The Beast of Caer Baddan (64 page)

“He who?”
Leola asked, her face showing her confusion.

“Who was the man that you stabbed?” Owain whispered.

Her eyes became wide and the color drained from her checks. For a moment the breath in her lungs would not escape. He read the horror written across her face.

“Shh,” he said, trying to sooth her.

“How did you know…” she gasped.

“Oh, Beauty, Owain said, trying not to laugh at her naivite. “Your clothes were covered in blood. So was the knife you had kept in your apron. Your forehead had blood smeared across it where you must have wiped your face with your sleeve. And not a drop of it was your own. So tell me, who was it you stabbed?”

Leola still seemed shocked that he knew.

“Raynar,” she said, blankly.

“What did this Raynar do?” Owain asked.

“He was just a stupid man,” she said. “Forget him.”

“Ah,” Owain replied, teasing still. “He jilted you. And you repaid him for it.”

“What?” she said.

Then she let out a long laugh that Owain thought sounded like a bowed string instrument.

“You are as bad as my aunt!” she cried. “Why does everyone think that Raynar was my lover?”

Owain had to laugh as well.

“Very well,” he replied. “Why did you stab him?”

“He was Ardith’s lover, or wanted to be,” she said, at last.

He thought on that strange name and knew that he had heard it somewhere.

“Is that the girl that Britu said Aluca Cyning has just married?” he asked.

“Yea,” she said. “Raynar blamed me for her rejection of him and tried to strangle me for it.”

“I see,” Owain replied. “Then this Raynar is dead?”

“No. He is alive in Anlofton. And I choose not to think of him.”

Owain's mind filled with his duties that would soon take him to that little town. Perhaps he should find this villain Raynar as well. A man who would strangle a girl was hardly worth letting live.

“I beg you will not kill him!” Leola cried, her revealing her anguish.

Owain was surprised by her words, that she should seem to understand his thoughts and that she should now protect a man who had tried to murder her.

“And why not?” he asked, annoyed but holding his anger back. His fury was not for her and thus he did not wish her to see it.

She squirmed beneath him, as if trying to arrange some confusing thoughts.

“Drudi, my friend in Anlofton,” she said. “I think she has married him. The girl has suffered far more than anyone should endure. I do not want her widowed at sixteen.”

“She can always marry a real man,” Owain said, with a casual shrug.

“But there aren't any more men in Anlofton,” Leola replied.

Her face showed the sorrow and pain of her heart, as her eyes pleaded with him to surrender.

“Very well, Beauty,” he said, surrendering. “I shall let him live.
Although he does not deserve it.”

Owain really could not refuse her but resolved to look on the welfare of this girl, Drudi, when he arrived in Anlofton.

“Thank you,” Leola whispered.

“Shh,” he replied. “Think on them no more.”

She turned back over onto her side, snuggled backwards up against his body, and was soon asleep.

The melting of the snow hailed an early spring, and Leola was glad to be able to take the children out into the garden once more. Euginius loved the outside, and Leola soon found that with coaxing, he would push his head and shoulders up off of the blanket and pull himself forward. Ambrosius, however, was content to just lay back and stare at her face with his large green eyes. Gratianna found friends in both of her brothers and was pleased to find some strange unknown objects from deep within the garden and bring it back to them to put in their mouths.

Leola continued to
sunbathe Ambrosius every morning, and Owain began to join them once he after his morning exercises.

After she laid the baby down in the cradle in the sitting room, Leola nuzzled into Owain's chest. He liked feeling her face up against his linen tunic and wrapping his arms around her to hold her tightly.

“I'm glad now that Raynar tried to kill me,” she mused.

“What?” he cried, horrified that she should think such a thing. “Why would you say that?”

“Because,” she said, and her voice rang as she spoke, “if he had not, then I would not have hurt my ankle, and then I might not have been in the mead hall, or more probably, you would not have picked me. For that is why you did choose me, because I could not run away from you.”

“That was one of the reasons, Beauty,” he replied.
“That and your soft cheeks and glorious hair.”

Leola giggled.

“Owain?” she said.

“Yea, Beauty,” he replied.

“Do you remember when I tried to knife you?”

Owain laughed. Of all the things to recall now, he could not help but marvel that her sorry attempt at killing him had come to her mind.

