by Lisa Hendrix
No. Not witch. Cwen was more than a witch, more than a mixer of potions and spinner of spells. She was a true sorceress, and one of great power—perhaps even a priestess of the dark gods—and her centuries-old vengeance still glowed as hot as these coals. To do this to a single man, the one responsible for her son’s death, that, on some level, Merewyn could comprehend. But to all of them? And their offspring? A curse fueled by such hate might never be broken.
Mother, why bring me these men? she prayed silently. I am a healer. My magic is not that kind, not that strong. I cannot possibly help them.
Tears of frustration and sorrow welled up. She should never have raised their hopes. It had been foolish. Cruel. But there had been so many signs … Perhaps she’d missed something, some tiny detail that would tell her what to do.
She scrubbed the tears out of her eyes and turned to ask Brand to tell her again. The words died on her tongue. He looked so tired, bowed by the weight of all those dead men. She crossed and rested a hand on his shoulder. The tightness there flowed up into her arm. “How long has it been since you truly slept? Lie down for a little.”
He shook his head. “I cannot. The bear …”
“I will sit up, and Lord Ivo will come. We will wake you in time.” She took his hand and tugged him the few feet to the bed, where he eased himself down with a sigh. Merewyn sat beside him and made him turn so she could rub his shoulders.
He sighed again. “That’s good.”
Slowly he relaxed, and when she felt him start to fade, she slid to the end of the bed and pulled him down so his head lay cradled in her lap. He was asleep in moments, his breath regular, his head heavy and warm on her thighs. After a time, when she was sure he slept soundly, she gently brushed the hair off his forehead and traced a sign of protection there with one fingertip, then rested her palm on his chest and began to pray to the Mother. In his sleep, he covered her hand with his.
They were still like that when Ivo returned near dawn. Merewyn raised a finger to her lips as he pushed open the unbarred door. He stood there in the frame, staring at them—at her—then closed the door quietly and went to sit at her table.
“You are a witch, to make him sleep so.” His voice barely carried over the song of the crickets outside.
“’Tis no spell, my lord. The telling exhausted him.” She stroked a lock of Brand’s hair where it curled over her thigh. “He carries too much guilt, as you carry too much worry.”
“There are reasons for both,” said Ivo, stomach twisting as thoughts of Alaida and the child tumbled through his skull. “Have you good news for me?”
She shook her head. “I fear such dark magic is beyond my ken, my lord. I will keep my mind to it, and perhaps the Mother will reveal something.”
“I will have Brand bring you Ari’s book. Perhaps it will show you a way.”
“Perhaps.” She hesitated, then raised the issue that most concerned him. “He told me of Sir Ari’s visions.”
The angry fear boiled up again, but this time he was able to stay in control. “Then you understand why I must be here.”
“Aye. But what if you’re not? If the child comes by day …”
No. Please, Odin, no. “That has been on my mind since Alaida told me. Even if it comes at night, I must leave before dawn. I cannot carry a newborn into the woods if it does not change, yet I cannot leave an eaglet in Alaida’s arms if it does. I need someone there who understands, who can stay when I must leave, who can care for them both no matter what. Someone like you.”
“Then I will be there, my lord, though I am not sure what you wish me to do.”
“We will figure it out together.” He studied her through narrowed eyes. She said yes so easily. Could it truly be that simple? “You are a strange one, Healer. How is it you hold me no ill will?”
“You did me no harm.”
“Nonetheless, I should not have been so …” He sought a word, but didn’t find it. “You have my apology.”
She nodded in acceptance. “What has changed, my lord? Why have you decided to trust me?”
He nodded toward Brand. “Him. He despises everything witch, yet he sleeps in your lap.” He rose and went to the door to check the sky.
Behind him, Merewyn exclaimed in understanding. Ivo turned to look at her.
“I have watched Sir Brand do that so many times,” she explained.
“And now you know why.”
“Aye. I will guard your secret well, my lord,” she promised again.
