Chapter Four

Margaret was in the herb-house with Lord William's sister when the rider came. At first she was grateful for the interruption. Lady Gwenllian looked just like her brother – and her mother, for that matter – as her eyes swept over every surface, silently assessing, missing no detail. This place and these remedies had been her undisputed domain when she had lived at Ruardean.

"There is so little." Lady Gwenllian's hand swept across a nearly empty shelf, pausing to finger the last few dried eithin flowers there. "It was a very hard winter?"

"Nay, the furze grew well and many flowers were gathered, God be praised." Margaret strove to keep the defensive tone from her voice. "Only lately have I sent a great barrel of the tincture to the Welshry, where the need is great."

This earned her a rather intense look, which she thought was possibly surprise. It would seem Lady Gwenllian had not expected much of her. She had only begun to ask more direct questions, clearly trying to judge the extent of Margaret's knowledge and skill, but was interrupted in her interrogation when they heard shouting in the forecourt.

It was a man calling Gwenllian's name, and as they stepped out of the herb-house they saw him rushing toward them. He was a young knight, handsome and fair-haired, with a look of desperate urgency.

"You must come," he entreated between heavy breaths.

It was all he could get out for a moment. He was covered in mud and panting for air. Margaret called to a nearby servant to bring drink, wondering if she should call her husband to hear the stranger's news. But Lady Gwenllian seemed to know the man, and was fully in command of the moment.

"Nan," Gwenllian said with a certainty, and the knight nodded. "It comes too soon. Does she bleed?" He looked close to tears, unable to answer, so she grasped him by the shoulders. "Robin, tell me now, does she bleed?"

"Nay. And she says there is no great pain, but she will ever say that."

"When did it begin?" Lady Gwenllian's face had gone white.

"In the night. It is too soon." His eyes seemed to plead with her. "Gwenllian, I have seen fear in her."

They both seemed paralyzed, twin expressions of concern and uncertainty on their faces.

"Where is she?" The words were out of Margaret's mouth before she even thought to stop them. They both looked at her, startled. "You speak of the Lady of Aderinyth, do you not? But her home is too far for you to travel here in less than a day."

The knight nodded, then looked back to Gwenllian to give his answer. He explained that the Lord and Lady of Aderinyth were at the edge of their own lands, stopped in some village for the night when the birth pains had come on her. Margaret barely heard it as she rushed back into the herb-house, leaving them behind. She snatched up amulets, linseed and fenugreek and rue, the rose oil and the mugwort – everything she could think of that would serve the purpose.

The confinement was not supposed to begin for at least another fortnight. Lady Gwenllian had planned to attend the birth then, because Lady Nan of Aderinyth was her friend. It did not bode well that the pains came so early.

With fumbling hands, Margaret pulled out the key to the chest where the myrrh and ambergris were stored, and put them in the basket with the rest. As she hesitated over the juice of the poppy, Gwenllian was suddenly there, pushing her hand aside and grasping the phial. "Mallow and vervain," she said, forceful and crisp, like it was a battle command.

She did not wait to see if she was obeyed, but instead began throwing other herbs into the basket, things Margaret had never seen used in childbirth. Gwenllian took only a moment to gather them, and then she was looking at Margaret again, piercing and direct, a sudden quiet in the storm.

"We must go to her now, with all haste," said Margaret, forgetting to speak with diffidence. "Can we reach her before night falls?"

"Do we ride hard, it is possible." Her face was impassive, her eyes never straying from Margaret's. "You care so much that you will go to her?"

There was a hint of incredulity in it, the silent surprise. She obviously wanted to ask why Margaret, who had never met the Lady of Aderinyth, would rush to this woman's side? Far easier to stay here and pray for the safe delivery of the child. It was all that was expected of her.

"I do care," she answered simply. "I would honor her, and her lord husband."

She should have said that she did it out of charity, that it was a Christian duty. And it was that. It was. But it was more, too.

"It is action that is needed, you understand? Not platitudes." Gwenllian's look grew even more stern. "Do you prefer to keep your hands free of blood and toil, they are better folded in the chapel than on this journey."

"Full well do I know it," she agreed, only to be met with a skeptical look. "Nor would I waste time in swearing it to you when you might believe me and we are gone with all haste."

Gwenllian held her in that piercing look for an eternal moment, before giving a curt nod and turning away.

They were gone within minutes. It only wanted fresh horses, which had already been ordered. Lord William rushed into the forecourt as Gwenllian mounted, and she shouted at him to follow later with such medicines as Master Edmund would know to send. It was understood that Margaret could not hope to ride fast enough, and she had mounted behind the knight named Robin so that she might ride pillion, her arms clasped tight around his waist.

She only glanced at her husband, barely registering his stunned expression to see her riding away in a race to aid the woman who was the whole cause of their marriage.

