Page 49 of The Ladies Least Likely
They drove along a rutted track eastward, with wooded hills rising to the north and tidy farms to the south, dotted with barns and houses. He insisted on driving and she, after walking around the trap to study its wheels and construction, had accepted. Now she reached out and broke a blossom off a hedge crowding the narrow lane. The hawthorn was in bloom, along with the apple trees and everything else. The season of rebirth, it was.
“I was thinking how scenic this countryside is,” Pen said. “I hear Wales spoken of often for its beauty. And its wildness.”
He felt comfortable with her, jostling side by side in the small trap. She wore what he recognized as her one good gown, the redingote riding dress, with the delicate blonde lace that Mother Morris had carefully mended. Her woolen shawl protected her skirts from the dust of the road, but not all of her ash-brown curls consented to stay pinned beneath her bonnet. With her refined features and elegant figure she had the kind of beauty that would capture attention in court and the ballrooms of the great—somehow he knew that, without recalling how he had any knowledge of the doings of the great, much less royalty. Yet she seemed happiest in the open air, unfettered by so-called courtesy or custom.
“It’s the most beautiful land God ever made. That,” she pointed to the forested hills to the northeast, “is Coed Gwent, the great and ancient forest of the kingdom of Gwent. The English call it Wentwood. Its lords have been doing their best to whittle the trees down for their ironworks, and it’s said that the Royal Navy prefers Welsh oak for its battleships.”
Pen’s neck prickled at the mention of the Royal Navy. That meant something to him. But she was still chattering, her arm pointing due north. “Had we followed the river we’d come to Caerleon, a center of trade for the Silures long before the Romans came and built their fort. The amphitheater and baths are still standing. St. Cadog built a church there, and Geoffrey of Monmouth said it was Arthur’s capital, home of the Round Table.”
She paused, turning the hawthorn blossom around in her hands before she handed it to him. “Cromwell’s troops camped on Christchurch Hill before they came down and destroyed Newport Castle. It was never rebuilt after, which is why it looks as you saw it.”
She was making another sly dig about English destruction in Wales, no doubt. But she was also showing him how much she knew, and cared about, this land. She might not choose to come with him when he left. His throat tightened at the thought.
“What am I to do with this?” he asked.
She smiled. “Eat it. Best while the leaves are young and before the flower buds have opened.”
Cautiously he put the sprig in his mouth. No one in his life, he thought, besides Gwenllian ap Ewyas, would ever encourage him to eat roadside shrubbery. Of course, no one else in his life knew the plant was edible.
She laughed at his expression. “Nutty!” he exclaimed. “Surprisingly good. How did you know you could eat it?”
“Much of what’s around you is edible, Pen. In fact, on our way home tomorrow, we’ll stop to gather. That’s chickweed, good for treating a variety of ills, and tasty in salads. The gorse flowers are delicious and make good wine. And I want to harvest the ramson, the wild garlic, before the flowers have died. It can flavor most anything.”
“And ward off vampires, I’ve heard.”
She laughed. “Vampires are for European countries. We have the Gwrach y Rhibyn, the hag who waits at the crossroads. She’ll drink the blood of your children unless you keep them close.”
She fell silent and fingered the lace at her throat. He glanced at her delicate fingers, the slender line of her neck, then away. The urge to be foolish and kiss her again was strong upon him, but he wasn’t sure she would welcome his embrace in the light of day. She’d been vulnerable that night in the kitchen, as she never had before, but today she was calm, poised, self-possessed.
She didn’t flirt with him as did virtually every other woman he encountered. She didn’t cast out lures or try to entrance him merely for the sake of conquest. He had the awful sense that when she regarded him with her clear, steady eyes, as she was doing now, she saw deep inside him.
And he wasn’t certain there was much of anything to show there.
“How did you learn it all? How to forage, I mean.”
Her eyes clouded and she looked away. “My mother taught me first. I don’t think we were poor, for our house was pleasant, built of wood and a tiled roof, not mud and thatch. But she used everything around us. Then, at Vine Court, the housekeeper knew herbs, and there was a cunning woman nearby who made remedies that had been handed down to her. Not written but taught, woman to woman, for centuries, much like the bards and ancient druids learned their verses.
“And then when I was—on my own, and had no way of earning food, I learned by trial and error what around me I could eat.” She broke off a hawthorn blossom for herself and popped it in her mouth. “It helps us now, at St. Sefin’s. When we are able to find our own food.”
Her little community, living half-wild in the abandoned shell of a medieval religious house, on the edges of a society that hadbroken them. And he had found himself, unaccountably, fitting in. Best not to examine why.
“I thought cunning folk were witches,” he said.
She frowned. “The priests like to call them witches. And burn them for it. I fear what is lost when learned men and their instruments of torture come to take from the simple folk. And to what purpose?”
Hewas one of those, Pen thought. The men who came with guns and fire to force others to their will. His nightmares told him that.
She had saved his life, but he did not see how she could come to care for him. He was too different, foreign in more ways than just being English. He’d never been taught what she knew. And he feared that, when in the past he’d had the chance to help another or advance himself, he’d advanced himself, every time. She couldn’t love that.
He cleared his throat. When had his thoughts grown so foolish as to turn to love? He’d been thinking of kissing her, of peeling off the lace and the woolen shawl and the outdated gown and browsing on the treasures beneath. None of which had aught to do withlove.
“When did you learn to harp?”
“Ah, my mother played. She had a smalltelynin our house. I brought it with me when I went to the Suttons. Anne’s mother let me sit in on her lessons, and I liked to play, and was told I had some skill at it. So when they turned me out, I took the harp with me. I imagined, at the time, Daron would find us a house of our own, and I would set up like a lady.” She fell silent for a long moment. “In any event, I learned I could play for the occasional meal or coin. I am no Marged ferch Ifan, though.”
“Who?” Pen pulled their trap aside to let a farmer pass with a wagonload of straw. The farmer touched the brim of his cap, and Pen returned the gesture.
“Queen of the Lakes, they called her. She lived in the north. It was said she could shoe a horse, make a boat, play the harp and the violin. And she could out-wrestle any man.” She sent him a sly, mischievous smile.
