Also standing at the table was the bishop. Leofric had prepared her to see him, insisting that both his presence and hers was required on this day. So she would keep to the other end of the table and not sink her dagger into his eye at their jul feast, before so many of the king’s people. But she would not tolerate him.
Astrid glared at him until he looked away.
The music changed, became more forceful, and Leofric’s father entered the room, wearing an elaborate coat over his breeches and doublet and a high crown on his head. Leofric and Eadric wore crowns as well, but, though they were dressed elegantly, they wore no coat of golden threads and spotted white fur.
All around the hall, women and men bent their knees. Even Leofric and Eadric did. Leofric tugged lightly on her sleeve, and she attempted to do what she was supposed to do.
Elfleda had attempted to teach her this ‘curtsey,’ but it was more complicated than it seemed. Men were required only to go to one knee. That, she could have done—not willingly, but at least with some grace. But women were made to twist their legs and nearly sit on them.
It was beyond her, and she wobbled and would have fallen but for Leofric’s steadying arm.
The king spoke, welcoming all to the meal, and the bishop, wearing a golden cowl almost as grand as the king’s coat, spoke of their god. Then, at last, the king sat, and everyone else could.
These people had so very many ways to hold a few above the rest, and none above the dead-but-not-dead, son-and-his-own-father man hanging on the cross. All sought someone to abase themselves to.
She would never understand.
As the food was being served, Astrid’s belly rolled at the smell of the meat, and she set her hand there as if she could calm it that way.
Leofric noticed at once and laid his hand over her other, which rested on the table. He said nothing, except with his eyes. She found a smile; she didn’t want to think right now about what was inside her, not trapped in this rigid gown, with so many eyes on her.
“Are you well, child?”
The voice was the king’s, and Leofric’s head turned so quickly his hair flew. Astrid bent her head to see around him to his father. The king had never addressed her in so familiar a manner before.
“Ja.” She remembered the courtly manners she’d been taught, and added, “Your Majesty.”
At that moment, a servant set some kind of dark meat on her plate and poured sauce over it, and Astrid was not well at all. She gripped the table and forced her rebellious organs back to their places.
When she could, she looked again at the king. “I well. Sire.”
He smiled. He’d never smiled at her before. His eyes moved to Leofric. Astrid couldn’t see what transpired between them, but the king’s smile widened, and he returned his attention to her and gave her a courtly nod.
She understood what he had just learned.
Leofric turned to her, beaming, and, in full view of everyone in the great hall, lifted her hand and kissed it.
She’d given them all what they wanted, it seemed. Everyone was happy.
If only she could find a way to join them.
“As the babe grows, Your Grace,” Elfleda reached out as if she meant to pat his arm, but remembered her station and thought better of it. “Soon, she won’t be so ill, and soon after that will be the quickening. When she feels that life stirring inside her, then she’ll change. You’ll see.”
Leofric sighed unhappily at the door he’d just closed. Behind it was a woman he loved with a power and depth that sometimes frightened him. Inside her was his child, who had been making her quite ill for weeks.
And she was desperately unhappy.
He knew exactly why. He would have known anyway, he understood his woman, but Astrid was not one to prevaricate her feelings. She’d been perfectly forthcoming: she wanted to be the woman she’d been in her world. She didn’t know how to be anything in his world. She didn’t know how to be a mother.
She wanted to be a warrior. And she had never wanted children.
The only women Leofric had known who seemed not to want children were bawd’s house whores, and a fair number of those, in fact, had children. He’d believed it to be something built into feminine nature: with breasts and a womb came the desire to nurture life.
Even had it not been a natural impulse, bearing children simply wasn’t a choice for women, certainly not at his station. They made heirs. It was the purpose of noble and royal marriage—heirs and alliances.
But her world was different. In her world, it seemed women could make their way like men did and follow whatever paths they wanted. It had once seemed shockingly cruel that a world existed where men put their women at such risk, put swords in their hands and let them stand side by side with them and fight.
But now he knew Astrid, as strong-willed a warrior as he’d ever known.
He would have put her in armor and given her a sword if he could have. But women did not fight in his world. Which was now, and would evermore be, her world. Women were mothers and mates. She was his mate, and she would mother his children. There was simply no other choice.
The lethargic woman still lying abed behind that closed door, however—if she spent these long months with child dwindling, there’d be nothing left of her, as a mother or a warrior, or the woman he loved.
“I pray you’re right, Elfleda.”
“You’ll see, Your Grace. You’ll see.”
~oOo~
The king set aside a scroll and nodded at a chair before his desk. As Leofric sat, his father said, “You swore that you would bring her to our ways, Leofric.”
