Keeper of the Dream (27 page)

He dropped her hand to snatch up a basin of pink-colored water and Arianna started, for it was the bronze basin from the laver that he held, not the golden mazer. “What did you do with it?” she cried.

“My lady?” He jerked so violently that water slopped into the rushes, but he stared back at her with blank, wide-open eyes, like a puppy caught with a half-eaten shoe between its paws.

“Myrddin’s magic bowl—what have you done with it?”

“I know naught of a magic bowl.”

“You lie. You stole it from me that day Rhuddlan fell and then put it here in this very chamber to bedevil me on my wedding day. A moment ago you handed it to me and now it has gone missing again and you …” Her voice trailed off. He would admit to nothing. It mattered for naught anyway, for the bowl would turn up again, and she didn’t want any more of its cursed visions anyway.

The squire had returned the basin to the laver and was edging toward the door. “Taliesin,” she commanded, and he froze, then turned, and his face pleated into a comical expression of reluctance.

“My lady, I swear to you I know naught of magic bowls, and I have important matters to attend to. Aye, my lord’s armor needs polishing and though that brother of yours is grooming my lord’s destrier, I fear the wretch is hopelessly incompetent and I shall be the one to suffer my lord’s ire if the task is not done properly. I shall be hung up by my thumbs—”

Arianna’s laughter cut through the boy’s tirade. “Quit flapping your tongue ere it falls out your mouth from overuse and tell me—do you know the date of Lord Raine’s birth?”

He blinked, then a smile flashed across his face. “Strange that you should wonder, for it came to my mind
only an hour ago that my lord was born under the influence of Mars, which explains why he is oft so irascible and foul-tempered.” He heaved a put-upon sigh. “The blessed event took place twenty-six years ago tomorrow, and thus was I doomed to this miserable fate.”

Arianna failed to see what the one thing had to do with other. “Fool boy, you were not even a lustful urge between your father’s legs at the time of my lord husband’s birth. But you say that his birthday falls on the morrow?”

“Aye. And pity it’s a fast day, for he is not overly fond of fish, is my lord. But doubtless the cook will conjure up a frumenty for the feast to tempt his appetite.”

“We are having a feast?”

“Why, I think that a splendid idea, my lady!” the boy exclaimed, clapping his hands. “Would that I had thought of it. Though you should have told me sooner, for I shall want to compose an ode in honor of the occasion.”

She scowled at him, for she suspected that a feast was precisely what he had been after all along. Perhaps he wanted a reason to perform on his harp. She wondered again if the music she had heard last night had been made by him, not by a dream. But, no, even with an extraordinary talent the boy was too young to be so skilled. And yet … yet, suppose he were
llyfrawr,
a wizard. It was said that wizards could fashion music out of the very air, they could assume any shape and travel through the circle of time, they could make themselves invisible or be in two places at once, so perhaps they could even conjure visions and bend the unsuspecting to their will.

God’s death, Arianna, you witless nit! Who ever heard of a wizard wandering about in these modern times? And certainly no self-respecting wizard would take on the shape of that irritating squire.

Besides, what did it matter from whence the vision came? It had all happened to Raine, the boy, just as she had seen and felt it, and she knew with a certainty she could not explain that it had never been forgotten by the
man. She ached for the man, even more than she ached for the boy. No wonder he had grown up so hard, so unfeeling.

His birthday was tomorrow and this once, she vowed, it would not be forgotten. There was scarce time left to arrange for a proper banquet, but it could be done if she put the whole castle to work. She would give him a gift too. Aye, a gift would be nice….

She wished she could give him a pony. But she was twenty years too late.

“Seventeen, eighteen, nineteen …”

Arianna folded her arms across her chest and frowned at the stacks of trestle tables lined along one wall of the great hall. With only twenty tables and all of Rhuddlan at the feast, people would be pressed in rows one upon the other like piglets suckling at a sow’s tits. But twenty would have to be enough, she supposed. There certainly wasn’t time before the morrow for the carpenter to make any more.

