Chapter 15
For a winter morning, Gwen felt much too green.
It was frustrating not to have shaken whatever this ailment was that clung to her. She had always prided herself on her fortitude. She wasn’t tall and slim like some of the more striking women in the brothel. She didn’t have a particularly clear singing voice or a quick mind for jokes. But she’d always been strong. Over the years, Bedwyr had been laid low a few times with some stomach ailment, moaning in a most pathetic manner, but she, like their father, had always pushed through.
Until now.
Well, she was still trying to push through, but this thing, this trial was testing the very last strand of her patience. This common winter thing that many, many people suffered from. That it could be anything else wasn’t a line of thought she wished to consider at this moment.
But that very possibility was the reason she’d been quiet, had made her way outside the chapel and around to the rear before she’d had to bend double and heave up what little she’d eaten after she rose from bed. Maybe Elain hadn’t heard. Gwen straightened and spat, then wiped her mouth. Maybe—
“Still?”
She turned to find Elain standing behind her, hands on hips.
“Get back in bed.”
“No.” Gwen pushed past her.
“No? You’re ill.”
“I have things to do.”
“What things?”
Elain followed her back into the chapel. The infuriating woman had already made up the bedclothes and wiped their cups and bowls and put them back on their small shelf. She’d even swept the floor.
It left Gwen with nothing to do to prove she could function capably.
She crossed to the tinderbox next to the brazier and found it full too. How long had she been outside?
“What things?”
She spun to tell the love of her life precisely how much she hated having questions repeated at her, but the motion sent her stomach up into her throat. She slapped a hand over her mouth.
“Gwen.”
She shook her head. Swallowed, carefully.
“I don’t think you should go to Lord Ban’s anymore,” Elain said, arms crossed. “What if someone over there made you ill?”
“Nobody there made me ill.” She was fairly certain and becoming more so, though attempting to work out the sum of the days that had passed made her head hurt.
“Why would you want to go there, anyway?” Elain said. “He’s not a good man.”
“How do you know?”
“I’ve heard things.”
What was this nonsense? “Brothel gossip?”
Elain drew up straight, frowning. “No. I don’t gossip. You know that.”
“So why disparage a man you don’t know?”
Elain was mulishly silent.
“I go there because I want to help him. Because I enjoy helping him. And because I promised him I would.”
“You’re not well. You should stay here. It’s nice, isn’t it?”
“Of course it is. But… what? Do you want me to just stay here all day every day, tucked up in this chapel, and do nothing?”
“No.”
That’s what Elain’s mouth said, but the entire rest of her screamed yes.
Oh, no.
“People have been telling me what to do my whole life, Elain. My father. His women. The Myrddin. Bedwyr, Arthur. I left so that it wouldn’t happen again, but even here there’s been Rhys and Caron. Can’t you understand? I want to stand on my own feet, and if you—you—try to control me too…”
She couldn’t finish the thought, because she didn’t know what she would do. Didn’t even want to think about having to make the choice.
A knock on the door rescued her. She hurried to it in relief and threw it open.
“Morien.”
He stooped to smile through the doorway. “Gwenhwyfar. Elain.”
“Good morning, Morien,” Elain said with a halfhearted smile.
Gwen grabbed her basket, then suffered Elain draping her cloak about her and fastening it.
“Take care of yourself.”
“I will, I will.” She kissed Elain’s cheek—just a peck, for she was in a hurry—and bustled to the door.
But no sooner had she stepped through it than her gorge rose again, and she vomited on the ground outside.
“Again,” Elain said.
“Again,” Morien said.
Gwen rose and gave them both a baleful look. But while Elain returned one of exasperation, Morien’s expression was positively cheerful.
No.
Smiling, he stepped forward. Laid a cool hand to her forehead. Pressed fingertips under her jaw. Lifted her chin to peer into her eyes.
His pointed teeth flashed.
She held up a hand. “Don’t—”
“Congratulations!” he said. “You are with child.”
“No, I’m not!”
Elain was staring at her, eyes wide. “Gwen.”
“I’m not.”
“All the signs are there,” Morien said.
“How do you know?”
He shrugged. “My mother brings babes into the world. She taught me this and that.”
Gods, why didn’t she know that about him? Had she been that centered on herself?