“I know.” Ivo squeezed his eyes shut against the emotion that welled up at the simple acceptance contained in Merewyn’s words. Brand was right: this was a good woman. It was hard to believe she was witch. “Wake him, Merewyn, lest we are still here when the bear returns. I would keep you safe.”
CHAPTER 25
A FEW EVENINGS later, Ivo pushed his bishop into position and said, “Checkmate.”
“Already?” With a sigh, Alaida flicked over her king with one finger. “I do think my head grows softer as my belly grows larger.”
“It does, my lady,” said Bôte, from her place in the corner. “The babe sucks the wits out of you now, just as he will suck the milk out of you after, and leave your paps as flat as a poor man’s purse.”
“Bôte!”
“’Tis one of the reasons you should hire a wet nurse,” continued Bôte, unabashed. “As I have told you many times.”
“I, uh, think I’ll see what Oswald is up to,” muttered Brand, rising.
“And I have told you I do not want a wet nurse,” said Alaida, ignoring him and his abrupt retreat. “What are my breasts for, if not to feed my own child?”
“I have occasional use for them,” volunteered Ivo.
Alaida made a face at him and started setting up her men for the next game. “Your enjoyment is not at issue.”
“And why not?” demanded Bôte. “You will want him to desire you enough to get another child on you.” She turned to Ivo. “If she suckles this one, ’twill be longer before she can have another.”
“Is that true?” Ivo asked Alaida.
“I don’t know. ’Tis what she says, but she tells me all sorts of things I know are wrong. And it makes no difference.” Alaida turned back to Bôte. “I’m not having a wet nurse, and you will stop hounding me about it, lest I send you away and have Merewyn midwife me.”
“I’d like you to have Merewyn anyway,” said Ivo, seizing the opening she’d so nicely left him.
“I deliver all the manor babes, my lord,” said Bôte.
“As you will this one. However, I want Merewyn to help as well.”
Angry red spotted Bôte’s cheeks. “I have no need of her help and I—”
Alaida held up a hand to still her. “My lord, I only teased Bôte. I did not intend you to take me seriously.”
“Your words only reminded me I had not told you my wishes.” He tried to sound like it wasn’t important, so she wouldn’t fight him. “I know you don’t need her, but humor me.”
For just a moment, her hackles went up in the old way, but happily, she only huffed a little before she assented. “Oh, all right, then. We will welcome her aid—won’t we, Bôte?”
“As you will, my lady.” Bôte’s voice was sweet enough, but her look for Ivo was pure venom.
“Go tell Brand ’tis safe to come back,” said Ivo, wanting her gone. “Then see if there is more of that apple tart. I’m still hungry.”
As she left, Alaida opened the new game with her usual pawn. “We have other things to discuss, my lord, like a name.”
A name. Ivo’s hand hesitated over the board. He didn’t want to pick a name. A name made the child real. A person. “We have time.”
“Waiting only ensures he will come early—or so Bôte says.”
“Ah. Well, then, pick something.”
“Have you no preferences?”
“No.”
“Your father’s name, perhaps, or your grandfather’s.”
Thorli, or Bjarnlaug
r? “They would not suit.”
“Then a friend. Would you name him for Brand or Ari or some other companion?”
“No.” If he didn’t answer, perhaps she’d drop the matter.
But her badger side came out again, digging at it. “I am sure of those I do not want,” she continued, trying to engage him. “Robert, Neville, Vital, Eustace.”
“Eustace? Was that the short, timid one?”
“No, that was Vital. But I do not want a child of mine sharing a name with any of them. Nor William,” she added. “Even if he is your liege.”
“And yours. Whether you love him or not, you owe him allegiance as king.”
“He will have my allegiance when I have my grandfather, but I will never name a son for him.”
“Then pick something else.”
“But what?” she prodded, clearly vexed by this lack of interest in what should be—was—an important decision. “Hugh? Fulk? Alaric? Guy? Martin? Stephen? And what of names for a girl, in case I’m wrong? Do you like Isabel? Matilda? Herleve? Jehanne?”
