Castle of Dreams (31 page)

In a flow of grey robe, Rhys rose, one hand
holding his long staff, the other held out toward the black-clad
knight in a gesture of openness. Meredith saw Brian stop dead, his
eyes going wide. His sword point wavered, then the weapon was
lowered as his right arm fell to his side.

“You are welcome here,” Rhys said, “but put
away your sword.”

Brian stood a moment longer, staring at Rhys.
Meredith saw awe and respect on Brian’s battle-scared face. The
knight’s sword slid quietly into its scabbard, and then he knelt
before Rhys, whose pale, thin hand touched Brian’s shoulders and
then his forehead.

“Rhys is not a wizard,” Thomas said
stoutly.

“I know.” Brian stood. He was shorter than
Rhys. Lines crinkled about his dark eyes as he smiled up at the
older man. “So this is where you have been coming, Thomas.”

“You shouldn’t have followed me. You must
never show the way to anyone else. It’s a secret.”

“I understand, lad.”

“Norman!” Branwen came into the clearing.
“You! What are you doing here? Have you come to take Meredith away
again?”

“No, no, Aunt Branwen.” Meredith hurried to
Branwen’s side, putting her arms around the trembling woman’s
waist. As Brian approached them Branwen shrank back against
Meredith, shaking even more violently.

“I know you.” Brian looked hard at Branwen.
“Yes. You were at the castle with Meredith one day. Now I know why
you refused to let me escort you home. In fact, you ran away from
me.”

“This is Brian, Aunt Branwen. Surely you
remember him. He is one of Lord Guy’s knights.”

“What will you do, Sir Brian, kill us all?”
Branwen asked. Meredith could still feel the quivering of her
aunt’s body. She was astonished at her aunt’s reaction, the more so
since she was certain from her first cry that Branwen had
recognized Brian. Why so exaggerated a reaction to Brian’s
appearance?

“I mean you no harm, lady. I was only
concerned for Thomas’s safety. I never expected to follow him to a
Wise Man.” Brian turned back to Rhys. “Now I know where Thomas
learned those old tales he sometimes tells Geoffrey and me. From
you.”

“We talk,” Rhys said. “Branwen and Meredith
are my true pupils.”

“I see.” Brian eyed the basket of plants
still slung over Branwen’s arm. “Yes, I do see. This is where
Meredith learned her skills. Where do you live?”

Rhys started to point toward the cave, but
stopped to clutch at his left shoulder. He sat down on the boulder
in an abrupt movement. Before Meredith or Branwen could reach him,
Brian was there, supporting Rhys with an arm across his back.

“I’m all right,” Rhys assured them. “The pain
only lasted an instant. It has gone now.”

“Leave him alone,” Branwen said fiercely,
glaring across Rhys’s thin form at Brian. “I’ll take care of him.
We don’t need you.”

“Gently, Branwen.” Rhys managed a smile. “I
will sit here until my breath comes more easily, and then you and
this kind knight will both help me back to the cave.”

“And let him see where it is? Never.”

“Aunt Branwen,” Meredith said, “You are
upsetting Rhys. Brian already knows near enough where we live. Give
me your basket, the herbs are spilling out. Thomas and I will go
ahead and prepare for Rhys. You will want to be propped up, won’t
you, Rhys? I know you breathe more easily that way. And I’ll have
your medicine poured out and waiting. Come along, Thomas.” She
caught the boy by the hand and pulled him after her toward the
cave.

“Go away.” Branwen glared at Brian across
Rhys’s body. She could feel tears pricking at her eyelids. It was
fear for Rhys that made her want to weep. She wished this Sir Brian
would stop looking at her as though he recognized her very soul. He
smiled at her and, oddly, she felt a warmth at her heart, a faint
melting sensation.

“Branwen, I’m a friend,” Brian said. “I know
what Rhys is. My mother told me enough about her own people for me
to understand that much. I honor Rhys for his wisdom. I will never
betray him – or you.”

“Believe him, Branwen.” Rhys’s voice rustled
between them like a dry autumn leaf falling from its tree. “Trust
him.”

“But you are part Norman.” It was a last,
feeble protest before she gave in to what some deep, primitive
instinct was telling her about this man.

