Her wounds stung as her aunt pressed a wine-soaked cloth to them. Then Gwyn opened her bag and the fragrance of herbs mingled with the smells of blood and wine.
“You made a poultice?” said Kaetha.
“We don’t want contagion to set in.”
“You’ll treat Aedan too?”
“Of course.”
The soft mass of cooling herbs gave Kaetha momentary relief but the pain soon crept back again. Gwyn bound the poultice in place with layers of cloth around her torso. “Keep it on until tomorrow if you can,” she said, helping Kaetha to dress in new garments she retrieved from her bag. “I wish I had something to give you for the pain.”
“It will ease.”
Her aunt lowered her voice. “It grieves me that I have also been the cause of pain for you, Kaetha. I’m sorry for that.”
A lump rose in Kaetha’s throat. “You lied to me about who I am.”
“For your sake, I did.”
“For my sake?” She shook her head in confusion.
Gwyn paused. “Long ago, after your mother and I fled the wars in the Edonian lands, Queen Donella persuaded King Alran to offer us his protection. He wanted to appear to treat Edonian refugees well. If he did not, those sympathetic to our old cause might rise up against him. So we lived well, first at court, then at Feodail Hall, bequeathed to us by Queen Donella. But our oaths of loyalty were not enough for him to trust us. Our movements were watched, our servants questioned, any correspondence monitored. Of course, we were not free to marry according to our own will either.”
Kaetha took some time to let this new view of her guardians’ lives settle in her mind. “What do you mean by ‘our old cause’?” she asked.
Gwyn did not answer at first and Kaetha wondered how much she still wanted to keep from her. Then Gwyn looked her in the eye and spoke in hushed tones. “I meant the reclaiming of Edonian ancestral lands.”
“He was scared of you marrying someone who might plot against him,” said Kaetha.
“Or of us producing offspring who would grow up to be a threat to him and his dynasty. Much better for him if we didn’t marry at all or married Dalrathans of his choice.”
Kaetha blinked, taking this in. Gwyn and her mother had lied about who she was because the fact of her existence went against King Alran’s will. But what kind of threat could she have been to him? Then she thought of the power she carried within her, the embers that waited ready to flare up and burn at any moment and she pictured the burnt face of King Alran’s son Svelrik. Perhaps Alran had been right to prepare for a threat; it just wasn’t the kind he had imagined.
Gwyn turned her back to Kaetha as she prepared a bowl of fresh wine and retrieved clean cloths from her bag, ready for treating Aedan’s wounds. “Despite his queen’s assurances,” she continued, “it seems he suspected we were born of one of the ruling clans, one that might, given time, gain the strength to rise up against him. But the Trylenn’s, though we had been lairds and ladies of a small settlement for some generations, were no family to be of threat to a Dalrathan king.”
“I understand why others couldn’t know who I was. But you didn’t need to keep on lying to me as if I was a child who might tell anyone. You should have trusted me, been honest with me. Don’t you understand how much it hurt that you didn’t?” Her old pain resurfaced – that sharp feeling of rejection. “I had a right to know who I was. You talk of King Alran controlling your life but what have you tried to do to mine? Both you and my mother.”
Gwyn sighed, her back to Kaetha still. “I did what I thought was for the best. I’m not asking for you to forgive me.” She faced Kaetha then, her eyes rimmed red. “All I ask is that you understand that all I did, I did out of love.” She reached into her bag and pulled out a thin roll of fabric. Neat stitching showed through at the edge. “She loved you so much too, you know. She would have told you the truth sooner had I not convinced her it was unwise. Here, I thought you’d like to have something of hers.” She placed the fabric in Kaetha’s hands. “It’s the embroidery she was working on. I thought that, someday, you might want to pick up the threads.”
Kaetha unrolled the piece of sewing. It bore an array of images in colourful threads – Edonian symbols, Dalrathan letters, faces that held familiarity in their careful stitches – all floating in a dreamlike arrangement, as the mind drifts from one thought to another. Unable to speak, she held the fabric tenderly as she followed her aunt back into the main room.
After Gwyn had treated Aedan’s wounds, Ewan brought down food and Kaetha’s mouth watered at the smell of meaty stew and fresh baked bread. Yet she sat a long while without eating, twisting a spoon in her hand as she sat on the floor at her father’s feet, gazing up at the patch of cloud through the high window.
“They’ll be here,” said Aedan. He couldn’t sit still and was clearly just as worried as she was. “We’ll soon be all together again.”
But what then? she thought. Her escape must have left Svelrik humiliated. Soon word of what had happened would spread. He would surely be more anxious to find her than look for her father, she realised.
