Immortal Warrior

by Lisa Hendrix

  Behind her, Lady Alaida and the others slept soundly, lulled by a potion slipped into the ale shared in celebration of a child brought safely into the world. Those below lay in a similar stupor—Brand’s doing—and Sir Ari would divert the guards outside. All was in readiness.

  As the moment approached, she quickly loosened the swaddling bands and traced a sign of protection on the babe’s chest. She pushed aside the tapestries and opened the shutter in case the eagle made its appearance fully fledged and ready to fly. She began mouthing the same prayer she’d repeated throughout the night, for the Mother to shield little Beatrice from this horrible curse, or if she could not, to aid those who worked to keep her safe and to ease Lady Alaida’s heart in what would be a terrible sadness.

  The first ray of light breached the horizon and froze the breath in Merewyn’s chest. She scanned Beatrice, searching for the first sign of feather or claw, expecting screams as the pain of changing tore through her tiny body. Anytime. Anytime.

  Beatrice stirred, whining. Her little arms, free of the swaddling, flailed, flapping like wings. Tears filled Merewyn’s eyes. Please, Mother, no. The light grew brighter, the sky bluer, the clouds pinker. The child blinked a few times and drew her arms in. Her fists bunched and flexed by her chin, she snuffled twice, then, with a soft exhalation, drifted back to sleep, at peace. No pain, no feathers, no claws.

  Stunned, Merewyn knelt by the cradle and quickly examined her. Fingers, toes, belly, back, head—nothing. Beatrice was a fine, healthy child with no mark of evil on her, and she stayed so, even as the sun gilded the land outside and the roosters crowed the morn. Words of thanks came to Merewyn’s lips as her tears, now full of joy, dropped onto the baby like rain.

  She was still there on her knees when the sound of Sir Ari’s voice outside startled her from her thanksgiving. She rewrapped Beatrice and hurried to meet him on the stairs. He saw her tears and blanched before she could say, “All is well.”

  “Are you certain?”

  “Yes. See?” She showed him the babe, and he blinked several times as if fighting tears of his own. “Can you tell him?”

  “You show him, at the window. He comes as we speak.”

  Merewyn hurried back to the solar just as a dark shape whisked past outside. The eagle made a slow turn and lit on the paling wall barely a dozen yards away. Merewyn pulled aside the baby’s wrappings just enough to show her chest and arms and carefully held her up in the frame of the window. The eagle stared, blinked, then spread his wings and leapt into the air, sweeping past the window once more, his wing tip just inches away. The rush of chill air over her bared skin startled Beatrice awake and she wailed, the sound of a newborn, not an eaglet. Outside, the great bird rose up, soaring higher and higher, wheeling and spinning, joy evident in every wingbeat as he danced the sky.

  “Bôte?” came a groggy voice behind her.

  “Merewyn, my lady.” Merewyn hugged Beatrice to her chest and quickly rearranged her wrappings.

  “Why is she crying?”

  “We were greeting her first dawn, my lady.” Merewyn closed the shutter, wiped the last of the tears from her cheeks, and turned with a smile to carry the baby to her mother. “Your eagle came to visit, and Lady Beatrice was bidding him welcome.”

  “ARE YOU NEARLY done, m’lady? Lady Beatrice sucks at her fist and ’twould be better for your milk if she sucked at you.”

  “Fetch her here.” Alaida choked down the last of the bland oat gruel that was her supper and set the bowl aside as Bôte brought her daughter.

  “Here we are, lamb.” Bôte perched on the edge of the bed, grinning broadly as Alaida put Beatrice to the breast. “Look at her. She knows what she wants. Suckles like a calf.”

  “And me the cow,” said Alaida, wincing as Beatrice worked hard for milk not yet there. “What makes you smile so, Bôte?”

  “You with a bairn, lamb. I always thought you would go off to marry and that would be the end of me. But here you are, lady and mother, and me still here to help. ’Tis a miracle.”

  “Aye, that it is, Nurse,” said a low voice from the door.

  “Ivo!” said Alaida, relieved beyond reason.

  Bôte popped to her feet and stepped forward to block him from coming closer. “The lying-in room is forbidden to men, my lord, as the birthing room was last night—or should have been.”

  “Rules invented by men without wives or children.”

