Border Bride

Enid had dropped to her knees on the rush-strewn floor, and begun to pour gently steaming water into the basin. At Con’s tribute to her daughter, her slender form tensed.

“Myfanwy, cariad, will you go check how Auntie Gaynor is coming with the last rinse of the wool? That’s a good girl.”

When the child had made a subdued exit, Enid explained, “My daughter does mighty credit to her father’s memory. She’s much like him in many ways.”

“I’m sorry.” Con chided himself less for the compliment gone awry than for the envious curiosity that flamed in him. By the tone of Enid’s answer, he might guess how much or how little she had loved Myfanwy’s father.

It should not matter to him…but it did.

“Was it very long ago you lost your husband?” At the last instant he managed to stop himself from adding the Welsh endearment, cariad.

“In the fall.” Enid pushed the basin toward him. Though her curt reply told him she didn’t want to dwell on the matter, it gave no real clue about her feelings for the man. “There was some trouble with the Normans, so Howell joined the muster of Macsen ap Gryffith. He took sore wounds in the fighting. They brought him home where he lingered until the first snow.”

Con eased his feet into the warm water as he digested this intriguing scrap of news about Macsen ap Gryffith. If the border chief had lost men in an autumn skirmish with the Normans of Salop, he might not need much nudging to retaliate in the spring.

“What brings you to the borders?” asked Enid, her head bent over the basin. “Did you grow tired of plying your sword for hire to the Normans?”

Her question caught Con like an unexpected thrust after a cunning feint. For a moment his glib tongue froze in his mouth. If he told her he’d come on a mission from the very people who’d killed her husband, she’d likely turf his backside out the gate, traditions of Welsh hospitality be damned.

“You might say I’m taking a rest from it.” No lie, that—not a bold-faced one, anyhow. “I mean to go back to the Holy Land, though.”

As Sir Conwy of Somewhere, riding at the head of an armed company of his own men. The dream sang a most agreeable melody in Con’s thoughts.

“In the meantime, barding lets me enjoy a bit of adventure without the danger. Mercenary or travelling bard, both make good jobs for a vagabond.”

“You’ve always had itchy heels, haven’t you, Con?” Enid mused aloud as she washed his feet. “I suppose you’ll be on your way from here tomorrow morning?”

The water was no more than tepid, but Enid’s touch set flames licking up Con’s legs to light a blaze in his loins. He could almost fancy it searing the itch of wanderlust from his flesh…but that was nonsense.

Though part of him longed to stay and visit, that tiny voice of caution urged Con to go while he still had a choice.

“Tomorrow.” He nodded. “Before Chester dogs arise, if the weather holds fair. I don’t want to wear out my welcome.”

A quivering tension seemed to ebb out of Enid as she dried his feet. For all her show of welcome, she clearly wanted to be rid of him. The realization vexed Con. He wasn’t used to women craving his absence.

Enid raised her face to him then, and Con struggled to draw breath. In the depths of her eyes shimmered a vision of the playful sprite he remembered from their childhood—so close and physically accessible, yet as far beyond the reach of an orphan plowboy as the beckoning stars.

“I’m surprised to see you whole and hale after all these years. I feared you wouldn’t last a month as a hired soldier.”

She’d worried about him. The knowledge settled in Con’s belly like a hot, filling meal after a long fast. He hadn’t expected her to spare him a backward glance.

“White my world.” That’s what the Welsh said of a fellow who was lucky, and Con had been. “I’ve had the odd close shave, but always managed to wriggle out before the noose drew tight enough to throttle me. I’ll entertain your household with some of my adventures tonight, around the fire.”

He leaned forward, planting his elbows on his thighs. “That’s enough talk of me, though. You never did say how you came to Powys from your father’s maenol in Gwynedd. From time out of mind I heard nothing but that you were meant to wed Tryfan ap Huw, and go to be the lady of his grand estate on Ynys Mon.”

Enid scrambled to her feet and snatched up the basin so quickly that water sloshed over the rim to wet the reeds on the floor. “You ought to know better than most, Con, life has a way of turning out different than you expect.”

Which was exactly how he liked it. How tiresome the world would be without those random detours, bends in the road, hills that invited a body to climb and see what wonders lay beyond.

But Enid had never thought so. More than anyone Con had ever known, she’d longed for peace and security. She’d craved a smooth, straight, predictable path through life, content to forgo the marvels if that was the price for keeping out of harm’s way. What calamity had landed her here on the Marches where turmoil reigned?

