“I won’t do very well,” she said. “We only heard it once.”
“I know,” Rhiannon said, unusually mild, her voice at odds with her look. “But try.”
They had no harp here with them. Rania sang unaccompanied. It was well done, in truth, a different tone given by a woman’s voice in a quiet (too-bright) room, late at night, as compared to the same song heard in the hall as the sun was going down, when the younger son of Owyn ap Glynn had given it to them:
The halls of Arberth are dark tonight, No moons ride above. I will sing a while and be done.
The night is a hidden stranger, An enemy with a sword, Beasts in field and wood.
The stars look down on owl and wolf, All manner of living creature, While men sleep safe behind their walls.
The halls of Arberth are dark tonight, No moons ride above. I will sing a while and be done.
The first star is a longed-for promise, The deep night a waking dream, Darkness is a net for the heart’s desire.
The stars look down on lover and loved, All manner of delight, For some do not sleep in the night.
The riddle of the darkest hours Has ever and always been thus, And so it is we can say:
Needful as night’s end, Needful as night, By the holy blessed god, they are both true.
The halls of Arberth are dark tonight, No moons ride above. I have sung a while and I am done.
Rania looked down shyly when she finished. Eirin clapped her hands, beaming. Helda, older than the other three, sat quietly, a faraway look on her face. Rhiannon said, after a moment, “By the holy blessed god.”
It was unclear whether she was echoing the song, or speaking from the heart … or whether both of these were true.
They looked at her.
“What is happening to me?” Rhiannon said, in a small voice.
The others turned to Helda, who had been married and widowed. She said, gently, “You want a man, and it is consuming you. It passes, my dear. It really does.”
“Do you think?” said Rhiannon.
And none of them would ever have matched this voice to the tones of the one who normally controlled them all—the three of them, her sisters, all the young women of household and kin—the way her father commanded his warband.
It might have been amusing, it should have been, but the change cut too deeply, and she looked disturbingly unwell.
“I’m going to get you wine.” Eirin rose.
Rhiannon shook her head. Her green cap slipped off. “I don’t need wine.”
“Yes, you do,” said Helda. “Go, Eirin.”
“No,” said the girl on the bed, again. “That isn’t what I need.”
“You can’t have what you need,” Helda said, walking over to the bed, amusement in her voice, after all. “Eirin, a better thought. Go to the kitchen and have them make an infusion, the one for when we can’t sleep. We’ll all have some.” She smiled at the other three, ten years younger than she was. “Too many men in the house tonight.”
“Is it too late? Could we have him come here?”
“What? The singer?” Helda lifted her eyebrows.
Rhiannon nodded, her eyes beseeching. It was astonishing. She was pleading, not giving a command.
Helda considered it. She wasn’t sleepy at all, herself. “Not alone,” she said finally. “With his brother and the other Cadyri.”
“But I don’t need the other two,” Rhiannon said, a hint of herself again.
“You can’t have what you need,” Helda said again.
Rania took a candle and went for the infusion; Eirin, bolder, was sent to bring the three men. Rhiannon sat up in the bed, felt her own cheeks with the backs of her hands, then rose and went to the window and opened it—against all the best counsel—to let the breeze cool her, if only a little.
“Do I look all right?” she asked.
“It doesn’t matter,” said Helda, maddeningly.
“I feel faint.”
“I know.”
“I never feel this way.”
“I know,” said Helda. “It passes.”
“Will they be here soon?”
ALUN DRESSED AT SPEED and went to find Dai in the banquet hall, leaving Gryffeth in the corridor with the girl and the candle. Neither of them seemed to mind. They could have gone to the women’s rooms around the corner and waited there, but they didn’t seem inclined to do that.
He carried his harp in its leather case. The woman had specifically said that the daughter of Brynn ap Hywll wanted the singer. The brown-haired girl, telling him this at the door, before Gryffeth got out of bed, had smiled, her eyes catching the candlelight she carried.
So Alun went to get Dai. Found him dicing at a table with two of their own friends and three of the ap Hywll men. He was relieved to see that Dai had a pile of coins in front of him already. His older brother was good at dice, decisive in betting and calculating, and with a wrist flick that let him land the bones—anyone’s bones—on the short side more often than one might expect. If he was winning, as usual, it meant he might not be too badly disturbed after all.
Perhaps. One of the others noticed Alun in the doorway, nudged Dai. His brother glanced up, and Alun motioned him over. Dai hesitated, then saw the harp. He got up and came across the room. It was dark except for lamps on the two tables where men were awake and gaming. Most of those bedding down here were asleep by now, on pallets along the walls, the dogs among them.
“What is it?” Dai said. His tone was curt.
Alun kept his own voice light. “Hate to take you from winning money from Arberthi, but we’ve been invited to the Lady Rhiannon’s rooms.”
“What?”
“I wouldn’t make that up.”
Dai had gone rigid, Alun could see it even in the shadows.
“We? All of …?”
“All three of us.” He hesitated. Told truth, better here than there. “She, um, asked for the harp, I gather.”
“Who said that?”
“The girl who fetched us.”
A short silence. Someone laughed loudly at the dicing table. Someone else swore, one of the sleepers along the wall.
“Oh, Jad. Oh, holy Jad. Alun, why did you sing that song?” Dai asked, almost whispering.
“What?” said Alun, genuinely taken aback.
“If you hadn’t …” Dai closed his eyes. “I don’t suppose you could say you were sleepy, didn’t want to get out of bed?”
Alun cleared his throat. “I could.” He was finding this difficult.
Dai shook his head. Opened his eyes again. “No, you’re already out of bed, carrying the harp. The girl saw you.” He swore then, to himself, more like a prayer than an oath, not at Alun or anyone else, really.
Dai lifted both his hands and laid his fists on Alun’s shoulders, the way he sometimes did. Lifted them up and brought them down, halfway between a blow and an embrace. He left them there a moment, then he took his hands away.
“You