“It disturbed my mother, too,” Brian replied,
still smiling. “I wish I were all one thing, but I’m not. I am only
myself.”

“You will not tell anyone where we live?” She
had to hear him say it again.

“No, my dear lady, I will not. I have
promised.”

“Then stay, and I will thank you for your
help to get Rhys back to the cave.”

“And I would thank you both,” Rhys said,
standing up with surprising energy, “if you would not speak as
though I were a bundle of old rags with neither mind nor speech of
my own.”

“You are feeling better, I see,” Brian noted.
Behind Rhys’s back, he and Branwen shared a conspiratorial smile
before each put an arm around the old man to help him walk. All the
way back to the cave, Branwen was aware not so much of Rhys’s thin
back as of the manly strength of Brian’s arm, joined with her own
to give support to her cousin and teacher.

“Will Rhys be all right?” Thomas asked
anxiously as he and Meredith hurried to the cave. She could see he
was frightened. “I know I startled him, coming upon you
unexpectedly, and I suppose Brian upset him too. Oh, Meredith, I am
sorry.”

“It’s nothing you have done,” Meredith
assured him. She put an arm around his shoulders to give him a hug
and felt him cling to her. “This happens often now, sometimes when
he is just sitting quietly in the cave. Rhys is growing older and
he’s not well.”

“Will he die soon?” Meredith met Thomas’s
round, frightened eyes, and nodded. There was no point in lying to
him. He could see Rhys’s condition for himself.

Thomas said nothing more, but helped Meredith
to roll a pallet into a bolster and prop it against the wall of the
cave, for Rhys to lean against. He watched intently as she poured
out the thick green herbal brew that was Rhys’s medicine.

They had just finished their preparations
when Rhys appeared, supported by Brian and Branwen. Brian assisted
Rhys until he was comfortably settled. When Meredith brought the
cup with Rhys’s medicine, Brian took Branwen’s arm.

“I would speak with you,” he said.

To Meredith’s surprise her aunt did not
protest, having apparently given up her earlier anger at the
intruder, but left the cave with Brian’s hand still on her arm.
Meredith stared after them, bemused. Rhys was watching her. She
heard him chuckle. The sound reassured her that Rhys was
better.

“I don’t really need that,” Rhys said,
indicating the cup Meredith still held. “Well, I’ll drink it
anyway. It can’t hurt.” He sipped at the medicine.

“The pain is gone now?” Meredith asked.

“I never had any pain,” Rhys said, and
chuckled again at her astonishment.

“Your aunt has been like a daughter to me,”
Rhys went on, answering Meredith’s questions before they were
asked, “and she has been like a mother to you. For years she has
had little thought for herself. She was not born to hardship, yet
she has endured much in patient silence. Now her time for happiness
has come. It will be brief, but long enough.”

“Rhys, what are you saying?” Meredith sank to
her knees beside him. “Brian? And Aunt Branwen?”

“Brian is a goodly knight,” Thomas broke in.
“Why should Lady Branwen not have a knight to do her service?”

“Why not, indeed?” asked Rhys with a knowing
smile.

Meredith, thinking hard, said nothing. She
never doubted that Rhys knew Branwen’s innermost heart, her secret
desires, and had foreseen whatever would happen between Branwen and
Brian. Rhys had told her once that his foreseeing had to do with
observation rather than magic. Now she recalled Brian’s intense
interest and her aunt’s blushes on the day the two had first met,
and concluded that she had been so involved with herself and her
feelings for Sir Guy that she had been blind to what was happening
right in front of her.

She observed her aunt closely when Branwen
and Brian returned to the cave a while later. Branwen seemed
perfectly composed, agreeing with Brian that it was time he and
Thomas returned to Afoncaer, consenting when Brian suggested he
might return in a day or two to see how Rhys was, offering her hand
as he took his leave, then blushing just a little when Brian kissed
her fingers before he turned to go. When had Branwen ever been so
agreeable to any man but Rhys? Meredith saw Rhys looking at her
with amused grey eyes and knew he had read her thoughts.

She was not at all surprised when Brian
returned two days later bearing food and warm blankets for Rhys,
and then went off with Branwen while she searched for edible
greens. Three days after that Brian was back again, and then, as
summer deepened toward harvest time, his visits became a regular
occurrence.

