“I thought I heard some caterwauling going on back here,” Malcolm called from the doorway of the barn. “Thought it might have been some tomcats fighting. Should have known it was only you two. What the devil are you doing?”
“Don’t look so precious, like we should be glad to see you,” Bertie said. “We already knew you were home anyway. His Majesty the King was already here.”
“I thought I heard some demonic grumbling in here and was about to send for the priest,” the King said. “I should have known it was only Norse.”
Sigefrith and Eirik, who were both giggling in a very unmanly way, turned abruptly to him and bowed.
“Oh, Edris,” her husband smiled as he came in. “I thought you must have been napping. If I had known, I wouldn’t have let Theobald go without greeting you.”
“Theobald was here?”
“Changed your mind, old man?” Alred asked when he came up to his study to meet the King and little Colban. “Need some good English company on your trip, besides those two swarthy Scots?”
But Sigefrith did not smile.
“What game is that, Cubby?” Sigefrith chuckled.
“He holds my hand,” Colban said. The boy was kneeling on the floor behind his baby brother’s head, waving his hand above Harold’s face.
“I wish I could come,” Dunstan sighed.
“I suppose you’re still a little young for such a trip, sprout,” Malcolm said.
Sigefrith knocked gingerly on the door to the nursery. He was uncomfortable around the Queen—she was strange, and… it was awkward. But he wanted to get the boy alone.
“Who is it?”
It wasn’t fair. What did they expect her to do? Choose?
Eadgith had been locked in her room all evening, ever since she had returned from her father’s castle—for she had returned with her father.
“Hold your sword a moment, runt,” Sigefrith said. “I didn’t bring you out here solely to teach you how to use a shield, although it’s high time. If the Lord God gave you two hands, it wasn’t so you could use them both to hold your sword.”
His godson laughed. “If you know how to use a two-handed sword properly, you never need a shield. No one ever gets close to you.”
Edris folded the woolen coverlet once along its length and then twice crosswise, across one arm and then the other, but she paused a moment then, holding it against her belly and listening.
She called it listening, to herself, since it felt as if she were expecting to perceive something from afar, although of course she was not really listening, and of course it was not really far at all. She was feeling, and what she hoped to feel could not have been closer. She was waiting to be touched.
“Maybe I can throw in some tedious backstory and unnecessary details?”
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