He felt her go still. “What?”
“Grain. For milling now, and seed for planting. Wheat, and rye, and barley.”
She was still another moment, then her shoulders began to shake. He held her tighter and pressed his cheek against the top of her head while she cried.
She woke up in the night screaming again. Griffyn held her to his chest until she calmed, then said softly, “Your father?”
She stared straight ahead, her eyes glassy and red-rimmed. “Aye.”
“Why do you dream of him so much, Gwyn? Why are they so awful?”
He didn’t think she was going to answer, but finally she said, in a rote voice, “He never forgave me.”
He ran his hand over her hair. “For what?”
“For killing my brother. And then my mother.”
He tucked the furs up around her shoulders and pulled her closer. “What happened?”
She was silent a moment, then started talking in short, monotonal sentences. “I was ten. Out riding. I shouldn’t have been. There’d been so many raids down from the north that spring. I was not allowed to leave the castle by myself. Not even to the village. I knew that. But I’d heard Mamma say she needed more elderflowers. Papa’s bones were aching in the spring damp.”
She stared across the room at the far wall. “I knew just where they were—I’d found a new cluster of them the summer before, by the river. I went to get them. I heard them. Mamma and Roger, calling me. At first, I heard them. I just didn’t want to go. I—I rode away. I found the herbs. I was kneeling on the ground, then—”
She swallowed. “Riders. A raiding party. Half a dozen routiers, straight down from Scotland.”
Her pace picked up, her words running together at times. “I got on Wind and tried to ride away, but they saw me. I hear them whopping and screaming, kicking their horses up behind me. I’m screaming too. Then, then—oh, Roger.” She was gulping and sobbing, the tears pouring out. “He and a few of his best men, galloping flat out. They’re calling to me, I’m flying on Wind straight to the centre of them, they’re closing in behind me. They’re fighting. It’s so loud. Godwillneverforgiveme Roger’s dead. I am alive, and Roger’s bleeding to death on the grass,” she whispered, pointing, as if he was before her now. “Oh God, please let me die.”
Great, wrenching sobs shook her body. Griffyn stopped hushing her and just held her, rocking away the relived horror that had lifted the hair on the back of his neck.
Later, much later, when she calmed, he brushed back the hair from her wet, stricken face.
“And your mother never forgave you?”
“Of course she did. Then she died. Three months later. Her heart broke one night.”
Griffyn took a deep, silent breath and let it out. “And your father, Gywn? He never forgave you?”
“No. Why should he?”
“It was an accident.”
“I knew what I was doing,” she answered in that flat, dead voice. She started shivering. “I knew I was doing wrong.”
He held her until she fell asleep, maybe an hour later. He lay awake for a long time, though, watching her. She’d thrown the furs off her body, and was a shadow of rose and silk in the flickering firelight. One satiny forearm was flung above her head, the other dangled off the edge of the bed, delicate fingers curled in sleep. Her hair streamed out as if she was underwater, all except one ebony curl which had fallen across her face and rustled gently as she breathed. The room was quiet.
With one finger, he pulled the strand of hair away from her face and ran its softness between his fin
gers. A flicker of self-disgust made him look away. He did not like deceiving her. But even less did he like the idea of involving Guinevere in whatever unholy mess had destroyed their fathers. She would be protected from that if it were in his power at all. The one noble act left in him.
His hand went to the keys hanging around his neck, the black iron one and the little steel one de Louth had given him.
He’d had hope, for a while. Hope he and Gwyn were touching one another. Hope that things could be different. That their marriage could be different, that he could be different. But she’d never returned his declarations of love, just as his father had not, and inside of Griffyn, the desire for the treasure was building.
And so, it was all to be the same, awful story again. Destiny. He could no more reject it than he could cut off his legs and keep walking. Wanting had crept in at the first crack in his resistance. Skewered in and spread out, like a cobweb over his soul. And now he dreamed at night of it, of a treasure that would lift him up. Power him. Ennoble him.
And he knew it to be trash. If a thing could so corrupt a man’s intentions, it was trash. Refuse. Carrion.
And still he wanted it. Not completely, not yet. But it was coming. He could see it like a great black bird, winging in from far away.