“So,” I said when Bleddyn and I had been riding along for what seemed like eternity in uncomfortable silence. We’d just reached the outskirts of Gwydir Forest after traveling along the road for a bit, he on Arwel, me on a horse whose name Bleddyn hadn’t told me. But her gait was much better than Queen’s. “What is Llyn Tynymynydd, anyway?”
Bleddyn, riding just far enough ahead of me that I couldn’t see his face, didn’t answer for a few minutes. When he spoke, his voice was matter-of-fact. “It is a lake. Llyn is the Cymraeg word for lake. Ty n-y-mynydd means the mountain house.”
“Oh,” I said, blushing for no reason and wishing I hadn’t asked. Then we rode along in silence thereafter for another eternity. Till the silence got so loud and obnoxious, I had to break it. “How was Gareth, this morning?”
“I do not know. I had not the time to check in on him.”
Ouch. Another thing that could be laid at my doorstep. I sighed. “So, are we gonna ride all the way to Mountain House Lake in this lovely, companionable silence, or are we gonna talk about what happened?” I asked him with more than a little reluctance, my voice shaking just a little. To be honest, I didn’t know which would have scared me more, a yes or a no.
Bleddyn, meanwhile, tensed up so much I could hear the slight jingle of his armor when his muscles shifted and tightened.
“There is nothing to speak about, Master Krishnan.”
So, we’re back to that, I thought, closing my eyes on the tears that filled them. Even though he wasn’t looking at me, I didn’t want to give Bleddyn the satisfaction of having made me cry. Though I seemed to be doing it a lot lately. And all thanks to him.
No, all thanks to me. It was hardly Bleddyn’s fault I’d let myself grow so attached to him so fast. Of the two of us, I surely knew better than to fall for a guy just because he was hot and an epic lay.
But Bleddyn had been more than that, or so I’d thought. He’d been my knight in shining armor. My Prince Charming, so to speak. He’d treated me, in the uber-brief time we’d been sort of together, better than all my previous boyfriends combined. He’d been tender and sweet and protective. Possessive in a way that made me feel special, but not controlled. And the way he’d looked at me, he’d made me feel about ten thousand feet tall.
And now, here I was, let down again, playing the Smiths’ Greatest Hits in my head because I’d just gotten kicked to the curb again.
I wiped my eyes and wished I knew how to slow my horse down so Bleddyn could pull ahead of me far enough that I could cry and do my Morrissey impersonation in private. But as we rode on, my tears began to abate some. Though not the heartache; that felt everlasting. But I guess there’s a ceiling on tears no matter how bad the hurt, because I started singing just to keep myself company. It wasn’t as if Bleddyn cared. He was probably off in his own world of Jesus and Hell and which virginal maid he was going to woo and marry to please his father.
Braiding bits of my horse’s mane, I began to sing How Soon is Now?, not caring if Bleddyn heard or didn’t. And if I put a little extra emphasis on the chorus, especially the last two lines, so what? When I fell silent, I smiled to myself a little, and finished off another braid on the nameless horse. I put my brain on shuffle, hoping to come up with another Smiths’ song that’d fit my current mood of raw heartbreak and weary cynicism. There were many, and like a jukebox, I cycled through bits of them all, each bit only serving to make what I was feeling even more intense, till tears threatened again.
This is ridiculous, I thought, swiping at my leaking eyes with impatience and self-contempt. What difference does it make which song I pick or how bad it makes me feel? It won’t change the reality of my situation. I’m stranded in 1626 with no marketable skills, and I’ve alienated my only defender because I just had to sleep with him. I’m essentially alone in a foreign place, in an even more foreign time, and living under the threat of a death sentence for being who I am. A reshuffling of priorities is in order, Krish! I should just be glad this little thing I had with Bleddyn didn’t end with one or the both of us losing our heads to an ax, and be more careful in the future. Which, as far as I know, is going to be spent in the past!
I’d just opened my mouth to start What Difference Does it Make? when I was startled out of my reverie by Bleddyn’s soft, thoughtful words. “’Twas a lovely madrigal, Krishnan of Nayar. You have a fine voice.”
Startled to hear him speak at all, let alone in praise of something I’d done, I looked up to find Bleddyn had slowed his horse and was riding almost abreast with me.
“Uh, thanks.” I shrugged and looked back down at my fingers, still playing with the horse’s mane.
“Is that a song from America?”
I snorted. “No. The name of the song is ‘How Soon is Now?’ by an English band called the Smiths. They were really popular in the 1980s and early 90s. A little before my time, but a really good band. They were the background music of high school, for me.” I laughed a little. Steven Morrissey always reminded me of my fraught teenage years, and how sincere I was. How absolutely naked.
