Chapter 5
Elain hadn’t planned to be back so soon, and it galled. She thought she’d escaped this place, escaped the almost daily reminder of what she’d run from the first time.
The brothel had undergone its normal shift toward winter. Fuel stood in great stacks outside the building, and the animals grazed in the near paddocks now. The great laundry cauldrons created a permanent haze of steam on the south side of the structure. The laundry boys were already hauling the clean bedclothes into the lofts to dry.
Some things hadn’t changed; she’d only left a couple of months ago. The corridors still smelled of sex and spiced oils. The rat passage was still almost too tight to breathe in. She didn’t know how Gwen withstood it, but she seemed to see it as a grand adventure. She slept soundly this morning, but then so did all but the most energetic of the brothel’s inhabitants.
Unable to put off this meeting any longer, Elain made her way to Caron’s chambers and knocked on the door.
The woman didn’t waste a breath on niceties. “What of your bargain with Uthyr?”
The bargain Caron had brokered, right here in her chambers. “Done, and happily. Bedwyr and I married after the harvest.”
“Mmm. I met the lad a few years back. Never a steadier young man.” Caron shrugged. “Now if you’d said that about the daughter—Gwendolyn is her name?”
“Gwenhwyfar.”
“Gwenhwyfar,” Caron repeated thoughtfully, as if she hadn’t known. “Quite the mouthful. Fitting, I suppose. She did look quite the scrumptious bite, all luscious breasts and plump, tender thighs—”
“She’s married,” Elain blurted.
“Yes, to the promising young warrior. The one who’s still got your husband completely besotted.”
Elain blinked.
Caron snorted softly. “We’ve known each other for a long time, Elain.”
“We have.”
“So why don’t you enlighten me: what is Uthyr’s daughter to you?”
“My sister-by-law. Who is Uthyr’s daughter and above sleeping in the loft.”
One of Caron’s eyebrows rose sharply. “Did she say so?”
“She did not. I’m saying it.” She fought to control her emotions; Caron would only use them against her. “I know you have rooms better suited for a guest of Gwen’s station.”
“Gods, who’s under my roof—Mari the virgin?”
“She’s a warlord’s daughter.”
“That’s rich.”
“He’s one of your most loyal customers.”
“They’re all loyal.”
“Caron—”
“Oh, so you’re through with ‘Auntie’ now, are you?”
Elain bit her lip and took a breath. When she looked up, the other woman’s expression was proud but brittle. “Of course not. You’ll always be my aunt.”
“’Til I toss you out on your ungrateful arse.”
She hadn’t done, those years ago, when Elain had appeared on her doorstep in the dead of the night, afraid and alone. Caron had been as stern then as now, but she’d brought Elain directly to her hearth and fed her. After a long talk and a fitful sleep, Elain had woken to find a neat stack of tunics and skirts next to her bed. They’d come from Caron’s own cupboard, yet putting them on that morning had made Elain feel more herself than she ever had. “I’m not ungrateful. You were always here for me.”
“Not ungrateful isn’t the same thing as grateful. Are you only using me now?”
“I’m asking for help.”
“You have another option, you know. You could offer your Gwenhwyfar much nicer accommodations—”
“No.”
“Go see him, Elain.”
“I won’t.”
“He’s ill. Men change.”
A humorless laugh escaped her. “If there’s one thing you taught me, Auntie, it’s that men never change.” She became aware that her fingers held her skirts in a death clutch. She flexed them, struggling for reason and a humbler tone. “Please. Arthur and Bed will be on the border until spring, at least. That’s a long time to sleep above the rat passage.”
Caron sighed, her lips pursed. “As it happens, an alternative is available, but it’s collected… some refuse. You’ll empty it. Thoroughly.”
Elain hugged her. “Thank you.”
Caron only chuckled. Somewhat darkly.
She led Elain out of the brothel and away from the complex warren of structures that made up Rhys’s central holdings. To Elain’s surprise, Caron led her out of the wall surrounding the settlement.
“Where are we going?”
“Do you believe in hell?”
“No.”
“Good. Hold tight to that conviction.”
They followed a path westward, and therefore farther from the river that ran along the eastern wall and made up Rhys’s center of commerce. As such, the gently rolling hills to the west lay quiet. When Caron turned off the wide path onto a smaller one leading southwest, Elain realized where they were headed.
