LITMIR.BIZ

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he’d fought well for Lord Gwogyr last autumn, even taking a wound in his service, a silver dagger’s welcome was a short one, and already the chamberlain was grumbling about having to feed him and his woman. Sheathing the dagger, he glanced up at the sky, cold but clear. It was likely that the snows were long past.

      ‘Tomorrow we’ll ride,’ he said aloud. ‘And if you were thinking of me, brother, may the thought turn your guts to fire.’

      Far to the south, in a little town in Eldidd, an event was happening that would indeed bring Gwerbret Rhys the sort of pain his younger brother had wished upon him, even though Rhodry had no way of knowing it. Dun Bruddlyn, a fort only recently disposed upon its lord, Garedd, was filled with a tense sort of bustle. While the lord himself paced restlessly in his great hall with a goblet of mead in his hand, his second wife, Donilla, was giving birth up in the women’s hall. Since this was her first child, the labour was a long one, and Tieryn Lovyan as well as the other women in attendance was beginning to worry. Her face dead-white, her long chestnut hair soaked with sweat, Donilla crouched on the birthing stool and clung to the thick rope tied from one of the beams far above. Her serving-woman, Galla, knelt beside her and wiped her face every now and then with a cloth soaked in cold water.

      ‘Let her suck a bit of moisture from a clean rag,’ said the herbman who was attending the birth. ‘But just a bit.’

      Another serving-lass hurried to get clean cloth and fresh water without a moment’s hesitation. Not only was old Nevyn known as the best herbman in the kingdom, but it was widely rumoured that he had the dweomer. Lovyan smiled at the lass’s awe, but only slightly, because she knew full well that the rumours were true. When she glanced at Nevyn in a questioning sort of way, he gave her a reassuring smile, then spoke to Donilla. His ice-blue eyes seemed to bore into her soft brown ones and capture her very soul. With a sigh she relaxed as if some of the pain had left her.

      ‘It’ll be soon now, my lady.’ His voice was very soft and kind. ‘Breathe deeply now, but don’t bear down on the babe. It’ll be coming soon.’

      Donilla nodded, gasped at a contraction, and let out her breath in a long, smooth sigh. Although Lovyan had given birth to four sons herself, she couldn’t remember her own labours being this difficult. Perhaps I’ve just forgotten, she thought. One does forget the pain, and so oddly soon. Restlessly she paced to an open window and looked out on the bright spring day while she considered the irony. Poor Donilla had been so eager to have a child; now she was probably wishing that she truly had been barren. When the younger woman moaned again, Lovyan winced in sympathy.

      ‘It’s crowning, my lady!’ Nevyn crowed in victory. ‘Soon, very soon. Now – bear down.’

      Lovyan stayed at the window until she heard the high-pitched wail, a good, healthy cry at that. She turned round to see Nevyn and the serving-woman laying Donilla down on the pallet prepared by the stool and laying the babe, still attached by the cord, at her breast. With trembling fingers the lady stroked the soft fuzz on her child’s head and smiled in wide-eyed triumph.

      ‘A son, Your Grace!’ she croaked. ‘I’ve given my lord another son.’

      ‘And a fine healthy one, at that,’ Lovyan said. ‘Shall I go and tell His Lordship the good news?’

      Donilla nodded, her eyes on the tiny face already nuzzling at her breast.

      As she went downstairs, Lovyan’s heart was heavy, and she felt badly about it. Of course Donilla deserved this moment of triumph, of vindication. After ten years of a childless marriage, her first husband had cast her off as barren, a bitter humiliation for any woman to bear, worse than the heart-breaking thought that she would never have children. Now she had her son, and everyone in Eldidd knew that she wasn’t the barren one. Unfortunately, her small triumph had important political consequences, of which her second husband seemed to be painfully aware. Garedd was a man of middle years, with two sons and a daughter by his first marriage; a solid sort with grey in his blond hair and moustaches, he was genuinely pleased at Lovyan’s news, breaking out into a laugh and yelling that he had a son to his warband across the hall. Then, almost instantly, he wiped the look of triumph off his face.

      ‘My apologies for gloating, Your Grace,’ he said. ‘But it takes a man that way.’

      ‘You don’t need to apologize to me, cousin,’ Lovyan said wearily. ‘Nor to Rhys, either, though I’d advise you to stay away from Aberwyn for a while.’

      ‘I was planning to, truly.’

      There lay the crux of the matter; Gwerbret Rhys had been Donilla’s first husband, the one who had shamed her as barren because he had no heirs for his vast rhan, one of the most important in the entire kingdom. If he died childless, as now seemed most likely, Eldidd could well break out into open war as the various candidates tried to claim the gwerbretrhyn for their own clan. Although Lovyan was fond of her cousin and his wife, she was here to witness the birth because of its political implications. Since she was the tieryn of Dun Gwerbyn, with many vassals and large holdings, her time was too valuable for her to ride around the countryside playing at midwife for her vassals’ wives. But it had been necessary that she see with her own eyes that, truly, Donilla had given birth to a child.

      ‘Do you think Rhys will adopt a son?’ Garedd said.

      ‘I have no idea what Rhys will or won’t do any more, for all that he’s my first-born son. An adopted heir won’t have much of a chance in the Council of Electors, anyway. The sensible thing for him to do would be to recall Rhodry from exile.’

      Garedd raised one questioning eyebrow.

      ‘I haven’t given up hope yet,’ Lovyan snapped. ‘But truly, my lord, I understand your scepticism.’

      In another half-hour, Nevyn came down to the great hall. A tall man with a thick shock of white hair and a face as wrinkled as old burlap, still he moved with strength, striding up to the table of honour and making Garedd a smooth bow. When he announced that the lord could visit the lady, Garedd was off like a flushed hare, because he loved his young wife in an almost unseemly way. Nevyn accepted a tankard of ale from a page and sat down beside Lovyan.

      ‘Well,’ he remarked. ‘She had a remarkably good first birth for a woman her age. Knowing you, you’re pleased in spite of yourself.’

      ‘Just that. I was always fond of her. If only some other beastly man had cast her off.’

      Nevyn gave her a thin smile and had a well-deserved swallow of ale.

      ‘I’ll be leaving tomorrow,’ he said. ‘Going to Dun Deverry. Now that I have a nephew at court, I can hear some of the gossip from the King’s councils.’

      ‘Nephew, indeed! But I’m glad he’s there, all the same. I’m beginning to think that our only hope is to get our liege to override Rhys’s sentence of exile. It’s happened before.’

      ‘Gwerbrets have also risen in rebellion against such meddling. Do you think Rhys will?’

      ‘I don’t know. Ah, by the Goddess herself, it aches my heart to think of war coming to Eldidd, and all over my two squabbling sons!’

      ‘The war hasn’t started yet, and I’m going to do my cursed best to make sure it doesn’t.’

      Yet he looked so weary that she was suddenly frightened. Even though he was the most powerful dweomerman in the kingdom, he was still only one man. He was also caught up in political intrigue that – or so it seemed to her – his magical calling would ill-equip him to handle.

      ‘Ah well,’ she said at last. ‘At least the child himself was born with good omens. They always say it’s a lucky lad who’s born the first day of spring.’

      ‘So they do, and let’s hope this spring is as well-omened for us all.’

      The absent way he spoke made her realize that he very much doubted it would be. She was hesitating, half wanting to ask more, half afraid to hear the truth if he should tell her, when a page came over to her. The young lad looked utterly confused.

      ‘Your

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