Rexanne Becnel (8 page)

Had her hands been free, she would have struck him for that. As it was, all she could do was glare bitterly at him. Perhaps she wasn’t their mother, but she was the nearest thing to it they had. Still, in the angry silence Wynne couldn’t help but recall her own thoughts of just minutes before. They did need a father, and not just the boys. But this Englishman was not the one to decide who that father would be.

She took a deep, steadying breath and willed herself to be calm. Then she fixed him with a narrow, glowering stare. “I shall make you very sorry you ever came to
Cymru
—to Wales,” she began. “You think you may come here, dangle the thought of a title and lands before me, and thereby justify stealing one of these children from the only home they know. Do you honestly believe I will idly sit by?” She let out a harsh laugh, then shrugged out of his loosened grasp.

Fighting the urge to rub the spots where his hands had touched her, she went on. “I am not called the Seeress of Radnor for nothing.
I
am the Welsh Witch you spoke of, and I have powers at my command that you cannot begin to fathom. I sensed your presence in these forests long before you arrived. And I can predict already the tragedy that shall befall you and your men if you linger here. Sickness. Madness. Even death if you are not swift in your retreat,” she added for good measure, though at that moment she considered it no exaggeration. She would murder him with her own hands if that’s what it took to drive him away.

He studied her for a moment, then grinned. “You are a superstitious people. No doubt the folk around here believe such things of you—maybe you even believe some of it yourself. But you’ll not frighten me off with such wild tales.”

“Then you are more fool than I thought,” Wynne replied with a smug smile of her own. She was feeling stronger and more in control now, and he was playing right into her hands. She lifted her chin proudly and put her hands on her hips. “You’ve been given your only warning. I’ll not feel the least remorse for the hardships that shall plague you and your men now.”

To her dismay, however, he only smirked and let his eyes run boldly over her, lingering on her outthrust breasts and then her lips before returning to her shocked eyes. “If you would put the same effort into seducing me with your considerable charms as you put into scaring me away with your questionable powers, you would no doubt succeed far better.” Then he reached out and caught one long tendril of her loosened hair and wound it around his finger. “Have you a husband?”

Wynne hardly felt the sharp pain on her scalp as she turned and fled. She did not notice the path as she plunged headlong through the forest after the children. All she knew was that this Englishman possessed some awful power over her, one she’d never allowed any other man to have. She’d firmly rebuffed any man who approached her in that way, and none of them had ever thought to anger the Welsh Witch.

But this man … With only his slow, heated gaze he caused her mouth to go dry and her mind to go blank He turned her anger into a terrible burning in the depths of her stomach, leaving her unable to focus. Did he have powers of his own? Some ability that was stronger than hers? She’d heard of wizards and warlocks, but she personally knew of no men possessed of suet powers. Only women.

His chuckle followed her, but she determinedly shut it out. Let him laugh. At least she knew that it was only his touch and his potent gaze that weakened her. If she stayed away from him and never met his eyes, she would be all right. She would plot in private. She would devise all sorts of miseries for him, and eventually she would drive him away.

Yet even as she caught up with the children, she was not totally reassured. He was very determined. But then, so was she. And she was on her homelands, surrounded by people who would help her.

Then she breathed a sigh of relief. Gwynedd. Her aunt Gwynedd would help her. She would know what to do. Wynne chanced a glance back and saw him not far behind. He was watching her with a confident, assessing expression on his face. It was enough to destroy her recovering calm.

“Hurry, children,” she said, a false note of gaiety in her voice. “The first one back to the manor shall get a double serving of pears tonight.”

But she would cook up a special recipe for the Englishman, she vowed. And she would make him very sorry he ever heard of the Welsh Witch.

G
WYNEDD AWAITED THEM IN
a woven chair of rye straw draped with sheepskin, which had been placed outside in a pleasant, sunny spot. Her head tilted back against a down-filled cushion, and her eyes were closed.

How could she be asleep? Wynne fumed as she herded the children forward. How could she nap so peacefully, so unaware of the terrible situation they were in? Surely she should sense it.

