Nan (Welsh Blades, #2.5) by Elizabeth Kingston

Author:Elizabeth Kingston
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Elizabeth Kingston
Published: 2019-01-29T00:00:00+00:00

Farewell

In a few weeks more, we left on the long journey to Morency. It was not a large party that had come with Gwenllian and Lord Ranulf, and most of them were men. They were a fighting force more than anything, quiet and watchful, disciplined like they were part of an army. I supposed they were that, in a way, and their serious aspect was because as we travelled they guarded the two little heirs to Morency who had come as well.

In the yard before we left I said my farewells and it was harder than I’d thought it would be. I’d only been there less than a year, but it felt the most like a home since the weaver’s kitchen, where Ida had filled my hands with work and my belly with food. And even in Ida’s kitchen I hadn’t made friends like at Dinwen. Catrin pinned my new warm cloak about me, telling me that if I kept my hands hidden from view then no one would ever believe I’d scrubbed a floor in my life. She didn’t say she’d miss me, but she gave me a quick hard hug and I saw her wiping tears from her eyes as Hawys pressed a sack filled with apples and cheese into my hands. “A good girl,” she said in her broken English to me as she gave my hair a stroke. Then she gave a kind of blessing in Welsh which I only half-understood, but it sounded like a song, the way the words rocked together. I think of Hawys still, every time I sight a distant target, because she tended my bloodied eye so well and who knows if without her I’d even see from it?

Robin stood waiting while my goodbyes were being said. He had it in his head that he must be the last to give me farewell wishes, the last to clasp my hand, like it meant I would remember him longer than the rest if he managed it that way. So first I made my courtesy to Lord Robert, who said he knew we’d meet again soon and that I would do well at Morency. I could see the urge in him, so I dared to take his hand and lift to it my chin, guide it in giving it a little chuck, and ended with a shy smile from me and a great wide one from him. Lady Eluned would not let me bend my knee to her for more than the barest instant. She pulled my hood over my hair and kissed both cheeks. Then she took one of my hands to her heart and pressed her other hand to my cheek and said, “Be bold, and grow strong. Remember.”

We had said our true farewell the night before. I had come to show her my new dress, modest and plain but very well made – never the sort of thing a serving girl would usually wear. I’d washed, too, even my hair, and she said the gold of it was more pure than any she’d ever seen.

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