The Shadow Isle - Katharine Kerr [157]
Had it been so asinine, to hope for something so grand, so much larger than herself, so much more wonderful than the handful of names and half-understood rituals offered by the old gods? That night she felt her loss of faith as keenly, as painfully, as she’d felt the loss of her first child. Either of them might have given her life a meaning that it had lacked, her, a mere slave-born half-citizen.
I have the dweomer now, she reminded herself. She might have another child as well, of course. She hoped for such every day, now that she had a man who wanted a child. She remembered telling Laz that their son had died of fever. He’d looked at her with such blank eyes, hesitated so long, and then finally said, “I’m so sorry.” That was all. “I’m so sorry.” For her, perhaps. For himself, he was relieved. He didn’t even bother to deny it.
Why would I want him back? The thought hung in her mind like a sudden moonrise, casting strange shadows rather than clear light.
On the morning that Aethel’s caravan left Lin Serr, Berwynna and Dougie went down the long flights of stairs to the parkland below the main entrance to the city. While the sun climbed higher in the sky, a crowd of men and pack animals milled around, seemingly aimlessly at first. The mules brayed, the men swore, and Aethel trotted back and forth, sorting them out into a decent order. Mic took the chance to remind Berwynna that Cerr Cawnen lay a long journey away—about a month, depending upon the weather.
“Now, once we get there,” Mic said, “I’ll look over this job of theirs. If I like it, I’ll stay, but you should go back to Lin Serr with the last trading run. I’ll arrange things with Aethel. Your grandfather will make sure that you and Dougie get safely back to Haen Marn.”
“If you say so, Uncle Mic,” Berwynna said. “By then, I’ll doubtless be ever so glad to see Mam again, especially if we find my da. Everything’s been so splendid so far. Even ordinary things are marvels to me after being shut up on that wretched little island.”
One of those mundane marvels was the caravan itself. Berwynna had never seen so many mules gathered in one place, to say naught of the sixteen muleteers, tall men, all of them, and on the beefy side. Among them, Dougie seemed neither tall nor short, but his red hair did mark him as someone different. Most of the Cerr Cawnen men had yellow hair and pale blue or gray eyes, far different from the men of Alban that she’d seen, and names that to her sounded either strange or oddly plain, such as Whaw, Hound, Fraed, and Richt, Aethel’s journeyman and his second-in-command.
“Why would anyone name their son Hound?” Berwynna asked Mic.
“Most likely it’s an old name in their family.” Mic dropped his voice and glanced around to make sure they couldn’t be overheard. “A long time ago all of the Cerr Cawnen ancestors were slaves, Wynni. They escaped from their Deverry masters and headed west. It was the masters who gave them names like Hound and Ash. Now, remember, bringing up the subject of slave-ancestors is very discourteous, so don’t.”
“Oh, don’t let it worry you. I can see that.”
Since some of the mules would be carrying empty panniers home—Aethel had traded bulky woolens for fine metalwork, including a good many pieces of jewelry—Berwynna, Kov, and Mic would ride to Cerr Cawnen. Dougie, however, would walk alongside Berwynna’s mule. Since Richt had given him a pair of stout boots and some brigga as well, he made no complaint when he led the mule that would be Berwynna’s over to her.
“You look so different in those brigga,” Berwynna said, grinning. “Now we’re dressed alike,