Caitlyn Box Set Read online

  Caitlyn

  The Complete Series

  Elizabeth Davies

  Copyright © 2018 Elizabeth Davies

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This story is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places and incidents are invented by the author or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any similarity to actual persons or events is purely coincidental

  The author asserts the moral rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior consent of the author, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  Acknowledgements

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  Table of Contents

  Three Bloody Pieces

  A Stain on the Soul

  Another Kind of Magic

  Three Bloody Pieces

  Chapter 1

  My husband lay at my feet in three bloody pieces, his torso severed from left shoulder to right hip. The third piece was his head.

  With lips curled back in a rictus of agony, eyes rolled up in their sockets, and skin spattered with clotted blood, he bore little resemblance to the man I wed three years earlier. His dented helm displayed a disabling, rather than a killing blow, and I guessed Llewellyn ap Seisyll must have taken him alive. I prayed that my husband hadn’t lived as long as I suspected, for no single, clean sword stroke had ended his life. Rhain had been hacked apart, savagely butchered.

  Most of the blood must have drained from him where he fell, but much still coated his skin and clothes in a sticky, black tar. The burlap sacks from which he had been upended lay in a sodden dark pile on the floor of the great hall.

  No one uttered a sound after those first horrified gasps. The hall was unnaturally silent. What remained of his people – women, children, old men, and those too sick to fight – ringed my husband’s body, drawn to the hideous sight.

  I swallowed down bile. Though I was no stranger to butchering pigs or sheep and well used to blood and entrails, yet the sight of a man – my man – reduced to meat and offal twisted my gut, and my mind.

  ‘His sons?’ I asked.

  ‘Dead. All dead. We had to leave them on the battlefield.’ Idris was moon-pale beneath the splatter and streaks of blood on his face, and I hoped none of it was his own. His voice shook, the usual booming tones replaced by an old man’s quaver, though he was not yet forty. His mortal blow had not been to his flesh, but to his soul. I sent a silent prayer for my husband’s dead heirs.

  ‘If you intend to bury him, you must do it swiftly. Seisyll is barely half a day behind us. He will be here by nightfall,’ Idris warned.

  Rhain deserved a Christian burial in hallowed ground and with a proper ceremony. The most he would get would be a few hasty words spoken over a shallow grave and my hurried, panicked tears.

  ‘Dig a hole,’ I instructed, stuffing my trembling hands into the folds of my skirt.

  Rhain’s lieutenant bowed his head, acknowledging my leadership for the present. My husband’s men were now my men, what was left of them, for most had either perished or fled.

  I followed Idris outside, shouting orders. God forgive me, but there was so much to do. Mourning Rhain would have to wait until we were safe.

  ‘Gather only what you need, we must travel light,’ I called to the wives, mothers, daughters, and sisters of Rhain’s fallen warriors. They hurried to do my bidding, ashen-faced and frantic, knowing full well what capture meant. They, too, would do their grieving later. At least I had a corpse to bury. The rest of our dead had been left to rot where they fell, on some distant battlefield.

  Late afternoon already, the sun was on the downward slide to the western hills, and Idris had predicted Seisyll’s arrival before the sun set. I spent a few precious moments watching my people run hither and thither, as they rounded up the chickens running free inside the palisade, rushed to fetch whatever livestock were pastured close by, and loaded carts with the necessities of survival. A boy, no older than five years, used a stick to guide a fat sow towards one of the carts, her little, striped piglets trotting at her heel.

  Idris stood at my elbow, his son, Cai, behind him. I did not dare ask after Tan. Idris’ face told me all I needed to know about the fate of his eldest.

  ‘We have too few horses,’ he said. ‘Cai, make sure there is enough room on the carts for the elderly and the sick. The rest will have to walk.’

  Cai nodded. The few good beasts we possessed had carried our men into battle and most had likely been taken by the enemy. They, at least, would be treated well. A decent horse was a prize indeed.

  ‘Will we have a sufficient head start?’ I asked. The slow nature of our flight would not compare to the speed of a raiding party.

  Idris scanned the surrounding hills. ‘Maybe.’

  ‘And if we do not?’ I persisted.

  ‘We pray.’

  I turned to face Rhain’s second-in-command, forcing him to look at me. Dried blood daubed his forehead, and a gash on his cheek stained the gold hairs of his beard a deep claret.

  ‘Then we shall have to make a stand,’ I said.

  ‘What with? Old men with their bent backs and arthritic knees? Women with a babe in their arms?’

  ‘But he might catch us on the road!’

  ‘He might,’ Idris agreed.

  I wanted to slap him, and his matter-of-fact attitude.

  ‘You know full well Seisyll will sack Llandarog. His men will kill, and rape, and do God knows what else to anyone left,’ he said.

  ‘He will do the same, if he catches us on the road,’ I pointed out.

  ‘Then we must not let him catch us, and we are back to praying that he doesn’t. Get them moving. Now!’ he shouted to the line of carts. The first was almost ready to go. A few more sacks and a barrel were loaded and a woman, scarcely older than I, climbed aboard and took the reins. Her three children scrambled up after her. An infant was strapped to her back. She took one last look, lifted her chin, and they were off.