By the time I grew my adult armor, high school was over, and the adventure that was college had begun. I was a bit too jaded, and the sincerity and earnestness of my teens was replaced by the sarcastic, snarky bitch I am today.
“These Smiths—did they work metal as well as they sang?”
I glanced at Bleddyn. He seemed serious. As usual. I sighed. “They weren’t actual smiths, that was just their name.”
“’Tis a strange name to take if one is not a smith or the descendant of one,” he noted, frowning at the woods ahead.
“Yeah, well, it gets even stranger. Strawberry Alarm Clock, Jefferson Starship, Toad the Wet Sprocket, Imagine Dragons—bands have to come up with some pretty weird names in the future to stand out.”
“Say you truly?”
“Truly. All the normal names are taken.”
Bleddyn hmmed and smiled just a little. It wasn’t exactly a happy smile, but it was better than the grim look that made him resemble Rhys so much. I found myself smiling a little bit, too, and I looked away before Bleddyn caught me staring.
This time, the silence we rode in was much less uncomfortable, though still a little tense. And Bleddyn was the one to break it.
“I would hear more of these Smiths, if you’re of a mind to sing further,” he said, low and humble. Again, I was startled. When I looked over at him, he was red about the face, but met my gaze steadily, almost—Well, I knew how I wished he was looking at me. But surely that yearning on his face was my projection of my own feelings, and the desires of my own restless, broken heart.
“Why not?” I replied, looking away, at the forest ahead. At least I’d be distracting myself from wanting what I couldn’t have anymore. “Okay, this one is called What Difference Does it Make?”
When I finished—I really shredded that high note, too, and usually that’s the one place my voice would give out—Bleddyn was watching me with grave consideration.
“The words are strange, but filled, I sense, with heartbreak and loneliness, loss and despair,” he decided finally, and I laughed a little.
“That’s the Smiths. Sometimes listening to their songs is like an education in misery. Other times, it’s a balm. Understanding in a world that feels as if it’s going mad and taking me with it,” I said, then blushed, realizing I might have revealed more than I was comfortable with.
Bleddyn tilted his head with almost unwilling curiosity. “And you say their songs remind you of your youth?”
I nodded. “In some ways. I found it easy to relate to their lyrics—um, words—and the feelings their songs evoked were feelings I knew. When I was just shy of fourteen, my dad died, and I experienced loss. When I was almost fifteen, my first boyfriend broke up with me, and I was heartbroken. At nearly sixteen, I fell in with a bad crowd and got cozy with the baddest of the bunch. It wasn’t long before I learned how to despair. And ever since then, I guess I’ve been lonely.” I shrugged again, uncomfortable with the territory we were treading on. “The Smiths and Morrissey make great music for masochists.”
“For whom?”
“Nothing, nothing.” I sighed, looking down at my horse’s bunches of half-done braids and thinking I was a walking Morrissey song.
*
By the time we reached the lake, the overcast sky had begun to rain steadily, if not heavily. Yet. We skirted the lake to the Northeastern shore, and then Bleddyn took us back into the woods for a bit. Minutes, really, before we came upon the cottage.
It was like something out of a fairy-tale: thatched roof, ivy-covered trellis, smoke coming out of the squat chimney top. Next to it on the right was a barn that was on the narrow side, but still respectable.
We clopped into Gwenllian’s front yard, wary of the neat, sprawling herb and vegetable garden to either side of the front door. Bleddyn and I looked at each other uncertainly, then he shrugged and pulled ahead a little. He was the first to stop and get off his horse, but he waited for me to reach him before helping me off. I thanked him without looking at him, not wanting him to see whatever expression was on my face.
Then we were walking slowly, in deference to my damned ankle, up the stone-paved walk to her front door. Bleddyn raised his hand to knock, but then glanced at me as if to ask was I sure. I smiled limply and nodded. The only thing I’d ever been surer of was him. Though I kept that information to myself.
So Bleddyn knocked and we waited. And waited. And waited. He knocked again, more heavily, so that the knocking echoed in the clearing around the cottage. The only response we got was the sky opening up to rain even harder, soaking us both in under a minute.
“She is not at home,” Bleddyn said, and I rolled my eyes, blinking out rainwater.
“You think, Captain Obvious?” I shivered, cold and damp and feeling miserable again. I’d been so dead-set on getting my answers, and now I was being put off. And I’d be riding back to the castle soaking wet. “So, what do we do now?”
Bleddyn shook his head and nodded to the small barn. “Methinks we can wait out the rain in there. Then, if Gweddw Robert has not returned by dusk, we will make for the castle.”
