The certainty did not make him feel better.
He found a path and followed it. When it forked, he continued right for a while and then stepped from it to trudge through the tangle of undergrowth. Eventually, he came to an oak, ancient and massive, its life flickering and failing, with a split in its trunk barely wide enough for the boy to squeeze through. Inside it was hollow, the floor littered with dried leaves, small bones and mice droppings. Filthy, but at least it offered some shelter from the cold. Dodinal wrapped his cloak tightly around him and sat with his back pressed against the wood, hugging himself and trying in vain to stem the rising tears.
He cried until he felt empty, as hollow as the tree.
A long time later, he slept.
When he awoke he was in the hut again, flat on his back on a scratchy straw mattress, looking up at the rafters. Grey light crept in through the smoke hole in the roof. The fire crackled steadily in its pit. Otherwise there was silence.
Dodinal frowned in groggy confusion. Had it all just been a bad dream, a nightmare so vivid it had felt real?
He raised his hands. They were the hands of a grown man, not a boy, etched with scars and with skin chafed from months of exposure.
It had been a memory, not a dream.
He remembered something else. Something far more recent. The boy in the forest, the wolves. His hand reached down to his right thigh and brushed against a thick wad of cloth. The wound throbbed but was nothing like as painful as it had been.
Still, he knew he was far from well. Every bone and muscle ached as if he had been beaten. He was burning with fever and reeked of sour sweat. It could have been worse. In the woods he had been certain he was going to die. Someone had obviously tended to him, but he had no idea who. He had no recollection of being brought here.
Wherever here was.
Exhaustion washed over him. He could not even lift his head. Just before he drifted back to sleep, he heard a rustle of movement and shuffling feet next to where he lay, and through half-closed eyes saw the boy from the woods staring down at him.
Then he surrendered to weariness and slept the dreamless sleep of the dead.
2The bulk of this chapter, and parts of chapters 4, 7 and 9, are drawn from the Lesser Dodinal rather than the Second Book;
THREE
Dodinal awoke to darkness. He had slept all day, if not days. Certainly he felt better than the last time he was conscious, when the boy had regarded him with those startling blue eyes. Now that seemed no more real than a dream. The fever had broken and the strength had returned to his limbs. But when he tried to sit up he had to bite on his lip to stop himself crying out. It seemed the wound in his leg was far from healed.
“Keep still,” a woman’s voice ordered. Firm hands pushed him down. He did not resist, sinking back into the rough, uneven mattress with a low groan.
He caught glimpses of the woman as she rearranged the furs he had disturbed attempting to get up. Questions crowded his mind, but he could not voice them. His throat burned as if he had swallowed an ember. He craned his neck to get a proper look at her, but she was busy tending to him and there was too little light to see clearly by.
“Try that again and you’ll make it worse,” she chided, but not unkindly. Her voice had a musical lilt to it. He had heard such accents before on his travels along the Welsh border but it seemed to him that hers was perhaps sweeter than most. “You’re on the mend, but you have a long way to go yet.”
When she was done she stood over him, then crouched down to take a closer look. Dodinal regarded her in return. Her hair was raven, her face thin, with high cheekbones and eyes of cornflower blue. She was, he concluded, rather beautiful.
“Y-you,” he croaked. He licked his parched lips and tried again but his throat was too tight. You’re the boy’s mother, was what he wanted to say. The woman nodded, either anticipating the question or merely offering a gesture of reassurance. Then she reached out and took one of his hands in both of hers. Her skin was soft and cool. A tingle ran down Dodinal’s spine; it had been a long time since he last felt a woman’s touch.
“Try not to speak. You were badly hurt. The fever has broken but it will have left you weak. Lay still. I will bring you something to drink.”
She left him. Dodinal closed his eyes. He cast his senses beyond the walls that enclosed him, seeing hounds and a pair each of oxen, sheep, pigs and chickens.3 Dodinal wondered how many people lived here, and how long they could survive if the storm did not lift soon.
The feast of Christmas was months past and Candlemas had been and gone. Spring should have arrived weeks ago. Dodinal had set out from Camelot in late winter, expecting the weather to have improved before he reached the borderlands, but he had been wrong. He could hear the wind gusting outside, and feel it rattle the walls.
The woman returned holding a steaming beaker. Dodinal’s nose wrinkled at the foul smell. Worse than gone-off meat. When she raised it to his lips, his stomach rebelled. He shook his head firmly.
“Drink,” she said. “You’ve been drinking it for the last three days, only you weren’t aware of it. Took me long enough to spoon it into your mouth as well. Come on, it’ll do you good.”
He hesitated, certain that anything that gave off such a noxious stench could do him nothing but harm, but the pain radiating from his mauled leg eventually convinced him it might be wise to do as he were told. He nodded reluctantly, and the woman pressed the beaker to his mouth and tilted it. Dodinal almost gagged as the warm liquid flowed over his lips. It tasted like water drawn from a stagnant pond that animals had wallowed and pissed in.
He had to fight back the urge to retch up every mouthful he swallowed. “Are you trying to poison me?” he gasped, once he had forced the last of it down. The words rasped painfully in his throat. Yet no sooner had he spoken than a warmth spread out from his belly, banishing the aches and pains from his body.
“Don’t be such a baby. It was just a simple infusion, nothing in it that would hurt you. Meadowsweet and yarrow and comfrey. Some mugwort too, and agrimony. All good for healing.”
Dodinal studied her, intrigued. It did not sound simple to him. “You’re a healer?”
She shook her head. “Not really. I just… when I was a girl I used to watch my mother. I learned without realising it.”
Dodinal sensed she was uncomfortable with the question.
She lowered her gaze and eased back the furs covering him. “Now I need to take a look at the wound. I think the worst of the infection has gone, but I have to be certain.”
It was the knight’s turn to feel discomfort. He tensed, not liking the idea of her hand on his thigh. He cleared his throat to object, but she shushed him. “It’s a bit late to be embarrassed,” she said. “Seeing as I’ve already washed the blood away, cleaned and stitched the wound and covered it with a poultice. And changed the poultice several times.”
With a heavy sigh, Dodinal tried to relax. She was right, of course, although that did not make him feel any less mortified as her cool fingers began to untie the cloth that held the poultice in place. It was only then he realised the lightweight clothes he wore were not his own, which meant the woman had stripped and dressed him too.
He almost groaned aloud.
“You have a name?” she asked.
“Dodinal. And you?”
“Rhiannon.”4 He liked the way she said it, with the R rolling so that the name flowed like water from her lips.
“Dodinal. That’s a strange name. Not from around here?”