Egelric brings gifts
Maud was watching the children play when the servant came.
“You know that I am not to be bothered in the morning,” she said coldly.
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Maud is found
Sigefrith cringed as the door swung shut with a bang—he hadn’t dreamed that he would find Maud in the room. But she didn’t move. He hadn’t woken her.
He stepped quietly around the bed and looked down at her.
Maud waits
Maud fluffed the pillow on the big bed and prepared to lie down to wait for Sigefrith. There was no time to lose. She had allowed herself a few nights of miserable weeping in the empty nursery after Malcolm left, but the month was passing quickly. She trusted him enough to do what he asked.
He had given her a ring on the last night—not to wear, but to keep. If she were ever in danger enough, she could flee north and show the ring, and if she met with friends she would find her way back to him. And if she met with enemies, he had warned… she wasn’t sure that the talk of enemies wasn’t a means to prevent her from following him. But she had often heard the tale of Egelric’s ring, and she believed in its power.
Maud is lost
Maud waited at the window of the nursery, peering out through the blue glass at the round moon. Through these windows she had seen it wane and vanish and wax full again; they had spent nights in moonlight and nights in such darkness that she could only find him in the room with her hands, and could only see him with her skin.
Outside the blurs of trees swayed uneasily in the wind. Already their top branches were growing bare. Her heart ached. She hated the autumn and the death of all the lovely growing things.
Maud is defeated
Maud pushed open the door, grateful that it hung on quiet hinges—although even these seemed to shriek in the silence.
Maud is followed
Maud walked quickly through the woods, her hands clenched into tight little fists. Alwy! She had been planning to say a few things to that insolent Scot, but that blockhead Alwy Hogge had spoiled it.
And now, as she walked, she thought of more and more things she would like to say to him. He thought he could be free and easy with a queen, did he?
Maud is restless
Maud was restless. She wanted to be alone. There were always so many people around her at the castle.
When she was a girl, she was happiest when she played alone in the gardens behind the old house. And when her parents died and she had to go live at the abbey, she still sought refuge in the gardens. She loved to go into the old and forgotten places, the wild places where the flowers had been left to find their own ways. It was not the wilderness, for these were planted by men, but nor was it the prosaic, domestic world of purslane and parsnips and neat rows. And, most importantly, there she could be alone.
But there were no gardens in Lothere. There were the kitchen gardens, but no one here had ever heard of flowers, it seemed. Only poor Elfleda Wodehead had planted anything that did not have a medicinal or culinary purpose. And they called her mad.
Egelric sees his lord
“All right, which one of you is God and which is My God?” Alred cried as he stormed into the room.
“I’m God and he’s My God,” Colban laughed.
Malcolm looks for the kitchens
Maud rocked Britamund absently and listened to the voices of the servants and other morning sounds ringing up from the kitchens and the court. Lately she awaited the summons to breakfast here in the nursery with her little girl. She slept in Caedwulf’s room, but the first thing Sigefrith did upon arising was visit his son, and so Maud made sure to wake early and go up to Britamund before the King had awoken.
Gunnilda meets the cousins
Gunnilda stood shyly in the corner. Egelric only had eyes for Baby, of course, but it was not from this that she shrunk. It was these two strange men—strange in every way. They were dressed just like Egelric, but they were as like him as wolves were like a dog. Or, no—the older one had odd eyes that glittered like a cat’s—and the way the young one moved set her hair on end.
She had heard stories of the fearsome Scots all her life, and now that she had two of them before her, she doubted the stories no more. They were not simply men in skirts, she saw now. And yet Egelric brought them home with him—let them close to his daughter. Had he tamed these two?
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Chapters“No more tears for us two. Life is too short for that, Dara. And love is too long.”
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