Bertrice Small: A Moment in Time

"My thanks, lady, but nay. Methinks I will forgo my own pleasure tonight that I not offend your granddaughter," he told her.

"As you will, my lord," Enid said. "I will bid you a good night then. Einion will help you with your lorica." She hurried away, and Rhys noticed the giant of a man he had previously seen with Wynne and young Dewi standing by his side.

"You wear no slave collar," Rhys said. "Are you a serf, or are you a freed man?"

"I am a slave, my lord, but Owain ap Llywelyn removed my collar from me the day I came to Gwernach. My chief duty over the years has been to guard the children. It is a task yet unfinished, but allow me, my lord, to help you." Einion's supple fingers moved to undo the straps holding Rhys's lorica, a cuirasslike garment of leather and gilded scales of bronze, together. "There, my lord,'' Einion said, removing the lorica. He then pulled Rhys's boots from his feet, placing them with the lorica by the bed space. "Good night, my lord," he said, and departed.

Rhys watched the large slave go, and then shrugging, removed his full-skirted outer tunic. He would be warm enough in his under tunic and sherte beneath the furs of the bed space. Climbing into it, he found himself most comfortable. There seemed to be no lice or fleas in the bed space. Wynne was obviously a good housekeeper.

The hall had grown quiet. He dozed, coming alert as he heard a footfall within the hall. Turning his head, he saw Wynne. He smiled to himself. Like the good chatelaine she was, she was checking to be certain that everything was as it should be for the night; that fires were banked. He watched through slitted eyes as Einion joined her. They spoke in voices too low to hear. Then the big slave bowed, and both he and Wynne departed the hall.

Rhys of St. Bride's felt his body beginning to relax, a state he rarely allowed himself to enter. There was peace and comfort to be had here at Gwernach. These things were Wynne's doing. He looked forward to the day when she would bring the same peace and comfort to his great castle at St. Bride's, and she would. She really had no choice in the matter. A smile of pleasure upon his face, Rhys began to snore most contentedly.

Wynne of Gwernach watched with palpable relief as Rhys of St. Bride's departed her home. Although she did not sense cruelty in the man, he had a personality that could best be described as forceful, and it irritated her. He was determined that she would be his wife, but Wynne, for all her delicate appearance, was equally determined she would not. She did not choose to marry. At least not at this moment in time. Yet how was she to refuse Rhys without offending him? And what if he did go to the king? The great Llywelyn would hardly object to such a match between an unimportant relation and a powerful coastal lord. He would, as Rhys had so bluntly put it, prefer a man to hold Gwernach in trust for Dewi ap Owain than to allow a girl such as herself to carry on those duties.

"A pox on all men!" Wynne muttered as she kicked at a pebble irritably, and then seeing Rhys turn in his saddle to wave a final farewell, she returned his salute unsmiling. Above the lord of St. Bride's the waning moon hung in the dawn skies, reminding Wynne that she had but a few weeks in which to find a solution to her conundrum, if indeed there was another resolution to her problem.

She needed to work. She needed the benefit of hard, physical labor to help clear her brain, and, like her late father, Wynne was no stranger to the kind of work that sent her sisters into fits of hysteria. She followed a wagon into the meadow, and when it stopped, she grasped a pitchfork and began filling a hayrack with hay, for there was not yet enough new grass to satisfy the cows. She worked steadily and rhythmically, trailing in the wake of the wagon as it made its way from hayrack to hayrack across the field. When the wagon was empty, she rode back to the barns with the driver and, climbing into the high loft, began to pitch down a second load of dried grass. The armpits of her tunic dress were now stained damp with the evidence of her effort, and she hiked her skirts up, baring her legs in an attempt to facilitate her labor. Descending from the hayloft, she followed the wagon back out into the fields.

For the next few days Wynne worked from dawn to past dusk in the company of Gwernach's serfs. Still she could find no answer to her problem, and it did not help that her sisters chattered incessantly in the hall each evening about their bright futures as wives to Rhys of St. Bride's cousins. Caitlin and Dilys were so self-involved that they did not notice their elder sibling's distress; but Dewi did, and their grandmother did.

"You do not have to marry him, Wynne, if you do not choose to," the boy told her earnestly one evening. "Have I not said it before, and am I not master here?" But his voice was low, that his other two sisters did not hear him and begin to harp at Wynne again.

"I seem to have no other choice," Wynne admitted reluctantly. "He will go to Llywelyn if I refuse him. I know it. No man of honor wants a bride who must be dragged to the altar. Will he not resent me if I shame him like that? If I must wed him, I would hope to make him like me, brother."

Enid nodded. "You are wise, child. It is not good to antagonize a husband who will have the power of life and death over you. You must reconcile yourself to your fate before Rhys comes again, that you might greet him next time with a smile."

Wynne sighed deeply. "I do not want to marry," she said. "I hold no grudge against Rhys, for all I suspect his motives at wanting me to wife. Though he might dream of possessing Gwernach some day, I think, Grandmother, that you and I are clever enough to outwit him in his desires. I do not sense him to be a wicked man, and yet if the choice were really mine, I should refuse him."

Enid had often heard her eldest grandchild voice her objections to marriage, but it had never occurred to her until now to ask Wynne why she did not wish to wed. "What is it that frightens you, child?" she inquired gently. "Would it make it easier if I explained the mysteries of the marriage bed to you now? Marriage is a good and natural state for a woman. There has always been marriage between men and women since time began. Does not the Church teach us that?"

"It is not the marriage bed I fear, Grandmother," Wynne answered honestly. If the truth be known, she thought wryly, that was the one aspect of marriage of which she was most curious to learn about from personal experience.

"What is it then?" Enid asked, unable to understand why Wynne would want to refuse Rhys's offer if she didn't dislike him, wasn't afraid of the physical aspects of marriage, or didn't have a religious calling.

Wynne considered for a long moment, and then she spoke slowly, as if she were carefully evaluating each word individually. "I do not wish my fate to be in anyone else's hands but my own, Grandmother. Since Father died I have been free to control my own life with no man to gainsay me. Would Rhys of St. Bride's understand my feelings? I do not think so. He would be shocked with such a wife and beat her into submission, or at least try to force her to his will. Oh, Grandmother! That is not the kind of life I want to live! Perhaps someday I will find a man who will understand these feelings within me and love me in spite of them, but until then, I would prefer not to marry."

The two women sat by the fire, Dewi now virtually forgotten. Enid leaned forward and took Wynne's hands in hers, squeezing them sympathetically. "My poor child," she said, and her eyes were damp with her emotion. "What you want is a virtual impossibility. Women do not live as you suggest. They wed with either a man or the Christ. To that fate you must resign yourself. There will be nothing else for you, Wynne, and you must face it."