Gunnilda had had enough. Alwy and Sigebert had been practicing barnyard animal noises for the past half hour, with a particular focus on pigs. Wynna would sit on the floor demanding to be picked up, and as soon as she was picked up would squirm until she was put down. The dinner had been burnt and the smell still lingered in the air. And she was tired—so tired.
“I’m going outside for some air,” she muttered to Alwy.
Egelric Wodehead trudged down the hill to the Hogge farm. Elfleda had suddenly declared that she absolutely had to have black sausage for her breakfast—for breakfast!—and wouldn’t he please go ask Gunnilda if she had any. Oh, she had asked sweetly enough, but he was convinced it was just a plan to send him out in the snow before he had even eaten. She was no doubt laughing over it next to her warm fire.
“Is Gunnilda or Alwy here?” he asked brusquely when Githa Selle let him in the house. What the devil was she doing here at this hour?
It was nearly dawn when Duchess Matilda awoke. As she rolled over she realized she hadn’t fed the baby once during the night. Could she be sleeping through the night already at two weeks? She truly was an angel.
She slid out of bed and tiptoed over to the cradle. The wee dear was still sleeping. Well, she must be starving nonetheless. She would just take her back into bed and nurse her there, where it was warm.
Duke Alred was surprised to find his wife still awake when he came up the stairs to bed.
“You weren’t waiting for me, I hope?” he asked her.
“Egelric,” Elfleda said, interrupting his grim musings, “There’s a page from Nothelm at the door. You are wanted at the castle.”
Egelric slipped past her without a word and opened the door.
Gunnilda Hogge pushed her way through the crowd. People were saying Egelric was still in the barn, that the Duke had run inside looking for him. And then she heard the crash, and Alred howling Egelric’s name—that was it, he was inside, he was dead. Gunnilda ran.
She burst into the barn and ran into a heat so intense that it stopped her like a wall. She looked wildly around, but there was nothing to see beyond the flames. Egelric was dead. It was too late.
Early in February, the serfs and peasants of Nothelm were treated to an evening of feasting, music, and dancing at the castle in celebration of the birth of the Duke’s little daughter, the dark-eyed Lady Ethelburga. The Duchess had had an easy time of it, which Colburga attributed to the fact that she had had a daughter instead of another ogrish man-child, and was even able to attend the feast, seated pale and proud at the head of her table.
Egelric Wodehead was deeply honored to have been chosen to sit at that table as well. All of the others so honored were noblemen themselves, from the King on down to the Selle family, since Theobald after all was the son of the Baron of Thorhold. And he—Egelric Wodehead—born a serf of the Baron of Thorhold, was here seated with the Baron’s son! If only his father could have seen him!
He had asked Elfleda not to come. He thought that there must have been some trouble between her and the Duke of which he had never been told, and besides he didn’t want her spoiling the dinner with her sour face. He knew that since Baby could not have come she was not likely to have been pleasant with him or, as a result, with anyone else: she seemed to like him well enough as Dada, but to her husband she had nothing to say.
Ethelmund Ashdown was the happiest man in Lothere that January. Of course he adored his little daughters, but he had so longed for a son… and now that he had one, he couldn’t stop dreaming about how it would be when the baby got older. They would go fishing together and hunting together, and he would teach him how to build a fire and how to ride a horse and how to tie a knot… The fun they would have!
Githa found it a little odd, however, that Ethelmund seemed to have become extraordinarily industrious ever since the new baby came. From dawn to dark—and even after dark if the new baby was sleeping—he would be out in the fields or in the barn. In fact, it seemed he was mostly in the barn. Considering it was January and there was little to do out there besides take care of the animals…
Gunnilda Hogge was furious. Once again the cook at Nothelm had sent one of the servants to help himself to one of Alwy’s fattest pigs, conveniently “forgetting” that Alwy was a freeman and owned all of his pigs.
And of course when Gunnilda had asked Alwy why he let the man into the pen and helped him choose the nicest pig, without even asking for payment, Alwy had just wailed, “I forgot again, Gunnie!” and went blubbering off to the outhouse to hide his shame.
“Well, they better not have slaughtered that pig yet,” Gunnilda muttered as she stormed up the path to Nothelm barn. “And once I get that pig I’m going to take care of that cook!”
Nobody knew where Duke Alred was that morning. Egelric had already been all through the castle, and now it didn’t look like he was in the stable either. Jupiter was in his stall so it didn’t seem that he had gone out riding. He was about to ask a groom whether Alred had been out to the stables yet, but then he noticed the new milkmaid over in the goat-pen. Aye, she was a pretty one. He could just as easily—and much more pleasantly—ask her instead.
He let himself into the pen behind her. When she turned, surprised, he said, “Good morning, young lady. Has His Grace been in the stables yet this morning?”
“At least there is a chance that my husband will still be alive this time next year.”
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