When six years ago, the Lord of Aderinyth said to Margaret that he would not marry her, she had felt both her life and her entire self open up. Her first thoughts, when she was capable of thought, were of dogs unleashed and prisoners unshackled. For hours afterwards – for days – she'd lived with the strangest sensation in the pit of her stomach, like she stood with one foot poised over a cliff, welcoming the pull of the earth, fearful and excited for the inevitable fall into the unknown.

But until he had released her, she had felt choked by darkness. Her betrothal to Lord Gruffydd, Prince of Aderinyth, had been arranged by Lord William himself. He was dear friends with Lord Gruffydd, and it was he who had escorted her to Wales where the wedding was to take place. It was a political alliance, meant to secure royal favors and mountain passes and likely a host of other things. The king approved, her father approved, and she had spent weeks in prayer begging God for a sign that He approved as well.

She had felt so lost in those days, so close to despair. Always had she believed she would feel some sort of calling, some certainty in the path her life took. But the betrothal had felt more like she was being carried along by forces greater than herself, and they were the forces of men, not God.

A woman's life is pretending , her mother had said to her once – words she could never have dreamed her daughter would take so deeply to heart. Margaret had pretended to her father that she was happy to marry, had pretended a burning need to visit every church on the way to Wales to delay her arrival, had pretended to her betrothed that a wedding feast must be put off for countless reasons. She had pretended until she could pretend no more, not even to herself, that there would be a divine intervention to show her the way.

Then scarcely a week before the wedding, when she had accepted in her heart that God must want her to be no more than a brood mare in the distant wilds of Wales, her betrothed had abruptly announced that he would not marry her.

And in that moment, as she struggled to comprehend the magnitude of that announcement, the Lord Prince of Aderinyth had looked at her as no one had ever done. He saw through the pretending, through to her perfectly functional mind and all her many misgivings. He had seen her.

He had looked amazed, and smiled, and said that she must go wherever she wished. That she was free. That she could choose a life for herself, with only her own conscience to command her.

How could she tell him – how could she tell anyone – that she had believed God had sent him to her, that his words had been the sign she had waited for? Even now when she entered the small hut to find him frowning in concern over his lady wife, she was shy of him, knowing he had once seen past her mask.

She turned her eyes to his wife instead, and found it impossible to look away. He had given no reason for his refusal to marry Margaret, but only days later he had married this woman. They said he had done it for love. It was an appallingly stupid reason to marry, and an even stupider reason to defy the king himself – but looking at the Lady of Aderinyth, Margaret understood it absolutely. This woman possessed the kind of beauty that made all sense fly from a man's head. Margaret herself found she could not think past how unbearably lovely she was, and could only stare.

"Boil water with betony and vervain. Make haste!" Gwenllian commanded, wholly unmoved by this vision. She pushed a basket into Margaret's hands, snapping her out of stupefaction.

Margaret remembered herself and the urgency that drove them. She turned to see a small hearth in the center of the room, with the knight Robin working to bring the flames higher, then found water warming in a pan and sorted through the leaves in the bundle. She half-listened while the beautiful Lady Nan of Aderinyth calmly told her lord husband to leave them now, and Robin too.

"This is no place for men," she said, and there was not even a hint of fear or pain in her voice. She continued in Welsh, words Margaret could not understand but were so calm that she began to wonder why they had rushed here.

But when the men left, Margaret saw the courage in her face erode, a battlement made of sand that could not resist the tide. A woman's life is pretending, it was true.

Gwenllian strode to where she lay and clasped hands. "Nan," she said in greeting. It seemed like more than a name, more than just a word.

"Sister," replied Nan, her voice filled with rising emotion. A strange thing to say, for they were not sisters at all. "I knew you would not let me die alone."

Gwenllian scoffed a little, dismissive. "Nor will I let you speak such witless words, nor let fear prey upon you now I am come. There will be no dying."

She spoke with such absolute confidence that Margaret could not imagine doubting her. But Lady Nan shook her head.

"It's different this time. I feel it. It's how my mother died. I seen Death in my dreams last night, standing there in the corner waiting for me." She nodded toward the far corner of the room. Her lips were pressed together, tears in her eyes. "It means to take me like it took her."

But Gwenllian was not afraid. She reached up and held Lady Nan's head in a solid grip, demanding her attention. "I will cut him down, does he dare to reach for you." Her look was as fierce as her words, and the note in her voice could rouse whole armies. "Name me the enemy who can stand against us both. I tell you, sister, there is none."

A strange thing happened then, in the shadow of these words that so moved Margaret. She could hear the hiss of water bubbling out of the pan and hitting the embers, yet it seemed to come from a far-off world. She could see only the two women, the place where their hands were clasped together against Lady Nan's golden hair. There was a look that passed between them, something that the rational part of Margaret's mind knew was only strength and comfort such as women so often gave one another.

