Twelve
“BRIA.”
Hearing her name murmured on the breeze, Briallen turned to glance around. It was wash day again, and this time the women had brought all the girls along with them, from two-year-old Eseld all the way up to fourteen-year-old Talwynn. Even Dama Wynn had come to keep an eye on her daughters, daughters-by-marriage and numerous granddaughters as they did all the hard work of scrubbing in the flowing waters.
Drifts of brown, red and gold leaves covered everything, from the ones still clinging to the branches, to others rushing in the river. Autumn held Dumnonia in its colourful grip and as yet refused to surrender to winter, but there was a bite of cold in the cold water that promised the harsh season was gaining ground.
Having taken care of Dama and Sira Wynn’s things as well as her own, Briallen showed Ceri how best to clean the clothes from her small family. They were almost finished when the voice called from the shadows again.
“Briallen.”
This time she stopped scrubbing at Demairo’s muddy tunic and sat up, scanning the light-dappled shore. A movement drew her eye and she found Pedar waving at her. Once she’d spotted him he stepped back into the shadows again, no doubt wary of catching Rosen’s attention. He’d been home for five days and had spent most of them avoiding his wife.
Seeing that Ceri was busy having a water fight with her cousins under Talwynn’s careful eye, and realising that she’d run out of things to wash, Briallen stood up. Putting Demairo’s tunic in the basket with the other clean things, she dried her hands on her woollen dress and rolled down her sleeves. Then, unwrapping her braids from the crown of her head, she approached the shadows where Pedar was hiding.
“Can we talk?” he asked once she was close enough to whisper.
She glanced over her shoulder. Most of the washing had been done. The children were playing, the women were gossiping; no one would notice her absence. She ran her eyes over the cheerful group again, almost hoping someone would look up and see her, ask what she was doing, but no one did. She was free to slip away into the woods with Pedar, even though she didn’t really want to.
Ever since he’d come home, she’d known he wanted to speak to her and had done her best to avoid him. She wasn’t sure why entirely; she’d always liked Pedar, had seen a lot of him when Mewan was alive. Perhaps it was because she’d finally put certain pieces of her broken marriage together and glimpsed the true picture.
It wasn’t that she resented Pedar for the role he’d played in it, but she wasn’t sure she wanted to talk about it either. She simply did not know what to say to him, not now she thought she knew the truth.
Yet seeing him here – the haggard lines on his face, the shadows beneath his eyes – she couldn’t deny him either. So she sighed, nodded and followed him into the shadows of the wood. She owed him this much, owed it to Mewan too, and herself. There were things that needed to be said, that should have been said both before she was married and after, but Mewan wasn’t here to say them.
Typical. She almost smiled at the realisation that once again someone else was doing the hard work for her husband.
After a short, silent walk Pedar stopped and turned, and she knew this was as difficult for him as it was for her. The poor man looked liked he’d aged ten years since she’d last seen him, and suddenly it didn’t matter what he wanted to say.
“I am so sorry, Pedar, for your loss,” she murmured, opening her arms.
He stumbled against her, rested his head on her shoulder and wept. There was nothing else she could do but hold him, comforting the man who’d loved her husband far more than she’d realised. Probably more than she ever had herself. And, she had little doubt now, had been loved just as much in return. In ways she’d neither known nor understood.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Pedar whispered, shaking with his sobs.
“It’s all right,” she told him, stroking his hair as if he was a child. “It’s not your fault. You would have saved him if you could.”
“He fell. I thought he was playing, but he didn’t get up. He used to pull such tricks all the time, but I couldn’t wake him. I thought he was just playing. Until I rolled him over, until I saw –” The jumbled words came out in fits and sobs as he clutched her tightly, and Briallen’s heart went out to him.
Had he talked to anyone about this in the months since Mewan’s death? Or had he simply walked the moors, grieving and alone, without anyone to understand, anyone to hold him, to tell him they were sorry? At least she’d been here, surrounded by Mewan’s family, supported and comforted, even when she hadn’t wanted it. Pedar had had nothing but emptiness, blame and loneliness.