When he’d been formally summoned to the solar, he’d known exactly what his father had on his mind, but foreknowledge made the topic little easier. “And I will. I have. She carries my child. She’s dined at the royal table, and in the residence, and she’s comported herself well. She knows our language and our ways. She has changed much in these months.”
“And yet she remains unsaved. She will swell soon with your child, and yet there has been no marriage. Not even the banns can be called. There is scandal enough spinning around you, son. Legitimize her.”
Astrid would not agree to be baptized, and they couldn’t be married until she was. He couldn’t marry a heathen. But she would not give up her gods, and the god Father Francis represented was absolutely repellant to her. She would never allow the bishop to touch her—another complication to the question of the marriage, if they could overcome the hurdle of the baptism.
Leofric hadn’t managed to find an argument that might persuade her. In truth, he agreed with her on more points than he’d admit. Certainly that Francis was a terrible representative for the Lord.
When Leofric didn’t answer in a timely manner, the king continued. “You promised me a moral victory over her people. A victory for the Lord our God. She must be baptized. There must be a wedding. Bring an heir with no question of succession into this line, Leofric. I gave you my approbation and allowed you a wide ground to act as you would with her. But the time for lust and licentiousness is over. Make her one of us.”
“And if I cannot?”
“She would not be the first woman to weep at the altar and to kneel with stiff legs. But if you are not strong enough to force her, then you will forget her. We will find you a suitable mate, and we will put your mistress and your bastard away from us.”
Leofric sagged back in his chair, his mouth gaping. For a few moments, as the full dimension of his father’s words came clear, he could do little more than blink. “I believed that you had come to have affection for Astrid.”
“I have. She is lovely, and I see how different she is from when I first saw her. I admire the strength of her will.” He smiled. “I think Dreda would have been enchanted by her.”
Leofric smiled as well, thinking of his sister. “She would have. She wanted to be a pirate.”
The king gave a sad chuckle and then sighed. “I also know my own wrongness in how she was treated. I
was ill-advised during a time of great grief, and I forgot my own way.”
That was a near condemnation of Francis, and Leofric leapt upon it. “If God were not so closely aligned with the bishop in her mind, I could persuade her, Father. She despises Francis so. She remembers that he watched all that was done to her. She remembers that he smiled and”—he stopped, knowing that his father would not thank him for putting the baseness of the Black Walls into words.
But Astrid had spoken in detail about her loathing for the bishop, and his father needed to know. “He smiled and he panted, and he touched himself, Father. That is what she saw when she was being raped and tortured almost to death. What was done to her in the Black Walls excited Francis. In a way no man of God should be.”
His words had a physical impact. The king’s complexion deepened, and his cheeks twitched with his tensing jaws. Leofric waited while his father struggled to keep his composure.
“And I should believe a heathen’s accusations against the bishop of this realm, a man who has many times sat at table with the Most Holy Father?”
Leofric didn’t respond with words. He simply held his father’s gaze and let his steadiness be answer enough. The king knew Francis well. There had been many signs. Leofric, who spent not nearly as much time in company with the bishop, had seen them. The Bishop of Mercuria was a man of many vices, many sins.
Finally, the king sighed. “And what is it that I can do?”
His father had already given them the answer, Leofric apprehended with a jolt. “Send him to Rome. On a pilgrimage. The weather is warming. He’ll be gone months.” The idea blossomed in his head. “Mayhap he won’t return. Mayhap His Holiness will keep his friend Francis nearby and appoint a new bishop. Should you make such a request.”
Astrid wanted to kill Francis, and held it as a plan she meant to accomplish, but such an act would end in her demise as well, whether she were married to him or not. Getting Francis out of Mercuria solved a host of difficulties, and his father knew it, too.
“Francis has been my closest advisor for many years,” his father mused.
“Yes. And he’s cultivated power over those years. Power beyond the castle. Power he’s abused. Father, he was a good man once, but no more.” Another great risk—underlying his words was a criticism: that the king had not recognized the failings of the one he trusted most. “Mayhap Rome will bring his goodness back to him.”
The king considered for a long time. “Astrid will give up her resistance and join the Faith, if the bishop is gone from us?”
Leofric had no confidence in that at all. To do so still required her to give up her gods, and she cleaved to them as if they were a lifeline. And, of course, they were. Not only was her belief in them the last thing she still held of her past self, but they were her gods. For all Leofric’s skepticism about men like Francis, and for all his own sins, he could not imagine giving up his faith in the Lord.
“Yes, she will,” he assured his father.
~oOo~
Astrid was sleeping when he returned to her. Lately, she’d been sleeping through great portions of each day. Worried and frustrated, he kissed her forehead and left her to her rest.