“God’s knees, Alaida, name it whatever you wish.”
“I shall,” she snapped. “Why do I bother? You did not want this child, and ’tis clear you still do not. I daresay you put more thought into naming your horse. Perhaps I should call him Hrimfaxi. At least I know you like the name.” Eyes bright with tears, she shoved her stool back, knocking over chessmen in her anger.
Before she could struggle to her feet, Ivo was on his knees before her, contrite. “Forgive me, Alaida.” He caught her hands between his and brought them to his lips. “I did not mean to upset you. I know this is important to you.”
“As it should be to you.” She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, and when she opened them again, the tears were gone. “Names are important. They have meaning and weight, and our son’s name must be carefully chosen—if for no other reason than that he is not known as le petit oisel.”
His fingers tightened mindlessly around hers. “What?”
“It is what I call him sometimes,” she explained, smiling happily down at her belly. “As he first quickened, the little flutters felt like tiny wings beating. So, mon petit oisel.”
Odin, no. Her voice, the crackling of the fire, the sounds of the hall—all were drowned out by the thunder of his heart in his ears. Alaida cocked her head, looking at him strangely, and he realized all the blood had drained from his face, perhaps from his entire body, so that his heart pumped only dry air, loud as a rowing drum.
“What is wrong?” she asked, her voice full of concern. “You look as if you have seen a ghost.”
His tongue felt thick, but he managed a “No.”
“Did I say something wrong?”
“No.” He shot to his feet. “No. I, uh, I just remembered … something I must do.” Leave. He must leave. “I will return shortly,” he said, barging past Brand as he reentered.
He made it to the stable before his knees buckled. Foundering, he caught himself on the wall of Fax’s stall and hung there, unable to stand and unwilling to fall down into the dreck where he belonged for doing this to Alaida. Heavy footsteps crossed the yard coming after him.
“What’s wrong with you?” demanded Brand. “You looked like you were staring into the mouth of Hel as you passed me.”
“I was,” said Ivo. “Alaida called … She calls the child mon petit oisel.”
“Ba …” Brand couldn’t even manage a proper curse, but after a moment, he nodded. “Maybe ’tis not as bad as you think.”
“Brand, it means her little bird.”
“I know what it means, but women do that,” said Brand. “They give them pet names, almost before they stop bleeding. Ylfa called our first Flotnar because she puked so much—like being seasick all the time, she said, so he must be a seafarer. And my sister, Runa, called all of hers Egg, right up to the day they were born and named.”
Ivo looked up, trying to see if Brand was serious or just trying to reassure him. “Really?”
“Don’t you remember? Egg this. Egg that. ‘Egg’s making me sick,’ she would say, or, ‘Stop kicking, Egg.’ ”
Ivo nodded, recalling, and Brand thumped him on the back. “Alaida’s doing the same thing, that’s all. It doesn’t mean anything, other than that she talks to it.”
“Ah, by the gods, I hope not.” Ivo pounded his skull against the edge of the stall until the pain drew the blood back to his head. “I feel like a whale’s been chewing on me ever since we got back, and it’s only been a week. How will I make it through two more months?”
“By doing what you must. Smile, shut your mouth, and keep her happy for as long as you can.”
Ivo straightened and pulled himself together. “Keeping her happy seemed easier when it mostly involved swiving.”
“It would,” said Brand. He thumped him on the back again. “Come. That nurse of hers was on her way up. Your lady will be crying in her arms.”
“Oh, good, another excuse for the old sow to hate me. She’s almost worse than the rest of it.”
“They always are,” said Brand, and walked him back to do battle with demons and nurses.
THIS WAS GOING to be easier than he’d thought, Neville fitz Hubert concluded as he perched in the concealing branches of a yew, watching Sir Ari approach one crisp evening a few days before Michaelmas.
