“Uncle Guy, what are you doing here?”
“Talking to Meredith,” Guy said, turning away
from her to look at his nephew. “I thought you were at weapons
practice.”
“I finished,” Thomas said. “I’m going to see
Rhys.”
Guy got to his feet, sending Meredith a look
full of meaning, and she came to his aid.
“Rhys is away from home today, Thomas,” she
said. “Shouldn’t you spend more time with your mother and not so
much with us?”
“She never spends time with me, she just
sends me on errands,” Thomas said, his disappointment so evident
that Meredith could have cried. “Very well, Uncle Guy, I’ll go back
with you.”
When they had left her, Meredith picked up
the basket of roots and trudged back to the cave where Rhys waited
for her, the wonder and joy she had found in Guy’s kisses
completely vanquished by the weight of the lie she had just told
Thomas.
Thomas did not come to the cave again for
nearly three weeks. When he reappeared, he was obviously struggling
with some grief.
“It’s Agnes, my mother’s personal servant,”
he said in reply to Meredith’s question. “We thought she had only a
cold in her chest and it would go away, but she got sicker and
sicker, until yesterday she died. I wanted to come here and ask
Rhys for some of his medicines, but my mother wouldn’t let me out
of her sight, and Uncle Guy has been so busy with Master Reynaud
that I could not talk to him alone and ask his permission, and now
poor Agnes is dead.”
Meredith put her arms around him. At first
Thomas stiffened at this affront to his youthful masculinity, but
then his grief took over, and Meredith felt his arms go around her
waist as he laid his head on her bosom and wept. Over his golden
head she saw Rhys smile and nod at her.
“Agnes was always kind to me,” Thomas said
when he had regained a little self-control. “I wish I could have
helped her. Uncle Guy says she died partly because she was so
old.”
“Your uncle is right,” Rhys said gently.
“There comes a time when even the best medicines will not help and
life must end. To the old, that is not so horrible as it seems to
the young.” Rhys sat rubbing his left side, and Meredith knew he
had the pain at his heart again and that his words were for her as
much as for Thomas.
“Remember your friend with love,” Rhys
said.
“I will.” After a moment Thomas added, “My
mother is very angry. Agnes’s death leaves her without a personal
servant and she says the other women are clumsy dolts and don’t
know how to wait on her properly. I tried to comfort her, but she
said I was a silly child and to leave her alone. Perhaps,” Thomas
sighed, “when I’m a squire, I’ll know what to do to make a lady
feel better.”
Branwen, who had been quiet during this
outburst, now offered him a wooden bowl filled with early apples,
and a wedge of cheese and some brown bread.
“The first apples are always the sweetest,”
she said. “Tell me what you think, Thomas.” Branwen’s hand lightly
brushed Thomas’s hair as he reached for the largest apple.
Thomas, munching hungrily while trying to
keep Gwyn the cat from eating his cheese, agreed with Branwen about
the apples. When he left the cave near dusk he was in a much
happier mood than when he had come.
“Thank you,” Meredith said to her aunt. “I
think he needed comforting.”
“The boy needs a mother,” Branwen said
roughly.
The following day Guy appeared while Branwen
was away and Rhys and Meredith were compounding a mixture for one
of Rhys’s patients. After greeting them both, Guy spoke
bluntly.
“I need your help.”
“Is something wrong with Thomas?” Meredith
thought her heart had stopped in fear, but it resumed beating when
Guy shook his head and spoke again.
“Thomas is in perfect health. It’s his mother
who is troubling me. Her maidservant has died, and Isabel says she
cannot get along without her. She is most unhappy.” Guy did not add
that he, too, thanks to Isabel, had been made unhappy over the loss
of poor Agnes, because he wanted Meredith to agree to his
proposition. It would not do to let her know how difficult Isabel
had become. He took a deep breath and plunged on. “Isabel has had a
letter sent to one of her friends at court requesting that she
select a servant trained to attend a highborn lady and send her to
Afoncaer, but it will be weeks, perhaps months before a woman can
reach here. In the meantime, Isabel needs a maid, and I thought of
you.”
“Me?” Meredith felt anger rising in her. “I
am a healer, not a servant. I know nothing of waiting on ladies,
and even if I did, I would not go to Afoncaer.”
