Free Brandewyne, Rebecca by Swan Road Page B

her
betrothal had been.
    If
Gwydion sensed this, however, he did not show it, but turned their conversation
to light, inconsequential matters, seeming not to notice that Rhowenna made
only monosyllabic replies and bowed her head and busied her hands at their
tasks more than was necessary to avoid meeting his eyes. She would see naught
save pity there, she thought; and she could not bear that, not from Gwydion.
She would have thrown away kingdom and crown for him had he but stretched out
his hand to her and asked her to go away with him. But he had not, and so her
only refuge now was her quiet dignity and this pretense that there was nothing
more between them than devotion and kinship.
    When
he remarked that it was growing late and that they had best be getting back to
shore, she raised her head finally from the shining, dead and dying fish. The
westerly sun reflected off the sea into her eyes, and it seemed that for a
moment on the far horizon, a clutch of dragons rode the waves, crimson sails
unfurled wide against the sun to catch the wind. She could not suppress a wail
of terror.
    "Rhowenna!
What is it?" Gwydion's voice was sharp with anxiety as he stared at her
eyes, huge and scared in her pale face, and filled with a stark blankness, as
though she were tranced and saw something he did not. "What is it? What do you
see?"
    The
sound of his voice penetrated Rhowenna's senses at last, and blinking her eyes,
she realized with some confusion that the horizon was empty save for the fiery
sun sinking into the sea, that what she had seen had been nothing more than a
trick of the light, after all. Yet the vision had seemed so real that she could
have sworn that it was...
    "I
thought... I thought— Gwydion, for many long nights now, I have had a dream, a
hideous dream of the Northmen's coming to ravage Usk"— without warning,
her terrible secret came spilling out— "and for a moment, I thought I spied
their long-ships there in the distance, on the horizon. 'Twas only the sun in
my eyes; I see that now. But I was so frightened—"
    "The
Northmen! Rhowenna! Have you told anyone else of this?"
    "Nay."
She shook her head, biting her lower lip contritely, suddenly ashamed that she
had permitted her fear to silence her when so many lives were at stake.
    "But...
why not?"
    "I
was afraid," she confessed, her voice low and remorseful, "afraid
that Father Cadwyr would denounce me, would call me accursed, a
witch. He has no tolerance for the old ways, for the old gods whence my dream
comes to me, I know, Gwydion. He would not think it a true vision, but a
wickedness visited upon me by the devil— and I've no wish to be burned at the
stake because of a priest's blindness and stupidity!"
    "Of
course not. Still, Rhowenna, the Northmen! Do you not remember the tales of the
slaughter and ruin they wreaked upon Anglesey some years ago?"
    "Aye,
I do. I do. That is why I have been so troubled and torn, not knowing whether
to speak or to remain silent...." She paused for a moment, contemplating
her dilemma. Then, finally, slowly, she continued. "There is still more,
Gwydion, the worst of all, the reason why I did not tell even you about all
this before. In my dream... in my dream, I saw the Northmen... strike you down
and— and slay you, Gwydion!"
    He
went very still at this last announcement. Despite all the priests' exhorting,
Gwydion was reluctant to accept that the old ways, the old gods, were false. He
believed in her vision, too.
    "Your
dream is a strong and serious portent," he said after a long minute of
consideration. "But 'tis also only the shape and shadow of what may happen,
Rhowenna, not necessarily what will be. Now that we have been blessed with warning of
it, we can change the future. If the Northmen do come, I need not perish as you
feared. I will be on my guard, and I will survive— as will Usk. Together, we
can surely think of some pretext that will alert the King and the Queen to the
possibility of danger from the Northland—