Ethelmund Ashdown sang softly as he brushed his saddle horse. He was having a problem finding a third verse for his song—it either rhymed or it was funny. He was hoping to have it ready by the time Githa brought the girls back from visiting, but the sun was going down and it didn’t seem that he was going to finish.
“Too late, my lady!” he said to the mare as he heard steps coming up the path to the barn.
Egelric looked uneasily at his cousins. They both looked ill. Perhaps it was the green light filtering through the colored glass of the window, but in his own case he certainly felt ill. He could only hope that Alred would come unarmed. He had not mentioned to the servant that Malcolm and Colban were with him.
“I think I shall have cured your friend of his blasphemous tongue, brother,” Malcolm said to Egelric. “He will not call me ‘My God’ again.”
Egelric had been to the stables, the kitchens, and the smithy, but there was no sign of Malcolm. And they told him that Colban had gone out looking for him as well.
The only thing Egelric knew was that he was not with the Queen—he had seen Maud in the hall with Sigefrith and her older children. He had scarcely had the courage to look at her.
Gunnilda’s head had begun to nod. She had been up well past dawn with Iylaine. Egelric had come in then and sent her off to lie down for a while, but shortly thereafter he had been called to the castle, and so she had slept only an hour or two.
Iylaine was cooler now, and she had tossed a little, but she still hadn’t woken. The important thing was that she was better than she had been.
Alred picked up his Pentateuch and frowned at the cover. He had been looking at it often recently, in search of clever jokes involving God and My God.
Today he was not in the mood for joking.
“Who was it, Alwy?” Gunnilda asked as he came around her side of the bed and sat next to her.
“You got to get up, Gunnie,” he said gently, putting an arm around her shoulders. “You got to go up to the keep. It’s Baby—she’s real sick.”
Egelric sat up with a start, leaning on an elbow. What the devil was that? An echo of thunder still rang in the stone walls.
Where the hell was he? Had he hit his head? It ached—it was throbbing. Had that been what he heard?
Theobald screamed.
“It’s all right, dear,” Githa murmured, rubbing his arm. “I think it was only thunder.” It had awoken her a short while before. It was funny how Theobald hadn’t reacted for a minute or two.
He must have taken a wrong turn. He had been walking in his father’s castle, going to his mother, but it had been such a long time since he had been home… all of the corridors seemed so much longer than before, and they went up and they went down and they never led anywhere. And he knew his mother was calling for him, but he could not remember how to get to her room.
And now he was here. This was the wrong place. And it didn’t make sense—he should have been able to turn around and go back the way he had come, but he couldn’t remember where the door was, or which corridor he had taken. And he could no longer hear his mother.
She was too shy to look at him, but he could see how she breathed, and how her heart must have been pounding.
“I just got rid of one Norseman, and so you bring me two? Is Tryggvason planning a conquest by slow, blond invasion?”
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