Egelric walked fast enough that Father Brandt could not talk if he expected to keep up. This was deliberate. The last thing Egelric wanted to do just then was talk, and the last person he would have wanted to talk to was Father Brandt.
As they got closer to the church, Egelric saw the crowd of peasants and, more importantly, a tall shape against the sky that had not been there the day before. Father Brandt had not told a lie.
“There you are!” Alred laughed as he came outside.
Matilda stood on the narrow wall-walk that ran between the tower where his children slept and the older part of the fort where he and Matilda still had their bedroom.
“Papa, can you tell me about when you went to Wales again?” Prince Caedwulf asked, coming to stand between his father’s knees.
“That’s your favorite story now, runt,” Sigefrith sighed, mussing up the boy’s black hair. “I should think you know it by heart, by now. You can be my memory when I’m old, and you can tell the story to me.”
It was true. Elfleda’s grave just outside the church wall was empty now.
Egelric clenched and unclenched his hands, trying to calm his rage. There was no reason for this, other than to hurt him. It would not have surprised him at all on the part of Druze, but the King had assured him that Druze could not have escaped.
“That’s fine for you, but you aren’t the one who has to tell Egelric,” Alred was saying to the King as Egelric opened the door to his lord’s study. Father Brandt was within as well.
“Tell Egelric what?” Egelric smiled. “That I’m late?”
“Did you hear something, Egelric?” Alwy asked suddenly.
The two of them were sitting in Alwy’s kitchen before a bright fire. It was the new moon, and Egelric and Iylaine had come to stay the night.
Leila smiled, for Maud seemed to find what she was saying funny. Leila could understand only every three or four words of the story, and Maud spoke so very quickly when she was excited. All she knew was that it was a story involving the children of some of the servants.
She and the Queen were in the nursery with Prince Colban and her little son Cedric. The two boys were the same age; indeed, they had been born on the same day, which delighted their fathers to no end. They were not of an age to truly play together, but they played well side-by-side.
Alred took his wife’s hand as they stepped into the bedroom. Such a small and slender and fragile thing a woman’s hand was! He could have crushed half of the bones in it with the grip of his own hand.
It was a miracle the grip of the terrible world did not simply crush the life out of such creatures as she. He would do all he could to protect her, but in the end he knew he had only God to thank, and perhaps Saint Margaret of Antioch, that she lived at all.
“Ethelmund, at least take your knife,” Githa whispered as her husband went to the door. They said that the killer had been captured, but they had said the same thing a few months before, and he had killed again.
Granted, a sliver of moon had reappeared since, and he had never killed when it shone, but she was frightened. A knock on the door at this hour of the night could never bring good news in any case.
“Why—what are you doing in here, Egelric?” Matilda cried in surprise. “I was looking for Alred.”
“His Grace has ridden out to the mill. I am keeping his chair warm for him.”
“I think that we should try and try to be happy whenever we can and however we can, even if there is a risk that we will be made unhappy. I think we must keep trying.”
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