  Bôte crossed herself. “Sacrilege.”

  “Truth.” He bypassed her and bent to kiss Alaida’s cheek. “Good evening, wife.” He bent further, to kiss Beatrice’s head. “And you, too, daughter.”

  His breath warmed Alaida’s breast, and tears leapt to her eyes. She tried to hide them by ducking her head, but he was too quick.

  “What’s this?” He lifted her chin and frowned. “Is Bôte right? Should I leave?”

  “No.” She pressed a kiss to his fingers. “I just … I wondered all day if I would see you tonight.”

  “You should not be seeing him,” said Bôte. “Not until you’ve been churched. You cannot stay, my lord.”

  Ivo straightened, a smile on his lips but an angry glint in his eyes. “Nurse, would you like to find a new lady to serve?”

  Bôte’s expression went flat. “No, my lord.”

  “Then close that mouth. I will submit myself to the priest and do whatever penance he demands, but I will not wait forty days to see my wife and child. Now leave us. I will only stay a little. I know they both need rest.”

  “Yes, my lord.” Bôte backed toward the door. “Of course you do, my lord.”

  “She seeks only to protect me,” said Alaida when she’d gone.

  Ivo came to sit on the edge of the bed. “Do you need protection from me?”

  “Only on occasion.” She slipped one hand along his jaw and drew him back to kiss her properly. “You’re sweating. Is it warm out?”

  “No, I rushed. I could not reach you quickly enough.”

  She swallowed back a lump in her throat as more tears dribbled down her cheeks.

  “Again? If I am going to make you weep at every turn, I will go and send the old woman back.”

  “No!” She clutched at his sleeve. “Every time I dozed today, I dreamed of searching for you. I tire of it. I want you here.”

  “And why did you hunt, in these dreams of yours?” he teased gently.

  “To find you for Beatrice’s christening. I made Father Theobald wait for your return, you know, since she is so hale.”

  “Ah.”

  “And because your kiss last night felt like a farewell,” she added, accusation shading her voice.

  Some strong emotion flickered behind his eyes as he stroked her cheek. “Well, it was not. I am here, lady wife, and here I will remain so long as Heaven permits.” He worked his finger into Beatrice’s balled fist, letting her tiny fingers curl around his joint as she suckled. “I have not attended a christening in many a year and paid little attention when I did. Remind me, what must I do?”

  BEATRICE SNORED LIKE her mother, Ivo discovered later that night.

  The next night, he learned that if he stroked gently down the bridge of her nose, her eyes would close despite herself and she would fall asleep, even if she was fussing. On the third, he realized that the nail on her smallest finger was no bigger than a barleycorn.

  These discoveries all came in the silence after midnight, after Beatrice had woken to nurse and been put back in her cradle. Ivo would listen from the hall, wait to give Alaida time to fall asleep and for Bôte to crawl into her cot, then slip into the solar to hang over the child until dawn approached, marveling at what the gods and his lady wife had given him.

  On the fourth night, a stool waited for him there by the cradle, beside a table with a cup of ale, freshly poured. When he glanced over to where Bôte lay, her narrow eyes glittered in the lamp light, watching him. He nodded his thanks, and wonder of wonders, she smiled, giving her blessing to his vigil.

  So watching B
eatrice became his whole night, just as watching the manor from a nearby tree had become the entirety of the eagle’s day. Each night, he would see what new thing he could discover about his daughter. The speed at which she grew and changed stunned him—he could see the differences day by day—and the more she grew, the more she looked like her mother.

  Except those eyes were definitely not going to be brown, he decided as she stared at his ring one night nearly a month after her birth. He moved his hand and chuckled at her determination as she tracked the gleam from side to side with eyes somewhere between light blue and gray. It was good, he thought, that he’d left his mark on her somehow, but he was glad she looked like her mother in everything else—especially the nose. She began to whine a little, so he stroked that tiny Alaida-nose to put her to sleep before she could wake her mother again. He yawned as she yawned, exhausted from all these nights and days of watching her but unable to keep himself from it even for a little.

  He reached for the spiced wine Bôte had left him that night and drained the bowl, relishing the pleasant warmth that flowed through him. Beatrice snuffled again in her sleep, and Ivo set aside the cup and knelt by the cradle to see if she was waking. She wasn’t, but he stayed there anyway, his chin resting on his folded arms, and watched her sleep.