  A querulous voice behind me said, ‘The grave is dug, my lady, though it is a shallow one.’

  I nodded my thanks to the old man. He held the shovel across his body, his hands grimed and callused, and he looked as though he wanted to brain Seisyll with the business end of the spade.

  I returned to the hall, Idris at my side. I had my own packing to do and a husband to bury. Panicked voices had replaced the earlier silence, anxious, darting looks had been replaced by horrified blankness, as my home was stripped bare. A serving woman piled the few treasures I possessed on a table and stuffed them into a pair of saddlebags.

  Idris signalled to one of the few men to have returned alive, and the soldier limped forward, the wound on his leg wrapped in a soiled length of cloth.

  ‘Fetch a board,’ he commanded. The man turned awkwardly and went in search of something suitable.

  It took three of them to wrench the hall door from its hinges. They placed it on the floor next to Rhain’s body. I averted my gaze as Idris and his son lifted Rhain’s remains and
placed them on the board, arranging them so he looked more like a man, and less like three pieces of carrion.

  Cai’s shoulders were slumped, his face white and creased with fatigue. His first battle had not been kind to him, but at least he had escaped with his life, unlike his brother. The other men had fared little better and every one of them bore a wound.

  Someone thrust a bucket into my numb hands. Water sloshed over the sides, dampening the hem of my workaday woollen dress. I had planned to have the floor rushes changed and one of last year’s lambs slaughtered in preparation for Rhain’s triumphal feast. I had also planned on wearing a new gown and braiding my hair with the last of the late-flowering primroses, before taking my man to bed to celebrate his win on the battlefield.

  Biting back a moan of anguish, I followed Rhain’s men as they carried him towards the only stone building for miles around, the tiny chapel behind the keep. A false sanctuary, for nothing could protect us now.

  The hard flagstone floor sent twinges through my knees as I knelt beside my husband’s corpse, Rhain’s sightless eyes staring at the ceiling with dull indifference. I closed them with shaking fingers, and tried to keep my own gaze on his face and away from those ragged, raw wounds which comprised the rest of him.

  Dipping a rag into a pail, I wrung it out and sponged the blood from Rhain’s brow, swallowing hard. The head lay on its side and I had to grasp his hair to keep it steady. The water turned red at the first dip of the cloth, and after several rinses, I called for fresh.

  By the time I had finished preparing my husband for his shroud, my hands were reddened, chapped, and sore, my back ached from bending, and bolts of pain shot through my knees. Feeling more like seventy-years-old than twenty-three, I had spent longer than was wise on the last earthly task I could perform for my husband. I didn’t want these final few moments with him to end.

  Oh, my love, look what they did to you.

  A hole in my chest where Rhain had once lived blossomed, eating at my heart. I hadn’t loved this man when I had first been given to him in marriage, but I had grown to care for him since.

  Surprised to see how dark it had become, I glanced about me. My husband’s face had become less clear, as if a candle had dimmed and guttered. The shadows lengthened, creeping nearer in the gloom. Had night fallen already? I couldn’t have been here so long surely, and anyway, Idris had insisted we needed to leave before nightfall.

  The pictures of the saints, which were painted with such skill and devotion onto the white-washed walls of the chapel, grew indistinct and I had an awful thought it was my sight which was fading, not the day. I could hardly see Rhain, yet his head rested mere inches from my knees. Was I going blind?

  I felt for his hand and curled my fingers around his, the skin cold, the flesh stiff. Underneath the coppery tang of blood and the stink of death, lay a faint aroma of thyme, reminding me of my mother’s herb garden. The scent grew stronger, tickling my nose, and I sneezed. The church darkened further and if not for the daylight sliding under the door, I might have thought night had fallen already.

  The smell of thyme invaded my mind, coating the inside of my mouth and nose, the strength of it making me sick and dizzy.

  Someone, or something, was in the church with me. I was certain of it.

  ‘Hello?’ My voice sounded thin and high.

  I could no longer see Rhain, though I gripped his hand hard. I imagined his body stirring, coming back to hideous life, his eyes opening, to reveal a gaze full of malicious and evil intent. I wanted to run, but I was as wooden as the carving of Christ behind the altar. I waited in dread anticipation for my dead husband to return my grip.

  No, it was not Rhain I sensed, not the man I loved, but someone else. Something else. It reached out of the darkness, searching, hunting. Something not of this world; something evil, something old. I sensed its yearning. It wanted me. It would devour me whole and nothing would be left, not even my soul. I whimpered as an unnamed dread stripped me of my wits, and I shrank back, trying to hide, breathing in panting little gasps, my heart beating so fast I thought it might burst.

  The weight of its gaze crushed me as eyes, as black as Hell, opened, seeking. Old eyes, filled with a terrible dark glee and elation; a woman’s eyes, awash with ancient magic and greedy need. They hung in the darkness, hovering in front of my face.

