The door to their room burst open, and Dai and Llelo bounded inside. “It’s already too big to put out!”
Gwen sat up, staring wildly at the boys, whose shapes were silhouetted in the doorway against the flames behind them. Both Hywel and Gareth were on their feet in an instant, pulling on their breeches and shoving their feet into boots. Gwen helped Mari out of bed, while Hywel slammed the door shut behind the boys, though not before a billow of smoke had followed them into the room.
“I managed one good look. The flames are already scaling the back wall.” Hywel crossed the floor to the window.
Gareth swung the shutter wide. “I’ll go out first and catch the girls. It’s hardly a drop at all.”
Gwen thanked whatever foresight had prompted Taran to give them one of the rooms on the first floor. But the manor housed other guests, who may well have gone to bed late, drunk, and would be hard to wake. Gwen didn’t hear footsteps on the floor above her. She prayed that some of them hadn’t found their bed at all tonight and were sleeping safe at a table in the hall, their heads on their arms.
In the few moments it took for Gareth to hop over the windowsill and drop to the ground, Gwen grabbed the dress she’d worn yesterday, her cloak, and her boots, and threw them out the window, followed by Gareth’s sword. Gareth was tall enough to still be able to see inside, and he held out his hands to Gwen, who scrambled over the sill and into his arms. Gareth set her down and immediately caught Mari, who followed close behind.
Gwen didn’t know that her heart had ever pounded so hard. She ran to the postern gate, screaming to the soldiers who guarded it, finding it incomprehensible that they could not have noticed the danger only a few dozen yards away. Finally, a man poked his head through the doorway. Gwen was relieved to see it was Rhodri, still awake even at this late hour.
“Raise the alarm! Fire! Fire!” Encompassing the danger in a single glance, Rhodri ran across the courtyard towards the gatehouse and barracks.
Fire was the danger of any dwelling, which was why the kitchen was often kept separate from the main buildings in a castle or in the lower level of a keep where the walls could be made of stone or dirt. Gwen tried to calm her breathing, resting in the doorway of the postern gate. She understood now, why nobody in the courtyard had noticed the smoke: the bonfire was still blazing, although few people remained around it.
At Rhodri’s call, every man who could still stand poured out of the great hall and the barracks, passing Gwen at the gate. Rhodri returned too and put a hand on her shoulder. “Are you all right?”
Gwen nodded, still breathing hard but less panicked than before.
It was a matter of a few moments to collect the necessary buckets; Hywel organized the beginnings of a human chain from the creek that flowed to the east of the manor house. With each new arrival, the line grew longer and the buckets of water flowed from hand to hand with greater speed. The hope now, given how quickly the fire had spread, was to prevent the fire from spreading to the surrounding trees or the castle. The manor house itself had been a lost cause before Gareth had set Gwen on the ground.
Gareth came out of the front door with a woman hung over his shoulder. He’d thrown a soaking wet blanket over them both, and Gwen tried not to cry after the fact at the danger he’d been in. Gareth laid the woman on the ground, and Gwen ran to her. She started coughing and trying to sit up.
“That’s the last,” Gareth said.
“How many—?” Gwen choked back the question, gazing up into Gareth’s face.
“We got everyone out,” Gareth said. “Several of the rooms were empty.”
Gwen bent her head, hugely relieved, and then Gareth put a hand on her shoulder. “I need to see to the security of Aber.”
“Could the fire be merely a diversion?” Gwen said.
“That’s what I intend to find out if I can. Stay here.” He was off at a run to the postern gate.
Llelo and Dai were standing in the creek, at the start of one of the lines of people passing buckets to put out the fire. Gwen was about to join their group when her father puffed over to her and threw a blanket around her shoulders. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine. Really, I’m fine,” Gwen said. “We should help with the fire.”
“You’ll catch your death of cold out here,” Meilyr said.
“I have clothes somewhere.” Gwen spied her small pile of belongings by a tree thirty feet from the manor house. Mari sat next to them, pulling on one boot. “Where’s Gwalchmai?”
Meilyr pointed with his chin to the line of water carriers. Gwalchmai had joined Llelo and Dai.
“If you see to them, I’ll join you in a moment,” Gwen said.
Meilyr grunted his assent and moved off. Gwen knew that he loved her, but she also knew that Gwalchmai’s welfare was paramount in her father’s eyes. She no longer begrudged him that fact, and since she was well, she didn’t waste any time feeling disgruntled at coming in second yet again. And to be fair, he had brought her a blanket first.
“Take the blanket, Mari,” Gwen said when she reached her friend, who still sat under the tree. Mari held Hywel’s sword in her lap, while Gareth’s leaned against the tree behind her.