“Please.” Guy took her hand. “It would be a
great help to Thomas. And to me.”
Meredith knew full well that the lord of
Afoncaer never had to beg for anything – no Norman baron did – and
yet he was pleading with her now. He was doing it a little
unfairly, too, by mentioning Thomas and implying that Thomas’s life
would be more pleasant if Lady Isabel were less unhappy. Meredith
knew another brief flash of anger until Guy squeezed her hand and
smiled down at her, and her irritation began to evaporate.
“It would only be for a short time,” Guy
said, “just until the new maid comes. You need not reveal who you
are or where you have lived. We will think of something to satisfy
Isabel’s curiosity about a stranger who speaks such good
French.”
“I can’t.” But her hand was still in his and
her voice was less certain this time.
“Meredith,” Rhys said, “it is a good
idea.”
“Surely you can’t want me to go? And Aunt
Branwen would be furious.”
“You cannot live in this cave all of your
life.”
“Of course I can. You and Branwen do.”
“I am old, and what Branwen has seen of life
has made her content to remain here. But you are young. It is time
for you to leave.”
Guy, pleased at this unexpected support,
squeezed Meredith’s hand again.
“You see,” he said, “Rhys agrees with me. You
must come.”
“No.” She pulled her hand out of his and put
it firmly behind her back, certain that if he was not touching her
she could think more clearly. The temptation to say yes, so that
she could be in the same place with him and see him every day was
nearly overwhelming. She fought it valiantly. “I want to stay here
with Rhys and Branwen. This is where I belong.”
“How can you know that,” asked Rhys, “until
you have seen some other place first, or met people who are
different from Branwen and me?”
“You need me,” Meredith declared with a note
of desperation in her voice, “to gather herbs and plants and to dig
the roots.”
“I expect Branwen can manage,” Rhys said
dryly.
“Why are you doing this?” Tears of hurt
confusion threatened to overcome her. She did not want to leave the
safety of the cave, and yet at the same time she did, oh, she did,
if she could be with Guy. “Why do you want to send me away?”
“For your own good.”
“I want to be a healer!”
“So you are, and so you shall be again, in
time. But now, do this. Do it in the same spirit in which a boy
leaves home to become a page, to learn to serve others with
patience and dignity, for the good of his soul.” Rhys regarded Guy
out of cool grey eyes. “I trust you will see to it that Meredith is
well-treated and that no harm comes to her. From anyone.” He
strongly emphasized the last two words, and Meredith had a sense of
some understanding between the two men to which she was not a
party.
“I give you my word,” Guy said. “Meredith
will be as safe at Afoncaer as she is in this cave. Perhaps safer.
Certainly warmer, with winter coming.”
“I doubt that.” Rhys’s smile was frosty.
“There are no drafts here.”
“I don’t want to go.” Meredith made one last
weak protest.
“I will not command you,” Rhys said. “The
choice is yours, to make for yourself.”
There was a long moment of silence during
which Rhys fixed his eyes on hers, and she could feel him willing
her to agree to Guy’s plan. Meredith knew Rhys sometimes had the
ability to foresee things. It had nothing to do with magic, it was
no wizardry, it was simply a quality of Rhys’s mind. Branwen had it
too, though in lesser degree. Meredith had long ago accepted this
odd characteristic in both of them and put it down to something
inherent in their Welsh blood. When she once asked Rhys about it,
he had laughed and said he was very observant, so that he saw
things others did not. Now, while Rhys looked deep into her eyes,
Meredith knew he had a good reason for wanting her to go to
Afoncaer. Rhys foresaw something that required her presence at the
castle. She knew her going would change everything about her life.
It was a terrifying thought, but she would do what Rhys wanted. She
admitted, in her deepest, most secret heart, that it was what she
wanted, too.
“Very well,” she said at last.
“Come to Afoncaer at mid-day tomorrow and ask
the guard at the gate for me,” Guy said. “You need bring nothing
with you. I will see that you have suitable clothes.”
After he left Meredith turned to Rhys.
“I’m frightened,” she said.
“Do you remember the first time I let you mix
a salve, how terrified you were? You thought you would make some
terrible mistake, yet you went ahead and tried. There was nothing
wrong with the salve, and the next time was easier, and the time
after easier still, and now there are few mixtures you will not
attempt.”
