Dafydd and Brynach glanced back, checking on the stranger with a practiced look, assessing the possible danger. Rhiannon saw Brynach place his hand on the knife he had beneath his jacket.
‘Do nothing with haste!’ she told him. ‘We are but shepherds fetching winter supplies.’
‘Does he wear the king’s colours?’ Brynach asked her.
Rhiannon could not be certain. Now that he was much closer she could see the rider wore chain mail beneatha tabard and a crest on his shield, but she recognised neither colour nor heraldry.
‘Treat him as friend, but speak only if you must,’ she hissed back, unable to say more as the rider had come within earshot.
He looked at Rhiannon and slowed his horse further, so that it walked but a few paces from her. The stallion’s coat gleamed with sweat from a long journey, but was not distressed or fatigued. The rider leaned forward and patted its arched neck, encouraging it to be calm and walk at a resting pace. Under the stranger’s gaze Rhiannon felt yet more aware of her dreary clothes and dowdy appearance. It was a long while since she had been in the company of a young man, there not being any her own age at Blaencwm. She had not ever thought to miss the attentions of the prospective suitors her father had found for her, but now she realised there was something else she had lost when they had fled to the hills. She had put aside that part of herself that was a woman in her youth. She had become a member of the settlement, and a pupil to Mamgi,She had forgotten what it was to feel the quickening of the pulse when in the company of an attractive, attentive man.
‘Good morning to you, mistress,’ said the stranger, his voice low and lilting, betraying traces, Rhiannonbelieved, of a Welsh ancestry. This thought pleased her, and allowed her to lower her guard just a fraction. The Norman king preferred to gift his newly won lands to other foreigners. He was not known for his allegiances withCymry. And yet here was clearly a man-at-arms, and there was no way of telling in whose employ he rode.
By way of reply she merely inclined her head and lowered her eyes.
The rider tried again.
‘Do you travel to market?’ he asked, nodding at the fat, fidgeting lambs secured onto the back of the cart.
Rhiannon raised her eyebrows then, looking directly at him. ‘Why no,’ she said, keeping her face as serious as she was able, ‘I take them to their dancing lessons, for their steps are shockingly clumsy.’
The rider’s eyes widened and he smiled. Rhiannon noticed how much his features were softened by their new arrangement, making him far less fierce-looking.
‘By my oath, I would have the name of any maid clever enough to teach a lamb to dance. Will you not give it me?’
She silently chided herself for falling into conversation with the man. It would surely have been safer to effect a coldness and not speak with him at all. But it was too late for that tactic now. She hesitated, weighingup her options, and then said simply. ‘Rhiannon. My name is Rhiannon.’
The rider nodded, waiting, saying no more, but evidently expecting it. When she did not speak further he pushed his horse on so that he was riding beside the cart and close enough to her that she could have reached out and touched him. After another moment he asked. ‘Will you not have my name from me, Rhiannon?’
Hearing him speak aloud her new identity sent a shock of delight through her, in part due to her owning that new version of herself, and in part due to the way her name, without any formal title attached to it, sounded in his voice.
‘If you insist on giving it,’ she answered, unable to suppress the smile she felt building inside her. ‘Pray, who are you, sir?’
He stood in his stirrups then so that he was able to remove his helmet from his head and make a low bow. As he straightened up he said, ‘On this blessed sunny morn made all the more beautiful by your presence, I am your servant, my lady, a simple man-at-arms who seeks only to protect and serve, and my name is Edmund Meredith Tudor.’
London 2019
Tudor had not been home more than an hour when he heard the familiar tread of his ex-wife’s heels as she advanced down the wooden gangway. One of the advantages of living on a houseboat on the Thames was that visitors had to make the walk along the boards to where the house was moored, so if the windows were open he could hear them coming. One of the disadvantages was that there was no back door to slip out of to avoid unwanted guests. And this one, an angry Melissa, he could have done without.
‘Rhys? Rhys, you in there?’ She was just about the only person alive who still called him by his first name. She hammered on the door.
With a sigh, he opened it.
‘Good evening, Melissa, what can I do for you?’ he asked, even though he already knew the answer all too well. He had dropped Emily off before returning to the boat. Time enough for her to tell her mother about the trophy. And the attack.
Melissa pushed past, all classy suit and Dior, storming onto the boat and into the open plan living room space.Her heels continued to make fierce stabs, this time at the old polished wooden floor, causing Tudor to wince. Since the divorce, after leaving the family home, he had not had much interest in where he lived. Flats had been places to sleep, eat, keep necessary stuff. And then an uncle he didn’t even know he had died and left himThe Kingfisherand he finally had a place that mattered. The boat was small, a retired trawler, cleverly converted into a two berth house, with an enviable mooring in sight of Albert Bridge and across the river from Battersea park. It was worth a bit, but he knew he would never sell it. It was his way of dealing with the city; a part and yet apart. The engine still worked, thoughThe Kingfisherhad not moved for twenty plus years. Still, it gave him the sense he could cast off and let the river bear them away any time he wanted. Right now it seemed like an attractive idea, but not with a fuming Melissa on board.
‘You are one selfish son of a bitch!’ she declared, pausing in her striding to glare at him, hands on hips. ‘You knew how much that tournament meant to Emily, but could you keep your messy work business out of it? Just for one day put her first? Oh, no!’
She took a breath but he chose not to interrupt. Experience had schooled him.
‘And because it’syourwork, because it’syou, it’s not just people imposing themselves on her day, her time. No. Nothing so mundane. It’s people trying to bloody kill you! Tell me, how does it feel to know your sorry arse was saved by a fifteen year old girl?’
Tudor processed what she was asking. It was clear Emily had decided against saying just how much she herself had been at the centre of what happened. True, she had fought off the attackers. Less true was the idea that they were only after him. Which is what had been weighing heavily on his mind every mile of the journey back from Manchester. He walked over to the kitchen area and opened the fridge door, taking out a bottle of Bud. If his daughter had seen fit to shield her mother from the scariest detail of what had happened, he certainly wasn’t about to undo what she had done. After all, she was the one who had to live with Melissa.
‘Want one?’ he asked, holding up the beer.
‘No!’ she yelled. Then, ‘No,’ in a small voice, the fight suddenly gone out of her. The fear that had made her angry now sapping her strength. ‘What the hell happened, Rhys?’ she asked, sinking onto the old leather sofa.
