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They drifted westward, and she found relief in having no driving purpose beyond finding nourishment and shelter every day, wandering in the direction of Wales, and simply being with him. No more did she resist looking at him, or standing near to him, or touching him. No more did she resist speaking when she might normally have bitten back words.
She had felt him surrendering to her silence before, and that was wonder enough. But now he adjusted himself to it, allowed room for it without impatiently waiting for her to speak again. It was part of her, and so he did not shove it to the side or disregard its importance.
It was the same as when she touched him, or he touched her – or even when they did not touch at all. She felt in him, always, this allowance for her desires, for what she wanted and did not want. He accommodated her and she, who had grown accustomed to living in service of other people and other purposes, found it more pleasing than she could ever have imagined.
“How do you come to speak Welsh?” he asked her one day.
She had just given a command to Fuss in words instead of using their signals, because her hands were busy stoking the fire and stirring the soup. Fuss had been trained with Welsh, as she had been. It had seemed natural to her when he was a pup.
“Those who taught me the blades did use the Welsh language in their training at Morency,” she answered, and hoped he would not ask more. Lady Gwenllian had been her true teacher, though others had trained with her, including Lord Ranulf, hard as it was for him to do. But a highborn lady should not have such skills. To say the secret to anyone – even one she trusted well – felt too much like betrayal. So too would it feel like betrayal to deny Gwenllian and say someone else had taught her. And to lie to him would make her feel wretched, so she hoped he would not ask.
He did not. He seemed almost to shy away from it, and she knew it was the mention of Morency that restrained him. Like her, he did not want reminders of the world. They were outside of everything here. There were no masters, no family, no duty – there was only each other.
There would be time enough for the world and all its cares when they reached the end of their journey. Until then she would live only for the day, for the moments when she caught the soft look he gave her, or could watch as he patiently worked thistles out of Fuss’ fur while murmuring soft and soothing things, so careful and attentive that she almost could not breathe for the tenderness that swelled in her at the sight.
She lived too for the nights, for the shadows that moved across his skin until the lamp flickered out, and the delights they discovered together in the dark. The way he touched her was a revelation – like it was a privilege, like there was no response her body could give that would ever be wrong. Some part of her could not quite wholly believe in it and stayed always wary, a corner of her mind alert to danger, a hand that would not let go the blade. But all that mattered was the pleasure of the moment, with no yesterday and no tomorrow. Everything felt far away. Only he felt real.
One evening as the sun went down, it lit up the sky in shades of glowing russet and copper. They sat and watched it together. She turned to look at the color reflected on his face, the shining patch of scarred skin turned amber by the light of sunset. She thought of the first time she had touched him there, when he had cried out in his sleep. In my dreams I burn and burn, he had said.
“Do you still dream of burning?” she asked, because she might never know if she did not ask him. Some things were worth putting into words.
He did not seem surprised by the question.
“Is rare now, and when I do dream it, I know it is a dream.” His eyes were on the blaze at the horizon, his voice soft. “And then I wake, and you are there.”
She bit her lips together, the now familiar tenderness swelling inside her. She reached a hand up to the scar, a soft caress that traced it back behind his ear. When she leaned forward and pressed her lips to the place, he slipped an arm around her and she felt it again – the same thing she had felt from him many times since she had made herself his lover. He wanted something more, but held the urge in check while he considered if she wanted the same, assessing her body’s reaction to find an answer.
This time he wanted to pull her into his lap, and she did not want that. She could tell this was his urge for the same reason she did not want it: because she had been pulled into the laps of countless men when she had not been fast enough to dodge their grasp. She could not like it, no matter the man who did it. But she did want to be nearer to him, so she squeezed his hand at her waist and kissed his lips. Then she slipped behind him, her knees on either side of him so he could lean back on her. They watched the sun melt from the sky as he held her hands to his chest and she felt the soft tickle of his hair against her cheek.
