by Jill Hughey
“What did he do when he realized David was gone?” Rochelle asked. Having met Drogo, a shudder passed through her at the thought of his retribution.
“It took him near a week to notice, actually. He disappeared for a few days after the accident, probably to this very hut, come to think of it. When he returned, Mother fussed over him to throw him off the scent for a while. Eventually he put it all together. And that was the end of her.”
David had been standing deadly still through Doeg’s entire story, but that sentence physically rocked him. “What are you saying?” he asked, his voice low and tortured.
“Again, it was an accident. He had hit her before, but this time she was pregnant. Something went wrong. She ended up halfway down the steps.” He shook his blond head. “The blood never stopped. Servants were screaming. Father stood back holding his hands out in front of him, turning them over and over as though he had never seen them before.”
David staggered to a chair to slump into it, dropping his head into his hands. “Did he continue to beat you?” he croaked.
“No, strangely enough,” Doeg said, his voice matter-of-fact now that the worst facts had been shared. “I have thought about this quite a lot. I think the murder of our mother proved to be something of an epiphany to him. He kept his distance from me after that, and he never went looking for you. Perhaps he realized he had a demon within that had to be caged. He has not shown particular interest in anyone or anything since that day. I have literally never seen him touch another person.”
David sat up straight. “You have been carrying all of this within you — alone — for all these years.”
Doeg smiled without humor. “Behind my tabard of self-pity. Yes.”
David winced, but Rochelle wouldn’t stand for that. “That is not fair, Doeg.” Both brothers turned their gazes to her, obviously at a loss to how to move forward from a place of so much pain. She struggled to her feet with David’s cloak held tight around her. “If today is the day to be honest, then let us be honest.” She walked to Doeg, gently touching his crippled arm with the tips of her fingers. He did not wince away. “You could have a wife, Doeg, if you stopped hiding behind this. And made your servants clean your house. And removed those beasts from your table.” She smiled encouragingly. “Many women would be happy for the fine home and your own good qualities.”
Doeg scoffed. “Good qualities! You would like to boil my guts in pig fat, and do not deny it. You despise me.”
Rochelle looked at him evenly. “Yes, yes I do. But there is no accounting for the taste of other girls. You have a responsibility to your family line. To your land and your peasants. Your ignorance of your own estate is inexcusable. Until now, that is your father’s failure, not yours. You were asking the right questions at Alda. It is time, Doeg, for you to take over.”
Doeg shook his head. “He will not give me control. You heard him. Every time I say a word, he tells me to shut my yap.”
Rochelle was not dissuaded. “From what I have seen, your father has withdrawn from his duties. If it were just the two of you and all your filthy friends moldering away I would not say a word. It is not just your future he is squandering with your tacit permission. Many families depend on you. Your people, your tenants, are needlessly suffering.”
David walked over to put his hand on his brother’s shoulder. “She might be right, Doeg. It was my intention to go there tomorrow anyway. Perhaps the two of us together could convince him to let you take over.”
Doeg’s eyes were wide and guileless for the first time Rochelle could recall, like a child who has just been given a vast new responsibility he is not sure he can shoulder. “Perhaps,” he breathed. Then he shook his head vigorously, “No. No, I do not think I am ready to face him yet. I am not sure what I should do. And I know I will never figure that out under his roof.” He glanced awkwardly around the hut. “Or here.” He turned to leave.
David reached to stop him. “Let us help you, Doeg.”
Doeg laughed bitterly. “A week ago, I wanted your help. Or perhaps to be rescued. After the way I have behaved, I do not think I can take any charity from you.”
“I am still going back there,” David warned. “I intend to do some aggressive housecleaning. If you want any say in it, you will come with us.”
Doeg shook his head. “Do what you must. I only ask that you do not hurt the serving women.”
“Agreed.” They stood awkwardly in the moment when they would usually embrace. “Is there anything else you have not told me? Anything at all?”
Doeg quirked his lips as he turned to open the door to blinding sunlight. He exited the hut, stretching his good arm high to the sky as though greeting a new day. “Yes, David, there is.”
“What is it?” David asked, his voice colored with dread.
Without turning, Doeg told him. “I hired the third warrior. The Black. I could not stand it. You are too damned lucky to be who you are and then to get a tolerable wife and a rich estate on top of it all. I simply could not stand it. I still cannot. But I will try to stop sabotaging you at every turn. It does not seem to work anyway.” He mounted his horse and rode away from the hut and his home, calling as he trotted by, “Oh, and that neighbor boy, I set him against you, too. I had nearly forgotten about that.”
Chapter Thirty-six
David and Rochelle shared an oddly calm, quiet afternoon. David sat at the table, carving random shapes in its surface with his semi-spata, absorbed in his thoughts. Rochelle took care of her clothing and personal needs, tried to comfort him with her presence, and offered only a dozen words. “I am here when you are ready to talk. I love you.”
Near dusk she pulled out the assortment of food left in his pack to mix some dried meat and cabbage into a soup. David ate it, silent until he swirled the last bit of broth in the bowl.