But there seemed to be light all around them. Everywhere. It burned her eyes and weakened her knees. It confounded her. She blinked, but it did not abate. There was nothing else that existed, that had ever existed. There was only the place where their hands were joined, in a world that throbbed with light.

She was still blinded with it when she heard Lady Gwenllian bark at her that she must bathe her hands, as well as the birthing stool and linen, in the infusion of herbs. It made reality come rushing back. Margaret busied herself with the task, blinking the strange light out of her eyes as she poured out a bit of the infusion to cool and then stumbled outside to find more water.

Night had fallen completely in the short time since their arrival. She stood motionless for a moment in the open air, trying to understand the lingering strangeness she felt, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the faint firelight and dim lamps.

"She is well?" The Lord of Aderinyth stood vigil near the door and was at her elbow. "Is there aught you need?"

"Lord Gruffydd," she said, flustered, still disoriented by the vision of light and now his sudden appearance. She hardly knew how to behave with him. They had not seen each other since the day he sent her off with an escort six years ago, to deliver her to the abbey of her choosing. They had both thought she would give herself to the Church, not to his friend. "Water," she answered him. "From a fast stream, if there is one near."

"She is well?" He asked it again while beckoning one of the nearby men. He commanded buckets to be filled with water at a place he named in his incomprehensible Welsh language, then turned back to her for an answer.

"Aye, my lord, she is in good health. She bears the pain well." A small lie, for kindness. She had not yet seen his wife in pain, and hoped it would prove to be true.

"Nan has said she needs only Lady Gwenllian to attend her, but you must only say the word and the midwife will be called. A wet nurse has been found in the next village. Two of them. We will go in the black of night to bring them, you need only to ask it."

She watched his hands as he spoke, how he squeezed them into fists repeatedly. He was a good man. "I will pray most earnestly that God will grant her a swift and easy birth, my lord."

A little silence fell between them. She became aware that she had spoken normally, as she would have spoken to Constance. How strange it felt to offer prayers sincerely, without that ingratiating manner.

"Is that why you are come, to pray?" he asked. "Have you given yourself to prayer these many years, after all?"

She looked up to see the nervous smile that twitched on his face. He was trying to be lighthearted, but nothing could distract from the worry that consumed him. He must have wondered for years why she had not entered the convent, else these would not be the words that sprang to his lips in this awkward moment.

"I have…tried. To live a life of devotion, as once I told you I wished." She did not let herself look away from him. "I must hope the prayers of a simple woman in a humble shelter are no less worthy than prayers sent up from a great abbey."

His brows raised a little. "All the power of Ruardean is yours, lady, yet you call yourself a simple woman? I think your prayers must carry great weight, no matter where they are said."

She wanted to tell him, suddenly. To blurt her doubts and uncertainties, her tangled feelings about the irreversible choices she had made when he had so generously given her the chance. But even as she opened her mouth, Lady Gwenllian interrupted. She called out for Margaret's return, urgency in her voice.

"Only by works is faith made perfect, Lord Gruffydd." It rolled off her tongue easily, one of the many platitudes she kept ready. She turned to hurry back into the little house, ending the awkward interaction. "Have them leave the water just outside the door."

She entered to find Lady Nan sitting up and hunched over, in the midst of a spasm of pain. She did bear it well, and with an uncommon silence. Gwenllian held something to her mouth and squeezed her hand throughout it. There was a small dog that had appeared from somewhere, watching and letting out a faint, anxious whine.

Margaret considered chasing it off, but she had no doubt Gwenllian would not have allowed it to stay if it was unwelcome. She turned her back on the other women to pour the infusion over her hands, and then began to gather more of the herbs to be added to the fresh water.

Lady Gwenllian came to her side after a while, bathing her own hands and watching as Margaret chose the herbs.

"You have attended many births?" she asked, her voice low.

Margaret nodded. "Aye, though always with a midwife."

"Yet you have seen much, and learned much?"

She could see it now, the uncertainty beneath the competence. Lady Gwenllian was well known for her knowledge and skill in physicking. But midwifery was its own art, one where experience mattered most.

"I have," Margaret answered quietly. "And have you?"

Lady Gwenllian was not insulted by the question. She only paused, looking down at her own broad hands before nodding. "Much. But it is never enough. A lifetime is not enough, though I would swear it is fear that has called us here more than reason, and all will be well." Her voice became a quiet command with a hidden plea at the center of it. "Stay near, and do not fear to tell me if you think me wrong in anything we do. For I swear, do you stay silent and she is harmed by it, there is no prayer can save you."

Margaret had already abandoned the mask of meekness, and could not retreat behind it now. She only nodded in acknowledgement. Then she went to the door and reached outside to haul in the first of many heavy buckets of water.