The Fallen Princess by Sarah Woodbury

back?”
    “Bran wanted her because she was beautiful
and Prince Cadwallon’s daughter,” Mari said.
    “So ‘no’,” Gwen said. “What about Tegwen’s
lover?”
    “Whoever he was, he broke it off with her
when she married Bran. It was only at the end that she took up with
him again.”
    Even as a married woman, Gwen found this
story shocking. She knew that women weren’t always faithful to
their husbands. Husbands certainly weren’t faithful to their wives,
though a wife had the right to compensation and to divorce her
husband if he lay with another woman three times. In turn, if Bran
discovered Tegwen with another man, he was justified in beating
her. “Did Bran find out?” Gwen said.
    “I don’t know,” Mari said.
    “Wait—I didn’t really hear you when you
mentioned it the first time, but did you say that she was pregnant
when she disappeared?” Gwen said.
    “She told me she was,” Mari said.
    “Was the child Bran’s?” Gwen held her
breath.
    “I don’t know.” Mari said the words so
quietly Gwen almost didn’t catch them. “The two daughters she gave
him definitely were his, but I don’t know about the child she was
carrying when she disappeared.”
    “No part of any story I have heard about
Tegwen up until now mentions that she was pregnant.” Gwen sat back,
her mind churning at the information Mari had given her. For all
that Gwen had traveled the length of Wales, lost her mother to
childbirth, spent the last years as a spy for Prince Hywel, and was
now a married woman, she could still be surprised by the behavior
of those she lived amongst. “And you never knew the name of her
lover?”
    Mari shook her head. “I’m sorry. Tegwen
would never tell me more than the scantiest details about him, not
even after she’d found solace in too much wine and her tongue
loosened.”
    Gwen looked carefully at her friend. “Was
that a habit of hers, to drink too much?”
    Mari’s eyes were sad. “Married to a man who
didn’t love her, pregnant with a child she didn’t want … it isn’t
only men who choose that route.”
    Gwen swept a hand down her own belly. She
couldn’t help but smile as her child chose that moment to kick.
    Mari was watching her closely. “You can’t
understand it, Gwen. Nor can I. But Tegwen deserves our pity, not
our judgment.”
    “You misunderstand, Mari. I don’t judge her,
and I do pity her. I also know that with a few different twists of
fate, her situation could have been mine. Wasn’t Gareth in the same
position as this lover of Tegwen’s—worse, even, as he was banished
from Cadwaladr’s retinue and sent to wander Wales until he could
find a lord to take him in?”
    “I suppose,” Mari said. “Come to think on
it, I could have shared her fate as well, except that it was I who
was impoverished, not the man I loved.”
    “And now you’re married to a prince!”
    The two friends clasped hands.
    “I will do my best by Tegwen,” Gwen said. “I
promise.”
     

Chapter Five
    Gareth
     
    A s he trudged up
the beach beside his young charge, Gareth eyed the small sack Llelo
had slung over his shoulder. “Are we having clams for
breakfast?”
    Llelo shot him a woeful look. “I didn’t have
time to dig up very many. It’s not enough to share with more than a
few people. I should give them to the king, shouldn’t I?”
    “Lucky for you, King Owain doesn’t eat clams
for breakfast,” Gareth said. “Bring them to the kitchen for boiling
and you can eat them at the cook’s table. I know you spend half
your life at it already.”
    “That’s because I’m always hungry!”
    Gareth shook Llelo’s shoulder. “I saw you
huddled with the children. I would think that there might be a few
nightmares among them over the next day or two.”
    “Is it true that the body is that of the
king’s niece?” Llelo said.
    “You heard that, did you?” Gareth said. “I
can’t say for sure. Prince Hywel thinks so.”
    “How could she come to look like