There was a short passage between the King’s new hall and the tiled sitting room, almost wider than it was long. Had the doors at the two ends not been grander than the third door leading onto the cloister, it would have seemed more an antechamber than a corridor.
It was the Feast of Saint Malo, to be certain, but Amarel’s breathless attention to the Mass was exaggerated even for a devout boy on his name day. As far as Araphel knew, his brother had never even met the man.
“Well, well, well,” Caedwulf sneered, before Eirik had even completed the long journey back up from the floor on which he had briefly kneeled. “If it isn’t Brass Balls the Pirate, run aground.”
Before she had crossed half the distance to the door, Condal heard the boy pull himself up, swing himself around the arm of the bench, and stumble after her, smacking his hand against the pillar as he tried to catch his balance in mid-flight.
Condal’s father had always said that no one knew the color of her eyes. They changed with every change in the light: blue when the light was rosy, green when it was golden, gray when it was blue. He used to joke that one could only see their true color in the dark.
Alred had stood, but he had stood before Leofric had even been shown into the room, making it seem due less to courtesy than to an unwillingness to be caught at a disadvantage. Nor did Leofric fail to notice the sword behind him—nor the jug perched beside it.
The night was so cold that its darkness shone: the stars were winter-bright, and the frost over the windlaid grass made the hillslopes seem the glossy flanks of a dark beast.
Ethelwyn had hurried home, almost jogging at the end, but he was careful to take the stairs slowly. He was cold, solitary, and thoughtful by nature, and just as a man had to lower himself by stages into cold water, Ethelwyn needed the gradual rise through the chill and the shadows of the empty hallway before he could face the warmth and light of his bedroom, and the love of his family.
Malcolm and Iylaine intended to stay until Sunday, but Alred and Hetty were returning home in the morning. Soon only Ethelwyn would remain, and even he would eventually want to begin spending his evenings at his own fireside again. Egelric would be alone, as he had not been in years, and no one knew what that would mean.
Sophie so rarely asked for anything that Stein was anxious to oblige her whenever she did—even if she asked for something as ill-advised as riding eight miles through the uplands on a moonless night.
Iylaine snorted and whipped her head around to stare over her shoulder. “What are you doing, Malcolm?” she whispered. Iylaine had a way of making even whispers sound shrill.
“Who can flirt within a fifty-yard radius of Father Matthew?”
“One can flirt within an eighteen-degree angle directly behind him. I have through experimentation and much elaborate geometry proved the theorem.”
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