In moments like this, she did not ever want to reach Wales. She never said it aloud, for fear he would think she did not care if he never went home. In truth she wanted nothing more than that, for him to reach the place he yearned for. If there could be some way to give him his home while keeping the world at bay, she thought she might sell her soul to know it. But that was impossible, so she must be content with their leisurely pace on the journey.
One morning she woke to the feel of cool air on her bare skin. Her eyes snapped open, wary of danger until she remembered that last night in the dark, he had taken off her shift. She had wanted it, wanted the feel of his skin on hers, his body hot all along her back while she guided his hands over her and he thrust inside her. But she had, for warmth and modesty’s sake, always put her shift back on before succumbing to sleep. Until now.
The cloak only half covered her and his eyes were fixed on the place between her breasts. The dagger that normally hung there had shifted and exposed the scar. Scars.
It was the first he was seeing it, and in the harsh morning light. The thin lines showed clearly where her flesh had been cut. Now his eyes came to hers and she only looked at him, her jaw tight, a look that told him he could satisfy his curiosity and push the cloak away from her hip. He did.
It was an uglier scar there, where she had been burned. She knew he had felt it already, whenever his hands had grasped her hips, or caressed her in the dark. Now he saw it, and she watched his face twist with feeling. He looked up at her, his brows knitted together with confusion and a little anger. It was a look that asked what had happened, why this had been done to her – for it was obvious that it had been done deliberately.
“Did you think he went away docile, after I ruined his sport and withered his cock?” she asked, her voice flat. It angered her suddenly, irrationally, that he dared to be surprised or appalled at this. What a luxury, to be able to believe in the honor of men. “His anger must go somewhere. Water rolls down a hill, men’s anger falls on women. It’s the way of the world.”
Fool, she wanted to say at the end of it, but clamped her jaw against it. She sat up. In the soft sound of his breath she could hear that infinite patience of his, steady and calm, the way he waited for the falcon in its flight. It was not a helpless or hapless state, this patient waiting of his. He was there within it, unmovable. He would not advance unless invited, but nor would he yield his place, or himself, only because of her mood.
“You said naught of this, when you told me what happened.” It was not so much accusation as it was bewilderment. “Yet you did teach me it must be put into words. Can you not speak of it?”
She almost scoffed. Not speak of it? She had spoken of it countless times, and she did not care to speak of it again to satisfy his curiosity about the details. They cut her, they burned her, she lived. It was simple enough to understand. She stood and reached for her shift, pretending it did not affect her to stand naked before him, scrawny and small and marked with ugly scars.
“I tell what I want to tell and not a word more.” She gestured to the places she was marked. “Talking won’t tell you no more than you can see with your own eyes, will it.”
She turned away and pulled her linen over her head and then her dress. Fuss sprang up from his place beside the trees that hid this tiny clearing, eager to see where the day would take them. She fastened her belt with the blades in it around her waist, and pulled on her boots without her hose.
There was the long, elegant dagger for her boot, but she did not slip it in at the ankle. She held it close like a talisman, bundled her hose and the braces of knives into her cloak, and said, “I’ll go gather more water.”
She did it every morning, but never announced it. She could feel the meaning of it fall on him, that he was not welcome to follow her. It was all she could do to remember to take the flask.
At the stream she knelt and put a hand into the water, wishing it was colder. Cold enough to shock and numb, to freeze the hot tears that seemed ready to spill. It was not fair. The world and all its ugliness had intruded on this soft place they had built between them. And it was her who had carried it in, written on her flesh.
The memory of it had long ago lost its sting. What had happened was a fact no more or less shameful to her than that she had scrubbed floors and served ale. But it was a reminder of who she was and had always been. A reminder that she was from a different world, a worse world, than him. Whatever misfortune had taken him from his home and put him at the mercy of villains was only temporary. That was not his true fate.