“Children, leave your bags and pouches on the big table in the kitchen. Then go look for Druce.” She shot an angry glance at the Englishman, who stood so straight and tall, surrounded by the children. “And stay away from the English encampment.”

As one, the five children looked from Wynne to Sir Cleve, then back at her. To her enormous relief they did not question her words. She supposed even a group of six-year-olds could not mistake the pure animosity that emanated from her toward that man.

She glared at him in silence as the children trotted off to the house. Then, still not speaking, she turned and walked away. When she reached her great-aunt, she knelt down before her, sneaking a quick glance back at the Englishman. He was still watching her, but then the shivery sensation up her spine had already told her that. What was this disturbing effect he had on her?

“Aunt Gwynedd,” she whispered urgently, even though he was too far away to hear. “Aunt Gwynedd, wake up!”

“What? Ah,
nith,
did I doze off?” The old woman patted Wynne’s hand, which rested on her arm. “Ah, well, ’tis one of the pleasures of old age, I suppose. You gather the herbs while I rest in the sunshine.”

“Aunt Gwynedd, I know now why that Englishman has come. He wants to take one of the children away. One of the boys.”

Gwynedd pushed herself a little upright. “What do you say? He’s taken one of the children?”

“No, no. Not yet at least. But he will. He says one of them is the son of some English lord. And that this lord wants his son back.”

Gwynedd stared at her, all vestiges of sleep gone from her sightless eyes. “One of our lads is heir to an English lord? How can he be sure?”

Wynne shook her head in frustration. “I don’t know. I don’t think he knows which one it is. He’s probably not even sure it
is
one of our boys, he’s only hoping. You know how the English are.” She snorted in contempt. “ ’Tis only sons they value. Women are but chattel to them, little better than brood mares to give them more of their precious sons.”

Gwynedd’s gnarled hand tightened around Wynne’s. “There is a reason for all things, child. The English pass their lands to the eldest son. ’Tis but a device to avoid conflict among several sons. Here in Wales a man’s holdings go to his most powerful son. ’Tis a tradition that cannot help but promote warfare within a family. You’ve seen it yourself. Kant ab Fychen rules only because he broke his brother’s fighting arm. Were Anwyl able still to fight, one or the other of them would by now be dead.”

Wynne stared at her aunt in frustration. What had Fychen’s boys to do with anything? It was these boys she was concerned with. “Didn’t you hear what I said? That man—the English bastard—would take one of my children back to England with him! A son of
Cymru
forced to live in that godless land!”

Gwynedd sat in silence for a moment. Her very lack of emotion, however, only incited Wynne more. How could she be so calm? But before Wynne could speak again, Gwynedd turned her blind eyes toward her niece. “The English are not a godless people. Their ways are different than ours, to be sure. But they love their sons, their children. If one of our boys
is
heir to a title and lands, who are we to deprive him of it?”

“What?” Wynne sat back on her heels, stupefied by her aunt’s words. She could hardly believe her ears. She would have pulled her hand free of Gwynedd’s except that the old woman gripped it so warmly.

“They are not yours, Wynne, these children you were given to raise. You have tried to be both mother and father to them up till now, but they are not truly yours. You know that. You’ve always known. Children are a gift from the Mother—from God, if you will. But they’re ours only for a while. Some die young; the rest grow up and leave us.” She gave a sad, understanding smile. “Perhaps it is the time for one of our five to leave.”

“No!” Wynne leaped up, hurt and angry and confused. Of all people, she would have expected Gwynedd to understand. She was certain her great-aunt would sense the same danger, the same threat that she sensed from this Englishman. Yet her aunt felt nothing. And now she was willing to give up one of the children to some English monster. What matter that he was a lord and possessed of lands and holdings? What matter if he were the English king himself! He was English and therefore a plague upon the face of the earth—or at least on the face of Wales.

“I will not surrender any of my children to this English
lleidr
,” she vowed in a voice that shook with emotion.

Gwynedd sighed. “Not even to the child’s rightful father? Every child deserves to know his own father.”