“Oh-kay,” I said as Bleddyn put an arm around my waist and began leading me toward the barn. “But she left a fire burning, so that means she’ll be back soon, right?”
“’Tis merely banked, not burning. If the widow is tending the sick, she may be gone for days.”
I groaned, and just then it began to rain even harder. Bleddyn and I hurried toward the barn as fast as my ankle would allow.
*
When Bleddyn saw me settled in an empty stall near the back of the barn, he went to get the horses, leaving me to look around.
The barn only housed three cows and two horses, not counting the ones Bleddyn and I had ridden to get there, despite having eight stalls. The hay was fresh, and the barn itself didn’t stink of manure as badly as I’d expected. Above me I could make out the hay loft and hear the occasional drip of water in the hay. Gwenllian’s roof needed tarring or whatever they did to prevent leaks.
I spread some of the hay out in the empty stall Bleddyn had left me in and sat on it. It was like sitting on the mattress in the guest room at the castle, pokey and a bit uncomfortable. But it was dry, and that was something to be said for it.
By the time Bleddyn had led the horses into the barn and gotten them settled in stalls, I’d removed and wrung out my soaked shirt and was wringing out my dripping hair. I’d heard him puttering around making the horses comfortable, but I’d drifted off into my own world, and so didn’t notice when he came up to the stall I was in. I just looked up after I was done with my hair and he was standing there, still as a statue, staring at me with wide-eyed surprise. His face was flushed and his lips parted. If I didn’t know better, I’d have sworn he was turned on.
But of course, after the tongue-lashing his father had no doubt given him, Bleddyn was probably put off me for life.
Trying not to sigh, I asked, “What’s up?”
“I—” Bleddyn began, then flushed more, looking away and wringing his hands. “I’ve settled the horses. All that remains is for us to await the widow.”
“All right,” I said, frowning as Bleddyn started to turn away. “Wait. Where’re you going?”
Bleddyn paused and took a deep breath and spoke without looking at me. “I think it best if I keep an eye out for the widow’s return and leave you to rest in privacy.”
“Oh.”
Now Bleddyn glanced at me, his gaze unreadable as he took me in. I probably looked like a drowned rat.
“I’ll leave you to your rest and privacy,” he said once more, but he made no move to go. We just stared at each other for what felt like forever. I tried to smile, to not let it show that the only thing I wanted in that moment was for him to be kissing me and holding me, pinning me to the hay and pressing his hard body against mine.
But maybe some of that yearning did show. And maybe it disgusted him, because he abruptly turned away and marched toward the front of the barn.
*
Weak…I was so weak.
I couldn’t stir from my bed, to which I’d been confined for days now. I lay fevered and raving, sometimes almost lucid. But the pain in my gut was constant as I lay there, simply trying to breathe past the agony that assailed me.
Sometimes people spoke above me in hushed whispers. Sometimes they spoke to me, but only ever to ask me how I felt. And I could only ever answer them with grunts and groans for them to please, please make the pain stop. Sometimes things were poured down my throat, bitter tonics that lessened pain and put me to sleep for many nightmarish hours. And when I slept, I dreamt of being beaten and chased, only to be awakened by my own thrashing. By the fresh agony of my disturbed wound and, sometimes, my renewed fever.
They would have two or three strong lads hold me down when they cleaned the wound and stuff my mouth with a rag soaked in spirits to calm me and muffle my screams.
All I wanted was for the pain to stop. I didn’t want the mother and father I’d never known. I didn’t even want the boy I had loved to the detriment of my life. I just wanted the pain to stop.
And my waking nightmare of being on death’s door would become confused with my nightmares of being beaten and chased. Sometimes I could swear I felt my love’s hand in my own as we ran across the grounds of Gwydir Castle, no plan as to where we were going, only knowing we were going together.
Until he caught up with us and beat us. Worse than ever he had. And as always, I didn’t get the worst of it. As always, the worst of it went to he whom I loved and had always loved. Would always love. As I lay, half-insensate on the filthy stones of the courtyard, I could barely move to reach out a trembling hand. Could barely speak to beg him to stop hitting and kicking and hurting.
“Ewythr, na, os gwelwch yn dda…peidiwch â brifo ef…! Yr oedd pob un fy ei wneud!!” Uncle, no, please. . .do not hurt him. . .! It was all my doing!
I kept repeating some variation of that over and over, not until he stopped, but until he was stopped and dragged away from the limp, bloody, bruised body of my love.
Surely he is dead, I thought, and in so thinking, wanted to die, too. I tried to crawl toward him, to touch him, to kiss him once more before the fires of Hell came for us, but the world began to go dark and hands pulled me onto my back. Canny dark blue eyes stared down into my own, horrified and sad.
