Eadgith’s head hung over her needlework, and her right hand rose slowly away from her left and sank slowly back to meet it again, over and over, as she stitched the embroidered panel to the backing.
She had finished the dragon, his tail, and his flames, and there remained only to sew up the cushion and, once she had returned to the castle, to stuff it. But all of the pleasure had gone out of it for her.
Eadgith cringed momentarily when a knock came at her door, but she relaxed when it was followed by her father’s voice calling, “Where’s my baby hiding?”
“I’m here,” she said. She laid down her needlework and came out from behind the wooden screen as he came into the room.
Eadgith’s head was bent over her embroidery, and her hands danced caressingly above and beneath the cloth. This was one of the advantages of staying with her father: no one ever bothered her about making sheets for her bridal bed, nor did anyone ever tease her about who would be sharing it with her. She could work on her dragon in full view of everyone.
Nevertheless, she wished she could retire to her own bedchamber to stitch, but her father insisted that she join him after supper when he sat with Leila and their children. Cedric and Raegan were both noisy little people, and though Cedric was rather in awe of her, Raegan wasn’t the least bit shy, and often came to tug at her skirt and beg to be played with—a request which she dare not deny in her father’s presence.
Egelric dropped his cloak on a chair and stopped to rub his eyes.
He had a little time before dinner, when he would have to go down and take his seat at the right of his lord’s empty chair. Young Dunstan would be seated across from him, and he would be reminded again, as he had been ever more frequently as the weeks passed, that he might in fact be seated across from his lord even then. They had had no word from the King or the Duke since they had ridden off towards the coast in late July.
Iylaine slept, one delicately pointed ear pressed against her pillow, but the other was alert and kept her informed of the goings-on at Nothelm castle by feeding sounds into her dreams.
She had been walking in a forest of pines so old that their bare trunks stood like columns supporting a dense and distant roof, so far overhead that even the sighing of the sky could not be heard, so dense that even the light of the sky could not be seen. It was like a church made of trees. It was a good place.
Angharat sighed in contentment and snuggled up as close to Bran as she might, given the awkward bumps and angles of his breastplate and his coat of mail.
“Quit your wiggling, if you’re going to sit in my lap,” he breathed. “You’re killing me.”
Out here, in the bright air, in the gold-flowered meadow bordered by dark pines, and with her father at her side, Eadgith felt free again.
She hadn’t realized how much the castle and her little room at the top of it had come to feel like a prison to her. Between her mother and her sister-in-law, she was locked up as securely as the dragon in the dungeon.
Father Brandt opened the door, expecting to find an anxious peasant come to fetch him to the bedside of a dying man or woman. He was rarely bothered so late for anything else.
Thus he was surprised and momentarily frightened to see Cenwulf standing on the step. Was it Edris? or his little nephew Baldwin?
Eadgith’s head was bent over the piece of dark fabric that lay in her lap, and the fingers of one hand danced spiderlike above it, following the hidden movements of the spider that danced beneath it.
Leila had taught her a scalloped stitch that closely matched the scales of the dragons in the margins of His Majesty’s Gospels. It was somewhat wasteful of silk on the back of the fabric, but it gave a lovely effect. It was worth it. He was worth it.
Malcolm pushed the door open hesitantly.
“Good morning, Malcolm,” Egelric smiled.
“Eve might have sinned, but if Adam had been a gentleman he would have lied for her sake, even to the Lord.”
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