“I always thought I was sent away because my mother died. Apparently it was vice versa.”
“You cannot blame yourself. This was your father’s doing, from beginning to end,” she insisted.
“The people of Alda judge Samuel by his father’s deeds,” he observed.
Rochelle nodded. “Samuel is barely out of boyhood. You are a man grown, completely separate from Drogo.”
“His blood is in me,” he said.
“Why should that worry you?” Rochelle asked as she walked behind the chair to embrace him, her cheek against his.
He shrugged, but his voice conveyed the agony of self-doubt. “What if I am like him, or become that way as I get older?”
“Do not compare yourself to him. You are nothing like him,” Rochelle said harshly.
“I have demons of my own I keep caged. You might not know what I am capable of.”
“I know you,” she insisted. “You told me so yourself. I have never seen you lash out in blind anger. You have only once said an unfair word to me and Lord knows I have given you more opportunities that that.” She kissed his stubbly cheek. “While I was in the storeroom at Calx, I even thought about how you could be so different from Drogo.”
“What did you decide?”
“It must be your mother’s influence. She must have been very courageous and very wise to get you spirited out of the house.”
David nodded. “Why didn’t she save Doeg, too?”
“She could not send you both, my love. You heard Doeg. She kept your absence from Drogo for a week. And she did not know she would be leaving your brother. He was injured. She kept him with her. In her mind, she probably felt she was abandoning you, not him. It must have been terrible for her.”
David twined his fingers in hers where they draped over his chest. “If I ever raise a hand to you, or show cruelty toward our children, promise me you will remind me of my father’s legacy.”
She came to his side to face him and grip his shoulders. “You are not your father, do you hear me?”
David continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “And if I will not listen, send for Theo. Promise me.”
“D
avid! The only evidence of your father’s blood in you is your hair and the shape of your nose. If Doeg had not told you the truth, you would never dream of asking me for this promise.”
He looked away from her stubbornly.
She caught his face between her hands, forcing him to face at her. “You told me, after Sewell’s attack, to not give my dagger more power than it deserved. You were telling me to not let the idea of a thing worm into my mind. I am giving you your own advice. Your father’s actions decades ago do not indicate who you are, or how you will treat people in your life. Do not give his sins more weight than they deserve. They are his to carry, not yours!”
David pulled Rochelle between his thighs, pressing his face into the softness of her breasts. She smoothed his hair.
“You are such a good wife for me,” David murmured.
She kissed the top of his head. “And you are a good, wise, strong man. I know it. I believe it. You must believe it, too.”
They set off for Drogo’s house late the next morning, Rochelle held firmly across David’s lap as Woden trod slowly through the snow. Magnus ran ahead then back, his tongue lolling out of his mouth. “This is much easier on a horse,” Rochelle joked. David’s eyes crinkled in the faintest suggestion of a smile.
He’d given no indication what he would do when they arrived. She’d envisioned several possibilities running the gamut, from his laying waste to the hall, to Drogo breaking down with immediate contriteness. Both ended with his father and all the men sobbing into her hem for forgiveness. Not that she would actually want that to happen, but the image gave her courage to face them all again.
Their interpretation of her return mattered a great deal more to her than she would like. She wanted them to see she’d returned by choice, not been dragged back unwillingly. Her entrance must show strength, even if David’s presence was the only thing that could prod her through Calx’s door. She could not bring herself to mention her doubts to David in view of everything else he was dealing with.
As the house appeared before them, her back straightened, her hands curled into fists, and she squeezed her legs together. David glanced down at her with knitted eyebrows. He rubbed her back reassuringly. “It will be different with me here. You do know that?”
She stared at her hands, forcing them to lay flat on her thighs. “Yes, but I am the same me.”
He reined the horse to a stop. “What on earth do you mean by that?”
“It is right for us to come back. I hate that I have been nothing but weak in their eyes. Or, at least, the two or three times they saw me….”
Of all the things his father could have done — had done — it hurt David deeply to see his brave wife so cowed. A woman’s lot in this world of men was precarious on the best of days. Rochelle had been insulated from it. She’d had a bit of maturing to do when he’d met her in Aix. She’d done some because of the tournament, but she had done more than he’d like to admit on her trip here. Without him.
“I will not lie to you, Rochelle. Alda is an oasis in the world. It is almost unreal in its purity. Your place in it is, perhaps, the most unbelievable part of all. You have very little in common with the way the rest of creation operates. I am sorry you had to learn that at my father’s hand, and in such a harsh manner.”
She nodded in resignation. “I always thought I was so worldly, with my ledgers and reading and stalking about the fields solving everyone’s problems. In reality, I am just —”
“Don’t!” David interrupted her. “It is not my intention to belittle what you have accomplished or to change how you see yourself. You only need to add this knowledge to what you already are, just as I am trying to with what I learned of my family. Can you do that?”
She sucked in a shaky breath. “Yes, you are right. We are both adding more layers.”