  The next thing he knew, roosters were crowing outside and his head felt thick as pease pottage. Trying to shake off the cobwebs, he struggled to his feet and opened the shutter. The fog outside glowed faintly pink. Was dawn so close? Panic rose just as the first pain of changing hit him.

  Odin, no! He started for the door then realized he had no time to escape. With little else he could do, he pushed the shutter fully open and peeled out of his clothes, kicking them and his sword beneath the bed where they might not be noticed. The second wave of pain ripped through him, tearing a groan up from his gut.

  “Ivo?”

  He whirled as Alaida sat up in the bed.

  “No,” he begged the gods as pain ripped down his arms where feathers sprouted. Alaida stared, her face a mask of confusion that twisted into horror as his feet cramped into claws and he buckled to the floor, shrinking, drawing in to fit the eagle’s form. He clamped his mouth against the tearing pain, only his lips were no longer lips but a beak, and the eagle’s piercing cry covered Alaida’s gasp of shock.

  This was what Ari had seen, the last vestige of Ivo realized as the sky beyond the open window beckoned. This was the vision the gods had given. Him, not Beatrice.

  Hands clutching over her open mouth, Alaida tried to scream and failed, too terrified to make a sound. With another screech, the eagle leapt to the sill to test his wings, flapping them powerfully above the sleeping infant, then sailed out into the mist, away from the terrible silence.

  SCREAMING. SHE WAS screaming but there was no sound and she couldn’t move and it was him.

  Then Bôte was there, her familiar, safe arms gathering her close, and Alaida’s scream finally came out, muffled against the old woman’s bosom.

  “Hush, my lady. Stop. Quiet yourself. Lady Beatrice is fine. She’s fine.”

  “But it was him,” sobbed Alaida, trying to tell her. “It was him.”

  Bôte hugged her tighter, half smothering her. “Aye, it was, but he flew away. He’s gone. All is well.”

  No. It wasn’t well. Nothing was well. Alaida tore away from Bôte and scrambled over to the cradle where her daughter slept as though nothing had happened. Outside, the fog had swallowed any sign of the bird, and for a heartbeat Alaida doubted herself. A nightmare, she thought. A trick of the eyes. She slammed the shutter and latched it and stood there, breathing so hard her lungs burned.

  Oh, God. It was him. He had changed into a bird. An eagle. A moan welled up, building toward another scream.

  Bôte grabbed her by the shoulders, her fingers digging into Alaida’s flesh as she shook her. “Silence, you fool, before someone hears you,” she hissed. “Where will you be if the others learn your husband is a demon? Where will Lady Beatrice be? They will burn you both.”

  Her words cut Alaida’s scream short with an even deeper terror.

  “A man who becomes a bird,” continued Bôte, her disgust clear. “’Tis no wonder he leaves you each dawn.”

  “Then you saw it, too,” Alaida breathed, almost relieved, because it meant she wasn’t mad.

  “Aye, I saw it, but ’tis our fortune no one else did, else they would be here even now, dragging all three of us off, to put you and me to torture and Lady Beatrice to death.”

  “No. Oh, God, please no.” Alaida fell to her knees next to Beatrice’s cradle and crossed herself.

  “Prayer will do you no good,” said Bôte. She poured a cup of wine and pressed it into Alaida’s hands. “Drink this. All of it.” She waited until Alaida obeyed. “Now listen to me. Lord Ivo is more danger to us than the Church. We know what he is, a devil who took a man’s form so he could get a child on you. He will take Lady Beatrice and kill you and me.”

  “No. He wouldn’t hurt us.”

  “He would. He must, for so long as we live, we are a threat to him, and to those friends of his, too, for surely they come and go so strangely for the same reason. They are all three of them demons.”

  “I asked him and asked him why. ‘Trust me,’ he said,” Alaida whispered. She rocked back and forth, holding herself as she tried not to shriek. “And I did. Oh, God, I did, and he is this … thing.” She grabbed Bôte. “What can we do?”

  “Run, my lady. We have no choice. We must be away before he returns.”