So she held him now. Some women might have hated him for what he’d done, for how he’d ruined her marriage. Except she knew Pedar, she liked Pedar, and she knew her husband too. It would have been Mewan’s idea to get married. He would have picked her by himself, making his decision without consulting anyone else. No doubt Pedar had argued, but Mewan had been strong-willed, far stronger than Pedar. There would have been no changing his mind.
“I told him not to do it,” Pedar murmured, shudders still running through him, though his sobs had eased and his tears slowed. “He should never have married you. It wasn’t right. I told him that you deserved better.” It was as though he’d read her mind.
Drawing back, cheeks damp, eyes red and full of guilt, he cupped her face in his weathered hands. “I told him it would be cruel. You were so sweet and pretty, so ready to fall in love. He enjoyed turning your head. It was such a great game to him. I was so angry. I left him behind. I told him he’d made his choice and he’d have to stick to it. You deserved nothing less.”
Briallen’s eyes grew watery at the remorse in his voice. Then she chuckled at a memory. “He was furious with you. Even though we’d just been married, he was all set to storm after you, but Sira Wynn came and spoke to him.” Her amusement faded at the thought of her husband being forced to remain by his young bride’s side.
“He didn’t deserve you, and you definitely didn’t deserve what he did. I’m sorry, Bria, so, so sorry. I – I didn’t mean to wreck your marriage, but I – I should have been stronger, should have made him stay. Should have told him no, that it was over, really over. Should have stopped things. I was – I was weak. I was always weak with him.”
His hands slipped from her face as he turned away, unable to look her in the eyes anymore, his shoulders hunched against anger and rejection. All Briallen felt was sadness. She touched his arm and put her other hand on his cheek, making him face her again.
“You loved him,” she said gently, without hesitation or doubt. It was all so clear now, all the signs she hadn’t seen.
“I – I –” He looked so guilty and apologetic, that Briallen smiled even through her tears.
“He didn’t deserve it.”
At last Pedar smiled, small and hesitant, but there nonetheless. “He was always good at getting things he didn’t deserve. Like marrying you.” His smile turned sad. “I’m so sorry, Briallen. Sorry I couldn’t let go. Sorry I couldn’t save him.”
“I’m sorry too,” she sighed. “But for you. I’m sorry you lost him, and that you had to hide. That you had to live this lie.”
He gave a gruff snort of laughter. “I was married to Rosen long before I knew Mewan. He was just a boy when my marriage began. I don’t know when that changed.”
“Mewan always got what he wanted.”
“Yes.” Pedar’s eyes filled with faraway memories, and he smiled at something only he could see. “Yes, he did.”
For the first time Briallen felt an uncomfortable pinch of kinship with Rosen. Mewan must have been about nine or ten years old when she’d first married Pedar, so perhaps for the first handful of years her marriage had been different. Perhaps it had worked then, perhaps Pedar had stayed at home more.
Then her little brother had grown up and seen something he wanted, and no doubt had gone after it with everything he had.
It was the same way he’d decided on Briallen as his bride. He’d pursued her relentlessly too, but with a different ending in mind.
“How could he have been so selfish?” she growled, suddenly furious not just over what Mewan had done, but that he was making her feel sympathy for Rosen.
“He didn’t break my marriage, Bria,” Pedar told her, voice low and sad. “Rosen and I were never right for each other, but she wouldn’t stop. I never planned to marry, it – it wasn’t anything I wanted, but she kept on and on and on, until I thought she’d hurt herself. She… she made it hard to refuse in the end, and I had no other plans in mind. I didn’t think it would hurt anyone. I never meant to hurt anyone. I was a wanderer when she married me, and if she expected things to change… I never promised her anything. I did my duty and we have the girls, but it was never supposed to be more than that. I told her that. I never lied to her.”
