< previous page page_401 next page >

Page 401
new truce proposals to which Richard, ever hopeful of peace with his overlord, might agree.
Simon was very willing. Richard found him useful, and the duties and male company kept him occupied. He had a good deal to suffer from his young friends, who could not understand his sudden and unnatural chastity, but he found that the jesting at his expense honed his pride and made it easier to resist his physical urges. What was most painful to him was the kindly weather, which prevailed over South as well as North Wales. He constantly saw Rhiannon running the hills like a wild doe and remembered the joy of being her stag.
However, Simon was wrong in imagining Rhiannon tasting this free joy. After the first abortive attempt to do just that, she did not go out to play and dream in the usual way. She busied herself with practical mattersthe end of the harvest and the work of storing the hall against the lean months of winter. She practiced her music and made a round of the far-flung dwellings to treat the sick, both man and beast. Yet each day her longing for Simon grew rather than diminished, and her fear and pain increased. There was something else that frightened her even more. Math was avoiding her.
She could not understand that, but she was afraid even to think about it. Instead, she wondered why time was not performing its usual service of healing her wounds. At last she realized that her increasing fear for Simon was a result of uncertainty. It was far worse, she decided, not to know what was going on than to know the hour and day of a battle. This way she felt a death stroke every minute when, in truth, it was far more likely that Simon was talking and laughing with his friends or hunting or drinking or playing some game.
When the realization came upon her, Rhiannon and Kicva were sitting beside the fire, Kicva spinning and

 
< previous page page_401 next page >