Her frown deepened as she studied the condition of the great hall. It was clean enough, for she had already seen to that. But the rafters were black as the bottom of a well with soot and the walls sorely needed a fresh coat of whitewash. She thought how much plainer was this hall compared to that of her father’s
llys.
Except for a few moth-eaten stag heads and rusted weapons hanging on the walls and pillars, there was naught to catch and please the eye. What was particularly needed, she decided, was something bright and colorful in back of the high table. A biblical painting, perhaps, or an array of silken pennons in peacock colors.

Suddenly she knew just what would be her birthday gift to Raine. She would fashion him an enormous banner to hang in back of his high seat. She would make it of the richest silk, the deep red color of fall apples, and on it she would put his black dragon device. Thus all strangers who
came to sup and sleep in their hall would see the banner and mark that it was the Black Dragon who was lord here.

Filled with excitement over her plans, Arianna set the kitchens into an uproar preparing for the feast. Then she saddled a palfrey to ride into town to purchase the silk she would need from Christina, the draper’s daughter. The day had turned suddenly stormy, and she thought with a sigh that she would probably get wet. Gray clouds had piled up overhead, like mounds of dirty fleece, and the marsh grass rippled in a stiff wind that smelled of rain.

The toll keeper waved Arianna through the town gate—she didn’t pay, for the toll went directly into her husband’s purse. A pack of dogs chased and nipped at her palfrey’s heels, their yapping competing with the cries of fishermen who trolled the river with their nets. She passed by the open, cavernous doors of the mint, where sparks flashed and the air thrummed with the sound of hammers pounding the dies. They were fashioning new coins with Lord Raine of Rhuddlan’s likeness on the face of them, just like the Roman Caesars of old.

He had come far, she thought, from the ragged boy who had yearned for a pony and was given a beating instead. As the palfrey picked its way slowly through narrow streets that stank of pigs, she pictured the look of surprise and pleasure on his face when she presented him with the banner on the morrow.

The draper’s daughter lived in a large, timbered house that fronted the market square and backed up against the quay. The market square wasn’t square at all, but shaped rather like a large, lopsided triangle of packed dirt that turned into a bog in winter. At the pointed end of the triangle squatted the church, with its chunky, square stone bell tower. In the front yard of the church a man sat in the stocks, hunched in misery, with a stinking, rotting mackerel tied under his chin.

In the middle of the triangle stood the large market
cross, carved of granite, and beside the cross a well where a group of women had gathered to gossip, water buckets balanced on their heads. Their magpie chatter ceased immediately as soon as they caught sight of Arianna.

She dismounted before the draper’s house just as the first drops of rain left penny-sized patterns in the dust. Skirting around a braying donkey that had been overladen with sacks of wool, she entered the dark cool interior of the undercroft.

A servant rushed forward, bowing low. “Milady!”

“Fetch your mistress, if you please.”

The servant left and Arianna looked around her. Stacks of bundled fleece tied up with reed cords took up a good part of the floor, along with barrels of papyrus and indigo and sheafs of woad leaves, all used for the dyes. Shelves on the wall were piled with bolts of cloth in rainbow hues.

A small door opened into another room, from which Arianna could hear the smack and clatter of looms. Another door led out back where bare-legged workers in clogs beat the raw wool in tubs of water and dyers dipped and stirred lengths of cloth in vats with long wooden poles. She stepped into the yard, holding her breath against the stale reek of urine, which was used to set the dyes.

Thunder rumbled overhead and it began raining harder. She was just about to step back inside when a movement to the left caught her eye. Steps led down the side of the house from the upper story. A man stood on the narrow landing, facing an open doorway. As she watched, he leaned into the shadows as if he were imparting a farewell kiss, and indeed, a woman’s hands went around the man’s neck. Then the man turned and ran lightly down the stairs. He carried a leather bag in one hand, which he thrust through his sword belt, and Arianna thought she heard the jangle of coins.

At the bottom of the steps the man paused to take a look around him, his eyes narrowed against the pouring
rain. Arianna got a glimpse of familiar honey-brown hair and a dashing, flowing moustache.

Without knowing why she did it, she stepped back beneath the shelter cast by the eaves, where he couldn’t see her. He looked around one last time, then slipped out a side gate. She wondered what her cousin Kilydd was doing here, what mischief he was up to. Doubtless whatever it was, it would mean trouble for the Lord of Rhuddlan.