It sat just over a rise from the brothel, on its own small mound of earth. A holdover from a time when more followers of the Christ had visited Rhys’s forebears, the old chapel had lain empty and mostly unused for as long as Elain had been aware of it. The more superstitious among the whores thought the place haunted, and it was easy to see why: the low land surrounding the chapel mound tended, especially in mornings and evenings, to collect heavy ground mist. The tale-tellers in the brothel saw in that mist the spirits of the dead. Elain rather thought—if she squinted a bit—the mist looked like a lake, with the chapel residing on a tiny island in the middle.
Caron led the way across the imagined lake, and as the mist swirled thickly about their skirts, Elain studied the building. Its stone blocks had mossed over, but the structure seemed solid. Moreover, it was a small chapel; it couldn’t hold that much refuse. Surely it’d be a matter of only a few days’ work to make it ready for Gwen. It wasn’t what she’d been accustomed to, growing up in Uthyr’s house, but it would be clean and snug, and near enough to Rhys’s wall to be relatively safe. Not as safe as the brothel, perhaps, but wooden buildings burned down sometimes and the thought of Gwen being trapped in the loft was horrifying, and anyway this was just better.
A tally of items she would need for the task was growing in her mind as she climbed the hill to the structure. She was encouraged that nothing lay piled against its exterior. This would be a simpler thing than she’d thought. With a shove, she opened the heavy door and peered into the dim space.
She couldn’t see anything but vague shadows, but the stench hit her right away: spilled ale and soiled man.
A shadowy lump on the far side of the floor shifted. It turned a pale face toward her, its long, dark hair tangled around its neck. “Lancea?” it croaked.
Elain stared. “Gods’ blood.”
Beside her, Caron made a satisfied sound. “If you call that down, you’ll clean it up as well. Good luck, niece.” And she walked away.
~ ~ ~
Gwen was tidying their sleeping space when a boy appeared at the top of the ladder. “Lord Rhys wishes to see you.”
She tried to still the tremor in her hands as the boy led her back toward the hall. It wasn’t every day one was summoned before a lord one was actively deceiving. But they hadn’t been dragged from their beds in the night, and anyway they were all married, and by the gods, she was a warlord’s daughter. She could hold her own.
Which she would have to do, as Elain had been up and off to tend her own business when Gwen awoke.
She looked to Rhys’s chair when they entered the hall, but he wasn’t in it. Dozens of people still slept around the edges of the space. The long tables and benches had been swept clean. A few men sat talking but broke off to watch Gwen pass. She nodded to them, and one man grinned. It was a knowing sort of grin, and if a man had aimed it at her in her own father’s hall, he’d have been tossed out for it. She looked away and followed the boy to the far side of the hall.
There he left her with a tall, dark man who stood next to a doorway. His head was shaved and shone in the light of a single torch in the corner. He stared at Gwen balefully, one hand on a great curving blade at his hip.
“Good morning,” she offered.
His lips drew back in a slow smile. “Mistress.”
If the expression was meant to intimidate her… it was working. “Is Lord Rhys inside?”
He tipped his head toward the entry. She opened the heavy door and passed through.
This chamber was smaller than the hall, though its walls and beams seemed to hold just as many artifacts as those just outside. It was darker in here, though, so she only had a sense of being crowded… or watched.
“My lord.”
A table stood in the center of the room, scattered with scrolls, some capped, some unfurled and weighted at the corners. She glanced at them as she passed, for Rhys didn’t stand at the table studying his maps. Instead, he sat in a chair near a wide hearth. Two other chairs sat near him, empty. He gestured to them. “Have a seat, Gwenhwyfar.”
She made a quick decision and chose the chair nearest him, turning it slightly to face him straight on. She settled on the edge of the cushion. When she looked up, he was studying her. He said nothing, though, and because the room seemed to be waiting, she said, “Thank you for hosting us. We gave you no notice.”
“I don’t require notice, Gwenhwyfar. I have plenty of space to share, don’t you think?”
“You have a very nice hall. And the brothel is the largest structure I’ve ever seen.”
She wondered for a moment if it had been undiplomatic to emphasize the brothel over the hall, but a smile curled Rhys’s wide mouth. “Impressive, isn’t it?”
“Yes, my lord. You must be very proud.”
“Pride is for those who have earned it. Caron built her trade. Pride in it is her domain, not mine.”
“But you must be proud to have married such a resourceful woman.”
He nodded. “I’m grateful—to her—that she agreed to make an alliance.” One long finger tapped the arm of his chair. “How do you find your accommodations?”