“Did she know?” Briallen had to ask. “About you and Mewan?”
He ran a hand through his dishevelled fair hair, now threaded with veins of silver, and turned away. “I don’t know. Rosen has always been good at ignoring things she doesn’t want to see, doesn’t want to admit to. Perhaps, perhaps not. She wouldn’t have accepted it, even if she’d known, but I always tried to be discrete. I never wanted to rub her nose in it.”
“Mewan must have made that hard at times,” Briallen said, remembering the way her husband and his sister had sniped at each other, the things he’d said behind Rosen’s back, and how Rosen had treated her when Mewan was away. It made her wonder if they’d always been that way, or if Pedar had driven them apart without ever meaning to. Poor Pedar, caught between two such powerful characters. “You never stood a chance.”
He laughed, a cracked sound of part humour, part resignation. “No, I didn’t. Against either of them. But I didn’t fight Mewan half as hard as I should.” The glance he shot her over his shoulder was full of shame.
Briallen stepped up beside him, resting a comforting hand on his back and her head against his shoulder. “We can’t choose who we love.”
“No,” he agreed softly, staring down at the little brook that bubbled past his feet, half-clogged with fallen leaves. “I wish he’d been able to love you, though. You would have been so good for him.”
The sincerity in his voice pinched at her heart, and part of her – the young, bright, hopeful bride she’d once been – felt a flash of joy at his words. The rest of her was older and wiser and knew far too much truth to want them.
“He would have been no good for me,” she said, without a hint of pain. Thinking about Mewan didn’t hurt anymore, unless she thought of Pedar too. Then she hurt for him, this quiet man, this adept hunter who’d been pursued and brought to ground by two relentless members of the same family. “He was no good for me.”
“I’m sorry.” Pedar’s arm encircled her shoulders and squeezed her against his side. “I wish I could have stopped him.”
There were some things that could not be stopped, some people who would not listen to reason. So she patted Pedar’s chest with her hand, offering him comfort in return. “Perhaps it’s better this way. Perhaps there were some lessons I needed to learn.”
Gods and ancestors knew she’d learnt plenty since her marriage and learnt them well. Never again would she fall for a beautiful young man who made her feel special with foolish words, and whose sincerity lasted only as long as they took to say.
No, before Mewan she’d dreamt of a man who was fun and merry, and would dance with her all night beneath the stars. She’d wanted excitement and laughter, would have scorned affection and strong arms, preferring a man who went out and seized the world to one who was always there, ready to offer support and comfort.
Without Mewan she would never have learned to see that the real worth of a man was not in his face, his laughter or his pretty words, but in his actions, his strength and the love he had for his children. Without Mewan she might never have appreciated the gift that Elisud was.
Without Mewan she might never have even met Elisud. Or Ceri, or Demairo. Without them her world truly would be a poorer place. If surviving her marriage and the loss of her babe was the price she had to pay for them, then perhaps it was worth it.
“I’m sorry about the babe,” Pedar said, breaking into her thoughts again as if he could hear them. “Sewena told me. Mewan would…” His voice broke with emotion. “Mewan would have been so pleased.”
While Briallen comforted him through another burst of weeping, she couldn’t help wondering about whether Mewan really would have been pleased or not. Oh, he’d said all the right things about wanting a child and seemed to share in her disappointment when she failed to fall pregnant after the few times they’d been together. Yet thinking about him now, seeing him from the distance of time and with fresh understanding, she doubted that he would have even cared. He certainly wouldn’t have changed his life to spend more time with her and their child; he was too selfish for that.
Or perhaps she was being unkind, perhaps he would have changed. Perhaps having a son or daughter of his own would have made all the difference. Then again not even Pedar, who clearly loved his children, had changed his life for them. That might have been because spending more time with them meant spending more time with Rosen, but it might also have been because he was a born wanderer and couldn’t change.
Not that any of it mattered now. Mewan was gone, the babe was lost, and even the love she once thought she’d felt for her husband had faded. All that remained was Pedar and his pain, and she wished there was something she could do to make things right for him.