It was several moments later before Christina joined her in the shop. The girl’s flushed cheeks stood out in stark contrast to the dazzling whiteness of the coif she wore on her head. Her mouth looked wet and swollen.

“God’s grace to you, milady,” she said, curtseying with folded hands. She sounded out of breath, as if she’d just been running. “What brings you here in foul weather such as this?”

Arianna smiled. “If one doesn’t venture outdoors in Wales when it rains, one would never go anywhere at all.”

“How true, milady.” Christina’s eyes darted toward the open door that led to the yard, which was now awash with running water. She forced an answering smile. “Not even the Normans have been able to tame our weather.”

It was an old jest, but Arianna laughed anyway. A trestle table sat beneath the window, a bolt of moss-green wool lay, partly unwound, on its shear-scarred surface. Arianna fingered the material. She wanted to ask the draper’s daughter what her cousin Kilydd had been doing sneaking down the back stairs. She said instead, “I would like to see what you have in the nature of carmine sarcenet.”

“If it pleases you, milady.” Christina motioned to the servant, who hooked a bolt of purplish-red material from a top shelf and spread it out on the table.

The sarcenet was beautiful and would be perfect for the banner. Next she selected a figured silk of the blackest ebony with which to fashion the dragon. As the servant wrapped up the ells of cloth and carried them out to load
upon her palfrey, Arianna realized suddenly that she’d brought no coin with her. She had no money to bring anyway, for what she’d had upon her marriage now be-longed-to Raine. All she had of value that could be considered entirely her own were her wedding band and the seer’s torque she wore around her neck.

Though it pained her to part with it, she reached up and unclasped the bronze circlet of writhing snakes. She held it out the draper’s daughter. “Would you accept this as payment?”

Christina backed away from the torque as if she feared to touch it. “My lady, that is not necessary. I shall simply add the price of the cloth to the amount left owed for your bridal gown.”

Arianna thought of the exquisite sapphire silk bliaut, wrought so heavily with gold thread, and the poppy-red pelisse trimmed with fur—their cost must have been exorbitant. Though Raine might soon become rich as the Lord of Rhuddlan, he had been poor on the day of their wedding. Yet still he had given her the beautiful gown and a white mule with all the trappings.

She practically pushed the torque into Christina’s hands. “But I wish to use the cloth to make a gift for my husband. So I can hardly have him paying for it.”

Christina hesitated a moment before her fingers closed around the ancient bronze circlet. She looked up at Arianna through a veil of pale lashes. “You are happy then in your marriage to the Norman? Have you fallen in love so soon?”

“Nay, I love him not at all,” Arianna said, too quickly, and felt the blood leap to her face. For she lusted after him, oh aye, she lusted after him. She could not bear to admit even to herself that this man, who cared for her not at all, could make her throat get all tight and her knees go all loose with but one of his rare smiles.

“And what of you, Christina?” she demanded, wanting childishly to share her shame. “Perhaps you speak to me
about love because you have the subject much on your mind lately? Does my cousin Kilydd share your maiden’s bed?”

Christina’s doe-brown eyes opened wide, and she started to shake her head. Then her back stiffened and her chin jerked up. “Aye, we are lovers, Kilydd and I, and I care not if the whole world knows it. For though we are not yet married by law, we have plighted our troth before God.”

Christina waved her hand as Arianna opened her mouth to speak. “You need not point out, my lady, that he is Welsh and of noble blood, whereas I am English and naught but a draper’s daughter. We love each other, and we share a common enemy, he and I, and a common dream. Someday, when the Normans have been driven back across the sea, we can …” Her voice trailed off as tears welled in her eyes. “Oh, milady, I do love him so….”

Lightning flared suddenly, casting Christina’s face in a greenish glow. Her last words seemed to echo in the darkening room,
love him so … so
… Thunder rumbled, and a gust of wind dashed rain against the side of the house.

Arianna wondered how it felt to be so sure of your love, so sure you were loved in return. She shut her eyes trying to recall how she’d felt in her vision when the golden knight had taken her into his arms. But all she saw was Raine charging her with his lance, and the touch she remembered was Raine’s touch, fierce and insistent and full of passion, but not love. Never love.