He’d spotted the seneschal two days earlier, riding into the forest just before sunset, then seen de Vassy along the same trail the following evening. A little backtracking had brought him to a thicket where he’d found two horses—Lord Ivo’s and Sir Brand’s—in a rough enclosure, but no sign of either man. Today, Neville had hidden his horse well away and come back to climb this tree and wait. As he’d waited, he’d counted once again the humiliations he’d suffered at de Vassy’s hands: Four. Five, if he counted his father’s reaction. Neville ran his tongue over the scar on his lip where the old bricon had backhanded him before ordering him away until he “made some good of” himself.
He’d drifted around for a few weeks, looking futilely for a lord who needed another lance and would have him, nursing a desire for revenge until it grew teeth. Eventually he’d found himself at Morpeth, still without a lord, so close he had just ridden on to Alnwick. He wasn’t even yet sure how he would satisfy the desire—murder seemed both too easy on de Vassy and too dangerous to his own neck—but he would. That he knew for certs.
Below him, Sir Ari looked around carefully, then dismounted. He wasted no time in unsaddling his horse and putting it in the pen with the other two. He shoved his gear beneath a fallen log, then, to Neville’s shock, began to undress.
So that’s what brought de Vassy and his men to the woods every day—sodomy. Neville smiled to himself. Even if the whispers were right about the king, the same perversion would hardly be tolerated in a lesser lord. It was just a matter of witnessing the two of them together—or would it be the three of them? A sudden shriek from above made him start, and he caught himself just short of falling.
“There you are,” said Sir Ari as the eagle came swooping down from overhead and settled onto the ground. “I thought you were going to be late.”
An agonized groan rose from below just as the sun settled below the horizon. It grew into a scream, changed, went higher and less human. Sir Ari began to crumple, to shrink and darken, even as the eagle grew bigger and lighter. Mother of God, what was this? The figures pulsed and shifted in the twilight, one figure growing more human as the other became more birdlike, as though they traded souls. The eagle’s shriek grew more human. Neville started shaking, and it was all he could do to keep still and not piss himself.
Impossible. Horrible.
Yet real. Terrified, Neville clutched at the tree trunk, his fingers digging into the bark until they bled as he listened to the cries of agony from below. And then it was over as abruptly as it had begun, and there was silence except for the thud of his own racing heart.
De Vassy huddled naked where the eagle had landed,
while a large black raven tried its wings on the spot where Sir Ari had stood. The raven hopped and fluttered, then rose up and circled lazily over the thicket as de Vassy struggled to his feet and began retrieving his gear from various hiding places. Neville flattened to the tree trunk, willing himself invisible, praying for protection from these demons.
Below, de Vassy finished dressing and quickly saddled his horse and Brand’s. A few moments later, he called the raven down to his shoulder and rode off toward Alnwick, passing within yards of the tree where Neville clung.
Neville’s mind raced over what he’d seen, trying to make sense of it, but there was no sense to be made. They were monsters, both of them, half beast and half man, and no doubt Sir Brand was like them. Pure evil, this was; devilry of the worst sort. They should be killed, burned like the demons they were.
That’s when he saw it. His revenge, handed to him by de Vassy himself. He wouldn’t have to kill the man—the Church would do it for him, or the Crown, and one or both would reward him for bringing the abomination at Alnwick to light. Excited by the prospect of watching de Vassy burn, Neville checked to be sure he was alone in the woods and clambered down out of the tree.
That’s it. He would go to Durham and tell the Archbishop. Oh, that’s right, the old buzzard had died. He would tell the king then, personally, and when William asked him to name a reward, he would say Alaida and Alnwick.
Alaida … He was lost in the fantasy of possessing her at last when a nearby twig cracked. With a yelp, he bolted off, crashing through the underbrush in his frantic rush to escape whatever other monsters lived in the Aln Wood. When he was lord here, he vowed, he would kill everything that moved and have the woods restocked with beasts he knew were beasts.
But for now, he just wanted to be gone. He found his horse, quickly returned to his camp to gather what gear he could find in the gloom, then rode like the Devil himself until he left Alnwick behind. Once safely away, he took shelter for the night at the first cottage he found, and at dawn the next morning, he started for London and the king.
