Five

The next night brought them out of the mountains and into a village that was almost a town, although Moiread didn’t know its name. It had a church and a blacksmith’s shop and, most importantly, an inn with a decently drawn sign outside its door: a wolfish dog baying at the moon.

“Poetic, after a fashion,” Madoc said.

“Aye.” Moiread laughed. “Are we meant to be the dog, do you think? And the ale the moon?”

“I’d bay loud enough for a cup, I confess,” said Madoc, but cheerfully enough to belie the words. “Though I’ll wager our coin will speak loudly enough.”

He dismounted easily and, once Moiread was on the ground, took the reins of both horses, leading them toward the small enclosure that this inn had instead of a stable.

For all that, the inn wasn’t bad, with two stories and an actual chimney. Here, where the people were half heathen and the king hadn’t been in a way to endow abbeys for some years, secular travelers sought shelter, and those who provided it prospered—more so if they also gave the local folk a place to sit and have an ale in the evenings.

A few of those good people were already gathered around the fire or at crude, heavy tables against the walls when Moiread walked in. She guessed that more would arrive as darkness fell and they put their labors aside and their stock in pens. One or two of the drinkers turned and looked at her—curious, as they’d be for any new arrival, and respectful, as befit a man dressed in her clothes and carrying a sword.

“Good sir.” The innkeeper—a short, bald man with a sparse blond beard—bowed to her. “How may I serve you this evening?”

“Lodging for myself and my master, if you have it,” Moiread said. She handed him a silver penny.

“Aye, and welcome. There’s a room upstairs if you care to spend a bit more.”

“In front of the fire will be fine,” said Moiread.

In truth, she wouldn’t have minded a bed, but sleeping in the front room meant one of them would likely wake up if one of their fellow guests snuck off to cut straps on their gear or simply rifle through their saddlebags. They were nearer the main road now. That had its flaws as well as its merits.

She sniffed the air and liked what she smelled. A joint of meat was roasting in the fire, with a thin adolescent boy turning the spit regularly. It was lamb from the odor, common enough at this time in the spring, when the shepherds would be ridding themselves of the males. “A meal for two, as well,” she added, “and ale.”

By the time Madoc entered, she’d found a table near the fire and stretched her legs out underneath, relishing warm toes and a seat that didn’t move.

“All settled?”

“And easily at that,” Madoc replied. “They were as happy to stop as we were, and they’re enjoying the new grass, if I’m not mistaken.”

“You get along well with them.”

“I do. They’re simple beasts when there’s nothing spooking them.” Here, his eyes glinted briefly and his smile turned teasing before he fell back into the slow, thoughtful rhythm of his speech. “It’s a change to be around creatures who don’t think through everything, not just once but over and over again, and then think about how they’re thinking it.”

Moiread laughed quietly. “Aye, I know that well enough. There’s a relief that way to the fight…and the hunt.”

Anyone overhearing would think she spoke of horses and hounds. She and Madoc both knew otherwise, and that shared secret was like a shield wall around the table, giving a surprisingly good feeling.

“Among other things,” Madoc said.

The curve of his grin was slow and meaningful, not an invitation—as it couldn’t be here in this crowded inn with Moiread posing as a man—but a suggestion, a touch of bawdy humor not unlike her own. From him, it made her pulse leap, and her nipples hardened inside her tunic.

Easy, my girl. You’ve a long way to travel with this one yet, and it was only a joke.

“Aye,” she said and flashed him a smile in return, as she would have to any of her men when they spoke of wenching. “But the hunt’s less trouble the next morning. Generally.”

“Generally,” Madoc agreed. He held out one sleekly muscular arm, turning it over and splaying out his hand. “I broke this going over brush when I was but a boy. They said I had the saints’ own fortune that it healed as clean as it did. It only aches for snow.”

“Not always a wizard with horses?”

“Even a wizard can press his luck too far. I was asking for what I got and more, back then—as my father said. It was only the arm that saved me from the strap, I’d say. That and my horse being wise enough to take no harm of the thing.”

“Valuable creature, I take it,” said Moiread.

“Not so much in coin, but we’ve never been ones to use our horses ill. They figure greatly in our legends—Pryderi, a hero of ours, was raised in a stable for the first few years of his life, for instance.”

“Must have been hard on his mother,” Moiread said.

Madoc shook his head. “No. Well, yes, but not the way you’re thinking it. I’ve dropped you into the middle of the tale, you see.”

Moiread leaned back, tipping the chair onto two legs, and folded her arms comfortably across her chest. “Oh? Then you should tell it from the beginning.”

“If you’d like to hear it.”

“I would. I told you stories all day.” Although that had been fun, remembering all the tales of her childhood and hearing them new as Madoc took them in. “I may as well have some return.”

By his smile, it was no hardship. “Well, then, once there was a prince of Dyfed…”

For a little while, Moiread listened to the story: the prince Pwyll going to meet with either harm or wonder and encountering a beautiful lady in gold riding a white horse, and how Pwyll and his men couldn’t catch her, though they rode as fast as they could and her horse only walked. Moiread was waiting to hear what happened next when a plump woman in a green dress set their ale down in front of them, and a younger woman followed with food.

It smelled wonderful. Madoc apparently thought so too, because he reached for his knife. Moiread stepped on his foot, lightly but firmly enough to get his attention.

