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By Root 1057 0

down the dark road, Jill was praying that the baby would still be there. It was possible that Beryn’s men had taken the child hostage just to make sure that its mother stayed under their control. Of course, it was also possible that they had no intention of ever harming the baby but had merely counted on a young and ignorant lass believing that they would. Finally, after a long three hours and a last few minutes of confusion at a dark and unmarked crossroads, the war-band found the farm. As they rode up, dogs began barking hysterically inside the earthen wall that surrounded the steading. When Lallyc pounded on the gate and shouted in the tieryn’s name, a crack of light appeared around a shuttered window. In a bit, an old man came out with a tin lantern in his hand. Lallyc leaned down from his saddle.

“Do you have a baby here in fosterage for a lass named Vyna?”

“We do, sir, we do at that. What’s all this?”

“We’ve come to fetch him to his mother in the tieryn’s name. Do you recognize the blazons on my shirt? You do? Splendid. Now go get the child, and wrap him in a blanket or suchlike, too.”

At the head of the line, Jill waited beside the captain. She could hear the old man shouting inside the farmhouse, and a woman yelling in anger. Finally, a youngish woman with a dirty, torn cloak thrown over her nightdress ran out to the gate.

“Who are you?” she snarled. “How do I know you won’t hurt the child?”

“I’m the tieryn’s captain, and I’m here to keep the child from getting hurt. Now fetch him out or we’ll knock this gate down to come get him.”

“Here, lass,” Jill said, and much more gently, “the tieryn sent a woman along to carry the baby home. Would he have done that if he were going to have it killed or suchlike?”

The woman raised the lantern and stared into Jill’s face; then she nodded agreement.

“He’s a sweet baby. I’ll miss him.”

Jill supposed that the sweetness of babies was an acquired taste. On the long ride home, she found the squirming, wailing bundle a nuisance and little else, even though one of the men led her horse to give her both hands free for the job. She tried singing to him, bouncing him, even kissing him, but the baby, torn out of his warm cradle into a cold night and the arms of a stranger, wept the whole way home until the poor little thing was hoarse and whimpering. By the time that she could finally hand him over to his jubilant mother, she was praying to the Goddess that she’d never conceive.

Before she went to bed, Jill joined the tieryn and Rhodry at the table of honor for a well-earned flagon of mulled ale.

“No trouble on the road, I take it?” Dwaen said.

“None, Your Grace. It gladdens my heart that you’ll forgive poor Vyna.”

“She seems as much a victim as any of us. While you were gone, she described this fellow that she’s been meeting. The cook always sent her on errands into town, you see, because she was the oldest of the three kitchen lasses, so she could get a word with him when she needed to.”

“We’ve got to get our hands on him,” Rhodry put in. “But if his grace sends the warband into town, the bastard will probably flee.”

“And the whole town will know what’s been happening, too,” Dwaen said with a pronounced gloom. “I hate to think of my subjects gossiping about me night and day.”

“I’m sure they do that already, Your Grace.” Jill helped herself to some of Rhodry’s ale while she thought. “Here, it’s still cold, this early in the spring. I can wear some of Vyna’s clothes and muffle myself up in her cloak. Then when he follows me, Rhodry can pounce on him.”

“Excellent, but I’ll send Lallyc in, too. We can’t have you getting hurt, lass.”

At noon on the morrow, Jill went to Vyna’s tiny room, which she shared with the other two kitchen maids, in the servants’ quarters over one of the stables. Next to Vyna’s straw mattress was the bottom of an ale barrel, sawed down and filled with straw for a rough cradle for the baby. While Jill changed into Vyna’s clothes, the kitchen lass sat the baby on her lap and cooed to him.

“What’s his name?” Jill said.

“Bellgyn, Mam’s pretty little