The Penwyth Curse Read Free

said to the man whose face wasn’t unpleasant, whose breath wouldn’t fell a horse, “If you do this, sir, you will die. My great-grandfather told my grandfather that the Druid curse came from the sacred stone circle that stands in the plains of southern Britain. I know no more about it.”
    â€œEnough! Go and have your ladies make you resemble a female. And have a wedding feast prepared. I want all in readiness by the setting of the sun.”
    When Father Jeremiah married young Merryn, finely garbed in an old saffron silk gown that had belonged to her mother, to Sir Arlan de Frome of Keswick, it was exactly five minutes before the sun set on another brilliant spring day near the very edge of Edward’s England.
    The only cheers were from Sir Arlan’s men and those only because they’d heard that the cellars were filled with beer and rich Rhineland and Aquitaine wine. They were also having a fine time making sport with the Penwyth soldiers.
    Penwyth’s master-at-arms, Crispin, whose beard was longer and whiter than Lord Vellan’s, knew a great number of fine curses, but they couldn’t kill a man, more’s the pity, and so none of Arlan’s men bothered to clout him for his insults. All of Arlan’s men drank and laughed and toasted each other on the ease by which they’d taken a very fine keep indeed.
    Lady Merryn de Frome sat next to her bridegroom of two hours at the high table, her grandfather and grandmother in the middle of the table, one of Sir Arlan’s men on either side of them.
    They ate from the same trencher. Sir Arlan sopped fine white bread in the thick beef gravy. Because he had been raised with a modicum of manners, he offered her a tasty chunk of beef off the end of his knife.
    She took it, chewed and swallowed, all the while looking through him, as if he wasn’t even there.
    He grabbed her chin in his hand and jerked her about to face him. “I’m your husband. You will show me respect. Look at me.”
    â€œI am sorry that you must die,” she said and looked him right in the eye.
    â€œBy Saint Peter’s furrowed brow, you will cease this foolishness about a bloody curse!” He turned away from her and ate all the tender beef on his trencher.
    The jests continued, most of them forced ribaldry, because what man in his right mind would want to bed this child? Still, his men wanted to have the form correct.
    There were more toasts, one even speculating on the year the new Lady de Frome would produce her first child.
    Sir Arlan was laughing at that when he shouted to Lord Vellan, “From this night on I am Sir Arlan de Gay, your heir and grandson-in-law. Aye, I fit your name well, do I not?”
    Lord Vellan merely smiled.
    There was more cheering, all from Arlan’s men. All the Penwyth people were furious and muttering, but softly, since they didn’t want their heads cleaved in.
    Arlan turned to his bride. “Tell me you have begun your monthly flow.”
    Merryn looked at the big man who was old enough to be her father, although, truth be told, most men in the Great Hall could have fathered and grandfathered her as well because, she was, after all, barely fourteen years old. “No,” she said, “I have not.”
    â€œA pity. However, with bed play perhaps it will encourage your woman’s body to do its duty. I will draw blood this night. Aye, that should do it.”
    â€œWhy did you wish to steal another man’s holdings?”
    Sir Arlan could have struck her, but he chose, instead, to say, laughter rich in his throat, “My father wanted me, his bastard son, to be a priest, bent and celibate, copying texts in musty old chambers, cut off from life. I was to spend my life paying for his sin of fornication that produced me. I could not imagine a more tedious existence. I could have killed him, but I did not. I went to the Holy Land, fought under Lord Edinthorpe, and brought back jewels.