Darkspell - Katharine Kerr [63]
All the next day Dannyn seemed to be going out of his way to avoid her. She was as puzzled as she was relieved until Nevyn mentioned that he’d had a word with the captain and warned him to leave her alone. Yet eventually the warning seemed forgotten. One rainy morning, as she was coming back from the stable, he caught her out back behind the broch with no one else in sight.
“What do you want?” she snapped.
“Just a few honest words with you.”
“Then here they are: you’ll never share my bed.”
“So it’s different with your common-born farmer lad, is it?”
“I’ve told you the truth about that. And it’s not for the likes of you, anyway, to question a priestess about her vows.”
She stepped round him and strode back to the broch.
Gweniver’s maidservant, a pale, plain lass named Ocladda, loved working at court mostly because the work was so much easier than slaving on her father’s farm. She took an odd pride in her lady being so eccentric and kept Gweniver’s sparsely furnished chambers scrupulously clean. Since Gweniver had no long hair for her to comb and arrange or fancy clothes to tend, Ocladda made the best of her situation by endlessly polishing her lady’s weapons and saddle-soaping her horse gear. While she worked, she would chatter gossip from the servants’ quarters and queen’s chamber alike, never mindful of how little her lady listened. One cold afternoon, then, it was a bad omen when Ocladda worked silently, laying a fire with never one word.
“Now, here,” Gweniver said at last. “What’s wrong?”
“Oh, my lady, I just pray you believe me. When a servant says one thing and a lord another, no one calls the lord a liar. I just know he’d deny every word of it.”
Gweniver’s first thought was that someone had gotten the lass pregnant.
“Now, now,” she said soothingly. “Tell me who.”
“Lord Dannyn, my lady. He met me out in the corridor this morning, and he offered me a bribe. He said he’d give me a silver coin if I left you alone in your chamber tonight. And I said that I’d never do such a thing, so he slapped me.”
“Oh, did he, now? Don’t fret—I believe you. Go back to your work while I think about this.”
At the evening meal Gweniver was constantly aware of Dannyn watching her with a smug smile. She ate fast and left her table before he could finish and join her, but she was afraid to go back to her chamber. If he followed and made some unpleasantness in front of Ocladda, soon every servant in the dun would hear about it. Obviously he considered the lass too far beneath him to consider that grim possibility. Finally she went down to the floor of the great hall and sought out Nevyn, who was talking with Ysgerryn over a tankard of ale.
“Good evening, good sirs. I was wondering if you’d care to join me in my chamber for a bit of mead?”
Nevyn’s bushy eyebrows shot up. Ysgerryn beamed, all smiles at the thought of being invited to drink with the noble-born.
“I’d be most honored, Your Holiness,” said the Master of Weaponry. “I just have to have a word with the chamberlain, and then I’ll be free to join you.”
“So shall I,” Nevyn said. “My thanks.”
Leaving the two of them to follow, Gweniver hurried back to her chamber and sent Ocladda off to the kitchen to fetch mead and something to drink it in. She lit two candle lanterns with a splint of burning kindling from the hearth and was just putting them down when there was a knock on the door.
“Come in, good sirs,” she called out.
Dannyn stepped in and shut the door behind him.
“What are you doing here?”
“Just coming to see you. Gwen, please, your heart can’t be as cold to me as you pretend.”
“My heart has naught to do with what’s on