“You will be missed at Afoncaer if you stay
away too long,” Branwen told Brian as they sat together on a
moss-covered rock. She had been collecting wild berries, which she
would dry for winter use, and Brian had said he would help her, but
they had done more talking than work. Her basket, only half full
and temporarily forgotten, lay on the ground beside the rock.

“I am not so important that anyone would
notice my absence.” Brian leaned closer, until his grey
woolen-covered shoulder touched hers.

“I would miss you,” Branwen whispered, nearly
overcome by his nearness. She did not know how Brian did this
strange thing to her. The grappling between male and female had
meant nothing to her when Alfric had used her body. For all his
gentleness, it had been a distasteful business, devoid of passion
on her part, something she owed him because she was his wife. As
for what Sir Edouard the Norman outlaw had once made her feel, that
was a shameful episode best forgotten, and after nearly twenty
years, seldom recalled.

But Brian had changed her. Sitting beside him
on the rock, aware of a compelling need to have his arms around
her, she knew the time was near when they would have done with
talking and would at last begin to know each other in the most
intimate way of all. It had taken them a long, slow summer of
frequent meetings to come so far. If not today, then the next time
they met, or the time after that, but it would happen soon.

Brian lifted her hand from the stone surface
between them and brought it to his lips. He kissed her fingers
slowly, one by one, lingering over each, while Branwen held her
breath and felt her heart beat and beat and beat. He opened her
hand and turned it over and pressed his mouth upon her palm. His
tongue was hot and moist on palm and wrist, and then along her
lower arm. Her sleeve fell back, and the inside of her elbow was
his next target.

Branwen could not move. She sat immobilized
while Brian’s hand slipped up her arm, under her loose sleeve to
caress the bare shoulder beneath the wool. Her heart stopped when
his lips touched her throat. She moaned as it began beating again,
faster now, and harder. She found it difficult to breathe.

Confused by her own reaction, she tried to
pull away from him, and found herself sliding slowly over the moss
and down the side of the rock, until she lay in the soft grass and
leaves at its base. Brian followed her. She, Branwen the strong,
was suddenly too weak to rise or to push him away. She could only
lie there, uttering soft little cries as he pulled the round neck
of her grey robe down as far as it would go and kissed her throat,
then her neck and her ears. She turned her face aside, but he found
her lips at last.

He was not gentle, not half afraid of her as
Alfric had been. Nor did he display the calculating, cautious
passion Sir Edouard had once shown toward her. Brian claimed her
mouth triumphantly, with a fierce possessiveness that told her he
would not let her go until he had taken everything she had to give
him.

She forgot Alfric. She forgot Sir Edouard.
She was aware only of Brian and of her own cold heart, frozen for
so many years, now slowly thawing under his passionate caresses,
beneath the long, sure stroking of his hands on her limbs. He
lifted her gown over her shoulders and away, and she lay naked on
the grass while he removed his own garments. She saw his hard,
battle-scarred body, and for the first time in her life felt true
desire stir deep in her belly, an emotion untarnished by guilt or
gratitude. She raised her arms over her head and stretched,
shifting her body on the grass with voluptuous pleasure, awaiting
him with an eagerness that astounded her.

She was an ice-locked river that had lain
cold and lonely through a long, bitter winter, and Brian was the
sun. She melted under his warmth as snow melts in spring. She was a
river in full flood, boiling, seething, unable to stop the wild
churning as he took her, and she smiled into his dark Welsh eyes
and knew he was her destiny. They were together. That was all that
mattered. They belonged to each other. They always would. They both
knew it.

Afterward, they lay still naked, totally
unashamed in each other’s sight, talking sweet nonsense and eating
the berries she had gathered earlier until their mouths were red
and he kissed the juice from her lips, and Branwen thought she had
never in her life been so happy.

Branwen daily grew softer and gentler, often
wearing a beautiful, secret smile. Meredith thought she looked
years younger. She was pleased for her aunt, but Branwen’s obvious
happiness only put a sharper edge on Meredith’s own loneliness. It
was months since she had seen Guy. She heard from both Thomas and
Brian how hard he worked, what long hours he spent in management of
his estates, how he drove himself and Reynaud, the masons, the
carpenters, and the other workmen, to finish the tower keep.