“What are you going to do?” Mari handed Gwen her dress.
“Help.”
Mari put the sword aside to assist Gwen with her clothes, but after she dressed, Gwen stopped her from following her to the creek. “You stay here and rest. Let me do this for both of us.”
Mari subsided without further protest, indicating how unwell she really felt. With one last glance back at her friend, Gwen headed off to join the lines of water carriers, only to find that that King Owain himself had taken a spot two people ahead of her. At the sight of Gwen, he motioned for the men between them to change places with him, which they did without question.
“A bad business, Gwen,” he said.
“Llelo and Dai woke us,” Gwen said. “If not for them, we might not have escaped.”
“Are you sure you should be here?” he said.
“I’ll stop if I feel unwell, but every hand helps,” Gwen said.
King Owain nodded, still looking grim. “The people are worried. Some are saying that Tegwen lies restlessly.” He leaned closer to Gwen. “I spoke at length with Hywel and Gareth before they retired last night.”
Gwen was glad she didn’t have to be the one to update the king on the latest events. “Ghosts don’t start fires, any more than a ghost murdered Brychan or poisoned Dewi. Next they’ll be saying that Bran has risen from the dead to walk with her.”
“I feel responsible,” King Owain said. “It was I who directed you to speak to Brychan but then didn’t order a watch set on him, so we would know where he was at all times.”
Gwen grabbed another bucket from her neighbor on the other side and handed it to the king. Her arm was growing tired, and the muscles in her belly were aching, but she wasn’t going to stop now, especially if King Owain was willing to confide in her. “You were distracted—”
“I’ve been distracted for months,” King Owain said. “I feel at times as if my kingdom is slipping through my fingers.”
That was far too frank a statement for her to reply to, and she wondered if King Owain was still a little drunk from the evening’s festivities.
“You don’t say his name but I know what you’re thinking,” King Owain said.
Gwen swallowed. “Sire?”
“You wonder if my brother has had more of a hand in these events than he’s said or we’ve discovered. Tomorrow, with the holy day over, he will return to Merionydd for a long winter of idleness.”
“Perhaps you could find something to occupy him?” Gwen said. “Stephen and Maud are still at each other’s throats.”
King Owain guffawed under his breath. “A little war is in order, do you think? One that my brother can sink his teeth into?”
“I don’t like war,” Gwen said. “I fear for my husband and our friends, but if Cadwaladr is searching for the Book of Kells to use as leverage for his own meeting with Gilbert de Clare, it is a short hop from there to speculating that he wants more than Ceredigion.”
“Bran was plotting against my life and sleeping with my wife,” King Owain said.
Gwen looked away.
King Owain noticed. “Hywel told me. I find a deep well of anger in my belly at all that has happened in my kingdom that I knew nothing about, and it makes me concerned about what else I don’t know.”
Gwen was grateful that she had been living in the south when Tegwen disappeared and that Gareth hadn’t yet joined Hywel’s company. Those events had completely passed her by. She handed another bucket to the king.
“Rhun and Hywel—”
“They are fine sons,” King Owain said, “but though Rhun will be king after me, he lacks the suspicious mind that a king needs. I am counting on Hywel to protect him when my time comes.”
“You know he will,” Gwen said, “but you don’t have to worry about that for a long time to come.”
“One never knows,” the king said. “When Gareth and Hywel return to Ceredigion after the Christmas feast, I expect you to remain at Aber. I cannot have all three of you departing at the same time. Hywel will arrange for his informants to report to you in his absence.”
Gwen’s surprise was such that she stopped moving, and the man beside her prodded her into action with the edge of a bucket. “But Gareth—”
“Gareth will not object when I tell him that this duty will keep you out of greater trouble,” the king said.
Gwen swallowed hard. She didn’t know how it had happened, but it seemed that she’d been promoted.
The conversation had her worried, however. The king seemed particularly maudlin tonight, perhaps not surprising given the death around them, but an uncomfortable sensation started in her belly that he’d had a premonition of his own death. She would mention it to Hywel at the first opportunity.
“When you speak to my son, tell him that it would be better for him to swallow his pride and admit what he doesn’t know than to lose everything we’ve gained in Ceredigion.”
Gwen gaped at the king. He couldn’t have read her mind, could he? Before she could ask what he was talking about, Gwen felt a drop of water plop onto the top of her head. At first she thought it was spray from a swung bucket, but then another drop came. And then another. She held out a hand. Rain splattered into it. King Owain tipped back his head, relieved laughter escaping his lips.
“Pardon the ramblings of an old man, Gwen. We will not falter now. God is on our side.”