“Some things are not meant to be,” she said, stroking his back as he covered his face with one hand, trying to hold back the tears. “Who knows what the gods and ancestors have planned for us?”
“But why?” he sobbed, shaking with the strain of holding his emotions back. “Why did they have to take Mewan and the child? Why both? I – we needed them, if not both, then at least one. Why couldn’t we have kept one?”
Briallen had no answers to offer him, and though she’d already made her peace with what had happened, she felt a fresh wave of sorrow at the combined loss. “I’m sorry, Pedar,” she murmured. “I’m so sorry.”
Pressing both palms over his eyes, he took a deep breath, shuddering as he released it. Rubbing hard at his face, he dropped his hands and turned to her. “No,” he told her firmly, despite his shining eyes and sorrowful expression. “No more apologies from you, Bria. No more sympathy. You, out of everyone, deserve them most. You owe me nothing, but at least you understand. We don’t need those words between us anymore.” He held out his hands, palms up. “Promise.”
Smiling, she laid her hands on top of his. “Very well,” she agreed.
He released her hands and turned to walk back through the woods. “So, what’s all this I hear about a new man on the farm? Sewena says you’ve been spending a lot of time with his daughter, and that his nephew, Lowena’s boy, brings you flowers every day.”
She glanced warily at him, but he smiled, taking her hand and squeezing reassuringly. “It’s all right, Bria. You deserve happiness. Not even Mewan could say otherwise. I want you to be happy.”
She squeezed his hand in return. “I want you to be happy too.”
His smile turned sad and he looked away into the russet shadows of the wood. “There are times when I’m on the open moor, when the wind sighs through the heather and the rocks throw shadows across the gorse, at times like that I can almost feel him with me again. I can almost hear him calling his dogs or laughing at the skylarks. I feel the hot weight of his hand against the nape of my neck, pulling me in close. At times like that I’m happy, Bria. At times like that I remember, and I am at peace.”
A warm tear slipped down Briallen’s face and she turned, wrapping her arms around him to hold him tight. There were no words she could find to say to him, but as he hugged her in return, resting his cheek against her head, she knew he didn’t ne
ed any. He had his memories, and for now they were enough.
“Be happy, Bria,” he whispered, kissing her forehead and rubbing his thumbs against her cheeks to wipe away her tears. “You deserved it.”
“As do you,” she sniffled in reply.
He smiled and let her go. “I think I’ve already had my share. Now it’s time for yours.” Slipping away into the shadows of the wood, he vanished within moments, not even a crunch of leaves beneath his feet gave away his presence.
“There you are!” The familiar cry had Briallen scrubbing her sleeve across her face, before she turned and found Ceri, hands on hips, foot tapping, standing beside an enormous beech tree. “I’ve been looking all over. We’re taking the washing home now.”
“Sorry. I went for a walk. I didn’t mean to be so long.”
Ceri didn’t seem interested in details, just darted over to grab Briallen’s hand and tow her back to the river. “Everyone else has gone already, but this washing is heavy! I couldn’t carry it on my own.” Running to the basket, she grabbed the handles and strained upwards, not even managing to raise the damp clothing off the ground. “See,” she panted, collapsing over the piled up washing.
“I’ve got it,” Briallen assured her, bending down and heaving the heavy load up, propping the weight on one hip and staggering slightly. “Certain sure, it is a lot.”
“And it took ages to wash,” Ceri agreed, skipping ahead down the path. “Mairo’s clothes were so dirty. Next time he should come and clean them himself, then maybe he wouldn’t get so messy. I’m going to tell Da…” And on she chattered.
Briallen smiled and followed, half her mind on the babbling brook of Ceri’s voice, the rest still in the shadowy woods with the sad man who walked alone.
“Be happy, Pedar,” she murmured, but only the wind in the falling leaves and Ceri’s oblivious chatter answered.