Too consumed with fury and a deep-rooted fear, Wynne ignored her aunt’s words, though they mirrored her own earlier thoughts. “They are all children of
Cymru.
Their mothers were
Cymry,
and so are they, no matter if
all
of their fathers come for them. Those despicable
cnaf
have no claim on them now. ’Tis too late.” She turned to leave but stopped when Gwynedd spoke.

“
Nith,
I ask only that you hear him out. Do not make this decision in pain and anger. You decide a child’s life here. Do not make a choice which that child shall someday blame you for.”

Wynne stood a moment, not willing, even in anger, to show disrespect to the great-aunt who had been so good to her these past seven years since her own parents had died. Only when Gwynedd sank back into her chair did Wynne give a curt nod, then stride away. Yet she could not hide from the new fear that the old woman had roused with her parting words.

These children would not always be children. The day would come when they would be men and women, capable of their own choices and decisions. She’d always dreaded the day that they must know the truth of their births. But she’d never imagined that they might wish to meet their fathers. In her eyes their mothers were saints, martyred one way or another at the hands of that devil’s horde—the English. Their fathers they would hate, just as she hated them.

But
would
they hate them? The idea that they might not, that they might actually be curious about them, was too painful for her to accept. Already it seemed Arthur had heard something of his parentage, if his conversation yesterday with the Englishman was any indication.

Upset as she hadn’t been in years, Wynne was not conscious of her direction as she fled the manor grounds. She only knew she had to get away, to be alone and collect her thoughts and lick her wounds. What her aunt was suggesting went against everything she felt. The past seven years had been hard ones. Orphaned and surrounded by the devastation the English had wrought, she’d managed as best she could. Parents gone; sister swollen with the seed of the very enemy who had caused their misery. And then Maradedd had been found at the foot of that cliff, her body broken and lifeless, while her baby had lain, strong and alive and demanding, in Wynne’s arms.

How Wynne had hated that child. If she’d never been born, at least Maradedd would still have been alive. Thank God, Gwynedd had stepped in, naming the child Isolde, forcing the thirteen-year-old Wynne to care for her. Forcing her, Wynne knew, to love her. And she did love Isolde. She loved them all. How could Gwynedd now expect her to be able to give any of them up?

She came to a breathless halt at a small stream. Clear and cold, it gurgled past a tangle of gnarled oak roots, then dropped past a shelf of stones to run through a quiet moss-lined glade of ash and wych elm. Wynne stared about her as if she’d never truly seen the place before. She knew where every rabbit hole, goosander nest, and fox den was, and yet the place seemed somehow wholly new to her.

Were there places like this in England? Wild places where it was quiet and safe? She’d never thought it possible, yet her rational self knew there must be. The land was still the land. It was different everywhere you went, yet even in that it was the same. It was people who shaped it, who made it a wonderful place. Or else a terrible one.

The English people were who made their land so awful, she told herself. And they would make life awful for an orphan of
Cymru,
thrust so young and defenseless among them.

She took a deep breath of the familiar damp air. Even to conceive of one of her children in England was madness. They would be frightened and alone, away from the only family they’d ever known. Besides, their fathers had forfeited all rights to them when they had fled Wales in the wake of their defeat. If the children should ever wonder about their fathers, then she would simply face that problem when it arose. She would tell them the truth, and then, well, then they would just see.

Feeling suddenly exhausted, Wynne pulled her coif from her head and shook her hair free. Then she made her weary way to the low-hanging branch of an ancient oak. For as long as she could remember, this had been her special spot. She would sit on this branch, pushing with her heels, making it dip and sway in a slow, ponderous rhythm. It was soothing and it was always there, unchanged, with moss beneath her feet and trails of mistletoe above her head. She’d cried a thousand tears in this place. She’d cursed the English to hell and back, venting her anger and her pain and her overwhelming sorrow.

Perhaps that was why the mistletoe thrived so well, she thought. All her darkest emotions flying around in the air, making the mistletoe’s power even stronger.