“I am at my lady’s command, as he bid me, to bring your message back to him.”

She nodded. Already she knew she would write him no message.

The boy with the broom had moved farther away now, far enough not to hear. She feigned interest in Edric’s horse. “Is a fine mount indeed,” she said, moving closer and running a hand over its neck.

She lowered her voice to a murmur.

“Tell me,” was all she said.

“They are at Tredum now and will stay there.” His voice was barely above a whisper. “Your cousin bids me tell you that unless the winter is unusual hard, they will not wait for winter’s end.”

Sooner than her mother had originally planned. “He said not why?”

“Lady, he did not even say what they wait for, nor who waits. Only with the words and not their meaning did he entrust me, so that if I am discovered naught is revealed.”

She frowned. This great caution from Madog said much. And he sent this stranger instead of one of her own men, which told her that he could not spare even one of his best fighters now.

“Is there such danger you would be discovered, then?”

He shrugged. “I know not, my lady. I am to give the letter to none but you, and to tell you if you ask that they are at a place called Tredum, and in secret to say they will not wait for winter’s end. And did I swear not to say these things to any other person, on the soul of my wife and child.”

She looked at the man blankly as her mind whirred, trying to calculate how many weeks were left until winter came, how many more until it ended. But something in her face must have urged the messenger to continue.

“My wife was Welsh, my lady. A month ago, she was killed with the child inside her by soldiers sent from Edward to keep his peace.”

His mouth was set in a grim line. There was no need to ask him the full story. Bloody tales of Norman cruelty fairly poured forth from every corner of Wales, since Edward had claimed it as part of his own kingdom. There was no shortage of men like this one, justification enough for her mother’s rebellion. Madog would trust a man who hated Edward, as this one surely did. And maybe he had meant it as a sign of his own sympathies, a reminder to her.

“They are not all so barbaric, these Normans,” she said. “Only those they send to Wales.”

Her hand went to her hip to grasp a sword that was not there. There was only a soft gown over a rounded curve. And this, the feel of her own body, seemed to answer a question she had not dared to ask.