Egelric was exhausted by the time he arrived home. It was close to dawn, and he had promised Gunnilda to come by around breakfast time. Any other night he would have sat up and read, but when he considered that he had spent the previous night in a barn…
So very much had happened since he and Sigefrith had awoken that morning in the barn at the edge of the valley. He felt as if he had aged a year or two. And he was exhausted. He would have to sleep a few hours.
Sigefrith paused in the doorway of his daughter’s room. Was it possible that he was going to leave them again? He had talked plans with Cenwulf so long that he had expected to continue the conversation upstairs with Maud. But he hadn’t the heart to tell her tonight. Only five nights!
“Is she still awake?” he asked gently as he came in.
“Damn them!” Alred swore as he and Egelric stepped out into the night air. “They’ve buried me already. Did you see that? Do I look sick to you?”
“You’ve grown thinner since I left,” Egelric admitted. “But you have fine color.”
Egelric was relieved to be out of Gunnilda’s house, but he was not much more comfortable at this big table in the castle, surrounded by shields and swords and banners, and most particularly seated across from Earl Cenwulf.
Every time he looked at the Earl he thought of a lion. He had never seen a lion, but once in his reading he had read about ‘men of war fit for the battle, that could handle shield and buckler, whose faces were like the faces of lions,’ and he had thought of Cenwulf.
“Ah, Bertie, don’t look at me with those eyes,” Egelric sighed. “I know.”
“Hallo, Egelric,” Bertie said softly. “Come in, please. Hallo, Baby!” he added, opening the door wide.
“It’s good to be home, Gunnilda,” Egelric said with a sigh of satisfaction. “Good, good, good.”
“It’s good to have you home,” she smiled.
“Ma!” Bertie cried. “Look!”
Just then Gunnilda heard the thump of feet coming up the steps and through the door she had left open onto the bright day—the first day, perhaps, of winter’s final thaw. Her heart lurched when she saw the strange costume and the flying skirts—the Scots!
“Wait, wait, wait! You wait here!”
Alred pulled up panting next to the two men he had spotted walking by the stable yard, where he had been out looking over the latest colt.
The Duchess was recounting to Githa Selle her latest troubles with the stablehands.
“I shall have to make my own bed out in the barn,” she complained. “I simply can’t trust them any longer. I told them: Don’t give Ruby any of the meadow grass; I go down there this morning and find her munching on the meadow grass. I tell them: Don’t let Ruby out in the pasture with that foolheaded black colt; I go out there this afternoon and find the two of them out there with that colt kicking up his heels right next to Ruby’s belly. She’s carrying Jupiter’s last foal, and I’ll be d—that is, I shall be very displeased if anything happens to either of them.”
“Why—Matilda!” Githa cried in surprise. “Your Grace!” she corrected herself, blushing.
“Matilda, please,” the Duchess smiled.
“If I believe in curses, I have also sometimes believed that you were sent to save me.”
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