Days of Blood and Fire - Katharine Kerr [46]
Meer swung his head round and grunted.
“Have you gone daft?” he snapped.
“I have not. You were right, that’s all, when you did tell me that great things were on the move. This be all real important, bain’t it, Jill?”
“It is, truly, or so the omens tell me. Great things or evil things, or, most like, a fair bit of both.”
Although by then the evening was growing late, by the light of candle-lanterns Gwerbret Cadmar lingered at the head of the table of honor with Lord Gwinardd sitting at his right hand. Nearby a bard waited, drowsing over his harp, in case his lord should ask him to sing. Across the great hall the riders’ tables were mostly deserted, and a few servants sat yawning by the empty hearth. Jill hesitated in the doorway for some moments. She’d been hoping that she’d find his grace alone. Matyc at least was gone. Although she herself had nothing against Matyc, she trusted Rhodry’s judgment in such matters. If he said he smelt festering meat, then doubtless something had died under the stairs. On the other hand, no one had ever said a word against young Gwinardd, and she refused to keep silent and send Meer and his boy back to the dungeon for the night.
When she approached the table, Cadmar greeted her with a smile and a wave, calling for a servant to bring up another chair so that she could sit nearby without displacing Gwinardd from his honored position. The lord rose, bowing her way, then sitting down again rather than leaving. As usual, Gwinardd looked puzzled at the honor in which his grace held this common-born old woman, even though he knew that her herbcraft had saved the gwerbret’s life the winter past. She wondered if he suspected her other skills as well.
“Well, Jill,” Cadmar said. “Have you spoken with those prisoners yet?”
“I have, Your Grace, and it’s about them, in fact, that I’ve come. Spies they’re not, as you might expect with one of them blind. That Gel da’Thae is a bard and here on a tragic errand indeed. I’d like to treat them as guests—well, guarded guests, if you take my meaning—and put them in a chamber here in the broch. Is that possible?”
“And have I ever turned away a man who deserved my hospitality? But—”
“I’ll explain, Your Grace,” Jill went on. “When these raiders first showed up in your lands, I thought they were after the usual sort of booty. Do you remember the talk we had about that, what they wanted, I mean, after you tracked down and destroyed the raiding party?”
“I do, not that you told me much in the way of hard fact.” Cadmar allowed himself a smile. “You were starting to get a different idea, you said, but you didn’t tell me what you meant.”
“Well, my apologies, but my idea sounds farfetched, you see, so much so that I’m still not sure of it. I do think, though, that Meer can tell me what I need to know, that he’s got the missing piece of this puzzle somewhere in his stock of bard lore. But if we don’t treat him well and show him some trust, he’s not going to trust me enough in return to tell me one word of what he might know.”
“That’s quite true.” Cadmar snapped his fingers at a serving girl. “Run fetch the chamberlain. Tell him that we have a guest to accommodate and him a traveling bard at that.”
The lass curtsied and hurried away. Gwinardd was staring, as shocked by this ready acquiescence as young Jahdo had been by her dweomer light.
“My thanks.” Jill rose, nodding his way in lieu of a bow, since she was wearing brigga and thus had no skirt to curtsy with. “May I have your leave, Your Grace?”
“Of course. But where is this sudden guest, then?”
“With Rhodry and Yraen. Look. Here he, comes now, across the hall. The lad will have to stay with him, of course, not be quartered with the other servants.”
“Of course. I’ll have the chamberlain tend to it.”
“My thanks, Your Grace. I thought that if you received him here in the open hall, everyone would know he’s your guest now, and the threats against him and his kind would stop.”
“No doubt, Jill. They had better.”
When the gwerbret and his vassal turned to look at Meer, Jill slipped