The Red Wyvern - Katharine Kerr [4]
“You’ll forgive my uncle, good sir,” Mic said. “He’s getting old and a bit daft.” He grabbed Otho’s arm. “Come sit down.”
Muttering under his breath, Otho allowed himself to be dragged away. Domnall had the uneasy feeling that the old man wasn’t daft in the least but speaking of grammarie. Yet his mind refused to take that idea in. He found it easier to believe in a lady sent away by her brothers after a husband’s death, or perhaps even a lady in political exile, allowed to take a small retinue away with her. The Sassenach chiefs were always fighting among themselves, and he’d heard that their women could do what they wished with their bride-price if their husbands died. The welcome fire, the warm straw, the steamy reek of his drying cloak and plaid, the taste of ale and bread—it all seemed too solid, too normal to allow the presence of magic. As he found himself yawning, he wondered if he’d merely imagined the man named Evandar and the blazing tree. They might merely have been the mad visions of a man come near death by cold.
At length Lady Angmar turned and considered him with eyes so sad they were painful to look upon.
“I can have the servants give you a chamber,” she said, “or would you prefer to sleep here by the banked fire?”
“The fireside will do me well, my lady, and I’d not cause you any more trouble.”
Her mouth twitched in a ghost of a smile.
“There’s been trouble enough, truly,” she said, then returned to watching the fire.
Angmar never spoke again. At length she rose and with her elderly maidservant left the hall. Young Mic brought Domnall a blanket; Otho banked up the fire; they took the lantern and left him with the dogs to curl up and sleep.
When he woke cold grey light edged the shutters. Otho was just letting the whining dogs out at the door. Stretching and yawning, Domnall sat up as the old man came stumping over, poker and tongs in hand, to mend up the fire.
“I’ll get out of your way, good sir,” Domnall said.
“You’re a well-spoken lad.”
“It becomes a Christian man to watch his speaking.”
Otho glanced puzzled at him.
“A what kind of man?” he said.
“A Christian man, one of Lord Jesu’s followers.”
“Ah. Is this Yaysoo the overlord in these parts?”
“Er, well, you could say that.”
Otho hunkered down and began lifting the chunks of sod away from the coals. Domnall pulled on his boots, bound them tightly, then stood up to wrap and arrange his plaid.
“The Lady Angmar? Has she lost her husband, then?”
“Lost him good and proper,” Otho said. “No one knows where he may be or if he lives or lies dead, and here she is, heavy with his child.”
“That’s a terrible sad thing.”
“It is, truly. If she knew he was dead, she could mourn him and get on with life, but as it is …”
“The poor lady, indeed.”
“It’s just like him, though, to do something so thoughtless. An inconvenient man, he was, all the way round. Ah, but who knows why women choose the men they do? She’s still wrapped in sorrow over her Rhodry Maelwaedd, no matter what we may say.”
That was doubly odd. What was a Sassenach woman doing married to some lord from Cymru? Or could this be the reason for her exile? Otho glared at the coals, then blew a bit of life into one of them and threw on a handful of tinder.
“Do you have a home near here, lad?”
“I do. I serve Lord Douglas and live in his hall.”
“Then let me give you some advice. Get out of here while you can and head home, or you may never see it again. The snow’s stopped falling, and the boatmen will row you across.”
“I’ll need to give the lady my thanks first.”
“She’ll not come down till well past midday. Her grief rules her. Get out while you can, while the sunlight lasts, and that won’t be long, this time of year. I warn you.” The old man glared up at him, his face red and sweaty as the fire leapt back to life. “Haen Marn travels where it wills, and faster than spit freezes on a day like this.”
Grammarie. His memories of the night before, of Evandar and the burning tree, came back like a slap in the face. Domnall grabbed his cloak from the straw.
“Then I’ll be