  They weren’t real, they couldn’t be real, not in this house of God.

  Are you the one?

  The thought wasn’t mine, and terror iced my heart. It reverberated like an evil church bell in my head, tasting of Satan and dead things. It was a woman’s voice. A scream lodged unuttered in my throat, but the speaker heard my soundless cry of anguish anyway. The pupils sparkled with amusement.

  Come to me, missy. Come. A faint cackle, more felt than heard, rumbled through my soul.

  The malevolent scrutiny ceased. The owner of those terrible eyes turned away and the terror which bound me loosened. She retreated, fading back into whatever depths had spawned her and I wilted with relief.

  She was gone.

  A shadow loomed in the doorway. Leri, Rhain’s eldest daughter, stood watching. I took a deep breath, blinked the lingering images away, and grabbed the linen sheet to drape over what remained of her father.

  ‘It is your fault,’ she said, not taking her gaze off the figure on the floor.

  ‘How can you lay the blame at my feet?’

  ‘If you had not wed him, my father would still be alive,’ Leri said, her comely face hardened by grief and hatred.

  The feeling of being watched was hard to shift. Those eyes hid in my mind, jumping out at me every time I blinked, and I glanced nervously around the chapel.

  ‘You know I had no choice in the matter of a husband,’ I answered after a pause to collect my scattered wits. ‘I married the man my father chose. It will be…’ I swallowed, ‘it would have been the same for you.’

  Would have.

  I said, ‘Do you really think Seisyll would have stayed his hand if Rhain had taken another for a wife? It is Rhain’s lands he covets, not me. He aims to make all of Wales his.’

  He had started with Gwynedd, and he’d had to kill my father and the rest of my family to do so. He would not stop at Deheubarth.

  ‘Seisyll could marry you now, and he would have claim to my father’s lands,’ Leri said.

  I almost laughed at the suggestion. ‘He will not marry me. Why bother, when he can simply take what he wants? He is more likely to kill me on sight for my threat to his stolen sovereignty.’

  ‘My father only married you because you were the daughter of King Aeddan. He had no other reason.’

  ‘Of course that was the reason.’ Did this child think me so naive or stupid to believe it was a love match? Our marriage had cemented ties between Gwynedd and Deheubarth. Now Seisyll had taken one kingdom and was well on the way to claiming the other.

  ‘My father would never have married you if he knew you were barren,’ she said.

  That old chestnut? Leri certainly picked her time to revisit old hurts. Her malice hung in the air like smoke from a damp wood fire, but pity for this girl-woman pricked my heart. With her mother dead in child-bed, and her father and her four elder brothers now slaughtered, no wonder she was bitter, though that failed to explain why she never liked me.

  ‘No, he would not have married me,’ I agreed. ‘No man would, and the sorrow is mine. With every passing month, I mourn my failure to quicken with child.’

  She huffed, staring at the flagstones, and wrapped her arms tight around her girlish chest. I thought she might be trying to hold back sobs.

  ‘Three years of being ploughed and you have nothing to show for it,’ she sneered. ‘You are no true woman and I am glad you are barren.’ For one of such tender years to be filled with so much vitriol made my soul ache. ‘It would be one more thing for Seisyll to slaughter,’ she added.

  She was right. Babes were not meant for running and hiding.

  ‘It is time.’
Idris and three other battle-worn men crowded the doorway. ‘Please, Lady Caitlyn, we must hurry.’

  Idris’ face was cleansed of blood, though he looked worse now than when he had upended those sacks and tipped a dead king onto the floor of his own hall. His face white and pinched above his beard, Idris was somehow less than the man I knew him to be. I couldn’t imagine how it must have been for him in the thick of battle, the horrors he had seen, the things he had done, and what he had lost.

  Four warriors carried my husband to the little graveyard behind the church, one man at each corner of the board. The rest of his people were too busy stuffing their belongings into sacks, to think of their dead lord. I wasn’t immune to the need for haste, so I sent a boy to tack up my horse and load the saddlebags. As soon as Rhain was below ground, I intended to lead his people away.

  The afternoon sun dipped lower, glinting off the golden heads of Rhain’s five daughters and sole surviving son. A servant carried the youngest on her hip, the child who Rhain’s first wife had died giving birth to; a sickly boy of four years, if he had to spend too much time on the road he wouldn’t live to see his next birthday.

  ‘Where is the priest?’ I expected to see him at the graveside.

  ‘He bolted when the first report of defeat reached us,’ one of my women said, her lips twisted in disgust. ‘And took with him the few treasures the church possessed.’

  Should I say the prayer? I looked about me in consternation.

  Idris put a hand on my arm and stepped forward, prepared to do yet another duty for his fallen liege lord.

  A bunch of drooping flowers were thrust in my hand, and I forced a smile at my serving woman. Bluebells were the epitome of new life and spring, but as I placed them on the rough mound of bare soil covering Rhain’s remains, I knew the delicate blooms would forever remind me of those three bloody pieces and the terrible change they had wrought. For me, for all of us, life would never be the same again.