“I have made mistakes.”
“Everyone makes mistakes.”
“This is different.”
“You will find,” Rhys said, “That when you
are afraid, your heart is telling you something. Fear is a sign you
should press on and face the thing that terrifies you, until the
fear is gone. If you turn and run from everything that frightens
you, you will never be whole, and in the end you will despise
yourself for a coward.”
“I don’t want to leave you, Rhys.”
“I will be here when you return. I will live
for a while yet. There will be time to learn all I still have to
teach you, and you will be a better healer for having done
this.”
With his words, the greatest fear of all was
gone, and Meredith reconciled herself to the change. She reminded
herself that once she was living at Afoncaer she would see Thomas
every day. And Guy. He was so far above her that she knew she could
never mean anything to him, but the thought of being near him, of
hearing his low, quiet voice, of seeing his smile, filled her with
joy.
Branwen was not pleased.
“How could you do this?” she raved at Rhys.
“Meredith deserves better than to be maidservant to a Norman
bitch!”
“The Normans are here to stay in these border
lands, and we must all learn to live with them,” Rhys said. “I
think this is best for Meredith. Trust me, Branwen. You always have
before.”
“I think you have taken leave of your senses.
Meredith will have nothing to do with Normans. Especially the Lady
Isabel. You have only to listen to Thomas to know the sort of
creature she is.”
“I have already promised Lord Guy I would
go,” Meredith said. “I cannot break my word.”
“You will never come back. They won’t let
you. Lord Guy will decide he owns you. The Normans think they own
everything.”
“Lord Guy has said I may return here when
Lady Isabel’s new maid arrives. It’s only for a little while, Aunt
Branwen.”
“If he doesn’t let her return,” Rhys said
solemnly, “I’ll cast a spell on him.”
“Oh, Rhys,” Meredith giggled, “you’ve told me
a hundred times you are not a wizard. You can’t cast a spell.”
“But Lord Guy isn’t certain of that, is
he?”
“You are both mad,” Branwen said, but the
next day, as Meredith was leaving, she held her niece tightly and
kissed her several times.
“I love you,” Branwen said in a voice thick
with tears. “If they treat you badly, or do anything you don’t
like, send for me or come home.”
“I will.”
Rhys embraced her, wrapping Meredith in the
wide, soft grey sleeves of his flowing robe. When she laid her head
on his shoulder, his long white beard tickled at her nose and cheek
as it had when she was a child, and for just a moment she was safe
and unafraid. Then he let her go, kissed her on each cheek, and
turned back into the cave, Gwyn running after him as always.
It had been nearly four months since the new
lord arrived at Afoncaer, and in that time the castle had been
transformed. Both the inner and outer walls had been repaired and
were now being built higher, while a sturdy new gate barred the
main entrance each night. Under the golden autumn sun Afoncaer
presented a formidable appearance, nearly impregnable on its high
bluff.
Meredith arrived shortly after mid-day, when
the gates in the outer wall stood open and the wooden bridge over
the wet moat was down. The guard to whom she spoke directed her
toward a slightly smaller gate in the inner wall that guarded the
castle proper.
“Walk right down the road,” he said. “You are
expected. I wish you luck.”
“Thank you,” she responded, surprised at
receiving good wishes from a Norman.
“With the life awaiting you in there, you
will need all the luck you can gather,” the man said with a knowing
grin. Meredith felt a growing concern. Could her new mistress be so
difficult a person that even the ordinary soldiers were aware of
it? She fought down the knot in her stomach and walked through the
entrance.
In the roughly rectangular space between the
inner and outer walls, Meredith could see the beginning of a town.
Streets had been laid out, and a few houses had already been built
for those workmen who would remain after the castle was finished.
Thomas had told her that for their work as carpenters, masons, or
ditchers, many of the men who were helping to build Afoncaer had
been given land as tenants and would remain at Afoncaer
permanently. Whether it was maintenance of the castle itself or new
building to be done in the town as time went on, there would always
be work for them. She saw that some must have brought their
families with them, for there were garden plots next to some of the
houses, and outside one dwelling a group of small children
played.