The long dagger was still clutched to her breast, pressed against the other blade that hung from her neck beneath the linen. She said her usual prayer of thanksgiving with a little more fervor, put on her hose, then pressed her lips to the dagger before slipping it into her boot. It soothed her, to have it where it belonged.
She watched sunlight play on the water while Fuss dug at the ground, covering himself in dirt as he tried to reach the center of some creature’s burrow. They would come to the end of this forest soon. Chesterfield could not be more than half a day’s journey from here. They must go to the market there, to buy provisions and avoid poaching any more. But after that, Wales was days away. More than a week, even did they not dawdle.
She began a new prayer, that they might somehow hold the world back, or that they would find a way to fit this fragile bliss into the reality that awaited them. She closed her eyes and silently pleaded that she would not have to let him go. Not him too. Not yet.
When she opened her eyes, he had appeared. Down the stream a little, he stood with his back to her. She rose and went to him, Fuss running ahead as always. He had her purse of nails, and the little silver knife that she had left behind in their bed. The sight of it troubled her. She did not like to think of how much she needed it, how her fingers would not let it go in the night even as he held her.
There was an old stump of wood he aimed at, throwing one nail after another at it. Few of them stuck, though he threw with great force. He only paused for the briefest moment when Fuss settled at his feet, then threw again.
“You could kill him,” he said when the nails were spent. He held the little silver knife in his palm. “Why do you not seek revenge?”
An impossible question. As well ask why she did not drain the seas after the destruction of a tempest. She looked at his thumb rubbing across the grip, interrupting the light that gleamed on metal.
“Would it erase the scars from me, or the memories I bear?” She barely noticed it came out in Welsh. “Would it raise Oliver from the dead?”
He shook his head. “Nay. But I cannot understand how you have no hate in your heart.”
She almost laughed at that. No hate.
“There is enough hate in my heart to burn down the world entire.” Her voice shook, her throat ached from the effort required not to scream it. She looked at his profile and gathered the rough fabric of her dress tight into her fists until her fingers grew numb. “But you are in the world,” she said. “You are in my heart.”
He turned to her and she felt naked again. She meant to say they must go to the market today, that he would never reach his home if they wasted days in wandering.
Instead, she stepped forward into her fear and kissed him, because he made her greedy and fearless. He made everything new and beautiful. She had no care for the market, or the road that awaited them, or their journey’s end. She only cared for him, and so they stayed there all through the day and night.
He had begun to imagine Nan in his mother’s solar, looking out over the valley below, framed by the carved stone of the window and the hills beyond. But then he reminded himself that the stone was probably rubble now and even if it weren’t, he could never go there again.
As they moved westward, she became more real than his memories – of the thieves, the abbey, the years spent as hostage. Only Aderinyth seemed as vivid as she was, as important. His mind kept serving up images of her there, with him. He saw her on the mountain path that led to the most hidden nest of white gyrfalcons. He imagined her listening intently to Philip Walch, who would love her like a daughter. He knew with a certainty she would never sneer at the place or the people, and that she would look at the mountains in the same way she had looked at the ceiling of the cathedral.
He knew he wanted her there, but was afraid to ask for it.
“I’ve no coin,” she announced as they entered Chesterfield. The way she said it and the set of her mouth told him that the money she had sent to her sister was the last she had. “I must earn some while we are here.”
His assertion that she need not do so, as he still had a little left from the long-ago sale of the hawk, was politely disregarded. He watched her eyes light up at the sight of an old man selling meat pies, then was amused to hear her quiz the man on his method of cooking them. It seemed to meet her approval in the end, and she said she would return to buy some once she had found a place to sell one of her knives.
Gryff saw her touch one of the blades on her forearm. He had seen her touch them in moments of idleness, her fingertips rubbing over the letter stamped at the base when she was lost in thought. She cherished them, and she had already lost one on this journey.
“Would you trade a pie for entertainment?” he asked the old man suddenly.
