Beaten daily in a foreign kitchen, a captive queen taught a starling to carry word home.
Branwen was a British princess, married to the king of Ireland to seal a peace. It held until her half-brother insulted the Irish king, and the Irish made her pay. She was sent to the kitchen, where a butcher struck her across the ears every day for three years. Cut off from anyone who could help, she caught a starling and taught it to speak, then sent it over the water with a letter under its wing.
Her brother, the king of Britain, raised an army and crossed the sea, and the war ruined both kingdoms. Her own son was thrown into a fire. When it ended, almost everyone was dead, and the survivors carried her home to Wales.
She survived the war. At home on the riverbank, she looked back toward Ireland and said that two islands had been destroyed because of her. She had decided almost none of what happened to her, and the grief of it killed her. They buried her where she fell, on Anglesey, and the mound by the water still carries her name.
This book is about the woman behind that grave, and whether she was once a goddess the storytellers turned mortal.
