The Dragon Revenant - Katharine Kerr [2]
“It’s cold out here, Your Grace,” he said, his voice soft with sympathy.
“I’m well aware of that, my thanks. We’ll be leaving soon.”
The priests were fastening the enormous golden ring brooch to the plaid and clasping it closed around the dead gwerbret’s neck. She looked away and saw two men pushing a slab of stone, balanced on a handcart, toward the grave. The epitaph was already carved, an englyn of praise for the ruler of Aberwyn, lost to a hunting accident, but of course it never mentioned the true cause of his death: evil dweomer. She shuddered, remembering the day when they’d ridden out together to fly their hawks. They’d been calmly trotting down the river road when Rhys’s horse had gone mad, bucking and rearing, finally falling to crush its rider. Even at the time the accident had seemed inexplicable; later she had learned that dark dweomermen had caused the horse’s madness and thus had murdered Rhys as surely as if they’d used a sword. Why? That, no one knew.
The priests climbed out of the grave and signaled to the diggers, leaning on their shovels nearby. Lovyan blew a kiss at her dead son.
“Sleep well, little one,” she whispered, then turned away. “Gome along, all of you. We’d best get back to the dun.”
Nevyn took her arm, and the small crowd of pages and serving women fell in behind her as they made their silent way to the edge of the grove, where her escort was waiting. Twenty-five men of Rhys’s warband and fifteen of her own stood at respectful attention beside their horses. As she approached, her captain, Cullyn of Cerrmor, led over her horse, a beautiful golden mare with a silvery mane and tail, and held it for her as she mounted and adjusted her long dresses and cloak over the sidesaddle.
“My thanks, captain.” She took the reins from him, then turned in the saddle to make sure that the rest of her retinue were ready to ride. “Well and good, then. Let’s get back home.”
At the captain’s signal the men mounted, and the procession set off, Lovyan and Nevyn at the head, her women and pages just behind, and bringing up the rear, the warbands. As they rode up to the high city wails, the men on duty at the gates snapped to smart attention, but Lovyan barely saw them, so wrapped in numb grief was she. It’s all been too much, she thought to herself, simply too much to bear. Yet in her heart she knew that she could indeed bear it, that she would somehow find from somewhere the strength to see her through the difficult months ahead. Many noblewomen, it seemed, lived lives that allowed them the luxury of hysterics; they could wallow in fits of weeping, or shut themselves up dramatically in their chambers and get sympathy from half the kingdom with no one being the worse for it; she, however, had always had to stifle her griefs and rise above her weaknesses. At times, such as that moment in the chilly drizzle, she resented it, but even in her resentment she knew that she’d been given the better bargain by the gods.
As the procession wound through the rain-slick cobbled streets of Aberwyn, the townsfolk came out of house and shop to pay their respects quite spontaneously to the tieryn, who had been well-liked here when she’d been the wife of the then-gwerbret, Tingyr, before their son Rhys inherited the rhan. Their heads bared to the drizzle, the men bowed and the women curtsied, and here and there someone called out, “Our hearts ache for you, Your Grace,” or “Our sorrows