The dogs launched themselves hungrily on their quarry, and as their teeth ground against the bones, Olwyn imagined the long sharp teeth sinking into her arms.
No time for fear.
Olwyn grabbed her tack and rushed to the horse’s pen, while Drystan readied the wagon. The mare, Nixie, nickered and nuzzled her arm as Olwyn buckled her straps. She was old and far too placid to prance with excitement, but still she tossed her head and swished her tail in anticipation.
Leading her out, Drystan hitched Nixie to the smallest wagon they owned; the bigger ones, she reasoned, would be heavier and more likely to tire Nixie. While the wagon was secured, Olwyn quickly packed up a few horse blankets and a feed bag, and had Drystan lift the fullest sack of grain into the wagon. She also took two oiled tarps and a coiled length of rope, and threw them on top.
With that completed, she and Drystan drove it back to the keep, and though she kept her pistol at the ready, he made no efforts to stop her. He was far too compliant, following each of her instructions without demur, and once or twice she thought she spied a smug grin on his face.
And she wondered if he had a plan. He most certainly was up to something.
“Stop here, Drystan,” she instructed. Olwyn nibbled at her lip for a second. “Get the man, put him in the back. Layer a few wrapped hot bricks beside him.”
And instead of readying herself, she waited, holding the pistol.
When he was finished, she directed him into a small windowless room that had once been a butler’s lodging. It had a small bed and a chamber pot.
“What are you going to do to me?” Drystan asked, eyeing her suspiciously.
Olwyn didn’t hide her smile. “You’ll see.”
She locked him in there for the time being, and spared a glance at the timepiece in the great room as she ran through it. Up to her rooms she ran, and with the excitement of a woman who had longed to escape for years, she gathered up her belongings.
A few sacks of clothing were already packed; she put those by the door, along with another bag she kept ready to go. It contained her pouch of stolen money, both her bottles of whiskey, the book of poetry that had been her brother’s favorite, and her pouch of incense.
She stripped her bed of the bed linens and blankets, rolled them into a bundle. She took tinder and flint, candles and a lantern, her thick, warm boots, and an extra pair of shoes.
It took two trips to carry it all down and pack it into the wagon, and then Olwyn made a quick stop in her father’s room, stealing an old, ratty cloak, a long, threadbare nightshirt, and two pairs of thick woolen stockings. Rhys didn’t have much in the way of clothing; it was all she could find. But naked as the unconscious man currently was, these clothes would be better than nothing.
A trip to the kitchens yielded a loaf of bara brith she’d baked the day before, a wheel of cheese, some dried figs, and two sacks of nuts. She took the jar of honey and the tea, a rasher of bacon and a jug of water. Once she had everything loaded into the sides of the wagon, Olwyn covered her provisions with the tarps.
“Are you awake?” she whispered in English. “Can you talk?”
He slit his eyes for the briefest second, and she swore she saw fear in those blue depths.
Did looking upon her spark horror in him? Was she truly so hideous?
The keep didn’t have a looking glass, and Olwyn hadn’t seen her own reflection in anything more than a distorted glimmer in a bucket of water.
The villagers reviled her, but she’d hoped it was because they feared her a witch, not because she was truly deformed.
Well, be that as it may, she told herself. It mattered not. This beautiful man with the face of a prince and the form of a warrior was not in the wagon now because she hoped for his love. Doing the right thing would be its own reward.
Sparing a final pat on the bundled man who lay on a pallet between all the rations and supplies, she said, “Well, whatever may come, it’ll be better than your fate in the dungeon.”
Olwyn left him there once more, and went inside to deal with Drystan.
After making her preparations, she opened the door and found him on the cot. He had his back against the wall, his legs outstretched and casually crossed at the ankles. A smirk twisted his lips, and his watery eyes had an unusual sparkle in them.
“What are you up to, Drystan?”
“Not a thing, girl. Not a thing, and why should you be asking when it’s you holding a pistol at my head and me doing your bidding?”
Olwyn didn’t answer him, but instead handed over a bottle of Drystan’s beloved whiskey with a cup overturned on its neck. “Drink up.”
Drystan looked askance at her offering, trying for suspicion despite his own longing. He licked his lips like a man who’d just crossed the desert. “It’s not payday.”
“This’ll work better than tying you with ropes, Drystan, and will surely be more enjoyable for you. Go on. Drink up, and come tomorrow when you’re sober enough to pick open the lock, you’ll find a note on the kitchen table. Take it down to the dungeon and my father will read it for you. It tells the location of the key to my father’s cell.”
Drystan ran his tongue out again over lips that were already shining with saliva. “Well, if you’re forcing me, I’ve no choice at all.”
He reached out and took the bottle, filled the cup, and began to drink.
With Drystan’s drunken songs echoing through the keep, Olwyn left her home behind. Hoping she hadn’t forgotten anything vital, Olwyn jumped onto the driver’s board, lifted the reins, and gave Nixie’s back a hearty slap.
The wagon lurched into motion. She urged the horse to a quick clip.
Olwyn’s heart raced, her blood sang, and her spirits soared. She did not think of the risks involved. Those worries were for another day, another time, and she thought recklessly, another woman.
Right now, she was seizing her freedom, an emancipation from her father’s madness and a life that would never improve.
She wondered if her mother had felt that way, the night she left them all behind.
And creeping into her happiness and hopes was the question that her heart never stopped asking, and would never be answered: why had Talfryn abandoned her?
Sadness threatened to steal her optimism. There are, Olwyn reasoned, always ways to justify doing the right thing for oneself, to ignore the needs of others, and to find a way to make putting oneself first seem like the only rational thing to do.
But there was always a price to that, Olwyn knew.
Olwyn turned back and looked down on the tarp-covered wagon. She spoke aloud to the man who slumbered beneath it. “Whatever happens, know that I did my best.”
She faced front and urged the horse to pick up its pace. And refusing to let Talfryn’s abandonment ruin her excited anticipation for the future, Olwyn consulted her maps, looked to the horizon, drove the wagon south, and thought about freedom.
Chapter Three
Warwick, England
Mira Kimball watched discreetly out her parlor window, impatiently tapping her foot. She tried to focus on something besides her boredom, even toyed with the idea of painting a picture of the landscape.
The sky shone smooth and silver with clouds, the sun a watery gold smear behind tangled, bare trees. Warwick was lovely, stark and beautiful in the way only England can be on a cold winter’s morning.
She envisioned