Read Online Keeper of the Dream by Penelope Williamson - Free Book Online

could sail out the river estuary and up the straits. Within hours they would make landfall in Gwynedd—a trip that would take days traveling overland on foot.
    They walked in tense silence the rest of the way to the river wharfs. A grainy powder dusted the gray weathered boards of the dock, flour from the looted mill house nearby. It was eerily silent but for the slap of water against the pilings. Taliesin went immediately to a skiff and began untying the mooring lines. He helped Arianna into the small boat, settling her down in the bow, then climbed in after her. He expertly hoisted the single sail.
    Arianna felt a sudden surge as wind filled the canvas. He flashed her a bright smile as he pulled off his beautiful helmet, carelessly tossing it toward the stern. As he adjusted the tiller to allow for the current, the wind caught his long hair, billowing it around his head. It was a bright, orange-red color, like the fur of a fox.
    They sailed up the long tidal estuary of the river Clwyd. The land here was flat, sandy beaches and wild marsh grass, stretching to the variegated green sea. Arianna breathed deeply of the heavy, salty air. Shore birds dipped and soared, riding the wind currents, and in spite of all that had happened on this day, she felt suddenly carefree, as if she flew with them.
    They slid out the mouth of the estuary and into the open sea. The storm had left the water frothed with while caps. Arianna stood at the bow, looking toward home, enjoying the feel of the sea spray on her face as the skiffcleaved the waves. Then she heard the sail flap behind her, and the boat heeled suddenly as it took on a new tack. She whipped around, gripped by fury, and fear….
    For they sailed now not toward Gwynedd, but England.
    The boy was not at the tiller. He was right before her, staring at her with those shimmering jet-black eyes.
Where are you taking me?
she asked, except that she had used no words, for they had only just formed in her mind. But he, it seemed, answered with a thought as well.
    Forgive me, my lady,
he said. He pressed a dripping sponge to her lips and nose. Panicked, suffocating, she opened her mouth and sucked in the reeking fumes of the narcotic henbane plant.
    It was the last thing she remembered before darkness overwhelmed her.
    She smelled bean potage cooking over an open fire, heard laughter and the cheerful lilt of a reed pipe. Arianna opened her eyes. The flame of a brass oil lamp winked back at her.
    She stirred, and pain shot up her legs. She lay, she discovered, on a densely packed straw pallet that would have been comfortable if her feet had not been bound to her hands with leather thongs that cut into her flesh. Her mouth felt dry and cottony, as if it were stuffed with a rag. It
was
stuffed with a rag, she realized an instant later; there was a gag across her mouth. She swallowed, and almost retched over a bitter metallic taste, as if she had just bitten down on a sword.
    She lifted her head, trying to see her surroundings. She was in a campaign tent sparsely furnished with an iron-studded war chest, a leather coffer, a brazier filled with cold ashes, a padded stool … and something odd—a treelike object made of woven straw and shaped like a man’s upper torso. She stared at it, trying to puzzle out what it was, and then it came to her. It was what a knight would hang his coat of mail on, when he wasn’t armored.
    She was trussed up and lying in a knight’s tent. A Norman knight’s tent by the look of it. And as if in confirmation she heard footsteps passing by and the clipped, nasal intonations of French.
    Arianna squeezed her eyes shut. She had trusted that wretched, hateful boy, and he had betrayed her by delivering her into the hands of her enemies. Tears trickled out from beneath clenched lids to run down her cheeks, soaking into the gag. She didn’t know why, but the pain of this betrayal made her weep when Ceidro’s death and all that had followed afterward had not.
    After a