She had been. She’d freed herself from under her father’s thumb and begun to direct her own life. Here, in this strange, flat place, but she’d had Elain and then Morien, and then days helping Ban, and it had started to feel as if she could do anything, be anyone. And even though she’d known all along this could happen, she might have begun to hope it wouldn’t. Because a babe—a clinging, clutching, crying babe—would dictate her life for the foreseeable future.
“Gwen.”
She looked up to find Elain frowning at her.
“Did you know?”
She had, deep down—and not so deep down, as her churning stomach reminded her. She’d known why she felt ill in the mornings, and fatigued for weeks before that. Her moon blood had still come, but that wasn’t the most reliable measure, even if she’d wanted it to be her proof.
Elain blinked, looking confused and hurt. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
She backed away. “I have to go. Lord Ban will think I’ve fallen into a ditch.” But in her haste to get down the slope to the path, one foot caught on the other, and she stumbled.
Morien caught her arm. “Watch your step.”
“I’m fine,” she snapped, then felt a flash of shame for doing so. “I’m sorry, Morien.”
“It’s all right,” he said and chuckled. “Your moods will turn frequently.”
She leveled a look at him. “More wisdom from your mother?”
“Yes.”
“What does she do, exactly?”
“Cares for the women, helps them stay healthy. Makes remedies when they need them. Delivers babes. Teaches new mothers what they need to know.”
They had gone several dozen paces farther when a rather unwelcome thought slithered into Gwen’s mind. “Morien?”
“Yes?”
“Do women ever ask your mother for remedies to keep from quickening?”
“Of course.”
Of course they did. She’d used one herself.
That one time.
She took a deep breath and steeled herself. “Do they ever fail?”
Morien grinned wide. “All the time!”
~ ~ ~
Gwen was with child.
Elain stood in the doorway, stunned, and watched her hurry away, Morien flanking her protectively.
That was her role, her promise—that she would protect and provide. But she hadn’t offered to accompany Gwen to Ban’s after she learned of her trips there, and perhaps Gwen had sensed the cowardice in her. Perhaps that was why she hadn’t told her she was pregnant. How could she have any confidence that Elain could give her what she needed once the babe was born? Because she’d cleaned out a derelict chapel that wasn’t hers to give?
She counted forward. At some point in late summer or early autumn, this chapel would ring with a babe’s cries. But what mother would want to raise her babe in a place so isolated from help? In a dank building that lay too far from Rhys’s wall, should anything bad happen, and didn’t even have its own well?
Those were all she’d been able to offer in her current state of being.
With terrible clarity, the next logical piece fell into place in her mind. She shuddered against it, everything in her quaking at the prospect.
No, she needed advice first. She needed Palahmed’s calm mind, and gods, did that admission leave her humbled.
Running along the path to Rhys’s, she tried to calm her thoughts, but they were in even greater disarray when she located him. Unfortunately, he was in no place to help her with her plight, for she found him in a tearful embrace with his brother.
Safir was all the family Palahmed had in the world, and seeing the joy on her friend’s face drove home how little she had offered Palahmed, too, since she’d returned. She should have asked after Safir, really dug into how Palahmed had been faring without him. Instead, she’d only had eyes for her own woes.
In any case, their long-awaited reunion was no place to dump her problem. Backing quietly away from the two men, she turned instead for the brothel. She would find what she needed inside, somewhere.
She did and had almost made her way out again when the sound of her name halted her mid-stride.
Caron’s eyes flicked down to the bundle under Elain’s arm. “Doing your washing?”
She tucked the clothing higher. “No.”
“Palahmed’s?”
“No.”
Too late, she realized she should have said yes. She could have borne Caron’s tirade about doing the man’s laundry. This expression her aunt wore just now was not as easy to bear.
Warning and anger and disappointment, all rolled as tightly as the wad Elain carried.
“You look like someone who’s about to do something stupid,” Caron said.
Elain swallowed hard.
Gwen and their babe needed safety. Security. Arthur and Bedwyr would be itinerant warriors for the foreseeable future, and wouldn’t return at the earliest until the babe was born. And it wasn’t really their place to support Elain’s child, regardless of their four-way arrangement.
She needed to act now, and she knew what she had to do.
Even if it felt as if part of her was being ripped out from inside to consider it.
“I have to go.”
“Elain, don’t.”
“I’ll bring them back.”
She turned and shoved out the door before she could change her mind.