“Wait,” she said, “until I let you know. Act like you’re eating, toy with the food, but don’t eat or drink yet. We’re not all eating from one pot here.”

“Ah,” he said, embarrassed. “I hadn’t thought of poison.”

“Neither had I until now,” she said and was glad Madoc didn’t look disturbed at that confession. God knew it disturbed her plenty.

* * *

“It’ll be the same here about the food, yes, or even more so?” Madoc asked the next night as they managed to find seats in the crowded front room of a larger inn. The town, Erskine, lay at the junction of two roads, and while Madoc was sure it was nothing compared to London or even Edinburgh, to his country-bred eyes it was busy enough.

Moiread nodded. It had been a day of rain and wind, and both of them more silent than otherwise because it was difficult to talk with their hoods up. Companionable silence, for the most part, though Madoc feared Moiread was thinking about a place before the fire in her father’s castle and resenting him more with every raindrop.

Yet once they were settled at the table, she seemed in good humor, and all the more so when she started in on her stew. “I came this way the first time I left home,” she said, shaking her head slowly. “Seemed a terrible big place back then, full of all varieties of folk. And me swaggering in as if I owned the lot, for I thought that’d be the best disguise for my gawping. Saints preserve us, but I was young then.”

Well able to imagine it, Madoc laughed. “You were the sort to take dares, weren’t you?”

“Always! And give them too, but I soothe my conscience and think I was never cruel in it.”

“Would your brothers say the same?”

“Not Cathal, probably,” she said after a moment of consideration. “On my deathbed, or his, he’ll bring up the time he had to sing in front of the hall.”

“Bad voice, has he?”

“No, a lovely one. For a boy his age, that may have been worse.” She tilted her head and touched a slim finger to her lips, thinking. Even when she looked masculine, the gesture caught the eye. “Agnes had me climb out one of the windows. Douglas wasna’ pleased. He’s a good deal older than the rest of us, and he’s taken things seriously as long as I’ve been alive. Tries to be more like Father than Father. I wouldn’t wonder… Wait.”

Moiread stopped. Very carefully, very precisely, she put her spoon back into her bowl. She closed her eyes.

All was not well. Madoc knew that much and suspected the precise type of wrong even before he saw Moiread’s tongue flick out, probing at her lips. He held still. Speech would hurt her concentration, produce errors in judgment. He held still, but he rested one hand on the hilt of his sword.

When she stood up and bolted for the kitchen, he was at her side.

There were two people beyond the door: the innkeeper himself, who doubled as a cook from the flour on his hands, and a half-grown girl slicing turnips. At Moiread and Madoc’s entrance, the girl cringed. The man swung around, ready to bluster until he saw their faces, their dress, or both. Then he too shrank in on himself.

“My lords?”

“Who had charge of our food?” Madoc demanded.

“I, m’lord. I… Is there…”

“Belladonna, I think,” said Moiread. Her voice was calm, quiet, and completely toneless. “I could be wrong. I havena’ vast experience with the stuff. But I think so. They call it deadly nightshade here.”

Both faces went white at that. If Madoc was any judge of human nature, neither the innkeeper nor the girl had been the one whose hand held poison, but he didn’t truly care in that moment. The word had pierced him with shock as well. He turned to Moiread. “You… Should I get the priest?”

“No,” she said, and her eyes shone pale blue in the firelight. “I’ll live. But I’ll not be useful for much longer. Is there any chance I’ll need to be?”

Madoc glanced around the kitchen and saw nothing out of the ordinary. “Does anyone else come in here?”

“A beggar, sir,” said the girl. She was barely looking at him. She was watching Moiread, and her lips were trembling. “Getting warm by the fire. He left a little while back. Before you’d have gotten your food.”

“He could doubtless work out which bowls were ours,” Madoc said.

“And,” said Moiread, “there’ll be no catching him now. Damn the luck.” She put a hand against the wall, steadying herself. “We’ll need that room you offered. For a few days. If you’re a wise man, you’ll ask no payment.”

“No,” said the innkeeper. “Of course not. My lord, I am… I had no idea…”

“I believe you,” said Madoc, and he didn’t intend it to sound like a threat, but he suspected it did. He couldn’t be bothered otherwise.

As tall as Moiread was, and as well-muscled, she still fit into his arms easily when he picked her up. Madoc suspected that she was being helpful, balancing her weight as best she could. He also suspected that he’d have enjoyed the experience considerably under other circumstances. She was a warm and pleasant weight against his chest. As it was, she looked like a young man, her eyes were already unfocused, and Madoc took the first few stairs with desperate speed while muttering the Ave Maria.

“Do you want me to fetch anyone?” he asked when they were alone and nearing one of the private rooms.

“No. No. Poison… Only silver and wizardry can truly kill us, or great wounds to the spine or the heart. I think. And if it was poison, it’d take more than this.” She shook her head. Her hair fell into her face, and when she raised a hand to bat it away, the gesture had none of her usual precision. “No,” she said again. “The next few days willna’ be pleasant, but I’ll live, wi’ no real damage done. I should. I think.”

“You think,” he repeated.

“It’s the first time I’ve been poisoned,” Moiread said. “Go easy on a lass, will ye no’?”

She managed an approximation of a smile. It somehow made everything worse.