Egelric offers Lili's explanation

Egelric did not rejoin the men until he had seen his wife undressed and resting on her bed, with a low fire and an order that she be brought something warm to drink. He and she knew that her trembling was not due to the cold, but it was easier for both of them to pretend it was.

He also knew that she would not rise again until he returned to her. There were times, he thought, when it was convenient to have a wife who asked one’s permission and obeyed one’s commands.

Meanwhile, his order had been that the men be brought wine to drink, and he found Sigefrith and Cenwulf, at least, looking more relaxed.

“Did she speak?” Eirik asked at once.

“Aye,” Egelric said and walked past him to pour a cup for himself.

“And?”

Egelric did not reply until he had drained half his cup and made himself comfortable on the bench. Eirik was too proud to be made to ask twice, and he only waited with an angry sneer.

“What happened to Raedwald?” Egelric asked him.

“He leave his friend to be killed and he run away. Nice friend! I like him so much, I pay thirty marks to any man who bring me his head!”

“I remind you that you are speaking of my wife’s brother,” Cenwulf said.

“I don’t forget it! And Whitehand, he don’t forget it either!” This last seemed more a warning to Sigefrith than to Cenwulf. “And Lili she know where he is?” he asked Egelric.

“Lili does not know where he is,” Egelric replied. “If you were to ask her, which I shall not allow you to do, you would be told that he probably went to Ireland.”

“She say everybody go to Ireland! ‘Where is he?’ ‘He’s in Ireland!’ So! I think Ireland is another name for Hell! Everybody go there some day!”

“They were not truly going to Ireland when your friend Olaf took their ship,” Egelric said calmly. “They expected to be captured. They expected to be taken to Whitehand’s court. What they were not expecting was you. You may have saved your lord’s life by taking them away from there.”

“I tell you, she is an assassin!” Eirik hissed at Sigefrith, as if this news proved a point he had been trying to make when Egelric was not present to hear their conversation.

“My wife has never killed anyone,” Egelric said.

“Then why is she with killers?”

“She was not given a choice, Eirik. She has no father, no brothers, no uncles – only her brother-​​in-​​law. And she thinks Raedwald knew something about Friedrich, or had some power over him, and he did not have a choice either.”

“I do not see,” Sigefrith said, “what secret could be so dreadful that a man would knowingly take his pregnant wife and her young sister into such danger.”

“Nor do I,” Egelric admitted.

“It is proof that his wife and sister are not so innocent ladies!” Eirik said.

“Or it proves that Raedwald and Friedrich are evil men,” Egelric replied. “You may guess which explanation I prefer to believe. They took Hetty and Lili to make it seem that they were harmless travelers. Lili was meant at first to pretend to be Raedwald’s wife, but when Raedwald saw how charming she was and what success she had with the men they met, he thought to use her to get closer to Whitehand. And it worked, didn’t it? She ate at his table, did she not?”

“She did,” Eirik muttered.

“And she feared that if she were able to get still closer to him, Raedwald would force her to kill him. Or make it seem that she did.”

“That is why she married you,” Cenwulf said to Egelric. “She did know what awaited her if she went away with Raedwald.”

“And I had thought that Friedrich and Raedwald themselves were behind that trick,” Sigefrith said.

“She thinks Friedrich might have been,” Egelric said. “He did not tell Raedwald that she was missing until the dawn, despite the fact that he must have found her letter to him upon returning home the evening before. She thinks Friedrich might have been trying to spare her.”

“And provide a man to care for his own wife and child if he did not return,” Cenwulf added.

“Which he succeeded in doing,” Egelric sighed. He realized now that his sister-in-law’s visit was hereby made permanent, though he had promised Lili that she would not be told the truth until after she and her baby were out of danger.

“And you trust her to lie beside you in your bed when you sleep,” Eirik chuckled grimly. “Better keep one eye open.”

“I do trust her, Eirik. What else could she do? She’s not a man to make her own way in the world. What could she do when the men who were supposed to protect her were taking her into danger and sin? What else could a young girl do but find another man?”

“You are only flattered she chose you,” Eirik sneered.

Egelric did not offer other reply than a glare.

“Does she know who sent them to kill Whitehand?” Sigefrith asked. “I doubt it was Raedwald’s own dream in life.”

“She doesn’t know. Raedwald only told her what she needed to know.”

“Friedrich he don’t know either,” Eirik said. “He’s clever, that Raedwald. Finally he say it is Enna of Leinster, but I tell them, a man he say anything to save his eyes.”

“Enna is the obvious man,” Cenwulf said.

“And so, it is why Friedrich would say his name if he want to make us stop to torture him.”

Egelric gulped the wine that remained in his cup and hoped it would not take long to act. He did not feel at ease with these men who could talk of assassins and torture and the fate of kings. He had been born a peasant’s son in a one-​​room house of daub and wattle. He had learned to tell the seasons and the hours by the stars; had learned to judge the quality of the soil with his tongue; had learned to turn a calf around in the cow’s womb and how to breathe life into the nose of a stillborn lamb. This was what he knew.

Now he was being asked to tease hidden enmities and alliances out of spoken half-​​truths and strange glances; how to judge the quality of men not only by character but by shades of blood and ties of marriages; and how to kill, as he had learned to do on a battlefield, and perhaps, for all he knew, how to torture and execute too. He was living another man’s life.

“What do we truly know of Raedwald?” Sigefrith asked.

Cenwulf sighed. “He is a pet of Colburga’s mother. I think her too clever to have been fooled as regards his true nature.”

“What interest would a sixty-​​year-​​old Saxon baroness – not even a baroness, but a dowager baroness – have in the death of Godred Whitehand?” Sigefrith asked him.

“I did not suggest that she was behind it. Only that she knows him better than I. I suppose I should go to see her,” Cenwulf said wearily.

“So, that’s good. You ask her,” Eirik said. “And tell her I pay thirty marks for his head, and see what she say.”

“I think she will laugh and tell you men have offered her more.”