“Hello.”
He had not expected a response, and did not get one.
“We had a close call.” Dodinal kept his tone light and friendly, though he could do nothing about the rasp of his voice. He felt he should at least make an effort. “Just as well your people came along when they did, eh?”
Again, he might just as well have been talking to himself.
“Does his silence bother you?” Rhiannon asked, as if the child was deaf as well as dumb. Dodinal considered this possibility, then dismissed it when he recalled Owain hearing the wolves in the wood before he had. Or perhaps there had been another sense at work, one that Dodinal was familiar with. Intriguing.
“Not at all. But I should imagine he will get very bored very quickly, sitting there like that.”
“I won’t let him stay here long. I don’t think he believed you had made such a good recovery. Now he’s seen it with his own eyes, he can go back to his grandfather in the Great Hall. There are other children there. He will be better off with them than here, even if…”
She did not finish the sentence; there was no need. Dodinal could guess what the other children thought of the boy. It must be hard on him, he thought, feeling an unexpected flicker of pity as he remembered his own troubled childhood. Twice now, these strangers had invoked emotions he thought he was no longer capable of feeling.
Dodinal ate the meat and bread, but only picked at the rest of it. Berries and nuts were for birds and squirrels. He craved a platter of hot roast beef, bloody in the middle, dripping with fat, with bread to mop up the juices and a flagon of ale to slake his thirst. While he was forever restless in Camelot, constantly yearning for the wilderness, at least he had never gone hungry. He had wanted for nothing. Arthur had seen to that.
But Camelot was a long way from here and he was grateful for what he was given. Owain continued to study him while he ate, his eyes following Dodinal’s hand as it moved from the bowl to his mouth. While amused at first, he soon found it slightly disconcerting. There was plainly somethingoddabout the boy.
Rhiannon must have sensed this, for she suddenly announced she was taking Owain back to his grandfather. “Now you’ve seen for yourself your friend is on the mend, you can leave him in peace,” she told the boy as she wrapped his cloak around him and pulled on her own. “He still needs plenty of rest. Don’t worry, you’ll see him again.” She turned to Dodinal. “I’ll return soon.”
The knight picked a shard of nut from between his teeth. “Don’t feel as if you have to for my sake. Your place is with your son. You should spend your time with him, not with me.”
“I will, but later. First I want to clean the wound, perhaps apply another poultice. You look much better this morning; it’s obviously done you good. You might be up and about sooner than I thought.”
That prospect alone was worth any amount of foul-smelling muck smeared on his leg. Only a day had passed since the fever broke, and already he felt like tearing out his hair with boredom and frustration. He felt his spirits lift at the thought of moving on.
Rhiannon was likeable and caring and there was something about the son, his oddness notwithstanding, that Dodinal found strangely beguiling. Perhaps it was because they were both outsiders. But they were not a good enough reason to stay. He was not a part of their lives and had no interest in becoming one.
When Rhiannon returned she brought his clothes, folded and carried in a neat bundle in her arms, with his boots balanced on top. “All mended, as I promised,” she said as she stooped to place the pile at the end of the bed. That done, she took off her cloak and hung it up. “Not quite as good as new, but close.”
“You did this?” Dodinal said admiringly. The ripped leggings had been expertly stitched, likewise the tear in the front of his tunic where the wolf had leapt on him.
“Not me,” Rhiannon laughed. “There are women in the village who can work wonders with a needle and thread. Yes, I stitched your leg, that was straightforward enough. The rest I left to them.”
Dodinal frowned. “And my belongings?”
“You mean your sword? Don’t worry, it’s safe with Idris. I would have brought it with me, but I already had enough to carry and the ground is icy underfoot. It could have been dangerous.”
Dodinal nodded, placated for now. The sword was not just another weapon. “Very well. And my shield and pack?”
“I have not seen them and they have not been mentioned. You must have dropped them before Idris found you.”
“Damn,” he said softly. The shield he could live without, but losing the pack was a blow. It had contained the last of his store of dried meat, a hand axe to cut wood for shelter, some knives, and a flint and steel together with kindling to make fire, along with other oddments that had been of use. Without it, surviving the weather and wilderness would be an even greater struggle.
“I’m sorry,” Rhiannon said. “But there’s no chance of finding them, not now. The snow will have covered them and the tracks the men made bringing you here.” She hesitated. “For a wandering wild man, your clothes are well made.”
Her raised eyebrows asked a silent question that Dodinal did not answer. “You should turn around while I dress,” he said instead.
She crossed her arms and tilted her head to one side. “You can wait until after I’ve left, or better yet, when you have fully recovered. Now keep still while I see how that leg is coming along.”
Dodinal did as he was told. This time he felt no embarrassment as she uncovered the stitches and prodded the flesh around the wound. There was very little pain. “Very good,” she said. “I don’t see the need for another poultice. The swelling has almost entirely gone.” Her voice turned serious. “Do you always heal this quickly?”
“Hard to say. I have never been mauled by a wolf before.”
She ignored his attempt at levity. “There is something strange about you, Dodinal. You’re not like any man I know.”
“In what sense?”
“In every sense.”
When Dodinal made no reply, she did not question him further. Instead she busied herself retying the cloth, brought him a beaker of water and made sure there was enough wood on the fire. “I’ll leave you to rest. Sleep if you can. The shadows under your eyes tell me you are not yet fully recovered.”
He felt a sudden need to talk. “Stay a while.”
“That isn’t possible,” she said, with no hint of apology. “It was different when you were sick. Now you are awake, it wouldn’t be right for me to be here alone with you.”
So that was it. “Fair enough. The questions can wait.”
“I will bring food later. Owain wants to see you again.”
As she reached for her cloak Dodinal impulsively asked, “Where is the boy’s father?”
The question stopped her in her tracks. In the charged moment of silence that followed, Dodinal regretted blurting it out; he hadn’t wanted to cause offence. To his relief she smiled, a small, sad smile. “He died four years ago, when Owain was little.”
“I’m sorry.” It was the best he could manage.
“He was taken sick,” Rhiannon continued unprompted, looking at Dodinal with eyes that saw only the past. “It was nothing at first: he complained of feeling tired, and we thought nothing of it. Then he lost his appetite. If you knew Elwyn like I did, you would have known then that something was wrong.”
She sat on the bench and ran a hand through her hair. “The weight began to fall off him. So I gathered healing plants in the forest and persuaded him to eat them, which was no easy task. He was as big a baby as you.”
Again came that fleeting smile, and in it, Dodinal saw the great love that husband and wife had shared.
“But it made no difference. As the weeks passed he became weaker and weaker until he could not stand on his feet unaided. Owain was four then. Old enough to know that his father was ill, but too young to understand his father was dying.