ORDINARY FAMILIES LOOK TO HOLY DAYS TO GATHER and share a big meal and get rosy with ale and dance caroles and hear the news.
I like to think I’d know ordinary if I saw it.
At last year’s Christmas feast, there were three drunken fistfights, several black eyes, and an “accidental” lapse in courtesy that involved a plate of turnips in sauce. We left three days early, before Owain’s father could throw us out.
Owain promised he’d behave himself this year, which I strongly suspect means drinking his weight in claret and leading the late-night singing of vulgar ballads. If you can call that noise singing.
At the very least, fewer broken noses would be nice.
I’m packing my rucksack by the curtained bed in the corner of the hall. Gowns, hose, warm woolen undergarments, and my ball. Owain’s little cousin will want a rematch after our game at Michaelmas. I also find the toy mouse I made for her from nubby scraps of linen.
Llywelyn penteulu is barking orders to speed our departure feastward, and the lads are tripping over one another to carry them out. None of them wants trouble from Owain’s warband chief, especially not when he’s harried. Llywelyn penteulu could be standing anywhere in the hall, but he’s standing near me because it amuses him that I stutter whenever I must speak to him.
“Ah . . . you packed yet?”
One of the men of Owain’s teulu, come to fetch me. I say men. It’s the newest one — Rhys, I think — a lad who doesn’t look a day over four and ten summers, the one the others still mock mercilessly for being sick all over himself during his first raid.
“Soon.” The toy mouse’s paws are coming unstitched where they attach to the body. Margred’s at that age when well-meaning mothers and aunts start pushing rosewater behind the ears and milkwashes for the complexion, so I’m of the opinion she needs toys more than ever.
“Ah . . .” Rhys was beaten in only months ago and struggles with how to address me. The warbanders avoid me if they can and call me nothing at all, and they’ve likely told him to do the same. “It’s just that the sun’s almost up, and I’ve still got my own —”
“What was that, pisser?” Llywelyn penteulu rounds on Rhys, and both of us flinch. “You afraid of girls? Because by now I sorely hope you know enough to step to it when given a task.”
Rhys swallows. Chances are he’s not afraid of most girls, but he might be a little afraid of me. One of the lads has doubtless told him I once stabbed a man through the neck with a fire iron, and it’s no secret where I sleep at night.
“It’s all right. I’m ready now.” I smile an apology at Rhys as I stuff the toy into my rucksack along with my sewing kit so I can fix it later. “Come, you can —”
“You’re burning daylight, lad.” Owain appears behind Llywelyn penteulu’s boar-solid shoulders and tilts a pointed glance at the open hall door. “It’s like you want to be set upon by Normans.”
“S-so it’s true, then. There are Normans out there. Waiting.” Rhys has been among the lads long enough to know that most of what they tell him is horse manure, but still he draws a shaky breath and says, “I’ve heard that Normans are butchers. That they’re the scum of England who’ve come to the kingdoms of Wales because they take joy in killing, and here they can be as brutal as they want.”
“Hell yes, it’s true,” Owain replies, bluff and cheerful, “but there’s no shame standing in dread of terrible things. Or terrible men.”
Rhys hesitates. “But you’re not afraid.”
“No reason to be.” Owain shrugs with a simple, carefree confidence that never fails to send a chill down my back. “Saint Elen protects me.”
“Owain ap Cadwgan can’t be killed, not by blade nor blow nor poison.” I say it calm and sure, the way I imagine Saint Elen would if she were here, because these lads cannot hear it enough times.
“And here’s what I must do for that protection.” Owain grins and pulls me against him with one hand sprawled over my backside. “Here she is, my Elen, good and close. Who am I to ignore the will of a saint?”
Rhys glances at me again through long, tangly curls. He is deliberately keeping his eyes off Owain’s hand on my haunch. There are no secrets in a warband. Rhys is not asking because any of this is new to him. He’s been told that Saint Elen keeps Owain safe in and out of the field, and he certainly believes a saint is capable of such things. He’s just not sure why. It’s not every day that Almighty God sees fit to lay a special blessing on the likes of Owain ap Cadwgan through the intercession of one of His saints.
“So you’ll see her packed and ready, then? Good.” Owain claps Rhys on the shoulder and turns to leave.
“This little pisser thinks he’s above the task,” Llywelyn penteulu says. “He has better things to do. He thinks that little of your safety.”
Owain stops midstride. “Beg pardon. What was that?”
I fight down the urge to speak for Rhys. It’s hard to begrudge him uncertainty, but it’s too dangerous for him to keep it.
Rhys shuffles. “My lord . . . it’s not . . .”
“Not what?” Owain leans close to Rhys, eyes in slits. “You think this is rubbish? You don’t believe a saint protects me?”
Llywelyn penteulu steps to Owain’s shoulder, and together they’re a shield wall as they glower down at Rhys. I edge backward, slow, slow, till I’m clear.
“Draw your blade, then,” Owain says to Rhys in a low, dangerous voice, “and let’s see if it’s true.”
“My lord, I never said — no, of course it’s true.” Rhys tries to square up. “It’s just that Einion ap Tewdwr told me so, and anything he says is usually worth its weight in shit.”
I can’t help but smirk. At least Rhys has learned that lesson well.
“All those bastard Normans out there, every last one would give his right nut to cut me to pieces, and none of them can. Saint Elen will not let that happen. No man in all the kingdoms of Wales can say the same.” Owain drops his fighting stance and bares his teeth into a smile. “Likely no little pisser, either, for that matter.”
Llywelyn penteulu pulls Rhys close with a fistful of cloak. “Are we clear, boy?”
Rhys nods without looking up. His breath comes unsteady. Teulu means both warband and family. A warband is like a family. More than a family. Brothers in arms over brothers in blood.
“Good. Then look to Elen.” Owain adjusts his sword-belt. “We’d best be off soon. It won’t do to be late to the feast. Not when my stepmother will supposedly grace us with her presence.”
He says it mocking, but I stop where I stand. Owain has told me exactly three things about his stepmother: she’s the daughter of a Norman knight, she’d tempt a saint to sin, and she’s younger than he is. Isabel de Say has been two years wed to Owain’s father, and finding her place in her new husband’s kingdom can’t have been easy. Strange tongue, strange customs, sharing a bed with someone who’s spent his entire adult life and a good portion of his youth killing Normans like her who were trying to seize his lands. If there was ever another girl in search of ordinary, it has to be her.