The Oaken Door (The Lion of Wales Book 2) by Woodbury Sarah

Author:Woodbury, Sarah [Woodbury, Sarah]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: The Morgan-Stanwood Publishing Group
Published: 2015-04-24T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Five

14 November 537 AD

“You are well and truly out of your mind!” Ifan followed Nell down the hall towards Lord Cedric of Brecon’s quarters, a stack of logs in his arms for stoking the fire in Cedric’s room.

Nell glanced back at him, careful not to tip her tray of food and drink. “Am I? And what was your plan for getting Myrddin out of prison? A straight assault?”

They’d arrived at Rhuddlan in time to see Myrddin hauled away from Cedric’s table—and the protest, albeit slight, that engendered from Cedric—and then spent the rest of that night and the next day mingling among the lowlier members of the castle. They both spoke Saxon, Nell better than Ifan, but only Welsh had been required so far, which was engendering a quiet rage in Nell. Her people had done far more to betray Arthur than the Saxons ever could. Well, except for his looming death at the church by the Cam River.

“Better than all this sneaking around,” Ifan mumbled, not so low that she couldn’t hear him.

At the same time, he hadn’t protested more than that, and so far had not objected to her taking charge of this aspect of the endeavor. Clearly, she’d spent far too many years in the company of women, and her confidence was out of place in a castle run by men.

“You got us safely to Rhuddlan,” she said. “Trust me to manage this.”

Ifan had caught her coming out of her room back at Garth Celyn, dressed as a boy. At first, Ifan hadn’t recognized her, which was all to the good as far as she was concerned. Then he’d grabbed her arm and hissed, “What are you doing?”

“Going after Myrddin,” she said.

“Alone? Are you mad? Myrddin told me what happened at St. Asaph; what he’d arrived almost too late to stop. You’d risk that again?”

“Better than staying here and allowing him to go into danger alone,” Nell had said. “To die at Modred’s hands. I don’t—I don’t have a good feeling about this.”

That had brought Ifan up short. He’d looked at her, suspicious. Nell gazed back. Unfortunately, it was no less than the truth, although as always, not all of it. Myrddin went off on his own all the time. The difference today had been her dream last night. Frighteningly, instead of dreaming as Myrddin as she always had, she’d watched the battle from above, looking down on the king’s death. Myrddin wasn’t even there. Nell’s breath had caught in her throat at what that might mean.

And yet, she’d told Ifan more of the truth than she liked to admit. Her visions of Arthur’s death took her only so far. Sometimes she simply had a feeling that she should do something, or that something wasn’t right—as if she could sense the currents and emotions of the people around her and they all added up to a conclusion that she couldn’t explain. She’d felt that way in the first moments of Wulfere’s attack on her convent. To her regret, she hadn’t felt it when she’d left her sisters alone in the barn.

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