“Cenwulf!” Matilda cried in surprise as the Earl came in to the hall unannounced. “You almost missed me—I was only waiting for my horse to be saddled. And Alred isn’t here at all.”
“I know he isn’t,” he said, and he paused so she could kiss him. “He asked me to accompany you.”
Malcolm sat on the king’s throne, quieter than many ten-year-old boys could ever be, and none of the chattering people in the hall paid the least attention to him. But his golden eyes were dancing, and he paid attention to them all.
Young Sigefrith had not come home alone, nor had he come with only his wife and baby. There was a pair of blond-headed Norsemen with him—a young man, about the same age as Sigefrith, and a girl who must have been around Eadgith’s age. He had heard them introduced as the children of Hilda’s mother’s sister, making them Hilda’s cousins as well as the King’s, but more to the point, Sigefrith had brought young Eirik home with him to be his squire.
Sigefrith was at Nothelm when the word came, planning his trip to Scotland with Egelric, and enjoying the excellent wine that Alred had won in some obscure wager with Theobald, and whose source Sigefrith had not yet been able to pry out of the Baron’s steward.
Cenwulf listened to Edris with one ear, but she was talking about the castle where she had stayed in the summer as a child, and he already knew it well, for Colburga had stayed there too and had often spoken of it. But he would not spoil the pleasure she obviously had in reminiscing, so he let her talk.
Meanwhile, he thought of Sigefrith and Maud. Sigefrith was, of course, delighted with his new son, but he could not hide his disappointment from his oldest friend. Cenwulf knew he had been hoping that some near-miraculous transformation would restore Maud to her right mind upon the baby’s birth, but so far it seemed that nothing had changed.
Edris nearly ran into Sigefrith as she rushed into the hall.
“Slow down,” he said as he caught her arms, and he smiled at her, though his face was pale. “You haven’t missed anything important. Matilda is already here.”
Colban went whistling down the path to the garden, where he had been told he might find the King and Queen. He had already met his son at the castle, and the boy did not seem to feel anything but delight at the sight of his father and his twin brother. That was already reassuring. If Sigefrith knew, he had not said anything to Malcolm.
As he came closer to the pond, he could hear the laughter of a young boy. He knew it must be his godson, and he stopped whistling and smiled a little sadly. He found himself growing fonder of the child as he missed its father more and more.
“Here it is, baby,” her father said as he opened the door to the room that was to be hers. He was smiling at her with a sort of eager pride, and so she tried to smile in return. “Go in, it’s yours,” he urged.
Eadgith stepped inside, and her father followed, closing the door behind them.
Egelric lay in bed with his eyes wide open. It was the first time he had awoken in the narrow bed by the lake since he had fallen ill.
He had spent the previous day working, and it was quite late in the night when he had come to the lakeshore, for he had meant to sleep at the work site with the men. He had endured their company as long as he was able. He had desperately wanted to be alone, and it was only fear of what he might find at the lake that kept him away until after midnight—or fear of what he would become there.
Alred had thought that he would find his wife already abed, but she was sitting up next to the lamp when he came into the bedroom.
“Am I interrupting my lady in her devotions?” he asked, surprised to see her reading.
It had taken an extra measure of craftiness, but Iylaine had managed to get away.
Wulsy knew that she must not be allowed to play alone outside the castle walls, but she couldn’t bear to be shut up today. She had distracted him by pretending to hear one of the animals crying in pain, and once he had gone to look, had dashed away.
“But oh my God, sometimes it seems like every story I come across has ‘You must be 17′ or ‘after the cut’ or whatever, and I just want to break my keyboard across my forehead and go read Proust.”
Chapters
Latest Comment