Days of Air and Darkness - Katharine Kerr [51]
“Now, you’ve got to promise not to breathe a word of this to anyone,” Davylla said, “but Lady Taurra’s not truly ill. The poor woman, how she’s suffered! Her husband suspected her of having a lover, you see, so he turned her out of his house and sent her back to her kin. All they did was mock her for her shame, and she simply couldn’t bear it, so I offered to give her refuge.”
“How simply appalling for her,” Babryan said. “She didn’t really have the lover, did she?”
“She didn’t. Poor Taurra thinks that he was simply tired of her and took a chance to put her aside.”
The girls all shuddered.
“Taurra must have had an awful time on the roads,” Wbridda said. “Or did her brother give her an escort?”
“He didn’t, the beast!” Davylla said. “He was trying to force her into a Moon Temple, but she’s got a different goddess to serve, so she just rode out on her own. It took her days to get here, the poor dear, and oh, it was so dangerous for her to be doing that.”
“Oh, now here, Davylla dearest, I survived,” said a soft voice.
Sevinna twisted round and saw a tall, graceful woman just coming in the door. Since she was a cast-off woman, she had her hair down and caught back in a simple clasp like a lass, even though she looked old enough to be the mother of a grown child. The hair was raven-dark, touched with gray at the temples, and her eyes were a deep cornflower blue, the mark of Eldidd blood somewhere in her clan. She made Davylla a curtsy, then sat down on a cushion by Sevinna.
“Well, doubtless our goddess was looking out for you,” Davylla said. “But still, who knows what could have happened to you, wandering around like a common peddler?”
Taurra smiled, and there was something odd about that smile, as if she knew some private joke that would be unpleasant to hear. As she looked the girls over, Sevinna’s unease deepened at the hard assessment in those dark blue eyes. Oh, here now! she told herself, doubtless she’s just bitter about what happened to her.
“I trust you lasses honor our Lady Davylla highly,” Taurra said. “She’s the most wonderful woman alive to take in a wretch like me.”
“Not a wretch at all,” Davylla snapped. “I shan’t listen to that, Taurra. It’s your beastly husband who’s the wretch, and that’s that.”
“Lord Gwell is no longer my husband, and I suppose I should count myself fortunate.”
Taurra began to ask the three girls polite questions about themselves, as if she were turning the conversation away from her painful past. Sevinna supposed that such was the reason, anyway, because she seemed not in the least interested in their answers. As the evening wore on, Sevinna wondered if she really liked this woman. She was annoyed with herself for not liking her; after all, she’d suffered terribly and deserved pity, but there was something about the stiff way that Taurra held her head, something about the slow way she answered questions, something about the way her eyes would narrow as she looked at someone else, that made Sevinna feel like a cat faced with a dog.
“Baba?” Sevinna said. “You should tell Lady Davylla about our friend Jill.”
“So I should,” Babryan said. “My lady, the oddest thing happened just last week. A silver dagger came to our dun, and here it turned out to be Rhodry Maelwaedd, Lovyan’s son.”
“By the Goddess herself!” Davylla gasped. “Now, fancy that!”
“And he had a lass with him. She ran away from her family and everything to ride with Rhodry.”
“Indeed?” Davylla allowed herself a grin. “I see that Rhodry hasn’t changed much. I met him several times at court, you know. Oh, honestly, the way he had of looking a lass over!”
In a flood of giggles and interruptions, Babryan told how they’d made a friend of Jill and how she, too, wanted to learn Aranrhodda’s lore. Sevinna noticed Taurra listening with a small fixed smile, her delicate mouth pressed