Daughter of Time (Prequel to The After Cilmeri Series)

Daughter of Time (Chapter Twenty-one)

Meg

Llywelyn left with a host of men-at-arms and I tried not to worry, as he asked. I had other things to occupy my mind. I hadn't told him before he left, but I was having some contractions, every now and then. It was nothing serious, but similar to what had happened with Anna when I'd had contractions for three solid weeks before her birth. They would go on and on, reaching a crescendo toward early evening, only to die down around bedtime. Then they'd start over the next day at nine in the morning. Not fun.

And today was Halloween (though they didn't call it that—it was All Hallow's Eve), the day before All Saints Day. The celebrations were already beginning in the village, where the weekly fair was in full swing. I held Anna's hand as we walked across the drawbridge and down the road to the market square. It had rained in the night, but not so much that the road was muddy. Little puddles pocked the road, and I tugged Anna away from them, not wanting her to get wet on the way there. I'd let her get wet on the walk home and then change her clothes.

Normally, as Llywelyn's woman, I rode into the village, even for the short distance from the castle to the market, but at nearly nine months pregnant, I wasn't allowed near a horse, much less on top of one. Beside us, two of Llywelyn's men-at-arms walked —Bevyn again, undoubtedly irritated at being left to mind me, though Llywelyn had tried to appease him by implying that this was a grave responsibility and he'd better not screw it up, and Rhodri, the young man who'd befriended Anna at the Gap, a lifetime ago now.

To understand what a medieval village fair was like, you first had to do away with anything you'd ever learned from movies, and particularly, focus not on what things looked like, but how they smelled. I'd gotten used to it in large part, but the sensitivities of early pregnancy had reasserted themselves at this late stage and I had to close my nose as I entered the village. The smell was a nauseating concoction of frying food, tanning leather, smoke, urine, decomposing organic matter of every variety, and manure.

The village was closely compacted due to the town wall that surrounded it. This protected it, but it also contained it and made the townsfolk 'in-fill' rather than spread their houses out as was more usual in Welsh communities. Very often, villages in Wales consisted of only a few huts in which an extended family lived: uncles and aunts, grandparents, cousins, and various distant relations.

At the most, these were in groups of five or six; the family worked together communally in the fields or in the raising of sheep, goats, and cattle. Many Welsh were also nomadic, splitting their time between the pastures of the lowlands in the winter, and the mountain meadows in the summer. The market fair, then, was an exciting event for everybody, and because of the imminent holiday, the Brecon fair had brought in revelers from miles around.

Anna swung between Rhodri and me. We lifted her over a particularly noxious clod of refuse. He and I exchanged a glance of understanding, and he swung her onto his hip.

"Let's see what trouble we can get into, shall we?" he said to her.

She smiled and touched a finger to his burgeoning mustache. Fashions were changing in Wales and more and more of the men sported them. I hoped Llywelyn would refrain from growing one, but Bevyn looked at Rhodri with something bordering on envy. I wanted to tell him that he'd grow up—and acquire the ability to grow one—soon enough.

Rhodri and Anna stopped at a display of finger whistles. The proprietor took one out and handed it to her—a classic tactic which meant that if I didn't pay for it, I would either have an irate seller or a crying daughter. Sighing, I opened my purse. Bevyn leaned in, took out an appropriate amount, and began to bargain with the man. He and Rhodri had evidently decided, as had been the case in the past, that they still didn't trust my Welsh enough to allow me to bargain all by myself. They were probably right. Anna's Welsh was coming along so well she might do better than I.