That was how they found themselves, an hour later, with a crowd of onlookers placing bets on what the fair maiden could hit with her knife. She did not like it as much as she had when she’d shown her skill in the privacy of Hal’s yard, but she did not object. Gryff was careful to stay close to her, gathering all her winnings into a basket he bought for the purpose. He kept it in easy view so that she might say when she had enough.
In the end, there was a small pile of coins, food enough to last them a week, and a few too many admirers for her comfort, or his. Only one man was fool enough to reach out for her as she walked away, his voice urging her to stay while his eyes held a greedy, lecherous look. Gryff moved swiftly between them and stamped his boot on the man’s foot. His own hands were full, but he would drop everything if he must and take up the knife at his belt. He did not need to do more than look at him for a long, hard moment before the man slunk away.
“Will you teach me that?” asked Nan as they walked away from the market. She had pulled a meat pie from the basket and was licking the juice of it from her lips.
“Teach what?” he asked, attempting to tear his attention from her lips. He seemed to spend most of his days pleasantly distracted by the sight of her mouth, and his nights more than distracted by the feel of it.
“The way you looked at him.” She said it with her mouth full, and swallowed before continuing. “You looked like the king himself, and would throw him in a tower or have his head on a pike. But it’s calm-like, not full of temper.”
His father had had that look, and his grandfather too – the eye of Arawn, they called it in his family, likening their belligerent pride to the pagan god of the Welsh underworld, gathering souls with a glance. He almost said as much to her, almost told her how the bard had stood beside the great open hearth and sung the legend of Arawn, how his brother Owain had loved it best of all the poems, how Gryff was the only one of his brothers who did not quail when their father gave that fabled look.
He did not say any of it. They were dead. He could never be that person again.
He knew she thought him a falconer, like Hal, employed by some wealthy household before misfortune landed him here. There was no reason to tell her otherwise. It was the only thing he would be, from now on. Just a simple falconer, and not even one of great status such as Hal was.
“Can it not be taught, Welshman?” she asked with a grin, before taking another bite of her meal.
She never called him by his name. To her he was only Welshman, and each time she said it, his heart felt lighter. A simple Welshman, safe from anyone who would throw him in a tower.
“I think me your defenses are more use than any look,” he assured her. “The sight of your blade is enough to drive away all but the most witless.”
They gave a coin to a man who let them shelter for the night in a loft above his granary and Gryff counted himself witless when she bared her body to him, wrapped her legs around him, but would not set down her blade. Her fist stayed closed on the silver knife, though it stayed in its sheath and she never held it to him after that first night. He had begun to dream of the day she would let it go, and take off the dagger that hung from her neck as well. It became entwined with the vision of her in Aderinyth, as though he need only to bring her there and her doubt and distrust would melt away.
In the morning, they made their way to the crossroads outside of town. They could continue west through the rolling hills and dales and reach Wales in as little as a week. Or they could follow the southern road, travel much farther, moving southwest until they crossed into Wales closer to his home.
He still did not know where she intended to go – only that it was north of Aderinyth, and so the western path was hers, the shorter path. He could ask her destination, but somehow the words would not pass his lips. They stood at the crossroads without speaking, the heavy basket of provisions slung over his shoulder.
He would follow her, to wherever she journeyed. He could make his way to Aderinyth from there. Without her, if he must.
“Will we go south now, or later?” she asked.
In all their journeying, she had never asked him this. She only chose the road silently, leading him by hidden ways to where he wished to go. Now she stood very still, her eyes trained on the ground, a delicate color high on her cheeks.
“South?” he echoed.
“To Aderinyth. There is coin enough to last the journey now. If you want... If you would have me come there.”
He dropped the basket and kissed her, relishing the sound of satisfaction and relief that came from her. He remembered himself in time to keep from devouring her right there. She was so fierce that he forgot sometimes how small she was, how easy it was to overwhelm her slight form. But now she kissed him back, her hands holding his face.
“Home,” he said, smiling against her lips. “Aye, I would have you there.”