“Of course,” he replied.

“Do you remember what you said to me?” she asked.

Owain had had so many pressing matters weighing on his mind that fateful day that he did not recall saying anything to her about attempting to stab him.

“No,” he admitted. “What did I say?”

“You said that was not the way to kill an aetheling,” and she turned over once more and stared up into his eyes. “What did you mean?”

Owain had to laugh again and shook his head.

He took her right hand and placed her fingers together in a point as if their were a knife blade.

“If you try to stab an aetheling from above, he will block your attack,” he said. “He is taught to do that from five-years-old.

His own right arm lifted up between himself and her own arm, pushing that hand away, off to the side.

“If you wish to kill an aetheling,” Owain said, with a playful grin, “you must stab from below.”

He turned her arm down so that the tips of her fingers touched his abdomen.

“You do it patiently,” he said, “getting very close, and not letting him know you have a knife, or he will still stop you. You then strike quickly, in and up as deep as the weapon will go.”

He pushed her finger tips into his stomach and slid them up to his ribs.

“Well,” she said, amazed. “I do not want to kill you anymore.”

She closed her eyes and surrendered her lips, and he bent over her again and gently sucked on their fullness.

“Good,” he whispered.

The only disappointment that the change of weather brought was when Owain was called away to the Kingdom of Dumnonnia.

The morning of Owain's departure, Leola was surprised to see him come into the bath house.

“I'm not dressed,” she said.

“Yea,” Owain replied, a mischievous smile dancing on his lips.

There he stood, fully covered and wearing what she was sure was her half weight in clothing and armor, and she had nothing on but the smooth towel that she clung to her wet skin.

Owain spoke some Brythonic words to the servant women, and they scurried off out the door.

“I'm going to Dumnonnia now,” Owain said to Leola. “I must see the newly made King Cadfan.”

King Cadfan? From where do I know that name?

“How long will you be gone?” Leola asked.

“I know not,” he replied. “I pray it be only a few days.”

Leola nodded.

She knew from the hesitation on his face that he was sure the trip would last much longer but that he hoped that these suspicions proved false.

“I have sent Annon back to Gloui,” Owain said.

Leola was glad at this, for although she did not mind the boy's company, she thought that he preferred the excitement of the busy capital and the training of the soldiers over the quiet domestic life that engulfed the castle at Caer Baddan. King Irael reading his ancient books, Gratianna strumming the harp, Leola sewing embroidery, and the babies cooing at each other, did not offer the kind of thrill that Annon apparently longed for.

“He shall be happier there while you are gone,” Leola replied.

Owain cradled her head in his broad hands.

“When I return, tell me if you are healed,” he whispered.

Leola thought her heart fluttered little wings within her breast.

“I shall,” she gasped.

She was determined to be.

A two day journey and much precaution brought Owain southeast to Dore the Capital of the Dumnonni people. He greeted the newly crowned King of the Dumnonni but regarded the man with some suspicion.

“You are King Tudwal's nephew, Sir,” Owain said, then the two men where alone.

“Ie,” King Cadfan replied. “Trust me, Dominae. I was not privy to all of the king’s secrets. I did not know that he had tried to have you assassinated. I would have tried to stop him.”

Owain did not believe a word of it, for he had always felt something in Cadfan that caused him to question anything the man said. Perhaps it was that King Cadfan's position in the
Isca clan seemed to make him informed of that people's doings. Maybe it was King Tudwal's reliance on his own family that would have made the king confide in his younger brother's son. Perchance it was that evil glint in the new king's eyes that made everything that came off his tongue the subject of dispute.

Owain decided to write his father on the details to see what he thought.

“King Tudwal's own son Gadeon is Prince of the Dumnonni,” Owain said. “Why is it that you were made king and not he?”

“Prince Gadeon is but a boy,” King Cadfan replied. “He cannot rule the kingdom. He shall when he is grown, but until then, I must do what I can.”

Owain nodded. “So when the prince is twenty, you shall relinquish the power to him?” he asked.

“God willing, before that,” King Cadfan replied.

Owain doubted these words as well. He was increasingly certain that King Cadfan would find some strange excuse to retain rule that should have never been his in the first place.

“I have long desired this feud between our clans to cease, Dominae,” the king said.

“As have I,” Owain replied.