyes. She looked nothing like the innocent girl she’d been when they’d danced at their wedding. How happy he’d been that day, how sure that at last, he’d found his heart’s own yearning. How much he’d looked forward to settling down into the rosy glow of the late afternoon of his life, beget an heir, or two or more. A sadness, a regret swept over him at how differently it had all worked out.
If only they’d had a child, he thought. Surely things would be far different, if only they’d had a child.
With a sudden screech, a black shape plunged from a ledge high above and as Donnor startled back, a raven swept low over the hall. It wheeled and dipped over the long rows of wounded, gave a shrill caw and flew out an open window. There was a general stir throughout the hall, and Donnor shuddered involuntarily. There was no mistaking that omen, for the raven was a harbinger of the Marrihugh, the warrior goddess. He could almost feel her striding across the land in her crow-feathered boots, crying out for foreign blood. But how many of his own men must die? he wondered, as he watched the stretcher-bearers carry away the corpse, while Cecily folded the grieving woman in her arms, rocking her gently as if she held a child. How many more must die, he wondered, before her thirst was slaked?
He noticed that Cecily looked up, following the raven’s flight, as she hugged the woman close. Then his eye was caught by the familiar gleam of hair so pale it was nearly white, and he saw that Kian, the First Knight of his household, and thus the captain of his personal guard, had slipped into the hall, and was making his way across the crowded floor to Cecily. From this height, he could not see Kian’s expression, but Donnor had no doubt of the eager light burning in Kian’s eyes. Since Beltane, Donnor saw it every time his captain looked into his Duchess’s face.
In only a few quick steps, Kian was beside her, the thick strands of his long hair clinging damply to the green and blue plaid he wore flung over one shoulder. Donnor stared, rooted in place by a hard anger made even hotter by shame. It had been a year—no, closer to two, really—since he had last shared Cecily’s bed. After the last hope of an heir had bled itself away, he had excused himself, murmuring that he could not bear to hear her weep over yet another unborn babe.
But that was not the real reason. If he went not to her bed, it was because he could not, and if ever Cecily bore a child, he would have to know it was not his. As her husband, he would be bound to acknowledge the child or cry her out for adultery, and see her burned at the stake. As Kian bent over her, his mouth close to her ear, Donnor broke free of the spell, turned on his heel, and fled, unable to watch any longer.
Cecily heard the crow’s harsh cry, and looked up from the desperate clutch of Rowena’s arms. Beside her, she could feel the comforting bulk of old Mag, chief still-wife, who could always be counted upon as much for a broad shoulder and an open ear as a soothing brew in times of trouble and distress. So many dead, she thought, as Rowena’s warm, wet weight pressed against her neck. She had known the moment she had seen the long procession of wounded carted through the gates that the slaughter begun on the battlefield wasn’t over. As the stretcher-bearers lifted the corpse, she whispered the ancient words to speed the newly-dead to the Summerlands, and hugged Rowena closer:
“These three things I bid thee keep—
The memory of merry days and quiet nights
Of quiet days and merry nights,
Honor unstained by word or deed
And all the love I bear for thee.”
Rowena’s thin shoulders shook with sobs as the body was borne away. “He was my whole heart,” she choked, while old Mag crooned a gentle hush.
Cecily glanced up at the balcony, where Donnor still stood, staring fixedly at the door as if he could will the messenger to arrive. She wondered if he even saw the men dying here below. She could not imagine weeping so hard for Donnor, if it were his body on the bier. Would she feel anything but a nebulous sense of regret, if the old lion, as most of the inhabitants of the castle lovingly referred to their Duke, were to die? As she rocked Rowena back and forth, she imagined herself a widow, and recognized it felt as odd to imagine herself a widow as it did to remind herself that she was Donnor’s wife. Lately she’d been plagued more and more by the constant vague feeling that there was something else she should be doing, some other role she was meant to play. Whatever it was, it continued to escape her.
Easy for him to stand above, removed, and watch, she thought, suddenly angry, leaving her to deal with this river of death; leaving Kian to deal with what defenses they could muster until the clan chiefs answered Donnor’s summons. She sighed to herself as she thought of Kian—at just past thirty, he was tall and strong and courageous, well-liked by all for the uplander’s courtesy he extended to even the meanest of the castle scullions. Although he had been a member of Donnor’s house for at least three years now, their duties kept them separate and apart much of the time and she had never even noticed him except in briefest passing. It was only this past Beltane their eyes had met and she had noticed a look in his she attributed to the nature of the rite, a look that had made her knees weak as a wave of longing and desire swept over and through her. That night, after the feast, as was her right, she had turned to him to lead her out into the forest. She closed her eyes against the memory of how gently