  “But …” This didn’t seem right. Ivo had always been gentle, and he adored Beatrice—but even Satan would love his own spawn. Her head felt so thick. “I don’t know. Oh, God. What do I do?”

  “Run, I tell you, fast and far, so that no one ever knows what Lady Beatrice is, or that you lay with a devil.”

  “But I didn’t know,” protested Alaida. “Surely I cannot be blamed. Nor Beatrice.”

  “No one will hear your innocence, my lady, they will be too busy burning you and your half-devil child. We must run.” Without waiting for Alaida’s decision, Bôte began gathering warm clothing. She tugged Alaida to her feet. “Dress yourself, my lady, and find as much gold and silver as you can. We will need it to make our way to Scotland. Aye, he’ll not find us there.”

  Still numb with shock, Alaida let Bôte’s sureness guide her. She donned thick hose and boots and layered on two heavy woolen kirtles beneath her warmest gown and cloak. She dumped out the money in the casket, filled her purse and Bôte’s, and wrapped what was left into the bundle of clothes along with her jewels. As Bôte tied up the remains of the previous evening’s supper in a cloth, Alaida tucked a few more jewels into Beatrice’s swaddling and wrapped her more heavily against the cold. The baby began to whine and fret.

  “I should nurse her first, to keep her quiet.”

  “Later. I will not burn for that demon.” Bôte leaned over the cradle, did something Alaida couldn’t see, and Beatrice stopped crying. “That will hold her. I know a safe place where you can suckle her once we’re away. Hurry, my lady. Sir Ari will be back. He’s one of them. He will never let us go.”

  “What about Oswald and the others? How will we explain … ?”

  “I will see to it. Stay here.” Bôte slipped out. A few moments later, she was back, carrying a skin of wine and a cheese, which she pressed into Alaida’s hands along with the bundle of clothes. “Fortune is truly with us, my lady. They all still sleep. Come. Quietly.”

  Bôte scooped up Beatrice, and they passed down the stairs and across the hall in silence, surrounded only by random snores and grunts. Outside, the fog hung so thick it muffled all sound and turned everything to specters. No one challenged them in the yard, and the man who should have been on duty at the postern gate seemed to have stepped away. Bôte quickly raised the bar and pushed the gate open enough to slip through. She motioned for Alaida to follow.

  This didn’t seem right, that faint voice whisp
ered again, as if through the fog. Alaida glanced back toward the hall, but it had all but disappeared in the mist, just as Ivo had disappeared, an eagle. Her eagle, she suddenly realized, and that made it worse.

  “Come, lamb,” urged Bôte. “I will keep you safe.”

  A muffled footstep sounded somewhere nearby. Panicking, Alaida stepped quickly through the gate and Bôte shut it behind them with nary a squeak. Unable to see more than a few feet in the fog, they made their way toward the river almost by feel, found the bridge, and crossed noiselessly. On the far bank, they hurried west, away from Alnwick and the evil that was its lord and her husband.

  And all the while, Beatrice slept peacefully in Bôte’s arms.

  CHAPTER 28

  “GATE,” SHOUTED ARI for a second time, and for the second time no one answered. Strange. The yard should be bustling with activity by now—he’d gotten turned around in the sudden fog and it had taken him forever to find his horse and get back. It was nearly time for dinner.

  He pushed against the gate and found it barred. He shouted again, louder, and pounded against the iron strapping, but the only answer was the neighing of horses from the stables. A chill ran down his spine, and with a curse, he whipped his mount around and rode for Wat’s cottage.

  He found the reeve digging beetroots in his croft. “Something’s wrong at the manor. Muster as many armed men as you can find quickly and come.”

  By the time the villagers turned out, Ari had discovered the postern gate was unbarred. He drew his sword and silently pulled it open. The others slipped in behind him, huddling with their weapons as he and Wat, armed with a broadax, edged forward through the mist.

  As they neared the well, Ari spotted what looked like a body. He crept closer, saw no blood, and noticed the man’s chest rise and fall. He prodded him with the tip of his sword. Edric rolled over and yawned.

  “Ass! Get up! Get up!” Furious, Ari hauled him to his feet. “Sleeping on watch, and with a gate unbarred. I’ll have your hide for this. Fifty lashes.”

  “Wha—?” Edric gaped at him. “But I … But I—”