“Gwil—” a low voice said, and then said no more. I rolled my aching head toward him, toward my love, who was being lifted up as if he weighed nothing. My vision was too compromised to make out who was doing the lifting, but it mattered not, for he was dead and no amount of lifting would change that.
And all I wanted was to die, too.
To die and be laid to rest next to him, but they were taking his body away from mine. Far away.
“Arhoswch i mi, Cefnder, canys mi a’th ganlynaf i ba le yr wyt ti yn myned—” I wept. Wait for me, cousin, for I will follow thee whither thou goest—
*
“Arhoswch i mi, Cefnder. Arhoswch,” I plead. Wait for me, cousin. Stay.
“Ni wnei di deffro, fy nghariad? Dim ond breuddwyd…dim ond breuddwyd.”
I startled awake to a soft, concerned voice telling me it was only a dream and to wake up. To a gentle hand caressing my cheek. Bleddyn’s worried face hovered over me, and I blinked in confusion, tears blurring my vision before rolling down my cold cheeks. “Bleddyn?”
“Ie, ngoleuni fy nghalon. Mae’n Rwy’n,” he confirmed, still brushing my cheek with his thumb, spreading the wetness of my tears, as he began to cry himself. “Rydych yn crio, ac yn galw allan am help wrth i chi gysgu.” You cry, and call out for aid when you sleep.
I flung my arms around Bleddyn and buried my face in his neck, sobbing for a reason I couldn’t define. All I could do was shudder and mumble. “Don’t leave me. Please don’t let me go.”
“Do not cry, gentle my love, for I will never leave thee.”
Bleddyn’s reply comforted me. His voice, soothing in my hair, and his arms around me, the feel of him against me was everything I needed, and it banished that awful dream to the deepest pit of my subconscious where it would hopefully stay, never to come bubbling to the surface again.
When my sobbing had subsided into occasional hitches, Bleddyn leaned back a little to look down into my eyes. His eyes were a little red from weeping.
“What did you dream, my love?” he asked, and I shook my head in complete negation. I didn’t want to remember it. I just wanted to never dream about it again.
Bleddyn frowned but reached up to caress my face tenderly. “What did you dream, Krish?”
I shook my head again. “I don’t remember. I don’t want to remember. All I know is it felt like dying, and I was glad to go.”
“Do not say that,” Bleddyn whispered, holding me tighter and leaning in to kiss my forehead, lingering to murmur something in Welsh I couldn’t catch.
“It was just a dream, but it hurt so much,” I mumbled, shuddering again as the pain of my vanished nightmare resounded in my heart. “It felt like I’d lost everything that mattered to me, and I couldn’t lift a finger to stop it. Like I was finally, truly alone in the world, and always would be.”
“It was merely a dream. A bad one, but a dream, nonetheless,” Bleddyn murmured, looking at me with solemn concern. “You are not alone.”
“Aren’t I?” I asked, remembering what had happened earlier in the morning and trying to push him away from me. But he wouldn’t budge. “Bleddyn—”
“You are not alone,” Bleddyn said again, leaning down to kiss me on the mouth as softly and sweetly as I’ve ever been kissed. I moaned, parting my lips to allow his tongue entrance. It flirted alongside my own, plundering my mouth and mapping it. I laid back in the hay as Bleddyn’s body settled on top of me, heavy and damp and perfect.
His touch, his very presence, was the antidote to the way that dream had made me feel. Every time he teased me with his tongue or ran his rough, callused hands down my bare arms and chest, he drove the dream farther away. “Make love to me, Bleddyn. Please.”
Bleddyn stopped kissing me to look into my eyes, clearly torn. I could feel how hard he was. He may have stopped kissing me, but he hadn’t stopped grinding against me. However, that look of grim guilt was on his face, and he looked so much like his father in that moment I felt almost disgusted.
“Surely I am already hellbound and beyond repentance,” Bleddyn breathed, closing his eyes. I felt a surge of anger and pushed him off me, something I only managed because I had the element of surprise on my side. I rolled away from him and sat up, tears in my eyes once more. Only these tears were nothing to do with my dream and everything to do with my waking reality.
“Leave me alone, Bleddyn,” I said when he put his hand on my arm. I jerked it away and clutched it to me as if it’d been burned. “I’m not gonna be your consolation prize for not being good enough to get into Heaven. I’m not gonna be the one you blame every time you lament your lost redemption and purity. If you wanna hate yourself, go right ahead. Just do it without me.”
And with that, I got to my feet as nimbly as I was able, and hobbled out of the stall. Out of the barn, where even I wouldn’t be able to tell what was tears and what was the rain.