For his part, rest was impossible, or ease of any kind. He couldn’t decide whether he’d solved his dilemma with his father or only made it worse. So he went in search of Dunstan. He wanted to ride, and to talk with his friend.
A winter more than typically full of grey mists and heavy rains had shrunk back, leaving a soggy but brighter world behind. The trees had sprouted tender new leaves, and a watery sun dappled through them. It was a good day for a long ride.
Neither of them was in a particularly loquacious tendency on this day, so they rode with little chatter, focusing instead on driving their steeds apace—not racing, but not ambling, either. As always, the tension began to bleed out of Leofric as he pushed his charger down the road, leaning in, feeling the bond between horse and rider, their bodies finding the same rhythm.
They rode out well beyond the castle, into the countryside, and, when their horses were lathered, they stopped at a humble roadside inn. They’d dressed for a long ride, and didn’t appear as anything more than nobles of no especial note. So they made themselves comfortable at a corner table, where no one could come up on their backs, and ordered ale and a meal of hearty stew and rye bread.
The companionable quiet between them lingered while they drank their first mugs, their exchanges limited to insignificant comments about the ride, the weather, the inn. But as their meal arrived with their second mugs of ale, Dunstan took a long draught and then groaned loudly after he swallowed.
“’Swounds, I needed this day.”
“Aye, and I.” Leofric lifted his mug, and Dunstan knocked it with his own.
“You and I, Your Grace, we seem to have gotten ourselves confused. You cannot make the woman who bears your child marry you, and I cannot make the woman I married bear my child. Somewhere between us is a good husband.”
Leofric chuckled. Dunstan had been wed for months now, but had been denied the marriage bed since the wedding night. Not denied, exactly. More driven from it by his wife’s terrified tears.
He chewed a hunk of bread soaked in stew. “No luck yet, eh?”
His friend rolled his eyes. “She is immune to my considerable charms, and I cannot find my way to force a sobbing child. She will not take drink, so I cannot make her agreeable in that way. I’ve even prostrated myself, offered to let her explore me as she would and have her way, and she is appalled at the thought of it. All she does is weep and pray and order clothes and jewels. At least I’ll have no heir to concern myself with when she drives me to the almshouse.”
“You’ve married the one female in the kingdom who doesn’t want you,” Leofric laughed, shaking his head. “Did her mother not come and speak with her?”
“Agh.” Dunstan dropped his head to the table with a theatrical thump and then looked up. “Aye, she did, and all that accomplished was weeping for homesickness. And more praying. You are lucky, my friend. You may not have the marriage, but you have the important results—a willing woman in your bed, and your child in her belly.”
Leofric’s sex twitched and tingled at the thought of Astrid in his bed. In the months since he’d taken her from the Black Walls, her body had regained much of its sleekness, if not the astonishing contours of muscle she’d first had. Now, and especially since the child had begun to work on her form, she had a womanly shape and softness that his hands and mouth savored.
He resettled himself on the bench and took a healthy portion of his ale. “You know I need the marriage.”
“Aye, I know. No progress in that regard?”
“She’ll marry me. But she won’t be baptized.” Dunstan knew as much; this wasn’t the first time Leofric had needed his friend’s ear to work out the problem of Astrid.
“And not one without the other.”
“No. But—” he looked around to be sure that there were no other ears close by. The innkeeper’s wife met his eyes and offered a look to ask if they needed anything. He shook his head, and she nodded and went on about her work. “I spoke with the king today.”
Dunstan’s eyebrows went up, and he set his mug on the scarred table. “And?”
Again, Leofric looked around, trying not to appear to be someone who had a secret he didn’t want heard. “I believe he will send the bishop to Rome. Mayhap to stay.”
Dunstan’s jaw dropped. “True?”
“Aye, I believe so.”
“And how did you accomplish such a miracle?”
He hunkered down, close to the table, and Dunstan joined him. The savory aroma of the half-eaten stew wafted between them. “The king gave me the idea himself, as he was demanding I bring her in hand. Astrid will not allow the bishop near her, and my father knows well why. I told him details she’s shared with me about her time in the Black Walls—and no, I’ll not share them with you. But Francis is a repugnant pretender to piety, and I thin
k today the king fully realized it.”
“Well, we both know the bishop does not live as he would have his flock do, or as he would appear to his flock.”
“No, he does not.”
“And you think if Francis leaves, Astrid will give up her gods?”
The surge of blood he’d felt speaking of, and imagining, Francis’ downfall slowed at Dunstan’s question. “I don’t know,” he answered truthfully. “She doesn’t find much use in ours.”
“Need she?”
Leofric cocked his head. “What do you mean?”
Soul's Fire (The Northwomen Sagas Book 3) Page 23