He nudged Woden into motion again. “And do not sell yourself too short,” he added, chucking her on the chin. “Retreat is a valid strategy in any battle. I told you that the first day we met. Retreat, regroup, call for reinforcements. I have done it many times.”
David pushed the door open with one arm then stepped back to allow Rochelle to enter. She recoiled from the familiar nauseating smell, then collected herself to step regally forward, stopping slightly to the left of the door. The remains of the midday meal were flung all over the table. She let her gaze slide across the face of every man seated there.
A few of the men hooted at her, and Drogo smiled. “Ah, so Doeg found you after all. He should have brought you back yester —”
She knew the instant David entered. The words died in Drogo’s throat and the taunting calls were doused, as though a candle had been blown out. She heard someone utter a prayer.
“I wish to speak to my father in private,” David announced without preamble. Rochelle heard something in his voice she recognized from yesterday. The fury in him still hungered, fed by his confrontation with Doeg, but not nearly sated. If unleashed, she knew it would be dreadful.
The men shifted in their seats. One even began to stand, ready to leave.
“Stay! Drogo shouted. “This is my hall. I decide when I need privacy. Where is Doeg?”
“As if you give a damn,” David shot back hotly.
Drogo paled at that, but sat firm with his men around him.
David drew his spata to swing it in lazy circles before him, just as he had in front of the chapel in Aix. “Very well. First things first. I am less than pleased with the hospitality extended to my wife in your hall.” He turned to Rochelle. “Which of these future dead people touched you, wife?” he asked, his tone changed as though asking her what was for dinner.
They were not a very loyal lot. Eleven pairs of eyes shifted to the man who had bruised her. David waited for her confirmation. “The one with red hair.” She did not relish incriminating him. It seemed entirely possible that David would kill him. The rage coiled in him since yesterday morning was now unwinding, here where it had a reason to strike.
“Magnus, guard,” David said quietly. The dog padded over to Rochelle.
David moved. He strode forward with such purpose that men scattered away from the table like beetles from an overturned log. Benches clattered to the floor. He grabbed the red-haired man by the front of the tunic to drag him toward the door.
“I didn’t do anything! I didn’t! She lies! I would never touch your wife!” He clutched at David’s hand with both of his own.
David stopped in front of Rochelle. Magnus trembled at her feet, teeth bared, ready for another go at the man. David yanked the miscreant’s sleeve up to his elbow to expose the scabby wounds of a dog’s bite circling his forearm. “Call her a liar again, you coward.”
The man whimpered as David wrenched him through the door. Rochelle stood rooted along with everyone in the room. The serving women, including Ingrid, hovered in the kitchen doorway, eyes wide. Only Drogo remained seated, leaning forward in his chair as if in anticipation. She could only call his expression eager.
Several blood-curdling screams cut the air. David returned, his spata bloody. He held it up for the men to see, then turned his face toward Rochelle again. “Was anyone else particularly insulting to you?” he asked her with deference. “Other than my father, that is?”
“No,” she whispered, eyeing the reddened blade, mesmerized by how quickly and calmly David had taken control of the household.
“Excellent,” he said before addressing the group before him again. “Now, let us try this once more. Any of you parasites who wish to keep me from speaking to my father in private, stay right where you are, and I will deal with you accordingly. Anyone wishing to escape the fate of your friend is welcome to walk out this door. I recommend you never return.”
The men shifted, not looking at David or Drogo. “Can we, uh, just get our things?” one asked hesitantly.
It took about a quarter hour for the men to leave, taking the red-haired man — minus a few fingers — with them. David watched from the porch to make sure no
one tried to steal Woden or Regret. When he dropped the bar on the door, Drogo still waited calmly in his chair. David turned to the women clustered near the kitchen. “Which of you is Ingrid?” The others shoved her forward.
“Ingrid, my wife will need something warm to eat. You will stay here in the house, if you can,” he said as he led Rochelle to a comfortable chair by the fire. “The rest of you are to clear the table, then go home. You may come back tomorrow.” They scurried quickly to do the cleaning. In five minutes, the house was quiet.
“I do not like noblewomen in my hall,” Drogo groused.
“I do not give a damn what you like,” David said sharply. “Rochelle will not be out of my sight.”
Drogo curled his lip. “Send her to her chamber. You can see the door from here.”
David strode to the door his father had indicated to kick it open. “By chamber, do you mean this windowless storeroom?”
“It was good enough for you.”
“I am a grown man accustomed to the noise and vices of men. I also liked being near the front door.”
“Apparently she did too,” Drogo drawled.
David chuckled. “Does it sting, Father, that she walked out of your house without your permission? She made it all the way to your hunting hut, on foot and alone. Luckily for you, I found her there. If anything had happened to her, or if I had arrived here to find her missing, your blood would be splattered on the wall.” The words were delivered with calm conviction. Rochelle stared at her husband, once again transfixed by his defense of her.
He walked to the opposite end of the table from his father to occupy the seat she herself had been in two nights ago. He laid his bloody spata on the table before him.
Ingrid returned with a steaming bowl of stew and a mug of warm spiced wine.