She thought of the rough beams and rickety ladder, the mattress of suspect ticking. “Generous, thank you.”
He watched her for a long moment. “She put you in the corner loft, didn’t she?”
“Yes, and it’s quite suitable—”
“It’s servants’ quarters, to be shared with rats, mice, and fleas. Oh, and spiders. Get used to those too.”
She closed her mouth, clamped down on her tongue.
“Do you know how long my family has been running trade among the great cities of the world?”
The change in direction caught her out. She grasped at what she knew of Rhys’s lineage. “Hundreds of years, my lord?”
“Three hundred forty-seven, to be precise. When I was a young man, I ran the routes myself. Met a lot of folk. Made a lot of bargains. Learned a lot about every manner of person there is in the world.”
“That must have been exciting, to see so much.”
“It was. Exciting and informative. The best education a man might find. And one that has inspired me to ask a question of you.”
A question, inspired by travels. All right. She supposed she was up for that. “And what is that, my lord?”
He leaned toward her. “Only this: do you suppose that, with such experience in my life and in my blood, I wouldn’t be able to spot a lie told to me in my own hall, by four idiots half my age?”
Of a sudden, she felt staked to the chair.
“We’ve just been married,” Rhys play-acted, “and winter’s nipping at our heels, but we thought we’d travel a bit—several days’ trek through mountains—instead of staying abed like normal newlyweds and fucking ourselves flat.”
“We didn’t lie.” At least her voice sounded steady. “We’re married. And our unions were verified.”
“First, my pretty little mountain partridge, I know that no such thing happened between Bedwyr and his wife.”
“How—”
“And I don’t care what happened in your marriage bed with Arthur. What I care about is that none of you thought it necessary to tell me that Uthyr banished your husband.”
She watched his eyes carefully.
“Why do you suppose I called you here, in particular?”
Because Bed and Arthur were gone and Elain off doing… who knew what. All of it likely orchestrated by this man, for this moment. The unfairness of it felt near to choking her. “Because I’m some little partridge from the mountains, and you thought I’d be the easiest one to roast?”
He grew still and raised one eyebrow at her.
“My lord,” she murmured.
Rhys glanced away, narrowed his eyes at something on the table, before turning back to her. “I’ve no intention of roasting any of you. The lads are caught up in each other; the border patrol will give them something constructive to do. Caron will deal with Elain. I called you here, Gwenhwyfar, because you seem the most level-headed of your complicated foursome.” He leaned back in his chair. “Rather, that would have been my reason had I not received a visitor this morning.” He lifted a hand from his chair and gestured, confusing her, for there was no one else in the chamber.
Until Tiro, her father’s scout, stepped from a shadowed corner. “Gwen.”
She stilled, feeling very much like that partridge, stunned by a stone from a sling.
“In case you were wondering,” Rhys said, “I didn’t surmise Arthur’s banishment on my own. Tiro shared the tale on his arrival.”
She studied Tiro’s expression, his stance. His usually lively face was set in serious lines, and though he was a solid fifteen years her father’s senior, he looked as ready to serve as ever. “He sent you?”
“Britte refused to tell him where you’d gone,” Tiro said. “But she allowed that I know the route. I volunteered to come.”
“To fetch me.”
“That was the idea, yes.”
“I won’t go back.” She held her breath at the audacity of it.
Tiro glanced at Rhys, then gave her a hint of a smile. “I expected as much. Uthyr did too, I wager, or he would’ve sent someone much younger for the task.”
“Which brings us here,” Rhys said. “How do you propose to earn your board?”
Just like that? She was to stay? Success!
But then a thought occurred to her, and her entire body went stiff. “I won’t whore.”
To her relief, he waved the notion aside. “Not everyone is suited to it. And your father would have my skull for a piss pot. But neither will you sit about as my pampered guest.”
“I’m not afraid of work. I’m accustomed to it.”
“Glad to hear it, and frankly, I suspected as much. Your father’s a proud man but a practical one too. You’re educated—he’s boasted of that as much as any other of your qualities—but Uthyr wouldn’t raise up helpless marriage bait. So you will work for my wife. Not as a whore,” he added pointedly. “Tiro, are you satisfied?”
Tiro tipped his silver head in agreement. “I am, but Uthyr will want proof I spoke to Gwen.”
“He trusts you,” she told him.
He turned to her with a gentle smile. “You’re his only daughter, child. Send him a few words in your hand, will you?”