The Bristling Wood - Katharine Kerr [8]
“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 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 heartbreaking 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 gray in his blond hair and mustaches, 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 anymore, for all that he’s my firstborn 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 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 skepticism.”
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 honor 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