Enid flinched from the memories Con’s question provoked, in much the way she would have avoided biting on a sore tooth. Once in her life she’d taken a risk, hoping to gain the only thing she’d ever wanted more than a safe, ordered, conventional life. She’d rocked the coracle and it had capsized, almost drowning her. That ruinous venture had taught her a harsh but necessary lesson about leaving well enough alone.

The man who had cost her so dearly spoke up. “Did this turn in your life bring you happiness, Enid?”

How dare he ask such a thing, as if he had any business in her happiness after all these years? And how dare he pretend to be taken by surprise over the unexpected direction her life had taken? He’d been there when the road had forked, after all. Then he had wandered away, lured by the fairy-piped tune of adventure, leaving her to bear the consequences.

A sharp answer hovered on her tongue, but died unspoken.

If Con ap Ifan had forgotten what happened between them thirteen years ago, on the eve of his departure from her father’s house, she did not wish to remind him—could not afford to remind him. For then he might guess what had become of her, and how it had all fallen out.

“It brought me my children.” She measured her words with care, anxious not to disclose too much, nor rouse his curiosity further with blatant evasion. “They are the greatest source of pride and happiness in my life.”

A grace she’d ill-deserved.

Con’s face brightened, as if she’d told him what he wanted to hear. “No wonder you’re proud of them. They’re a fine pair, though I only saw the little fellow for a moment. Your last yellow chick, is he?”

“I beg your leave for a moment,” she interrupted him, “to toss this water out.”

Somehow she knew that after inquiring about the baby of the family, Con would next ask if she had any children older than Myfanwy and Davy. “I must see that supper’s started, too. Will you take a drop of cider to refresh you until then?”

Con did not appear to notice that she hadn’t answered his question. “Your duties must be many now that you’re both master and mistress of the house.”

He waved her away with a rueful grin. “I won’t distract you from them. We’ll talk over old times and catch up with each other during the evening meal. In the meantime, if there’s aught I can do to make myself useful, bid me as you will. I can turn my hand to most anything.”

“I wouldn’t dream of putting a guest to work.” She didn’t want him snooping around the place, talking to folks about things he had no business knowing. “Take your ease and tune your harp until supper. It’s been a long while since we’ve been entertained by a minstrel from away. You’ll more than earn your bread and brychan tonight.”

She bustled off to prepare for the meal. And to make sure her children had plenty of little chores to keep them occupied and away from the hall until supper.

“He’ll be gone in the morning,” she muttered under her breath as she worked and directed others in their work. “He’ll be gone in the morning. He’ll be gone in the morning.”

The repetition calmed her, like reciting the Ave or the Paternoster.

Yet along with the rush of relief that surged through her every time she pictured Con ap Ifan going on his way tomorrow morn without a backward glance, a bothersome ebb tide of regret tugged at Enid, too.

A small but bright fire burned in the middle of Glyneira’s hall that evening, its smoke wafting up to the ceiling where it escaped through a hole in the roof. A sense of anticipation hung in the air, too, as Enid’s household partook of their supper.

There were over two dozen gathered that evening, most distant kin of Enid’s late husband. All eager to hear the wandering bard who, according to rumor, had fought in the Holy Land.

Enid sat at the high table with Howell’s two sisters, Helydd and Gaynor. She had placed Con at the other end, between the local priest and Gaynor’s husband, Idwal, who’d taken a blow on the head a few years before and never been quite the same since.

Though everyone at Glyneira had gotten used to Idwal’s halting speech, outsiders often had trouble understanding him. Father Thomas was voluble enough to make up for what Idwal lacked in conversation, and then some. His uncle had gone to Jerusalem on the Great Crusade and returned to Wales years later to ply a brisk trade in holy relics. Enid trusted the good father to keep their guest talking on safe subjects.

Subjects that did not concern her or her family.

Once all were seated, the kitchen lasses bore in platters of chopped meat moistened with broth, and set one between every three diners, as was Welsh custom in honor of the Trinity. A young boy brought around thin broad cakes of fresh lagana bread on which diners could heap a portion of the meat dish for eating.

Gazing at their guest, Helydd leaned toward Enid and whispered, “My, he’s a handsome one, isn’t he? And so pleasant spoken. Is it true you knew him back in Gwynedd?”